Players: Jay, Alex, Mycorrah, Evan, and Pat.

Sorry for the incredibly late write-up on this one. Jay kindly ran a game of Kagematsu for the 4 of us, none of whom had played it before. Mycorrah played the titular samurai, while the rest of us fawned over him and struggled to elicit bits of affection.

I liked how the game made slight social gestures into a huge deal (as I presume they would be for a village woman interacting with a samurai in feudal Japan.) I was also a big fan of the hidden Love/Pity stats that Kagematsu's player recorded after every scene. When the dice rolls got tight, it was fun trying to judge if you'd accumulated enough Love under the hood to fudge your way to success.

I was less crazy about the dice and progression mechanics. It all felt very gamey and mechanical to me, which detracted from what I think could have been some very tender scenes. The temptation to throw more Affection attempts and Desperation in to get more points often got distracting.

Thanks a lot to Jay for facilitating and everyone else for playing!

This was a very enjoyable game, all the characters were very memorable whether they were meek and traditional or more headstrong and self-reliant, I particularly enjoyed Evan's yakuza-boss's-daughter who ended up being sort of a wolf in sheep's clothing. The thing I was displeased by was that my initial impression that characters were extremely min-maxable and that the gamey aspects would interfere with the storytelling turned out to be more right than I even guessed. Out of all the games we've played here I don't think I've played another one where you just straight up assign number stats to your character, (maybe Polaris but we didn't end up using those mechanics) and it seems like a very strange design choice that a player who puts 7 points into either Charm or... whatever that useless stat was (Piety? Meekness? Tact? I seriously don't remember because I rolled it like two times) and 0 into the other is going to have a ridiculous advantage over the others. I can't help but think we must have been doing something wrong and that there's some other rule out there against just hurling 8 Desperation dice at a scene, because once you can do that it is pretty impossible not to end the game.

I guess it wouldn't be a problem that one player can extract the Promise from Kagematsu early if other people were just allowed to catch up in their own time (and I don't really see any gameplay reason why that shouldn't be the case, especially as it would actually encourage balance in character creation so you could go up both tracks instead of just blitzing through one) but given that the game just straight-up ENDS as soon as somebody does that, and that it's likely that (as in our game) the other players won't have enough Hope saved up to "survive" the end, they don't even get to exist in the ending aside from their "death" scenes! I mean, I liked my last epilogue bit with my blacksmith girl working through the night trying to forge herself a sword and ruining it in her fury and despair, don't get me wrong, but any mechanic that kicks players out of the game almost entirely based on the actions of other players deserves looking into in my opinion.

I also wish there was even more secrecy and power imbalance in the dice roll decisions, since (given that some gamers have spent a lifetime deducing monster Armor Classes from the results of iterated dice rolls) there wasn't as much tension as there could have been around whether the girl would "win" the scene against Kagematsu. Honestly what I'd prefer is if the Kagematsu player rolled both sets of dice and revealed only Kagematsu's results, so the girl player knows whether Kagematsu has good luck or not, and has an idea of her likely average, but has no real idea whether or not to succeed, or when to be Desperate. I'd also like to see some sort of actual use for Pity points rather than whatever they were supposed to vaguely indicate here (getting gradually "Friend-Zoned"???) and maybe an addition of Scorn points that Kagematsu can give out at will regardless of the dice rolls that would (or not, at Kagematsu's whim) cancel out Love.

The reason I am so interested in drastic changes to the current system is that I feel like you could have a really interesting game where at the end of every scene you're highly unsure of whether you'll succeed or fail, and know that you'll fail often, which would put you on a much more empathetic level with the girl you're playing. Personally I found that the perfect visibility of the dice rolls and knowledge of my own stats and bonuses meant that guessing the one hidden number--which is within a pretty low, predictable range anyway--was not as tense as it could have been. I was frequently sitting in the part of my brain that goes "Well if I get an average of 3.5 points per d6 roll, and I'm rolling six dice, and I could add three more dice if I needed to..." rather than the part that goes "Oh wow I think the edge of his kimono is touching the edge of my kimono Oh gosh I just touched his arm with my arm a little bit did he notice I hope he likes the hat I made him..." which is really where it should be at for this game to achieve its intended ends. Honestly I'd much prefer a game where you play multiple girls, each of whom only has a small chance of success, that it would be possible (and mechanically represented) to accumulate Despair as well as Hope, and that you would go into a scene knowing it was unlikely you'd win Love in it and that the best you could hope for was Pity. Basically, if my girl is going to be giddy and flushed with success when she actually wins Love, feel a mix of hope and despondency when she earns Pity, and fall into despair if she's Scorned, I want to experience the same emotional rollercoaster, not just sit around doing math that's 90% going to be in my favor anyway.

