Og was a great game.
The communication was a lot of fun once we got started and everyone got used to it, which did not take that long.
The best aspect of the game I liked is that no one really died, one just got beaten up a bit, plus there was more drama than I expected.
For example Rhiannon spent over two hours trying to tell me we needed to get the tridactyl egg off the other tribes(tree cave) medicine man to heal my wife, when I finally cottoned on we charged off after him. But as we did so I turned round and saw the rest of tree cave raiding our food supply, so we turned round and charged back. We lost all our food but we re-captured all of tree caves women in the ensuing scuffle. (high drama stuff). I then turned round chased tree caves medicine man, beat him to a pulp,(also good revenge as he arranged for me being beaten up and attempting feeding to the tridactyl earlier) stole his tridactyl egg and dashed back to heal my wife.
Also it was not cold at all, through a little hard on the feet
Sweet game. Funny and frustrating, usually both at once.
Top moments:
Splashing puddle water on someone’s face because I didn’t realise that the rain water (“sun water”) had already woken them up.
Trying to explain that someone from the other tribe is hiding behind a tree and might ambush us if we go down that path with only one verb took me nearly ten minutes.
Trying to explain that I wanted to keep the pterydactyl egg so that I could hatch it and raise it into a flying mount created endless perplexity. “No food. Big sun thing (pointing up at cliff, flapping arms and cawing like a vulture), no-small sun thing (pointing at egg, making little chirping noises), me thing (putting egg between legs, fllapping arms and walking around)”.
All the combats were hilarious. First people would throw rocks, then rush in and hit each other with sticks. Bedlam. Fighting at its most primitive. And waking people up by throwing water on them - genius. Must remember more coconuts for next time.
All the combat abilities and cavenan types worked well, although I didn’t find being a Smart caveman terribly useful. I did draw a picture near the end, but it was more to show off than anything. And whenever I used my extra word (“now”), everyone else would start using it too.
The location. A cave tucked into what felt like a primitive jungle, a huge cave near sand dunes, the beach, and all the little tracks around the place. So totally suited.
The constant threat of the “big smelly” caveman roaming around at smashing people.
Whenever Rhiannon’s character said anything it sounded like absolute gibberish to me. “Tree sun cave bang”. Pardon?
Downers:
My goal was to leave animal sacrifices out for the pterydactl to eat, but she only ever picked up one corpse. The rest just lay there until they were stolen by the other tribe or the big smelly. In the end I decided that it didn’t matter if she was angry about me stealing her egg, because she almost never showed up anyway.
Losing words when you were knocked out. It wasn’t clear what words to lose. because Steve was busy playing and it would have broken the mood to stop and ask him what word to lose. Maybe everyone should be given a printed word list in a random order, and lose them from the top down?
The pterydactyl egg, possibly the most important prop in the game because one tribe wanted to get it from the other, was a football. Just a tiny bit of dressing up would have made it look like a cool big egg prop - as it was I don’t think the other tribe realised what I was carrying for ages, because it looked like a football. I had to explain to them it was an egg (which was really against my characters best interests, not to mention insanely difficuly to express).
I thought having a few cavemen (two in each tribe) with printed goals worked well. I had goals, and it gave the game a semblence of meaning for me. How did it feel for the people without written goals? Were you happy going along with the leaders’ apparently absurd whims? “Go bang no-big hairy food! (Leading them to where I wanted them to leave the small animal corpses for the pterydactyl, and pointing). Small food. Big sun thing food!”
Also, I loved the “rock cave” cheerleading cry. “Rock cave! Rock cave! Rock cave! (banging clubs on ground)”. Very stirring. And the way that when the “tree cave” tribe were captured or surrended to the “rock cave” tribe we were stripped of our old name and made a slave to a member of the rock cave with a new name associating us to our master. I was given to a small boy called “thing”, and thus gained the new name “thing thing”. Nice one, Adam.
-splashing water in peoples faces to wake them up
-having my own concubine, and dragging her off to the back of the cave 3 times (one of which she was unconcious), and almost taking another cavemans concubine too (my chief clicked to what was happening at the last moment)
-running away, and jumping over stuff
-juggling rocks when my chief wanted to give us orders
-having conversations with only 17 words
being very egotistical
-winning (well, converting the other tribe to our tribe at the very least)
Not quite so good parts"
-the cuts on my feet that i noticed once i got home (they were big, and hurt) and also twisting my ancle at some point when i was jumping around
the game worked really well, especially the communication thing. it was great having a whole lot of spectators watch. coconuts are worth their wait in gold (they allow you to carry water). id really like to see this become a regular thing (though the trip all the way to piha is a bit of a drag).
