Examples of Play!

I've been playing more ITAM recently, and I was fortunate enough to have a group with some old playtesters as well as newbies to TTRPGs and man they give good feedback. I have some revisions I want to test, but that's beside the point.  I have some more examples of how the game's meant to be played!

First of all, all you need is a digital whiteboard. While this could have all been done in Foundry (and I do love Foundry), it's just a bit too... involved... for new players. Personally, I've been using Sketchtogether and just registering new emails for the trial, but it really does do everything I'd want it to without needing people to sign in to use. There's definitely better options out there if you look for them. I mainly wanted it to do the following:
- Realtime collaboration
- Drawing
- Text
- Lines and Arrows

As stated in the book, we went around and created the world and the Apocalypse. I love it when you can engage players by brainstorming together, and gets the juices flowing for where they fit into the world.

Up next, they create their characters, and then the bonds!

After some sessions of play (and Sana, as the Bond-Keeper, does a banger job!), we get something more like this
I realized that there were some bonds that really aren't tied to the individual Magical Girls. Like does the Contractor have a different bond with everyone? What about a friendly NPC that views them all as a set? It would probably be more interesting if there was someone who mainly held that bond but it's definitely food for thought.

Finally, we get playing and cook up a map! We started with the Home Base node, the upstream, downstream, plaza, museum, and tower, and as the players explored and interacted with the world, they grew comfortable and familiar with certain areas.

I'll be playing the game more and learning even more as I go. I'd be interested to see how other people handle these same challenges (in person would probably be very dope). Full disclosure, the world- and character-building process took about 2 hours with new players, but in playtesting with experienced TTRPGers it took closer to 30-45 minutes.

It was also interesting throwing players into combat for the first time. Combat in TTRPGs is often like, the thing players want to be doing. But ITAM is weird, because combat almost never benefits you and if you haven't built up any Hope, you can quickly start losing. As I say, Magical Girls will never win a battle of attrition. It usually takes a fight for that to 'click' for the players. That being said, Healing during rests was very forgiving if your MGs didn't have anything else they wanted to do.

Anywho, those are just some lessons I've learned from playing ITAM. Remember, Discover Hope is absolutely OP, required even! Go reclaim your City, Magical girls!