I mean, out of the 20-odd scenes we played I think there was... one failure? Two at most. And that was with two players "only" having 5 points in their main stat, in a system that has basically no real disadvantage for not putting 7 in it. I can see a ton of replayability inherent in the setting, characterization, and power imbalance of this game, but given the current mechanics I can't imagine playing again would be very satisfying unless I deliberately made "bad" choices--not just nonoptimal but actively bad choices to make the game last longer. And honestly, I already did that in this game anyway by not maxing out my stats when I suspected it would have been a good idea!

Sorry that that was so long-winded, this topic just got me a little riled-up because I can so clearly see and admire the type of story the game is trying to tell and the ways it's trying to make the players feel, and the current mechanics are just so not accomplishing that as much as they could be. I'd be quite interested in the thoughts of the other players and people with actual design experience on my points here.

P.S. by "I'd be interested in the thoughts of other players" I meant "somebody please say something too so I seem (slightly) less like a crazy person ranting at an empty room."

I'm all curious about this. Kagematsu is a game I've wanted to play forever but I never had the chance (the curse of being a facilitator).

I *really* enjoyed playing this game, but I imagine I have a slightly different perspective from the other players. As Kagematsu there's never a dull moment, you are in every scene after all, and you find yourself rooting for each of the other characters in turn without knowing the outcome until the end of the scene. I think I got attached to all the other characters on some level, so in that way I think the game was incredibly successful.

I liked how significant small gestures/forms of affection were in the game. I think it really helped convey the idea that the other characters are really pining over Kagematsu, and it gives you a framework to zoom in and examine romantic gestures between characters. It also makes things like hugs/kisses near the end of the game seem climactic.

I think the most complaints I've heard concerning the game involved the other players ability to game the numbers a bit. I can see how 1) putting a cap on desperation attempts per turn might help balance the game better/keep things from getting too crazy (though we didn't get too crazy with it in the game we played), and 2) If "pity" actually *did* something. From my perspective additional secrecy/influence regarding those numbers would be welcome, but as far as creating additional stats to keep track of is concerned I must admit I'm unenthusiastic at the prospect. The person who plays Kagematsu gets to have a lot of fun, but is also responsible for setting every scene for every other character, and acting in every scene, and altering stats for every other character, so having two manageable stats per character was great (though, again, I wish pity *did* something)! For my part, I wish it were easier for other players to live at the end. Maybe not necessarily for everyone to end up with Kagematsu, but taking people out of the game like that does detract from the experience somewhat. Still, very fun game. Might have to try playing it again sometime. :)

Glad to hear your perspective on this Mycorah, as it definitely puts some of my more zealous thoughts on modifying this game in perspective; it now seems obvious folly to put yet more stuff to remember on the plate of a player who's already assigned to play a high-status character in every scene while making continual judgments about all the other characters.

While thinking about some of the dissatisfied feelings I had about the mechanics of this game--and don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the experience, the other players, and the scenes, and even the ways the stories ended, just not the numbers under the hood--I happening to be perusing an article on defining story games (http://arsludi.lamema...­ clearly written by some sort of madman, but perhaps useful nonetheless) and was wondering to what extent these passages might help to illustrate my issue with this game's ending mechanic.

"Nothing that happens to the character can put the player in time-out. In a lot of story games character death is not even a possibility unless the player decides it’s a good idea, and if your character dies you can continue to play influencing what happens in the story of the characters that remain.

If what happens to your character can reduce your authority to contribute, you are probably not playing a story game. It’s critical because it gives you the freedom to make interesting, dramatic things happen. You don’t have to protect your character to stay in the game. You can focus on creativity instead of playing to survive."

I think this helps me understand my unease around the mechanics of this game--and, for a similar reason, the ending mechanics of 1001 Nights, which is also "winnable" quite quickly if someone decides to go for that route. One major source of fun I find in story games is setting up characters who are clearly going to fail horribly, and that sort of behavior is extremely discouraged in a game that can be "won" and ended early, especially in Kagematsu where the "losing" players are pretty literally stripped out of the narrative, never to be heard from again aside from their epitaph. Even so though, I enjoyed my play experiences in both of these games, and remain interested in ways we might jostle the rules a little to keep the stories and characters alive. I guess it could just be as easy as taking the route Durance takes and having a surplus of characters so that individuals being lost is not as important, which could work in this case.

Your thoughts?