My previous attempt at pocket play didn’t really work. It was Don’t Rest Your Head, and while that was good fun and all, we did tend to getting the “party” together soon enough, what with pocket play ending up a rather boring affair for everyone not currently involved in a scene.

Here’s why I think pocket play works in Hammer Falls while it doesn’t in DRYH.

1) The world creation thing. The fact that you’ve helped create the world the game takes place in means you have a vested interest in seeing that world develop, which is just what happens when other people play and make stuff up. You pay attention so you can reincorporate things they invent in your own scenes, and you pay even more attention when they reincorporate something you came up with, because that’s just cool.

2) This is the big one. The Chains. One cannot stress this enough: the fact that each player represents one method by which the dystopia keeps you down means you’re acutely following every scene, constantly thinking “okay, if he draws a card now and it’s my suite, how do I bring my chain in?” This means that you’re engaged, and more importantly possibly, that you’re always creating stuff at a low level.

One thing I would offer as a suggestion is that you may want to reshuffle the chains after each “round”. I’m taking this from Joe Prince’s Hell 4 Leather, where major characters are potentially reshuffled between scenes. Thinking of yet another way to use the same chain may become somewhat of a strain, and you may want to take addiction for a spin at some point (so to speak).

I think both your “does an issue survive when the hammer falls?” suggestion (although I might not go for the suite; let’s say the card revealed is examined for its value, and if you have a card of that value on your issue then your issue survives; suits may make it too easy) and your “use highest card + number of cards as difficulty” suggestion. I’d need to be reminded of the exact mechanic to comment on the latter–were there face cards in the deck? If so, how many points were they worth? We’ll need to come up with an average point value of a card on your hand and adjust this to the new expected difficulties. But I do agree: it would be much easier. (Also it would make jokers less overpowered, since they wouldn’t remove a full, say, 10 points of difficulty, but only 10 – + 1 (so in a worst case situation, when there’s another 10 on the chain, just 1 point of difficulty).

Enough rambling! I loved the game and want to play it again as well.