Players:
Caroline, Marc, Fred, Shuo

Characters:
Main
Jane Austgun (organized criminal) Caroline
Reverend Nigel Pinxbury (reverend) Marc
Young Edgar Ewing (weird child) and his pet horse, Colonel Clompers Fred
Master Abercrombie Tinneys (crippled martial artist) Shuo

Secondary
Medic Jenkins, a sweet but slow old doctor Caroline
Lieutenant Reginald Babbage, a very capable steam robot powered with a Guinnessite core Marc
Lady Margaret Cadwell, an annoyed upperclass socialite Fred
Captain Jasper Snicket, Velociraptor, T-Rex Shuo

A crew of steampunk victorians on a scientific expedition is sucked through a wormhole and crash lands on a prehistoric planet. The ship's damage is extensive and the survivors are forced to make their way together through the unknown world. After moving through a jungle, the party finds shelter in a cave by a vast river. Captain Snicket, Liutenant Babbage, Father Pinxbury, and Jane leave immediately to find provisions for the party before night sets. Master Abercrombie's leg is badly injured from the crash and amputation is inevitable. Cursing Father Pinxbury for his bad fortune, Abercrombie vows to kill him as revenge. He is interrupted in his murderous thoughts by Young Edgar Ewing who asks him of his criminal past after being tipped off by Mr. Clompers (Clompers had served on the police force in his younger age).

Back in the jungle, the other half of the party is still searching for food when a velociraptor and a T-Rex suddenly bursts through the brush. Fortunately, both creatures are friendly towards the humans. The T-Rex's leg is badly injured and when they all make their way back on the cave, they all feast on the amputated limb for dinner. Abercrombie tries to train the T-Rex, hoping to use it for his revenge plan, and a game of fetch goes horribly awry when the dinosaur accidentally mauls Lady Cadwell's face and she is forced to leave the party because she is now too ugly to look at.

The next morning, Father Pinxbury baptizes both dinosaurs into the Steam Church. The velociraptor descides to become a reverend (velocireverend) and the captain, Jane, and the Father ride off on his back to the velociraptors' lair to aid his conversion efforts. Edgar, who can speak to dinosaurs as easily as horses, finds out that the T-Rex is part of a gang which his parents run. Abercrombie tells the T-Rex he should kill the human Reverend as a part of his gang initiation and the dinosaur runs off in the direction of the velociraptor's lair. The dinosaur gets a message from his girlfriend who tells him that their eggs have hatched. Not wanting to be an absent father nor rearing up his hatchlings with a life of crime, he quits the gang and makes his way to his nest.

Thinking that the score is settled, Abercrombie agrees to help Ewing escape the planet and fools Babbage in coming with them to steam the thicker underbrush for the horse to run through easier. After dressing Colonel Clompers in his finest dress blues, they are off! Before they are out of the jungle, Colonel Clompers trips and cripples his leg. Young Edgar cannot bear to see his friend in so much pain helps him commit suicide by using Clompers's favorite toy, hoop and stick, and makes him play it off a cliff.

Meanwhile, it is Halloween at the velociraptors' lair and all the humans dress up in whatever they can find in Lady Cadwell's discarded clothing trunks. Taking offense to the religious conversion, the velociraptors challenge Father Pinxbury to a beauty contest. The Father dresses himself in a wolf costume and wins over all the dinosaurs. While the captain is celebrating with the velociraptors, Pinxbury confronts Jane about the secret she's been harboring all this time. Jane shoots the holy man with a very powerful weapon and steam comes shooting out of him from all sides. He becomes a Steam Savior and propels around the lair with his steam and all the velociraptors become velosteamraptors.

Finally out of the jungle, Babbage, Edgar, and Abercrombie comes upon a group of pagan triceratops. Disgusted by the heathen lizards, Babbage flies away. Edgar and Abercrombie, desperate to get out of the planet, converts to the pagan religion and gladly accepts the mechanical help from the triceratops to rebuild their ship. As the ship is almost complete, Abercrombie spots the Reverend, now practically a steam god and shoots him down with the ship's still working infrared missiles.

Epilogue: The Reverend survives the hit and after some repairs, flies off the planet and through the wormhole back to the group's original planet. He converts all the people to the steam religion and is worshiped and loved by all. Abercrombie decides to stay on the planet after all and teaches the dinosaurs martial arts. He eventually retires to a martial arts sage atop a treacherously tall mountain. Jane made a deal with the T-Rex gang and started her own crime syndicate on the planet. Edgar wanders off into the jungle, never to be heard from again.

