u/benrobbins

The playtest of This Means War is ready for you to download and play.

It is… very different… from my other games, like Microscope or Kingdom.

You create two nations that go to war, but the weird part is that you (as players) have no control over what happens in that war. Instead you consult the oracle of war -- the WARACLE -- and it tells you what happens.

The players' job is to role-play characters living through these events and explore their lives. The Waracle creates a constantly evolving background of world events and we tell the stories of the people living through it.

It's a bit of an experiment, but we've played it a bunch and had a great time.

We just started playing Emissary the other night and so far it's been a lot of fun.

The idea is that you're doing a LeGuin-style "emissary comes from another world", which means that you're doing world-building not just for the world you're visiting, but also the world they come from. The compare-and-contrast of the two societies is a pretty interesting change from usually just making one world.

I give it a thumbs up

https://samovargames.itch.io/emissary

When Titans Fight was one of the games recommended in the "unboxing" discussion (on bluesky), and I see a lot of potential. The core pattern of relationships feeding social scenes feeding combat scenes is great. I want to play it!

Buuuuut there's also a lot of stuff that's unclear. Even after several readings I'm not sure I understand some of the core rules.

I think it could be a really good game, with a lot of potential for genre reskinning (more on that later), so I'm really hoping by giving feedback we'll get a revised version that you can just pick up and play. Hopefully the author (agentouroboros) will be chiming in and let me know if I'm misinterpreting or missing something.

It's a free download, so I encourage anyone interested to jump in to. But be nice, since the author agreed to this feedback but didn't ask for it.

Let's start with the big stuff:

(For simplicity I'm going to say "P" for the number of players, because it will come up a lot)

• If I'm understanding the round order, you play a single bout vs an NPC mech for each player, then a semi-finals and finals. The rules say that's P+1 bouts but I believe it's really P+2 (P rounds vs NPCs, then 2 more for finals and semi-finals). So each mech is in two fights total? That took me a while to figure out.
• Is every player making a social scene between each bout? I think that could work if scenes were very short, but it sounds like they're supposed to ask all the questions each scene, which is a lot.
• In combat, is there any reason not to just use your best stat over and over? Just keep rolling Reckless, etc? Since winning actually matters, I think this incentivizes boring choices. It would be better if combat was simpler but had more motivation to do risky things etc. The Rival daring you to not use a particular tactic in your next fight is solid gold. Much more interesting than getting a generic resource. More of that.

I have a lot more questions, but let's stop there for now.

EDIT: oh forget to mention that the commentator newscaster thing is great. Genius. They should have more contribution to the combat too.