Discoveries About Clash from Origins 2014

Hello Internet!

This will hopefully be brief.

I wanted to talk a little about some stuff I found out about
Clash this weekend. I promised you all video blogs, vlogs, whatever you want to
call them and I wanted to try this out! I am not using my fancy cam setup or
anything, so you get raw, uncut Brie.

That sounds kind of gross.

One of the biggest things I noticed at Origins was that
players had trouble focusing on each other, and that we resolved the conflicts.
Resolving the conflicts! WHAT! That is not supposed to happen!

I talked with John a bit and what I think is happening is
that I am really shit at explaining things. Like, really shit. Because, here’s
the thing.

Clash is a game about conflict.

It’s not necessarily about THE CONFLICT.

I want players to focus on themselves and each other. Avoidance
is there for a reason. If you want to fuck off and do your own thing and let it
screw up life for everyone, go you, dude! The conflict is important but only in
the way that it’s keeping you from your goals and keeping you from what you
want even if it’s not really what is keeping you from what you want.

Plus, the World hates compromise. After all, it punishes
everyone when you compromise, just like it punishes everyone for avoiding conflict.
The World doesn’t want peace.

So what I’ve discovered is that I really need to take time
explaining the way the game works to people when we sit down to play, and write
up a script to prep the players when they start play. It’s not about the big C
conflict all of the time, but it’s always about the little C conflicts,
including internal conflict.

What is something you have discovered in a playtest that
changed how you want to present the game?