This page records some initial thoughts having completed my first solo playthrough of Cold Shadows (over a 7 segment story). It’s split into things I liked, things I didn’t like so much, and things that I think are down to my inexperience.
Things I liked
I really liked the simplicity of rolling against a pre-determined success value (10 in CS). The difficulty of the roll, and the skill of the character is reflected in the number of dice available to roll. More skillful characters, and those with skills or tools to bring to the situation, receive more dice to use. Situations which are more dangerous, or where the tasks is more complex, carry a mandatory ‘wager’ of dice - effectively reducing the size of the dice pool. I interpreted a ‘pass’ (more than 10) as the plot moving in an obviously good direction and a ‘fail’ as the plot moving against the wishes of the main character.
I also really liked the process of consulting and interpreting the rolls against encounter tables - even just using the simple Oracle was pleasing. Sometimes it was difficult to find a suitable encouter table to use (which I chalk up to a lack of experience).
Clearly, I also liked the setting (espionage) although I didn’t make use of tools or the additional resources available. Perhaps this was down to the mission (or how I played it), maybe in time, as I get used to the system I might make more use of them. However, at the moment, I feel like a more realistic (i.e. less James Bond/fantasy) experience is more to my taste.
Things I didn’t care for
By far the most difficult issue was moving the plot on (perhaps this is more an experience issue) - knowing what to do and how to resolve a stall in the plot. I didn’t feel as if I had an obvious tool to use - in hindsight, I think I did - there are ‘segment suggestions’ in the rule book which I only used in the last segment - perhaps I should have made more use of these. At the start of the story they all felt a bit too ‘significant’.
I found it hard to decide i) what type of risk each roll should be (so a lot ended up being against the ‘Charisma’ score) and also ii) what level of threat I should face (and so the size of the mandatory ‘wager’). I think I would prefer a simpler system, perhaps with only one type of resource. It could be the case that this doesn’t matter and actually it’s fine that most rolls are against the same resource - in fact this might represent the approach of my character…However the description of the risks requires a little reworking to include descriptions of non-physical dangers (i.e. it’s not just fighting).
There was no way (or at least I didn’t use a way) to take account of time and whilst this doesn’t ‘matter’ it does mean that the experience lacks a certain amount of narrative realism. I could have simply made decisions - perhaps making each segment a 2 or 4 hour ‘slot’. On reflection, some sort of system like Chronicles of Crime would work well - moving and asking questions takes up time.
Inexperience
Being able to move the plot on and to pace the story over a reasonable number of segments (sessions) is almost certainly down to inexperience, but it’s also partly to do with the nature of Cold Shadows as a game - it is designed to be a game in which the players share (and ‘battle’ for) narrative control. Something with a little more structure to it would suit me, as a solo player with little experience, a little better. That said, a simple table that draws on the segement suggestions already in the rule book might be just the thing.
The other ‘inexperience factor’ is writing up the story. Truthfully, I had expected to be better at this (and at handling the plot issues) given how much fiction I read, particularly of a thriller/crime/espionage nature. I assume this will become a little easier in time and that I will develop a style that works. Simple things like keeping any control of tense (am I writing in the present, or in a narrative tense?) and deciding how much dialoge to include (this is difficult because it is both critical and outside the direct control of the dice) threw me…practice makes perfect.
So, this is what I’m thinking about where next