Danger Patrol – a Daring play test!

Today was game day! Yet trough a series of very unexpected events, we ended up short and decided not to continue the research into who is killing off the fair maidens of Paridon ..
So I got my print of the Danger Patrol beta rules (by onesevendesign.com) and we started a game of heroic adventures, 50s style!

Tommy Spike, a psychic investigator paired with an atomic explorer known only as “Pitch Black”.
Pitched against a Crimson Ape outbreak! We played through the Action scene, filled with rampant apes being crushed by a telepathically induced tornado, potentially exploding cars and a former nemesis coming back in a seductive assassination attempt at Tommy, only to be thrown out of the hover car and violently crack her skull on the pavement, meters below.)
The interlude presented some needed RnR time
And a short overview of what the Suspense would have been, had we had more time (with mob assassins, poison driving the zoo animals INSANE and a cunning trap, set up to KILL the valiant heroes!)

The system; I generally liked it.
Even though I managed to miss the Threat Moves section, that table quite puzzled me and since the failed danger dice didnt really do all that much without it, I was slightly puzzled at how the damage actually got to the players. The show, however, must go on and damage was dealt, but in retrospect, we did miss out on a nice part of the system. Next time..
I also found a small typo in nr of danger dice available to the player. 2 or 3? (Pg 13: 1-3; pg Pg 25 Rules Summary 1-2) We played 3 since I like how the players themselves are in control instead of putting that with the DM!
Its a nice system. It works smoothly and I love how it takes you places you otherwise wouldn’t go! Having these other random story creation seeds influencing the storyline is really rich!

A point of interest is that there is more of a load on the storyteller and to a certain level on the players. Actually, there is just more of a load on the game as a whole and how that gets divided really depends on the players. Regular games always have the scenario and if the players go catatonic, you can easily fall back on the prepared scenario points to kick them to action or death. If the players fail at giving their input in this game, you need to create it all on a whim and that can be hard (supposing you’re above putting the players through any pathetic thin drivel) on a longer run. If on the other hand the players really get into the describing, you re in for an easy ride, really! One player immediately pointed out that you need a specific type of person to really make this work, though I don’t believe thats entirely true.
That being said and at any rate, I’m confident that any troupe of moderately creative people can have a blast at this!

Im wondering if this game could be modified to be more DM-less by rotating the DM role for the scene to a different player, so that Everyone has a character and the rotating GM does the storytelling..

The notes overview system is very nice. You are able to create a great overview on the go and this greatly helps the game. A friend however quickly remarked that its not really that nature friendly, considering the big pile of paper waste you end up with after the game! And I agree. But I like it. .. theres definitely conceptual gold in there! (actually, there should be an app for that 😉 heheh If only I had the time to write all that!)

Danger Patrol is a fun game with some great mechanics that offers a humongous amount of freedom but requires more creativity than the big, more scripted and rule heavy RPGs.

And the Beta is downloadable for free at dangerpatrol.com!