When: May 26
Who: Jay facilitating, Ian, Caroline, James, Morgan, and Reid playing

After crashing in an armored car, our heros awake memoryless and powerful. They have strange powers, including mind-reading, teleporting, dis-assembling, water-powers, and growing huge.

We worked together to escape our pursuers, the mysterious "chasers" while using our new, and dangerous, powers.

Psi-Run is a GMed game, although the GM seems extraneous. The mechanics lead to the GM always having to say how the Psi powers are too powerful and lead to explosions, which isn't the most fun job. In fact, he hardly had any opportunity to describe the world or the chasers.

Furthermore, the game didn't push us towards realistic interaction and didn't seem created to handle PvP. As a bunch of amnesiacs with crazy powers, it would seem difficult to stay together and work alongside each other--tension, confusion, and fear would surely cause SOME issues. However, we felt compelled to stay together and all that, vis-a-vis the point of the game.

It reminded me a lot of Don't Rest Your Head, and I would recommend it to people who found that game enjoyable. I liked the question creating and answering process, and I liked that you sometimes had to sacrifice your health or safety to answer questions. While this mechanically happens, it might be cool to see this as a decision the character makes--making the sacrifice more substantial.

Thanks for playing, and Jay--thanks for facilitating! I'm super glad I got to try something new!

I think it would be fun to come up with the characters by trading the character sheets around. I also felt that there was some strain involved by having the five of us desiring to stick together so desparately. Maybe part of character creation could be something that ties us to two of the others. I also want there two extra types of scenes, one that shows the Chasers getting closer, maybe even surrounding us and another where we have more intimate discussions between two characters. Foreshadowing and lulls for character development.

Great title!

I think it would be fun to come up with the characters by trading the character sheets around. I also felt that there was some strain involved by having the five of us desiring to stick together so desparately. Maybe part of character creation could be something that ties us to two of the others. I also want there two extra types of scenes, one that shows the Chasers getting closer, maybe even surrounding us and another where we have more intimate discussions between two characters. Foreshadowing and lulls for character development.

Yeah, there's definitely something that hasn't quite clicked either time that I've played. My thoughts are:

• I'm not sure the GM is necessary. I don't see why the group couldn't take up those duties.
  
• It seems really hard to make questions that are going to be fruitful. For example, if nobody has a question tied to a location, where you are running to seems a bit too arbitrary.
  
• I agree that some more collaboration in character creation could be helpful and fun. Some ideas:
  
  
  
  • Have everyone write down rich sensory details, A Penny for My Thoughts style, and draw randomly for psi power and appearance (and maybe for the general questions).
    
  • As you suggest, passing characters around the table to generate questions.
    
  • When we scrounged for character tokens, we got some really provocative items: a chess pawn, a cribbage peg, a mini-playing-card Joker, a match from a matchbook, and one more I don't recall. I think it would be cool to have an assortment of little objects when you start and have everyone pick on and weave it into their character.
    
  
  
• While I love the Otherkind dice, I feel like there's not enough motivation for players to stimulate their character's recollections: that category seems to just become the dumping ground for low rolls. It would be nice if there was something else pacing the game (e.g. the Chasers automatically move every X number of scenes or something).
  
• The ways in which psi powers go wild (as written) are hard to make really interesting. Sure, it's cool the first time somebody uses a power and it blows things up, but it gets a little tired. The options also seem very impersonal.
  

Actually, doesn't Penny have an alternate setting for secret agent-style amnesia? Has anyone tried that? I wonder how it would compare to Psi-Run.