Nine Worlds Actual Play (Go Play NW June 2009)

Nine Worlds is an elegant Story Game design and beautiful book from 2004. See the description at
http://www.story-games.com/codex/index.php?title=Nine_Worlds­
Demetrius reviews a playtest version on RPGnet and I think the final version proved better than his 4-star rating.

We played at Go Play NW 2009 here in Seattle. James Brown facilitated and acted as GM. I recall three players: myself, John Powell, Daniel, and Shannon. James ran the game with no prep and I think it's really suited to that, provided the GM knows the mechanics and has skimmed the setting material. He explained the basic premise: the universe as we know it is a deception. In reality the universe is more like the Platonic model--the Earth is in the center and the sun, moon, and planets revolve around it, passing through the swirling, breathable Aether. Eternals, who bear the name of Greek Gods rule each world. Prometheus, Primarch of Earth has recently visited each of the player characters and revealed the truth of the universe to them. They now enter the wider solar system as Archons.

Character creation took about an hour as we all became familiar with the game. Characters are straight forward: a concept, a name, distribute 9 points between Arete (doing things within the laws of the universe) and Hubris (violating the laws of the universe). Then distribute 9 points between the four Urges: Chaos (clubs), Cosmos (spades), Metamorphosis (hearts), and Stasis (diamonds). And another 9 points between up to 9 Muses. Muses proved to be the time consuming part as players had to get used to the idea of creating goals that had both achievable endpoints and specified enough detail for the GM to latch onto.

Here's what I remember of the characters:

Diana (John)
Ex soldier and athlete (I believe) whose lover had died. Her primary Muse had to do with visiting the Underworld and bathing in the river Lethe, to forget.

George Whittington III (Shannon)
Young British worthy seeking adventure, and rather dedicated to finding the Golden Fleece.

Ulysses Talbot, Capt of the Ethel Be Damned (Alan)
Having been an Archon slightly longer than the others, he's got himself in hock to Artemis (Primarch of Luna) to keep the Ethel together. His biggest Muse was to acquire the Automated Aethership Aphrodite and his second was to find the Eusebius Scroll which may give a clue to the Aprhodite's location.

<Name forgotten!> (Daniel)
A man in gray business suit, still dazed by Prometheus revelation, heading to Luna to finalize divorce papers with his wife. Daniel decided that his character actually had the Eusebius Scroll, though I don't recall why.

Diana, George, and Daniel took passage on the Ethel to the Moon. James created Lana, a crew girl on my ship and Arus, a veteran from Mars out to see the solar system. Lana had a Muse about falling in love, and Arus wanted to destroy the Eusebius Scroll.

James told me that Ulysses could expect Artemis to demand a payment when they reached the Moon, so I declared that someone on Venus owed Ulysses money. He steered the ship on a side trip to Venus, without telling the others. James said the newcomers weren't too familiar with Aether navigation.

However, first out of the dock, Daniel asked how long the trip to The Moon would take. I asked James what would be a figure that allowed the trip to Venus and we settled on a figure three times the trip to the Moon. Daniel question this. At that point, I pointed out that we could go to cards, but he declined.

Later Lana made a play for George. George resisted and they did pull out the cards. I don't recall the details of the results but resolution is pretty simple: declare Arete or Hubris, add any relevant Muses, then draw that number of cards. Sort the cards by suit and choose the suit that gives you the highest Fate -- which is the total of the number of cards in the suit and your Urge rating for that suit. In addition to Fate, hands are worth Points, one per Joker, Ace, or face card. Shannon won by activating George's Muse to find the Golden Fleece and narrated how George did not want to be distracted. She also claimed the Points in Lana's hand, and decided whether to go another round. Shannon let the conflict end and spent the Points to increase a couple of her Muses. She could also have spent points to manipulate Lana's characteristics based on the Urge she used (Chaos lowers scores, Cosmos raises scores, Meta shifts scores, and Stasis locks scores).

I decided that Ulysses was sorry to see Lana's disappointment and later engage George in another conflict, trying to convince him to give Lana a chance. While this was going on, James engaged Daniel below decks, by sending Arus to steal the Eusebius manuscript (which Ulysses so far knew nothing about). I failed to convince George and Shannon pumped up his Golden Fleece muse again. Arus failed to get the scroll but did a second conflict to intimidate Daniel into keeping mum.

Later, as the voyage dragged on, Daniel again challenged Ulysses about arrival time on the Moon. This time we went to cards and I used Hubris and had the most cards in hearts, so I went with Metamorphoses. Ulysses case a spell that changed Daniel's expectations of arrival time on the Moon. I spent the Points I captures to create a Muse about getting my money from an underground leader on Venus.

At that point, we cut to our arrive on Venus. I landed the ship in one of the many archipelagos. James explained that Venus was like a Caribbean resort world for the solar system. Capt. Talbot set departure at sunset the next day and let the passengers out to enjoy Venus. I narrated that he was looking for an underground rebel leader for whom he had smuggled arms onto the the planet of Love. James then cut away and we followed the passenger's experience of Venus.

Lana convinced George to take her on a romantic walk on the beach. While that was going on, Aphrodite, intervened in Lana's conflict trying to get inspire love in George's heart. Simultaneously, elsewhere, Diana, was also lost a conflict with Aphrodite, and fell in love with a great stretch of beach, a place to run and forget her troubles.

Because time was short, we ended the session there and did not explore all the dynamics of the rules. For example, the rule about the Victor deciding whether to extend conflict or not is interesting.

The initial character creation required some thought, but once we got through a few conflicts, I think everyone got a handle on their characters. I like how conflict directly drives goals (Muses). We did not see any Muses resolve in our short session, but if they had, they would have produced points that could be used to improve characters, create Talismans (NPCs or story-active objects controlled by PCs), or horded to bid for Trump suit in future conflicts.

I also read in the rules about Aresteia -- a player can declare one Muse his final one and when it is resolved, the character can spend all accumulated improvement points on the other PCs and then must leave the game. An end game, declared by the player.

I think the game has a lot of potential for multisession play.