Last night we played the #Threeforged games Ultranormal Encounters and Last Year’s Magic.
In Ultranormal Encounters, players are a group of people who have been abducted by some entity, and who are now being questioned by government agents (who are also played by the players) about what happened. Each of the abductees has a different interpretation of the events, and gameplay involves a series of cuts between each of them telling their version of events, and either supporting or refuting what the other characters are saying.
The start of the game, which involves selecting a scenario containing certain facts and character types, and then subtly tweaking those facts and characters to give you a unique set-up, is pretty fun. The gameplay is also enjoyable. . . to a point. While it is undeniably fun to cast doubts on each character’s story and then smash-cut away to see if another character backs them up, our game started to feel like a drag after awhile. Part of the problem is the characters begin with wildly different versions of what happened (this is determined in set-up), and so the conflicting stories between players start to really defy belief, and even turn downright comic. I think an easy fix would be to simply have two disputed versions of what ultimately happened to the characters, with each character on one side or the other, and to have those differing versions of events have some similarities so as to avoid gonzo outcomes.
Another reason our game started to drag is the mechanical pacing is off. We eventually threw in the towel and just stopped, but, per the rules of the game, we probably could have kept going for another 2 hours. As mentioned, the smash-cut gameplay, in which you tell an increasingly convoluted (and contradictory) tale, is pretty fun, but it wears out its welcome after about an hour. The rules need to be revised to get you to an earlier, cleaner endgame.
All that said, this game has a ton of potential. I hope the designers go back and fiddle with it, because I really love the concept and would love to see what the game could be with a little more time in the oven.
Last Year’s Magic is a competitive game about a group of wizards in a pub trying to solve problems with magic. The game involves some free roleplay between the wizards, an imminent problem arising, and then the wizards proposing a magical solution to that problem. Gameplay is a simple trick-taking card affair, with each suit representing a certain magical approach to the problem, such as Connections Between People or Imposing Your Will to Alter Reality. Players describe their magical approach as they lay their card facedown in the hopes that others will play a lower card of the same suit, since a player wins the trick if their suit is the dominant one played and they played the highest value of that suit. Of course, you can’t be too obvious about what your suit is, because if all the cards are the same suit, it’s a bust, and the player with the highest card played in that circumstance loses a bunch of points.
The way in which you try to influence the cards played via your narration is a very interesting component, but, all-in-all, the trick-taking card game was the least compelling thing about Last Year’s Magic. We had a lot more fun just playing our zany wizards, thinking-up problems to tackle, and then describing our magical solutions. The card game part of it felt like an afterthought (and, in some cases, really slowed things down). Which is not to say we didn’t have fun. In fact, we had a great time. But I think we had fun despite the core gameplay, not because of it.
I think there is a way to keep the competitive aspect of Last Year’s Magic intact, while also enhancing the RP that is happening at the table. As it stands, the competitive aspect of the game just feels like a thing that has to be dealt with before you can get back to the fun stuff.
Daniel Lewis Russell Benner and Kristen D might also chime-in with their thoughts.
Ultranormal Encounters
I think this game has a ton of potential. It comes close in its current form but definitely has some issues.
Most importantly, I love love love the way that narrative control is passed between players in the interrogation scenes. It feels super cinematic to jump from one character saying “Sofie will back me up.” straight to Sofie’s player saying “No, that’s not what happened at all” or “That’s totally what happened” and then continuing on with her version of events.
The biggest problem that I had with the game as it’s currently written is that it doesn’t ever feel like you’re really accomplishing anything. At the beginning of the game, each character decides what they think happened to them (this is required to be different for every character) and is encouraged to push their version of events. There’s no reason that they would ever change their story or deviate from their initial interpretation, so in the end, everyone still thinks the exact same thing as they did in the beginning. There’s no mechanism to build consensus even about the basic facts of what happened.
I think it would be more satisfying if the characters were just having difficulty remembering what happened and when another character confirmed or denied one of their statements, that became a truth and all of the characters were obligated to move forward from there. That way it would build a single cohesive narrative through play and at the end, even if all of the characters had different interpretations of what happened, they could all agree on some basic facts. As it is though, it mostly felt like we were telling 4 different stories that we occasionally needed to amend small details of if they were denied by another player.
There’s a spotlight problem, too, in that whichever player acts fastest to cast doubt on the character being interrogated gets to draw a card, which essentially means their character will get another turn in the interrogation seat. By the end of the game, there was a big disparity in the number of cards that different players had drawn, so some characters spent a long time being interrogated while others only got to a couple chances to tell their version of events. Just giving everyone like 5 cards to last the entire game would probably solve this and trim the runtime to something that feels a little more appropriate. We closed out our story long before we exhausted all of the cards in our hands.
One other small thing, the way the playsets work is cool, but our results with them felt a little uneven. I liked using it to determine the facts about the abduction in the beginning, but using them to create the characters didn’t give us the intended result. For example, the playset was supposed to be a bunch of college students abducted from the woods, but we all randomly got a bunch of black cards, so we had to deny most of the facts that were presented about our characters, so we only ended up with one character who was actually a college student.
Overall, it’s a fun game with a lot of potential and I really hope that it gets a little more attention after the contest because it wouldn’t need much to be fantastic.
Ultranormal Encounters
I think this game has a ton of potential. It comes close in its current form but definitely has some issues.
Most importantly, I love love love the way that narrative control is passed between players in the interrogation scenes. It feels super cinematic to jump from one character saying “Sofie will back me up.” straight to Sofie’s player saying “No, that’s not what happened at all” or “That’s totally what happened” and then continuing on with her version of events.
