Lincoln’s War

I saw this game posted on the Camp Nerdly planning pages and to be honest, it was the one event I looked forward to the most. The premise of the game is that the players are trying to gather enough victories from a pool of dice to indict a suspect in a series of murders.

This particular game was listed a playtest. Kat Miller ran the game along with Michael S. Miller and Alexander Newman. Earlier in the evening I was so uptight about not missing this game that I interrupted Alexander’s Nine Worlds game out of fear that the playtest began early.

Kat explained that the game design emerged from her frustration about how bad RPGs were at generating detective or mystery fiction. Serial begins with everyone creating parts of a victim profile and then creating victims that match that profile. Play continues with alternating series of investigation and victim vignettes.

Each player drives a victim vignette towards answering a simple question that each victim wants most in their life (”Will I get back together with my ex-wife?”). The result of these scenes, which is always a 50/50 chance of being “yes” or “no”, has no concrete effect on the mechanics of the game. None. But without them, I don’t think the game would have nearly the emotional weight that it ended dumping on my lap.

Although the victim I created ended up in a morgue, the post-investigation vignette answered the question I posed earlier, “Will I get custody of my kids?” (The victim profile specified divorced.) I narrated that the ex-wife is unpacking moving boxes, but instead of the cross-country move that other scenes established, it was in fact the old house that the victim lived in with his family before the divorce. I had the wife placing a picture of the victim on the mantle as the last “shot”.

I really didn’t grasp completely how each player can collect dice during an investigation scene. I’m sure after some study, they will become obvious. I did notice that the game rewards players for trying to create investigation details and linking them back to the victim profile and other player’s findings. I can imagine coupling these details with the investigation scenes, despite my muddled understanding of how to frame and narrate the action itself.

I found myself seeing the outcome in my head, but struggling to get them articulated. Michael S. and Alexander were smooth operators and injected several scene details and characterizations that supported my play.

I’d be curious to see if Kat adds a lot of rule illustrations through “faux” play examples. For someone like me, without the seeing it in action, I might not realize that playing out these scenes could as free-form and still get back to answering the victim’s question. My fogginess didn’t detract from the play overall, as far as I could tell. I enjoyed just about everything about the game.

I can’t wait to see this in print and all polished up. Kat has something cooking in the kitchen.