I love getting art for games in development. Nothing makes me want to write more than seeing awesome illustrations by talented people with fun spins on “my” material. Sons of Liberty is going to have a whole ton of art, and it’s streaming into my inbox every week, now. It’s to the point where I can’t help but share:

Anna Krieder is doing the Connected (Diamonds) illustrations, involving networking, connections, and social-fu:

Jake Richmond is doing the Patriotic (Hearts) illustrations, involving courage, martial prowess, and sacrifices:

I am so looking forward to laying this book out, since I am going to be drowning in art assets to throw into pages!

Back in the day, dramatists used to write plays that had three “unities:” unity of time, unity of place, and unity of action. That is, the entire play took place within a single day, the stage represented one place throughout the play, and there was only one plotline with no subplots. This was, ultimately, a misinterpretation of Aristotle that got elaborated on for a few centuries until it was the unquestioned standard of The Way Things Are. You’ve gotta love European thought sometimes.

Now, there’s this thing that can happen in Full Light, Full Steam that can totally bog down the game and paralyze the scrip system’s scene pacing. In short form, the players get most or all of the characters into one scene and then each character goes off in a different direction to do a different thing. In response to this, the scrips scream in horror, shrivel up, and die on the table.

Fixing the Problem

Much as the classical unities were a reductive idea overzealously imitated, they can be useful tools in fixing this problem. To put it simply, a ’scene’ in Full Light, Full Steam should possess at least two of the three unities, and should probably start off with all three.

So when you frame up a new scene, it’s the three officers in the cockpit of the escort ship, flying out to the derelict frigate to see what’s up. You’ve got time, place, and action right there. Now, if the scene continues on and they get to the airlock and proceed to the frigate, that’s fine: they’ve only violated unity of place. Alternately, if some pirates attack on the way over, that’s fine, too: it’s just unity of action that’s broken. What you should not do, however, is stretch the one scene across fighting off the pirates as well as boarding the derelict ship. That’s too much stuff for one scene, and you lose the common thread that makes the scene a scene.

Basically, it’s fine to have everybody united in one thing and do that thing in more than one place or over a period of time (a chase scene, for instance). It’s also fine to have lots of characters doing different things in the same time and place (shore leave at the Arcturus Arms!). When you cram more into the scene, though, and have different characters doing different things in different places and over a space of time, you are trying to shoehorn the entire adventure into one scene. At which point the scene pops from overpressure and spills the game all over the table.

Which is not to say that you shouldn’t have all that stuff happening in your game. You should! All those things, though, should be in different scenes. A scene is just a display box for the cool stuff in your game. If you put too much cool stuff into one box, none of it is displayed well. Luckily, scenes are free, and you can have as many display boxes as you like.

Enough Abstraction! What Do I Do?

When framing a scene, lay out when it is, where it is, and what is happening. That way it’s clear what the unity of time, place and action is. This is easier than it may sound: “Okay, a half-hour later, we’re in the fighter flying away from HMS Imperial, heading down to the colony. Lt. Hastings, Captain Montrose, and Sally are in the cockpit.” Boom: everybody should be on the same page.

Then, when you’re in a scene, your character can leave the area only if he’s going to do something in coordination with the other players — you preserve time and action while breaking place. If you want to leave and do something else, that’s great: it’s just another scene. Get yourself a full scrip and pass it so you can set a new scene, or pass a not-full scrip and jumpcut to somebody who’s where you want to be.

Similarily, when you are in a scene, your character can only start doing something new as long as the scene has stayed and will stay in one place — you are preserving time and place while breaking action. If you’re in a travelling scene and you want to do something new, grab a scrip and jumpcut to somebody else. Then the scene after that may allow you to do your thing.

Lastly, when you are in a scene and you want to do something that takes some time — fix a complicated assembly in the faraday drive, for instance — you can ‘montage’ your way through time to being finished only if nobody else is doing other things at the same time and you stay put with the problem. You can break unity of time only if you preserve unity of place and action.

If you are not in a scene and want to break into it, make sure your entry doesn’t break a second unity. If you want to burst in and shift the focus onto doing something new, make sure that the scene has unified time and place. Also make sure that the ‘doing something new’ will not require breaking time or place. “Hey guys, let’s stop doing this and go do that” breaks two unities and will require a new scene before you “go do that.”

Unfortunately, this problem has only really come into clear focus now, so it isn’t in the first edition, first printing. It will certainly be in the next edition; it may get added to the second printing. I doubt I can add it in without causing some serious shifts in page flow. First significant change to go on the reprint list!

So you’re sitting there at like, Taco Bell lunch or something, and all of a sudden you get this EUREKA lightning bolt of how to fix some piece of your under-development game. And you think it over, and you analyze it, and you work through the repercussions, and more and more you’re thinking, “Yes, this is the solution! This fixes three different problems at once! This is beautiful!”

And then you open the rules document, find the right place in the manuscript, and you change three words. Brilliant insight, change the entire experience of play, the only impact to the manuscript is this little tiny corner of the text. Kind of a letdown.

(But then you playtest it and it’s awesome.)

So last night we played the second installment of our Sons of Liberty playtest where we are trying out the Campaign Mode. We have cleared the Stamp Acts phase and we are now in Shot Heard Round the World.

Last night it was Mark, Judson, and I. Turo, who played in the first session where we cleared Stamp Acts, couldn’t make it, but the game continued undeterred, as it is meant to. It was rather gratifying how much this was not a problem; I don’t want to say that I was happy that Turo didn’t game with us, but I was happy to see that Turo not being able to play didn’t upset the game.

