Business Solutions Playtest

This is the first playtest of someone else's game I have ever run and the first actual play report I have ever written. And, now that I have a computer that will accept a modern operating system, I will hopefully engage in this a bit more.

So Friday Alex was stuck in NY and couldn't run Tekumel, I offered up Business Solutions as a one shot for the evening. I had thought I would play with Pete and Phil next time we got together, but that could be a while, so I was excited to try this week. Jason sent me the latest version of the playtest rules which I forwarded on to Joe and Phil.

First the stuff we completely didn't do:

1. We didn't use the card sheets. I had one and Joe's printer wasn't working so we did without. I think that was a mistake. having a place to put all your cards and keep track of them would have been a good thing.

2. Buzzword, we skipped over this part. I think that it was a smaller mistake because it has the potential to put you all on the same page about the company. we didn't seem to suffer from it though.

So we created the characters

Phil had

Primary, Lundy - an Unsavory Creep who's need was slack
Apprentice, "Vader" an irritating Noob who's need is Technobedience

Joe had

Primary, Russel - a Patronizing Geek with a need for crime
Apprentice, Mehare who's need was betrayal

I had

Primary, Herb - a Clueless Oldtimer with a need for loyaty
Apprentice, Niles - a Bitter Hipster with a need for sympathy

That Done we launched into our first call. Russel and Vader take a call at CopyBox where a grinding noise was making all sorts of problems for them. Russel puts the annoying Vader on the copier while he scopes out the breakroom for something to eat and hits the jackpot finding some left-over beer from the Store Christmas party. While Russel is helping himself to a couple of free beers he runs into an old business partner, Norm (Icy Ghost from the past) the Assistant Manager of copybox, who felt that when they broke up the business they were in Russel got too much of the money and Norm wants Russel to get him a job with Business Solutions and make better money than he is making at CopyBox. They get into an argument and while Norm tried to wheedle, Russel tried to sick the annoying Vader on him getting Vader to quiz him on the ins and outs of the copiers that Norm wants to fix. Vader fixes the machine and dampens Norms enthusiasms. Russel offers Norm one of his own beers as a consolation.

Next up, the copier at the trendy restaurant Valhalla has broken down and the owner, Chef Hall (Angry Authority) is in a pissed off mood before Lundy and Niles arrive. Lundy pawns off the exploration of the copier and why it is shocking people to Niles and goes up front to visit with his girlfriend Sylvia who happens to be Chef Hall's Daughter. Niles figures out the problem on the first try and stops it from shocking people but Lundy, who is trying to push chef Hall's buttons by caging drinks and lunch from Sylvia while Niles fixes the copier, Does the real shocking when he tells Hall that he and Sylvia are having a baby.

Third Act was a weird one, Phil set it up within the Business Solutions organization. Horst (Embarrased Authority), One of the tech departments supervisors, but apparently not a tech himself, has a machine that the sales department will be showing to some potential clients, but the copies are coming out blurry. In what would have been the coolest scene had it not been for Horst working for our own company. Herb is the Primary and Maher is the apprentice. Herb has the need of Loyalty and Maher has the need of Betrayal neither of which work well with someone in Horst's position. We blew the Copier repair on this one, and to be honest, I don't remember the relationship conflict. But if memory serves it was something to do with Horst being on the committee that decides the promotions and we managed to get another copier in from somewhere else for the demo.

Not two days later, Horst (Icy family member this time) has a copier that's glowing and Russel and Niles wind up taking the call. While Niles who is dating Horst's son fixes the copier and arguing with Horst, Russel is Downstairs in the sales office stealing an espresso machine. Niles fixes the copier and, by threatening to elope to Massechusets, gets Horst to help the boys buy a condo. I made out like a bandit on cards on this one, I had a ton of red cards and they came up when I needed them.