The biggest problem that I had with the game as it’s currently written is that it doesn’t ever feel like you’re really accomplishing anything. At the beginning of the game, each character decides what they think happened to them (this is required to be different for every character) and is encouraged to push their version of events. There’s no reason that they would ever change their story or deviate from their initial interpretation, so in the end, everyone still thinks the exact same thing as they did in the beginning. There’s no mechanism to build consensus even about the basic facts of what happened.
I think it would be more satisfying if the characters were just having difficulty remembering what happened and when another character confirmed or denied one of their statements, that became a truth and all of the characters were obligated to move forward from there. That way it would build a single cohesive narrative through play and at the end, even if all of the characters had different interpretations of what happened, they could all agree on some basic facts. As it is though, it mostly felt like we were telling 4 different stories that we occasionally needed to amend small details of if they were denied by another player.
There’s a spotlight problem, too, in that whichever player acts fastest to cast doubt on the character being interrogated gets to draw a card, which essentially means their character will get another turn in the interrogation seat. By the end of the game, there was a big disparity in the number of cards that different players had drawn, so some characters spent a long time being interrogated while others only got to a couple chances to tell their version of events. Just giving everyone like 5 cards to last the entire game would probably solve this and trim the runtime to something that feels a little more appropriate. We closed out our story long before we exhausted all of the cards in our hands.
One other small thing, the way the playsets work is cool, but our results with them felt a little uneven. I liked using it to determine the facts about the abduction in the beginning, but using them to create the characters didn’t give us the intended result. For example, the playset was supposed to be a bunch of college students abducted from the woods, but we all randomly got a bunch of black cards, so we had to deny most of the facts that were presented about our characters, so we only ended up with one character who was actually a college student.
Overall, it’s a fun game with a lot of potential and I really hope that it gets a little more attention after the contest because it wouldn’t need much to be fantastic.
It’s so great to read an AP of a game I reviewed. It sounds like UE went about where I thought it would. Still there’s some really cool shit in there.
It’s so great to read an AP of a game I reviewed. It sounds like UE went about where I thought it would. Still there’s some really cool shit in there.
Last Year’s Magic
I’ve got less to say about this one. I wanted to like it more than I did. The premise is great and leads to fun free-roleplay, but I didn’t really like the trick-taking aspect. The descriptions of the suits are so vague as to be mostly meaningless. If you try to describe your card in a coy way, no one is going to get it. That might get better after a few playthroughs, but in the end it doesn’t really matter because even if you know what suit someone else plays, it doesn’t help you unless you have a high card in that suit. The trick-taking rules more or less undercut the Dixit-like clue giving. By the end of the game we gave up any pretense of being clever and essentially just called out which suit we were playing. I liked it better at that point, because then it became sort of a bluffing game where you had to decide if you thought you could take a trick or if you should throw a low same-suit card in the hopes that it became a bad trick or just decrease its value by throwing off-suit.
In the end, I had fun with it, but probably wouldn’t go out of my way to play it again.
The best thing about it, by far, is declaring a premonition and then acting all smug when something happens that immediately confirms it.
Last Year’s Magic
I’ve got less to say about this one. I wanted to like it more than I did. The premise is great and leads to fun free-roleplay, but I didn’t really like the trick-taking aspect. The descriptions of the suits are so vague as to be mostly meaningless. If you try to describe your card in a coy way, no one is going to get it. That might get better after a few playthroughs, but in the end it doesn’t really matter because even if you know what suit someone else plays, it doesn’t help you unless you have a high card in that suit. The trick-taking rules more or less undercut the Dixit-like clue giving. By the end of the game we gave up any pretense of being clever and essentially just called out which suit we were playing. I liked it better at that point, because then it became sort of a bluffing game where you had to decide if you thought you could take a trick or if you should throw a low same-suit card in the hopes that it became a bad trick or just decrease its value by throwing off-suit.
In the end, I had fun with it, but probably wouldn’t go out of my way to play it again.
The best thing about it, by far, is declaring a premonition and then acting all smug when something happens that immediately confirms it.
Hats off for getting in some Actual Play! Out of curiosity, how many did yall flip through before selecting these two to play?
Hats off for getting in some Actual Play! Out of curiosity, how many did yall flip through before selecting these two to play?
Mischa Krilov Thanks! In fact, I am aiming for us to play test at least 20 of the games between now and contest completion.
Honestly, Dan suggested the games we played. I’m not sure what his methodology for choosing was.
Mischa Krilov Thanks! In fact, I am aiming for us to play test at least 20 of the games between now and contest completion.
Honestly, Dan suggested the games we played. I’m not sure what his methodology for choosing was.
Mischa Krilov I probably skimmed through about 30 to 40 of them but any that required a GM or multiple sessions I didn’t consider at all.
Mischa Krilov I probably skimmed through about 30 to 40 of them but any that required a GM or multiple sessions I didn’t consider at all.
Right now, I could only play ones that could be done online. Really keen to see how it goes for y’all.
Right now, I could only play ones that could be done online. Really keen to see how it goes for y’all.
I figure since The Gauntlet’s core competency is quickly assembling play sessions, the least we can do for Threeforged is get some of these games played. That will be our contribution.
We’re thinking of playing some online tomorrow. Let me know if you’re interested, Mischa Krilov.
I figure since The Gauntlet’s core competency is quickly assembling play sessions, the least we can do for Threeforged is get some of these games played. That will be our contribution.
We’re thinking of playing some online tomorrow. Let me know if you’re interested, Mischa Krilov.