Today’s playtest of “A Town Called Malice” served a couple of purposes, not the least being a test of new playset setting Malice as a lone mining station of the moon of Io, “Calling Malice Station”. Technically it should make no difference, as long as the Town still served the definition basics. (And it didn’t).
Christopher played the Chief Constable (The Law), Robert played Dr. Severin (The Medic), I was the bad-lunged miner (The Tradesman) and Michael was Nick, owner of the Caliban’s Corner dive bar (The Criminal). As it works now, The Law determines who was connected to the Body, and Chris chose to make it himself. After realizing his drinking buddy was killed horribly, he opted to hide the evidence to preserve the upcoming Corporate Review of the station. Of course, changing the dead body to a missing person only caused the Medic to get concerned (thanks to a missed O2 exam), which only made things more complicated – the Medic was now married to the Law’s ex-girlfriend.
As the Tradesman, I of course just wanted to work for a living. And this was complicated by my “B” rating partially due to my Black Lung symptoms but more importantly my previous addiction to narcotics. My goal was to get re-certified back to “A” so I didn’t lose my insurance. The Criminal, of course, was up to no good, but he knew that closing the mining station would be bad for business despite his problems with the Law. His bartender talked too much, throwing monkey-wrenches into just about everything (as he should).
In the end, we managed to destroy the Darkness but the corporate auditor arrived a day early and found out about what was going on. The station was going to be closed. Such is life when dealing with things in Malice.
From a mechanics standpoint, the game is definitely more lively with the added accrual of Character Points. Player vs. player conflict is a little better defined when scoped from a Personal Goal point of view. I realize I will need to further develop Town development as we get started before Act I, but that’s not too bad. We also have a new option in how the Spotlight Player is selected for the Scene, which I think would be great for players that are comfortable with the game.
In the previous playtests with the “Last Dance” playset, players needed to be reminded about the importance of the Event. However, this particular game pushed it to be almost more important than the conquering the Darkness on the Station. There’s still some open questions about the best way to handle the growth of the Darkness, but I have some ideas on how to make that smoother.
All in all, a good game. Two of the three players had played Malice at Strategicon and the third was quite comfortable with story-based improv. Things moved quickly, and there was very little fumbling about for a rules situation that hadn’t been defined. (One question did come up, but not the end of the world. Just needs to be written down). I’m looking forward to testing the scenario where no narrator is needed, and seeing how that plays out.
If you’re curious to try it out, I’ll be doing more playtests prior to Strategicon and BigBadCon later this year. Follow our Facebook page to keep in the know.