Playtest Feedback:
We used dice as much as we could during the game to keep things randomized and fun. We didn't use permanent cards or Foreshadowing so it was a pretty basic game.

We also ignored the suit hierarchy rules as it was more fun to throw whatever we had in our hand. It seems the rules should either make hierarchy necessary or not at all (and we all vote the latter) instead of both. The colored suits of the card would be more helpful if they denoted the type of card (red for role, green for item, blue for traits, etc...) so you can tell at a glance what is on the table.

The direction of the Motivations and Antagonists were a bit confusing. In general, it was easier for everyone to be an antagonist instead of just one person.

We all ran out of cards quickly so for those of us that were playing more aggressively, it would be nice to have another card taking rule.

A dice pool, like in Fiasco, was suggested for the setup portion.

All in all, it was another fun light game and we had many laughs. Thanks Jamie!

Wow, crazy. Sounds a bit like our Munchausen game! That's the second time playtesters reported a T-Rex. Which card inspired that?

Do you remember what the Motivations were?

Was your understanding of the hierarchy rules that you *had* to trump to use a card (that's the way we played last time) or that it was an either-or thing? I like the new either-or thing if I'm going for less silly because then I can still win some conflicts even if I don't have the cards, but in a story about victorian scientists on an intelligent dinosaur planet I could see how it wouldn't be necessary!

Just double-checking, what card taking rule(s) did you play with? When someone was contradicted did they get to draw a card?

About how long did you play for?

Thanks so much for giving it a try, it's really interesting to hear what comes out when I'm not there.

Also, sounds like the tone went from campy to silly to sillier as you played - how disappointing is that? Was anybody like, "I wanted this to be a more serious steampunk space opera, and now we've got velociraptor costume contests"? Or was everyone on-board for full silly from the get-go?

No card inspired the T-Rex. We all liked the idea of a prehistoric world so of course, we HAD to have dinosaurs.

Motivations:
Shuo and Marc: You were hurt by an event. You make it right by hurting back.
Fred and Shuo: You want to get out with them because you can't go alone.
Caroline and Fred: You can't stand their Motivation because she wants it for herself.
Marc and Caroline: You don't like to see them living a lie. They have a secret—they should confess.

My understanding of the hierarchy was that it was either-or. I can see now why you would want to follow it if you were playing a more serious game.

We took the "take a card when contradicted" and "after your scene" rule. We weren't sure if we were supposed to take one card no matter how many times we were contradicted or if it was as many times as contradicted. I think after the half-way point we were doing the latter because we ran low on cards in our hands.

We played for an hour and a half excluding the set-up time.

We really had fun playing the game. The absurdity of our backstory egged us on to make the story as ridiculous as possible. I think we achieved that quite nicely. :)

This has been incredibly useful. Thank you!

One little thing - a rule I'd been on the fence about - is giving you a card if you let everyone else frame your scene. It's going in. (But will it be enough?)

Other things, must think on.

I'm glad the play test is helpful. :)

I think giving out more cards is the most useful if the suit hierarchy is disregarded. Getting a card if everyone else frames your scene will help but drawing a card equal to the number of cards you throw down (contradicted or won) might be the best way to go to keep your hands full. I think it just depends on how silly you'd like to allow the game to be.

Serious: Hierarchy in play, draw only one card at the end of your scene and no matter how many times you are contradicted.

Ridiculous: No hierarchy, draw as many cards as you throw down as well as at the end of your scene.

This doesn't take into account the Permanent cards, Master cards, or Foreshadowing though.

Good idea on the refilling.

Something I finally figured out re-reading your AP - instead of having everyone's character be both the protagonist of their own story and the target of the motivation of the character on their left (a la The Shab Al-Hiri Roach, which I haven't played, only heard about), you guys invented antagonists (a la Shock.)

Did you guys do it that way because the rules weren't clear, or was it an intentional hack?

I originally interpreted the rules as having the antagonists on the right... was that not what you intended?

Antagonists in the sense of Shock aren't really necessary at all, but could happen anyway, for example, if you take a Motivation like "You want revenge", either you or the target of your revenge is going to effectively be the antagonist of the story - but still you'd both have one main character. Like in our last game, I played the guy who kidnapped Pat's kid.
But it's also totally okay to create secondary characters (like Lasagno from our last game) who end up being antagonists as well.
Creating four seems like it's above-and-beyond the call of duty, so I was wondering if it seemed like the rules required it.

Oh, sorry, nevermind - my first reading was right, my second reading was wrong. I got confused and thought the supporting characters were antagonists.