Hi!
  So, I am designing this game to fix a few problems I have had with other games over the years:
1) I want party cohesion, but I don';t want to force it on the players
2) I want genre cohesion, but I don't want to restrict the genre too tightly to accomplish this
3) I want the mechanics to force you to decide between getting what you want, hurting the other guy and protecting yourself from harm

  So, I made Steampunk Crescendo, and it seems to be firing on all cylinders.

We had out first big playtest. Our group consists of 6 people plus the GM (me).
We began by sharing our expectations for this adventure, we came up with:
Repression
Love
Vampire Hunting
Power Struggle
Fighting
Redemption
Intrigue

From that, I made an Antagonist, Baron Gilderoy. A Finishing School Master at a school where mysterious things were happening to the students and told the players about him.

So, everyone made characters based on those concepts, we ended up with:
A Magical Healer
An aspiring actress who is in an arranged marriage with a man she doesn't love
A power hungry heir to a family fortune
Two Vampire Hunters

The first scene was with a Vampire hunter and we were roaming the streets of London looking for signs of vampiric villainy. They were confronted by a bobby who was investigating a recent vampire attack. The players threw me for a loop and did not investigate further, but I went with the flow...

The next scene was with Jen at the Finishing school, her character is getting ready to graduate, but her younger brother is just starting at the school. We met the Baron and he creeped her out.

Next we had a scene where the Healer researched a new spell. She was looking for a way to detect the plague.

Finally, our little Machiavelli went a calling on his grandfather, 3rd in line to inherit the rule of the family estate (he had already abdicated, but should something happen to his two sons, it would revert back to him). This was a cantankerous old man (84 years old) who was very used to getting what he wanted. He threatened to send his grandson to the war in South Africa to make a man out of him, but the conflict in the scene finally fell on setting up an arranged marriage with the female vampire hunter. We used the full-blown conflict rules and it was very tense and down to the wire. The players lost the conflict by one point and a message was sent to the Hunter's father requesting her hand in marriage.

There was a stutter start to get used to setting scenes and learning when to go to the dice and how they worked. But I feel it went well once they hit their stride. I, as the GM, still had a good amount of creative input and a decent workload. But I felt that the players were contributing to the adventure in a meaningful way.
Dave M

Hi!
  Well, we added two more players. and Inventor and a Politician.
  We did their scenes.
  Our Inventor made a steam-powered hang glider vehicle.
  Our Politician turned to a vampire

  Then it was my turn.
  I staged a vampire attack. But it wasn't by the Baron but by Du Loch. They hadn't met him before, but his intentions were clear. He was pouncing a servant girl carrying water.
  We broke into a conflict quick. I declared if I won I would feed on the girl. The players took various Intentions, including:
1) Save the girl
2) Earn fear and respect of Vampires
3) Character Advancements

  It was pretty interesting and the group conflict mechanics went alright. the one issue is, I squarely whooped the group again. During another playtest, a single NPC vs. multiple PCs were whomped pretty hard core.

  The difference was, that NPC did not use vampire powers.

  So, the fix is easy, we can give a special group bonus to non-vampires and deny that bonus from vampires.

  So, I would call it a GREAT playtest. And next week should be way more fun with what we know!

Great! I've always found playtesting a rewarding experience, even when system elements turn out to be terrible. But, it's even better when things go well. Fantastic to see you enthused about your project.

Quote from: dindenver;388598Hi!
  So, I am designing this game to fix a few problems I have had with other games over the years:
1) I want party cohesion, but I don';t want to force it on the players
2) I want genre cohesion, but I don't want to restrict the genre too tightly to accomplish this
3) I want the mechanics to force you to decide between getting what you want, hurting the other guy and protecting yourself from harm

Does all of this come from the sharing of expectations and so forth, or are there other things in the game that allow this to happen? I'd be really interested to hear more about the mechanical guts of the game, particularly in regard to your third point above.

Cheers
Malcolm

1) I want party cohesion, but I don't want to force it on the players
So, there is a process I built into the system that builds this cohesion.
  a) Players (including the GM) brainstorm what they do and don't want to see in the upcoming adventure
  b) The GM makes an Antagonist and shares most of the details of them with the rest of the players
  c) Payers make characters that are in opposition to this antagonist
  d) GM sets up the adventure scenarios around the new characters and the Antagonist
  e) The Adventure begins!

2) I want genre cohesion, but I don't want to restrict the genre too tightly to accomplish this
The only rules available are conflict rules, Gadget, Magic, Vampires, Goals and Corruption. In order to interact with the system, is to perform activities relevant to these mechanics. It's not fool proof, but what is?

3) I want the mechanics to force you to decide between getting what you want, hurting the other guy and protecting yourself from harm
This is the core of the conflict mechanics. You throw three dice and assign one to Progress towards your goal, one to affecting the other player and one to protecting yourself from being affected.

  The current rules are posted here:
https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AYGF0nJQdKAOZGQyY2ZqcnRfMzAzbnM2MjhncQ&hl=en

  So far, the numbers are balanced between chargen, turn-by-turn tactics/die assignment and die rolling.

  The multi-player got sketchy there, but I am pretty sure I have an easy fix.

  Thanks for asking, I am getting psyched as I get close to the end of development.