List of topics to raise during the game briefing:
- Points
- Generally represent stamina; used in many ways in game
- GMs may give additional Style Points for especially good roleplaying, at their discretion
- Quick review of Combat Mechanic
- Quick review of Spark Mechanic
- Items, Abilities and Disabilities
- Items are transferrable; Abilities and Disabilities aren't
- Most Abilities are optional; more disabilities are mandatory
- Stealth -- worth noting, since it happens a lot in the story
- Buttons
- This is who you appear to be
- Sometimes ambiguous: means you can't easily tell them apart
- Doesn't necessarily reflect costume
- Take the button seriously: this player looks, sounds and smells like the pictured character
- Please try to avoid using metagame knowledge about the world
- Readers of the story know more than your character does
- Rule #1: Enjoy the Game
- Not about winning and losing, it's about roleplaying
- Trust some people; don't trust everybody
- Ask questions of GMs as needed -- that's what we're here for
- Game will take 3 to 3.5 hours; debrief afterwards
- Darker: Suggestion - keep the debriefing short, and more focused on "what happened during the game?" rather than the usual backstory exposition. With all of the game information online, curious players can look over the starting game-state as much as they'd like; the insatiably curious can ask other players or the GMs. If you're willing to be experimental, we could even do a distributed debriefing: rather than everyone sitting as a captive audience to a single player/GM at a time (each of whom will have varying talent with storytelling and the difficult-to-master skill of "judging what about your experience was interesting to others"), allocate time for the players/GMs to ask each other what they did / what happened during the game. If concentrated, this will be very noisy, but with the full room(s) available it need not be.
- Justin: Hmm. Interesting idea, and I'll think about this. The difficulty is that the line between "what happened?" and backstory exposition is very fuzzy -- it's often hard to talk about the former without the latter. But the basic principle seems sound, of trying to minimize the amount of time spent on backstory during the mass-debrief and encouraging the players to talk among themselves afterwards. If we can hold the game to three hours, that should give enough time for people to spend a while chatting, while we clean up.
- Review Setting
- This room is an area of wilderness.
- Over yonder is a big castle; rumor has it that it appeared out of nowhere several months ago, and it may have something to do with why you're here. It's the other room. Rules for exploring it are posted on the door and inside.
- The area between the two rooms is the path up to the castle, and can be used as in-game space so long as you don't get in the way of hotel staff.
- (last) Set players up initial locations