Players: Ben, Pat, Cy, Jered

For this game, we were playtesting That's Drama using the "foreshadowing" mechanic. The idea of the foreshadowing seemed to be playing cards face-up on the table before they were actually relevant, and then using them at a later time to influence the story. It allowed elements to be "worked towards" and provided some direction to the plot, but also seemed a bit unwieldy as nouns on the cards could never be played exactly when they would be relevant.

We frequently had to interrupt the game to discuss game mechanics or consult the rulebook. This is partly due to it being Ben and my first time playing That's Drama, and partly due to confusion regarding certain rules such as how specific foreshadowing cards should be.

Anyway, on to the story itself.

Our setting evolved from "wild west cowboys" to "cowboys and aliens" to "cowboys in frontier space, plus aliens," similar to Firefly or Cowboy Bebop. Imagine a dusty, arid planet dominated by a climate similar to the American southwest. The hot sun blazes overhead day after day, rain is a thing of legend, and miles and miles of sparse brushland and cacti separate the few frontier towns in the area. In this land, water is a precious resource. Gangs of bandits terrorize the populace. Men are forced to make their own law.

Our characters:

Jeremiah (played by Jered): A young, naive water prospector setting out to make a name for himself. His trait card was "Weak" to reflect his ineptitude at actually prospecting for water, and his general low position on the social totem pole. Jeremiah had high hopes and dreams, but lacked the immediate means of achieving them. His motivation card was "They are better than you. Do you win the...?"

Daniel (played by Cy): A minor media mogul who publishes a successful newspaper and line of pulp novellas. I can't recall the exact trait card he had; it may have been "Divorced," but I may be confusing that with a foreshadowing card which came up later. Daniel happens to be Jeremiah's cousin, and would like nothing more than for Jeremiah to give up his crazy schemes and settle down as a respectable typesetter. Daniel's motivation card was "You can't stand their motivation. Do you stop them?"

Bowmar, a.k.a. Black Bowmar (played by Pat): A local scoundrel and scamp, often maligned by public opinion and always with a price on his head. His trait card was "Criminal," which reflected his thievery and general disregard for the law. Although a competent gunslinger and in cahoots with his partner the Martian Millipede (Ben's character) for some reason the stories of their escapades end up exalting the Millipede while villainizing Bowmar himself. This inequity of infamy slowly angers Bowmar until he can't take it any more. His motivation card was "You covet their [item.] Do you get it?"

Milly the Martian Millipede, a.k.a. the Millipede Manhunter (played by Ben): An 8-foot long, upright-walking, sentient, gunslinging insectoid alien. His trait was "Student," reflecting his years of rigorous gunplay training at the hands of his zen-like master. Milly was literally a walking talking man-sized millipede. Known for his exceptional skill with all 10 of his guns (he can draw all 10 and fire within a heartbeat) and stoic demeanor, he was Bowmar's partner in crime. The media apparently loved to romanticize the exploits of Milly, however, while Bowmar got reviled. An odd circumstance considering the two work together. His motivation card was "They are in trouble. Do you save them?"

Our motivations tied in with each other pretty well. Jeremiah's motivation was to earn the Martian Millipede's respect, after the Millipede had saved his life some time prior. Milly's motivation was to save Bowmar from trouble as he got himself deeper and deeper into bad situations. Bowmar wanted to slander Milly and promote himself by using Daniel's printing office to spread the "real story." Daniel wanted to convince Jeremiah to give up his dowsing ambitions and settle down in the family printing business.

That's it for now... I/we can fill in the story details a bit later.

Dude, my name was soooo not Milly. That was just Bowmar giving me shit. (Beaumar? I know he was named after some booze behind the bar)

"Sorry partner, my name is not pronounceable with your human mouth-tongue." >klick-klick<

Dude, my name was soooo not Milly. That was just Bowmar giving me shit. (Beaumar? I know he was named after some booze behind the bar)

"Sorry partner, my name is not pronounceable with your human mouth-tongue." >klick-klick<

By that logic, "The Martian Millipede" isn't any more valid than "Milly." :P

Daniel was Crippled, which is why he was stuck behind a printing press and didn't wan Jeremiah out there being risky.

We tried to play with the Foreshadowing rules. but they weren't very clear.

What we ended up doing was:
1. You can Foreshadow a card onto a PC, scene. or location by playing it down. Anyone can use it once:
a. a Conflict has resolved.
b. a scene ends.
c. another card is Foreshadowed.
2. You can only contradict:
a. with any card, if there's no conflict. The word doesn't matter.
b. with a higher card in the same suit as the current conflict (or Wild.) The word doesn't matter.
c. with a Foreshadowed card, by incorporating the word and character it was played on into the narration.
3. After the contradiction is completed, anyone who got contradicted (the initial narrator, or anyone who played a card and didn't win) draws a card. Then, if anyone has no cards, they draw one.

(We had a bit of a discussion about 2a. I thought there was pretty much always a top card of the discard like a rolling game of Uno. We ended up with only having a card to beat if you were un-doing someone else contradiction.

We talked a bit about how to play a Foreshadow. Ben thought it should be open-ended. Play the word on a character (or the world in general.) Anyone can narrate a contradiction with that card, as long as it matches the word and character. I thought you should describe a specific aspect of a character, scene, etc. Then you had to work that specific take into the story to contradict. The rules really aren't clear on this point, and could be interpreted to just have the word out for use by anyone on anything.

