Press-Gang Questionnaire Play Test

At the end of a recent post wherein I whined about not having players for the RPG I wanted to run - Advanced Fighting Fantasy - I had proposed the "Press-Gang Questionnaire," a multiple-choice distillation of the significant encounter choices presented within an adventure session. The questionnaire was to be given to unsuspecting victims and then the results were to be compared and played out while I "ran" the adventure as a solo game.

For my initial test of this concept, I drew up a quick little adventure called "The Ruins Have Eyes," a pretty basic fantasy escapade.

The Premise: After a falling star is seen landing among the ruins on a rocky precipice, the locals notice blinking green lights and Goblin activity coming from the 300 year-old structure. Adventurers are hired to check things out and clear away the Goblins.

The Truth: The ruins aren't ruins at all; they're the remains of an incomplete summoning spell meant to bring an evil Earth Elemental into this plane. The warlock who had tried to cast this during Allansia's War of the Wizards died during the process, and the Earth Elemental has been stuck between the planes ever since. The falling star that landed in the ruins is a meteorite with the cosmic oogedy-boogediness to complete the summoning, and, just to complicate things, its unearthly power has also drawn a Goblin shaman to it, one who thinks he is capable of harnessing the space rock's power. The shaman is very wrong and soon will be crushed under the wrath of a seriously ticked-off elemental behemoth. (The "lights," by the way, are the two glowing green eyes of the elemental opening and closing as it struggles to put itself back together.)

As for the Heroes, I wanted four of them to test out the "consensus mechanic" of the Press-Gang Questionnaire, including possible ties, so I used AFF's versatile character creation system to design a quartet comprised of a potion-making witch, a treasure hunter who collects beneficial and cursed items, a thief with ESP, and a hearty Dwarf mercenary. For each one, the same questionnaire of 8 items was drawn up on an index card. Each was titled with a very brief description of one Hero. The items were as follows:

1. Sneak in / Attack / Wait
2. Continue past trap / Find another entrance
3. Pause to examine / Move out quickly
4. Fight little foes / Flee little foes
5. Fight big foe / Flee big foe / Retreat
6. Fight / Negotiate
7. Fight / Negotiate
8. Keep object / Destroy object / Give away

The questionnaires were given to four different acquaintances of mine in-person, not via e-mail or text. All four were professional adults above the age of 30. Two were academics, one was a business owner, and one was in media. Three of the four were sci-fi and fantasy fans, but only two were RPG players. The four were chosen by me simply because I saw them before I saw anyone else once I had the questionnaires written.

I did not look at their choices until I was ready to play, and then I only looked at one response at a time.

Best observation: It was always exciting to reveal a new multiple-choice item! I couldn't wait to see what people had chosen for each character and what the consensus would be!

Overall, the game ran much more smoothly than I had anticipated. With the most important decisions made by others, all I had to do as GM was mediate the obvious stuff. It helped that the adventure was nicely straightforward.

The first item, which my respondents did not know concerned the three Goblins standing guard at the entrance of the ruins, had a consensus of two - to sneak in rather than fight. This was a poor choice as the Dwarf mercenary was very bad at being stealthy, and the Goblins attacked. Though the Heroes triumphed, demerits were issued to the Heroes who had made that choice.

A sudden quandary occurred when the Heroes encountered the Elemental's hand as it manifested before them. The consensus was to "Fight big foe," but the poor Heroes had no idea that they possessed no weapons or abilities that could harm the hand. With real players, they would have realized this soon enough and would have fled their big foe, pushing past it. With no real players, I needed a way to mechanically emulate this realization. So, I rolled an unopposed test of the witch's Magic Lore skill each combat round. When she passed it, it would indicate her realization of the futility of their combat, and the Heroes would move to the next encounter. She finally "got it" after four rounds, which was good news for the treasure hunter who was getting slapped around pretty good by the hand.

When the naked Goblin shaman performing a useless ritual by the meteorite was finally encountered, demerits were even and there was a tie between the choices of fighting him or negotiating with him. So, I rolled randomly, and the result was a fight. This was a good thing because the Heroes only had 1 minute in game time from the moment of meeting the shaman to get to the meteorite or the Earth Elemental would be born. The shaman cursed the treasure hunter, nearly killing him, but the axe of the Dwarf mercenary and the crossbow of the psychic thief took the Goblin out in 10 seconds. The meteorite was quickly removed from the ruins, and the day was saved.

The final multiple-choice item concerned the meteorite. A consensus of two determined that the Heroes would "Keep object." Suddenly, I started to ponder a "space rock" story arc...

Anyway, it was a good test with positive results. With real players, the adventure would have probably taken 60-90 minutes to play out. Using the Press-Gang Questionnaires, the game took about 30 minutes. The demerit system made for excellent added dynamics, and every reveal of a new response was exciting!

However, I missed real players. One of the great joys of being a GM is to immerse others into a fantasy and to collaborate in its development, and I didn't get that here. As the adventure proceeded, the Earth Elemental began to reform; thus, the Heroes were traveling through its body, a cool narrative conceit that was utterly lost without a real audience for whom to play up the description of such an evocative scenario.

So, I'm torn. I'm glad my solo mechanics worked and an adventure could be run, but, ultimately, it was an exercise, not a game. I like being a solo player, but I don't know if the "solo GM" experience is what I want, no matter how difficult it may be to get players at my table.