Mendel:

Captain Steele is meant to be a reward given to the player who has pleased the other players most by offering elements that are most attractive.

I thought that the role of Steele would be extremely attractive to a story setting or social interaction socket player, while a character socket player, (or just merely a player uncomfortable in a GMish role) could hand it off to another willing player so as not to be “handcuffed” by winning (or “punished” for good behavior).

Surprise twists can be introduced into the second half by bidding shields to buy them in. They can not replace an invested element already in play – the invested element must be part of the fiction, but there is nothing to stop someone from bidding shields after it has been introduced to issue a surprise twist. “The killer’s private journal is fruit from the forbidden tree! It was aquired in an illegal search.”

Now, that said, I’ve got a rule currently under consideration which allows Actors to buy out story elements on the table… so that might get more dynamic in the future.

I do have some comments from analyzing the game:

1) Is there any reason to let the shield winner hand off Steele? It seems like this will cause more problems than it is worth – especially if Steele is given to a player with substantially fewer shields (both mechanically and in terms of investment in the contributions).

2) There doesn’t seem to be any mechanism for introducing a surprise twist, which seems a significant part of the source material. Might it be possible to use a buy-in strategy, where the detectives are building their case, but explicitly leaving pieces for Steele to introduce a plot twist, with Steele actively looking for a way to introduce one? Then perhaps making the risk of the detectives failing based not on time, but on the number of these twists (0-1: unsolved, 2-4: criminal brought to justice, 5+: criminal is one step ahead).

I hope that helps,

– Mendel

I look forward to seeing the commercial version of it.

- Gerald

PS: The layout is phenomenal.

Congrats.

I know I want to, but I’m not sure I’ve got time. Despite my non-helpfulness, you still love me enough to run a demo for me at GenCon, right?

Thomas