Mark wanted to give the Tory player a try this time around, so Judson and I picked Patriot figures. I played Tom Paine; Judson went with Thomas Jefferson, who Mark played in the prior session. Again, the repeat of characters was a great, big non-issue, and that made me happy. This was also the first time we played with the Tory figures prepared and “on-line” so Mark picked up Governor William Tryon to start with (although he switched to Dunmore later, see below).

We drew objectives and filled out the mad libs sheet, although this time we only bantered about the primary objective and left the three opportune objectives to be fleshed out in cut scenes. I really liked this change, as it led to more fluid play and a sense of possibility and unknown that hasn’t been part of the game since the first (single-objective, multiple-scene) playtest. Our primary objective was “The Sons of Liberty must disassemble an apprentice while the British smuggle an author.” Our interpretation was, of course, that General Howe’s aide-de-camp was a cunning clockwork boy who advised him on tactical matters. While Howe was distracted getting a pro-Tory anti-revolution author into the colonies, we could sabotage the aide-de-camp.

When I did up Thomas Paine’s favored circumstances, I nabbed “while flying his ornithopter” right quick. (I also took “when impersonating an officer,” “witnessing and reporting,” and “using pamphlets.”) So the opening travel scene saw the two Toms flying south to Savannah. Mark had us pursued by a “Flying Snake” British airship. We were outgunned, but the intervention of the Turtle evened the odds and we captured the airship. End of travel hand.

I got the cut scene, so I picked up the opportune objective “The Sons of Liberty must forge a customs house lest the British install a fleet.” The cut scene consisted of the two Toms enjoying the airship captain’s store of brandy and discovering plans to build an entire fleet of the things to crush the revolution. All the parts, however, were coming in through a customs house in Savannah, so we decided to subvert the customs house and divert the parts to Valley Forge. I really, really liked how the next objective was developed from within the progress of the game rather than before play began in earnest. It felt natural and created a less jerky story.

So the two Toms stormed the custom house and rather soundly trounced what little opposition there was. Mark’s chosen starter Tory figure could only lock down sets of 5s and 7s, and none of these came up in the course of that scene. This became the “big problem” of this playtest. The Tory figures were implemented, sure, but it turns out that their abilities are so narrowly defined that it is quite possible for the Tory player to be unable to actually exercise them. This was a problem, especially since the “value” of the hand is determined by how often those abilities are used. So while Judson and I won the hand, we didn’t actually win anything mechanical. Still, we kicked the redcoats out of Savannah and raised Betsy Ross’ new flag. Booyeah for us. It’s also important to note that that hollow victory was our last.

Tory partisans had scattered out into the hills surrounding Savannah; in the next cut scene we selected the objective “The Sons of Liberty must deliver a court before the British arm colonists.” The interpretation was, of course, that we had to set up a proper government in Savannah to find and disarm those Tory partisans before the British gave them enough guns that they could retake the city. It was here that Mark ditched Tryon and picked up Dunmore. Mark exercised his abuse (militia of ex-slaves) and usurpation (collusion with the Shawnee) three or four times, and this was a glory to behold. There was tons of setting color injected into the game on a pretty organic, natural basis. Backed up by his militia of freed slaves and Shawnee allies, Dunmore kicked us the hell out of Savannah. I didn’t mind very much because it felt so appropriate.

Judson took the next cut scene and directed us at the objective “The Sons of Liberty must destroy a brother mason lest the British rescue a heliograph station.” There was a destroyed heliograph station, Judson explained to us, and a fellow mason was being manipulated through his pride to help rebuild the tower bigger and grander than before. We had to stop this or else word would get to Howe about the insurrection in Savannah and he’d know something was afoot. The two Toms leapt to action… and totally ate it. Whether it was poor cards in our hands or Mark competently shutting us down, we got nowhere here, tried to infiltrate the mason’s manor and embarrass him but the British found us out and we had to run for the hills.

Round about here, we were looking at Mark’s stack of 12 Tyranny, and realized that only the Primary Objective was left and Judson and I would have to get 34 cards on the table before Mark collected his three face cards, which was a tall order. After a desperate cut scene in a rickety shack, the two Toms resolved to give it their best for the cause of liberty. We infiltrated (using connections with the staff attending to Howe’s camp), we pamphletted (silencing captives by stuffing their mouths with pamphlets), we loomed (Jefferson is 6′2″!)… we got into General Howe’s inner sanctum, loaded a wax cylinder of seditious lies into the clockwork aide-de-camp… and then Mark called the question. We had 33 cards on the table to his 34 points. We lost by ONE POINT.

The sabotage of the aide-de-camp was discovered, repaired, and the yellow-bellied monarchist author was smuggled into the colonies. The two Toms fled into the night, flew off in Paine’s ornithopter, defeated for the day but alive to fight another day.

This was a very positive playtest; I was somewhat concerned that the Tory player was sort of a chump source of adversity there to kind of challenge you but not really. The inclusion of the Tory figures really evens the playing field and makes the Tory player very competitive. We had more than a few currency issues, but they were plain and transparent currency issues, and the way forward is pretty clear, there.

So the other day I went to France, right, and let me tell you, I couldn’t understand anything that anybody was saying. It was all fromage this and quel horreur that, and no matter how much they said, they just kept saying more, and let me tell you, it made no sense whatsoever. A few times I tried to get them to clarify what they were saying to each other, but they only looked at me funny and kept blathering on using their terrible, opaque words.

So finally, I quite reasonably told them, “Look. I’ve got an idea. How about you stop using all those silly words that you’ve built up over the last few thousand years and use the words that I’m more familiar with? Wouldn’t that be so much better? Then I could understand what you were saying to each other!”

Sadly, they kept speaking French. I wonder why.