thread: 2011-09-20 : Deep Dark Vincent-burning Game Design
On 2011-09-22, Adams wrote:
I ran one session of Poison'd once. This was right after Mouse Guard had gone a bit off the rails with one of the PCs starting a cult to raise an army to kill an owl, and getting most of her army killed in the process. She was the player who played the most evil PC in any game we played, to the point of actually scaring someone away from a Sorcerer game. I thought that Poison'd would probably work well for her because playing evil people was part of the premise. But, I was wrong. I enjoyed the game; one of three players, the one who created the least evil pirate, who just wanted to get amnesty and settle down in france, he enjoyed the game, but the girl with the evil PCs, she hated it. You see, she really enjoyed camaraderie in RPGs, being on the same side as the other PCs, and Poison'd, it kind of calls the PCs out on what horrible people they are. They can see each other being evil and dangerous, and they realize they don't want to be associated with each other, and they turn against each other. It's like the part of Reservoir Dogs where Mr. Orange shoots Mr. Blonde. So, we didn't play a second session, even though I felt like that game was really going places. A month later we started our first Apocalypse World game, and that's the single game we've played the most sessions of since. But I still want to try Poison'd again sometime, and I want to play a full game of it, and I want it to work, because in apocalypse world, I've found that evil often goes punished, the PCs can do whatever the fuck they want, sometimes, and I think Poison'd might be the game that turns that around.