[quote=“Ryan Paddy”][quote=“adam”]Tree Cave at the beginning:
Bigbig
Fireme
Sleepsleep
bangbang[/quote]
Actually, my character’s name was Hairysleepsleep.[/quote]
are you sure, I am postive that it was thing thing.
ps Great costume it was one of the highlights of the game Ryan, its a shame I did not get a picutre of it.
What I loved about Og was the setting and how realistic we looked. One of my favourite moments was escaping from the Rock Cave tribe and taking their chief with us and sacrificing him to the big Sun Thing lol.
I did get a bit confused sometimes because I love to yell bang when I hit someone and I kept forgetting that means Im doing more damage. OOPS
Also it was interesting getting woken up from incapacitation by someone throwing water in your face.
It was an awesome game and Im def up for another one sometime.
Yeah, this was a bit of a problem for me. I hadnt thought it out too well, originally I had sort of expected them to be amassed and then all done at once. If we’d had more players, I could have been more active in the GMing role.
You were supposed to just lose one at random, probably pick it yourself since its too much hassle to find a GM. I like the random order idea, though, maybe next time I’ll have randomised lists (but youd need to carry a pen to cross words off…)
I know! I’d intended to spray it eggshell white, and so on. I just didn’t have any time, nor the paint. In the end, I bought the ball one day before the game. Having a small baby really absorbs ALL your free time.
I think the game worked very well, with there being, in effect, no NPCs. Everyone was a player, although several starting with different objectives. I think it would have worked better with another 10 players, though, since Tree tribe sort of disappeared when all the women were stolen, and one player is not enough to mount a rescue expedition! The venue worked fairly well, although the Rock cave had that awkward fence and Tree was rather deeply hidden. A good place to leave the gear, though.
People were (in some cases) a bit inaccurate with remembering the word list, and this decreased the value of the Smart caveman’s extra words. I think Ryan could have used drawing more often to get awkward concepts across (as could Rhiannon?). Maybe Smart should have an extra 2 words?
Walter did well as Mego the fast caveman (good use of the ability) and the whole communication thing was great fun. I had to hang back a lot as I already knew what the message would be since I’d read the briefs… Adam really did well as the Rock Cave bigbig, and Ryan’s medicine man was excellent, particularly the costume.
I was irritated that it turned out I’d forgotten the 6 coconut halves Id prepared for the game. They are majorly useful items, you can keep a water supply handy. I had a foot-cut also although not too bad. Maybe we should play right down on the beach, by bigsmelly’s cave (original plan). Also, I’m not sure how many toys we lost, but it must be more than one. Prehaps we should use bigger ones, if we can find some next time.
The whole minibus thing flopped due to insufficient people, and it would be too pricy to hire a bus in the future, too (this time I could have borrowed a minivan). As it was, there were only 3 people booked so we car shared (cheaper on petrol). I should have been less optimistic in travel time, though. Still, I think 1 hr to get to Piha is worth it for the venue being so good.
[quote=“Adam”]In Rock Cave at the beginning there was
Big Big
Mego
Smelly
Thing
[/quote]
You missed me out-
Rock Big Sun
I knew what it was the whole time - But could I make the others work out what it was? No. After two hours, they FINALLY get the idea. After five minutes of drawing a pterodactyl (note correct spelling) and miming pulling a rock out its backside. No help. Then Big Big sees the egg and it begins to click. After more pointing and shouting, anyway. “Big-Sun-Thingfrantic flapping motions thing!” Gah!
As it was playing on the beach itself would have been a bad idea due to all the bluebottle, was miraculous no-one stood on one really.
However was much much fun and we all want another one!
I didn’t forget you, just forgot your name (spent several minutes and I just could not remember) and I didn’t want to spoil my post with real names as that was what Scotty was after.
I’m definitely going to do another, but I think the weather is going to be too bad now until the spring. I’ll run one then, and hopefully we can get more players this time! The last game would have been a lot different with 15 people instead of 8.
I’ve also got to work on the scenario… I used up all my good ideas in the last one…
