[OCHH] Designing again
One Can Have Her is back. Peter Nordstrand rekindled my interest in the game a while back, so now I’m playtesting and writing again. I’ve asked some people whose opinions matter to me to do external playtests, and I continue doing my own.
I’m confident the game works after playing this Saturday at Peter’s mini-convention OmniCon. Actually playing this time, with Peter as game master. That helped me identify a couple of things that need clarifications.
Oh, and I won. I guess you can talk about winning in a roleplaying game about making the others take a fall for you to reach your dreams and get the girl? My aggressive doctor managed to become famous and work in high society. He originally wanted to become famous for legalizing abortion in 1960s California, but had to settle for the fame of paving the way for a legislation. He then rejected the femme fatale, because she reminded him of his former life.
The two other player characters, a paranoid government agent and a conflicted nightclub singer, ended up in jail for 30 years and dead by suicide floating in a swimming pool respectively.
And don’t forget to check out my actual play report at The Forge.
From what I’ve heard of OCHH (mostly from Tobias) it sounds really interesting.
Winning (or at least competing with the other players) feels different from classical game and is a nice touch to the gameplay. I like when the players is faced against each other, both in a narrative way (like Polaris) and in a game way (like Agon) and will probably try more games of that kind in the future.
To be clear, the players can cooperate in One Can Have Her, should they want to. What happens is they get the “mediocre” ending where no one gets caught and no one reaches their life goal.
On his blog, Anders Sveen thought about what happens if a player doesn’t play to win. His conclusion is that the game still works as intended.
But to get to the nerve of the game I think you should open yourself to the dread and paranoia of ratting on the others without knowing if you’ll get away with it. Tobias has the playtest version of the game, so maybe you could convice your group to give it a try? I would love to hear what you guys think.