As an example, I Foreshadowed Daniel's Divorce coming up, stating that he'd been married in the past. I think by Ben's reading, I'd just foreshadow Divorce coming up. And I could announce a divorce, get married then divorced, rail against the idea of divorce, etc as a contradiction from the card.

I think the basic question is, are we Foreshadowing that specific things will become more relevant than they seem, or that the words will come into play later, without describing anything when we play them.

We were playing that Foreshadowing was the *only* way that the word on the cards was relevant.

Oh, we also had a bit of a mixup with who's antagonizing and who's the object of your motivation. We ended up motivation to your left. But thought it might work better with antagonist on your left and motive on your right, so you can react to their scene.


All in all, I had a good time and I think we got a good story. The cards were cool, with a good mix of elements as a good source of inspiration applicable to a broad range of settings.

Awesome setup! - I'd love to know how one of your more elaborate conflicts went down, and how you ended up resolving your motivations.

Sorry about the lack of clarity, I knew that the foreshadowing rule was murky as I wrote it. I was imagining the Uno thing myself (seeded with a card up-in-the-middle at the beginning of the game) but the way you played is fine, it means it's a little easier to get a Conflict started.
Preferences? In hindsight, do you think it would have been better more Uno-like? The main reason I was thinking Uno is because it's a little simpler - there's no difference between starting a Conflict and continuing one.

I meant foreshadowing the way you understood it - I probably shouldn't have called it foreshadowing, that might have been misleading ... "introducing"? Like writing down a trait in Universalis. The idea being to eliminate non-sequitors of the "Actually, then a 'Driver' runs you over" or "Actually, then my long lost 'Cousin' appears and shoots you" stamp - did you guys get many of those?

Oh, and interesting idea about antagonist-on-the-left, target-on-the-right - I thought the target made for good opposition because they're in the best position to mess with you ... though I imagine if we flipped it, instead of,

"I ask her out."
"She tells you she despises you."
Which is a little obvious and momentum-killing...

We'd get

"I ask her out."
"She's not home right now. Her phone rings and rings."
Which at least gives you something to work with, and a more likely possibility of a happy ending...

And thanks so much, everybody, for playing!

We didn't get any non-sequitors or semi-sequitors, since any card that was played for a word was foreshadowed, and other cards were jsut played for the effect someone thought made sense/was cool.

Having the target of your motivation also be your antagonist seemed like it would both overwork your antagonist and leave more players out of scenes. Since our motivation targets were mostly sympathetic, it seemed like you would end up with the antagonist having to add more characters/threats while also playing the character you might be asking for advice. And, of course, having at least threee players invested in a scene would is better than two.

Preferences are hard to say without playing the other way. I tend to think that making Foreshadows specific descriptions/elements/aspects is stronger. But then the words on the cards are irrelevant otehrwise, which is a little weird. Maybe allow word cards to be used normally to trump, but if someone else uses your Foreshadow, you get to draw a card?

It's really hard to say how much Uno-like would change things without playing it. It would cut down a lot on contradictions. It might bring things crashing down, or it might lead to a tighter game where foreshadowed elements are more important.

We played a scene with the continuous stack (aka the Uno model) and it crashed immediately, which is why we stopped. The problem is that you need a card to contradict, but you don't need a card to say something, so once a high card is on the stack whoever speaks first has a huge advantage, no matter how zany their statement, so long as they're saying something new, not contradicting. But we were also unclear about player authority: can a player just say something about another person's character without a card? Can I just say something about the world without a card?

My objection to detailing specifics with foreshadowing cards was that we moved towards making tight predictions: "because of this card, X will happen to you in the future."

But we clearly weren't playing a lot of the game by the rules as you intended, so it's hard to say if our feedback sheds much light. We got a bit lost. My advice for revising the playtest text would be to make it much more procedural: move all the advice or optional stuff to the back, and distill the bare bones of mechanical play to a page or two. It may look boring to read, like an IRS tax form, but that's okay. Once you have a strong core structure, you can add flavor around it, but the core structure comes first.

also: If I'm remembering the cards correctly, I'd recommend moving the number to the edge of the cards below or above the suit, just like a normal playing card. That way you see the number when you fan.

You were at least 95% playing as I intended - and where you weren't, you probably were playing smarter than I intended. That's a good point about the who-speaks-first advantage...I wonder why it never seemed to be a problem in my tests...ah! Probably because you guys were the first to break in the foreshadowing rule, which doesn't play well with it. (I did warn Shuo it was new, I don't know if she passed that on to you guys.)

SHUO!!!!

No, I'm kidding, she gave us the heads-up that foreshadowing was new, and we intentionally decided to test it. If we had known "UNO" was correct, we probably would have spotted that foreshadowing removing card word-power was screwing it up. That makes sense.

Another thing: I think Cy mentioned that part of the design was that intentionally saying things just so other people would contradict them was a valid tactic to gain cards. I would argue that's a bad plan from the get-go. It encourages people to throw out things they might not even want in the fiction. I'd say you definitely don't want a mechanic that encourages that kind of thing. (compare to Polaris: never say something you don't want to have happen. Don't bluff.)