Act five takes us back to CopyBox where Angela (Clinging Sex Object), the shift supervisor was getting blank copies. Lundy, ever the slacker, tried to talk her out of service. Finally he and Maher went out for the service call. Lundy, of course, made Maher do all the work. Angela makes several plays for Maher, who being a good Muslim finds her a complete American whore and puts her down while badmouthing the copiers that BS sells. Lundy having fun at Maher's expense Offers to get some lunch for the three of them leaving Maher alone with Angela. Joe threw all of his Mojo into this to keep from getting a greencard wife and on the last card managed to not be taken. Joe picked up a lot of black cards in this scene.

Finally, it was back to Valhalla where Herb and Vader tried to deal with Chef Hall's threats while one of the Salvadoran dishwasher, who was an electrical engineer back home tried to gain favor with Chef Hall by showing his boss that he knew more than we did. I was pulling nothing but blackfrom the cards I had and Vader being irritating kept out of the way except to point out what I was doing wrong. I pulled a card from the tech support and finally got a red card, Joe turned his over and only had one so I won and the stupid Savadoran wasn't right after all.

Back at the all hands, it turned out that Joe had misread the rules and was keeping all of his cards together. Even so he lost a lot of his mojo on the scene where Maher got away from Angela so Niles was the character with the most red cards and funny enough Herb had the least so I got to fire myself.

What worked well

The character generation went very smoothly. Though we initially thought there was not enough difference between Dork, Geek, Nerd and Noob. In the version in the appendix Dork was changed to Old Timer and we made the best of it. Still Nerd and Geek might not be different enough. The needs were nice and they were different enough that you could make fairly unique characters. That you could take 18 simple words and get that many possible viable characters should be shown to everyone who has a game with six or eight stats.

The situations set up fairly nicely. I think that the only scene that went bad was the scene where Phil brought Horst in. in many ways that should have been the scene of the evening with herb trying to sell the client on mare BS stuff and Maher trying just as hard to tell the customer what a piece of crap they are.

I won which is of course a wonderful thing.

What was clunky

In play, the needs were easy to bring in, but hard in a three person setting to get a rise out of each other with. In a lot of our scenes the need droned on like background noise and we didn't even bother handing out cards for it.

The card mechanism was a little hard to match to the role play. We did it sort of like Dogs with flip card and see if you get to make a step forward or dig yourself further into the whole. Then when you think you have enough or have given up seeing if the other guy can beat it. I don't think the mechanism is bad but it didn't encourage really going out on a limb.

The "do you burn the cards to figure out the problem/fix the copier" thing was a little dull. figuring out the problem didn't make it any easier to solve and didn't add much to the game. I would rather a system that tied both the repair and the relationship together. Maybe a system that broke each scene down into two or three smaller chunks and encouraged you to burn one set of cards for the other. So like I'm loosing ground trying to get Horst to help his son to buy a condo and it's going against me, so I play some cards from the copier fixing pile and put that into jeopardy to get the other thing.

Things I would love to see added

Something that put more strain on the relationship between the copier guys would make the game better too. In a lot of the scenes the one who had the relationship bomb dropped was the star of the scene and the other guy could nip out for a beer while it played. Something that brought them both firmly into the scene either together or in an adversarial way would be cool.

A bigger mat for the play area. My old Kinko's used to have a copier that ran 18X24 cardstock I would love to make a play area that had all of the stuff you needed on the deck and spaces to write stuff.

A different and incompatible set of victory conditions for every character. to further drive us forward into needing to work together and pulling us apart at the same time.

All in all I actually had a lot of fun with the game and look forward to playing it again. Setting aside the fact that Herb and Lundy were actual people form our Kinko's days,who would have been scandalized that they were applied to those characters, all of the characters were cool and I looked forward to their interacting. I wish they were more involved with each other; the scenes where we made the client characters more viscerally involved with the Techs all played better. I don't know if we need a Tenra Bansho chart where you find out that Norm Is both Russels' old partner and Vader's uncle, but it couldn't hurt. Since the game isn't set up for campaigning you might as well pile on the significance and ramp it up till you have Mexican stand-offs.

Esdemere 0.2

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