In a Wicked Age

[Totally Guy]

I played a game of In a Wicked Age yesterday and it was pretty good. It was the first time we'd tried out the system.

There is no prep as a situation is generated through drawing cards and consulting a chart. Resolution is kept exclusively to characters opposing characters. The stats are called forms, they are: Directly, Covertly, For myself, For others, With love, With violence. You always roll two applicable forms when you do stuff.

The characters only get to appear in future chapters if they get onto a list called the Owe list. Being at the top of the owe list means that your character features in the next session. You can scratch your name off the list for mechanical advantage.

Rather than a single time line the game creates a mythology for the characters to occupy through their deeds and conflicts.



In yesterday's session one player picked an innkeeper who routinely killed his guests and the other played a spirit who was bound to a wizard.

The innkeeper had a wife who was cursed to be a gollum-like eater of flesh. She mainly wanted her husband all for herself and for him to be rid of his gang.

The innkeeper wanted the amulet from the wizard to help him transform his wife back.

The innkeeper's gang was not present but one of his underlings wanted the wizard to assist him in taking the gang for himself.

The Spirit player wanted the amulet destroyed and the wizard to renounce sorcery. And the wizard wanted nothing more than to be rid of the spirit that plagued him.

In the end the wizard burned down the inn and was attacked and killed by the innkeepers decrepit wife. The innkeeper killed his insubordinate gang member over the wizard's magic amulet but was unable to stop his wife from destroying it, the very amulet that would save her.

The spirit escaped with the wizard dead and the innkeeper was left with no inn and a twisted wretch of a wife in tears.



Next session the spirit will be one of the protagonists, the innkeeper may appear in the session after that. We might see what he did next or what he was like before he died.

[kaomera]

Awesome game and the Oracles are just generally a great idea. You can find quite a lot of alternate Oracles (for differing themes) online, and they are a fantastic way to come up with neat adventure ideas. Unfortunately I never seem to be able to play multiple sessions with the same group. A lot of players I know either don't appreciate the rules-light nature of the game as much as I do or else they want be guaranteed to play the same character on a long-term basis.

[Totally Guy]

We've been playing Burning Wheel as we were digging the "Fight for what you believe" style play and this game does a similar style of game but with single session bites. The lighter rules are a welcome change too. I can keep all of Wicked Age in my head at once.



One thing we've struggled with though was a contest to get something.

So we've got a magic amulet which both my wretched hag and the player's innkeeper wanted. I described the hag taking and holding it first. The player wanted it and was prepared to wrestle for it.

The player won and suggested that he'd get it. I said no, my hag was still going to keep it but was now impaired. The player gave her exhaustion. I made that choice because I wanted to test the relationship between the character and his monstrous spouse.

But if the player had described him getting it first and I wanted it off him and then I'd lost would I be able to use the same logic as above? I guess not. So it looks like it's important to grab early.

What would the situation be like if the wrestling happened before the amulet got grabbed? Should this have been how this kind of situation be best handled?

[kaomera]

That seems about right to me, I think. I haven't had the chance to GM In a Wicked Age yet, but in one of the games I played in two of the other players both wanted to get somewhere first, and the GM ended up giving it to the first player to announce this, despite both of them wanting to make it a conflict. But I don't really know the exact thought process behind that (there was other stuff going on).