TIME IMPLOSION: THE GAME

Last night, under the influence of a variety of liquors, we managed to play a game of Mini Six. As you might have guessed, the theme was TEMPORAL CATASTROPHE, and I told my players to peruse the book and make a character from any time period because they're all going to be unstuck from time and working together, like the Scooby Doo gang, to make things right again.

whowowowoaahahoh- time itself is in trouble!

 Good god though- it went terribly.

The first, and I think largest problem, is that Mini Six as a ruleset is TERRIBLE. I feel awful for recommending it and I feel awful that the author of the system will probably read this, since role-playing is a small community and word gets around but dude, this ruleset is not good. I know it's based on another system that probably gets a lot of love for whatever absurd reason but this incarnation is not written clearly at all. It took us entirely too long to figure out if we added our weapon skills to our attack rolls (still not really sure), and the system itself is like really cheap underwear- it doesn't support you where you need it. When are you supposed to roll? Do you combine attributes and skills to kick people? Why is there such a difference between high and low rolls? Why is this so much worse of a generic system than Risus?

The second problem is that nobody really knew what to expect from a time implosion, and although my liberal borrowing of Zladko helped the framing and created a bizarre character and half-true tale that everybody liked, it wasn't quite enough to help the group's cohesion. A belligerent Hunnic warrior and a timid Arabian street rat don't really mix, and between the dozens of tangents and distracted discussion and a general lack of direction the game went nowhere fast and we all got bored. They liked Duke, the absurdly tall be-suited man, and they enjoyed my rendition of the Cave of Wonders and also how the genie of the lamp turned out to be a re-skinned Hades, but the fact is that the session got off on the wrong foot while I was trying to feel out the party composition and the way that the session was going to happen. By the time I figured out how to sate the Future-Sikh and Hun's appetite for violence and reconcile that with the Arab and Spaceman's need for adventure, the session was more than half over and everybody was tired. Oh, well.

The fast-talking and probably treacherous genie of the lamp, not that this went anywhere

Next time, I'll start with a stronger call to action than a fumbling Russian man (although I'll probably re-use him, since the Soviet Union is such a rich and interesting place for people to come from), and probably try and include more conflict in general, especially conflict that doesn't involve battling things. And maybe I'll make the characters myself, and let them choose between them, so we end up with characters that are planned out and the feeling is more of a "oh man Time Itself chose us to fix it!" and I can semi-plan out a course of action that lets each player do something neat (or fuck up massively, with equally exciting results)...

But the real net benefit is that we're back on to Dark Heresy next week. So more procedural work, more scouring the galaxy, and more general 40k weirdness. They're on the cusp of discovering what, exactly is happening, and that's a fun place to be. Hopefully they like what's going down! I know I will...