3) Putting pressure on the parents' Issues during Chase scenes. I need good advice here. Brand suggests watching the people who do this well in playtesting and writing down what they do and why it works. At least to capture some of this.

Posted By: emilycareBy the way, it is a three player game, right? How would you handle different numbers of players? I was thinking you could have multiple kids, perhaps.

1. Remove specific dinosaur names from the Obstacle cards - This is pretty straightforward. I realized only recently that specific dinosaurs aren't really important to the game. To the family a dinosaur is more about size, shape, and where the sharp scary bits are located. In addition I pulled a card that said velociraptor and it made more sense in the story to ditch the specifics.


2. Playing out a Chase Scene - I was really certain that I didn't like the Chase scene as written. At the table we came up with a procedure that I think I'm going to stick with. Start with one of the players of the parents (or the older sibling) who will come up with an attempt to overcome the Obstacle. The player of the child then details how that character's actions fail to overcome the Obstacle. Another player then makes an attempt to overcome the Obstacle without success. Finally either the first player goes again (when there are two players), or the last player (when the older sibling is being played). On this last exchange, the character successfully overcomes the Obstacle, but unless it's the last Obstacle the child slips away again.


3. Start with a Chase scene - I walked through these rules once before at Dreamation '09 and starting with an Interlude scene was hard then and at this playtest. You have the characters and their Issues, but it's not quite enough to really kickstart the first scene. Jason suggested starting out with a set of Chase scenes, and I think that might solve this problem. The first Chase scene will give the family something immediate to do and then give a lot of context for the next Interlude.


4. Ending the game - We ended the game after 2 Chase sequences and 3 Interludes. In general the current end game conditions in the text are too loose and it's likely that the game will simply drag on. We discussed that maybe the text should advise that once all Issues have changed once, it's a good time to take stock in whether the game should end. I'm a little worried about it, but I'm not really sure why. I think it needs to be played a few times to really get a handle on it. As an addition to this, I think the game always needs to end on an Interlude. It captures some of the sitcom roots of the game, and resolves the game the opposite of how it began, with a quiet peaceful moment.


5. Refine skills - The comment was made that some of the Skills seemed less active than others and also that they could perhaps be more whimsically phrased. I think this is gonna need some brainstorming about potential Skill ideas to improve.