Thread by @DGivaca

Comfy late night, with a tea at hand and a new zine to read.
Hop on board people, it's time for another #aGivacaReadsRPGs thread, where I live tweet my impressions on ⭐A Complicated Profession⭐

Before opening its pages, let's get the context out of the way:
A Complicated Profession is a light-hearted, one-shot, GM-less game by @alwayscheckers where everyone plays the role of ex-bounty hunters that are now hosting intergalactic cruises.
alwayscheckers.itch.io/a-complicated-…

I've played this before (shortly more than a year ago) once, but without reading the game. This time, an indie ttrpg book club I'm part of will dedicate March to this RPG, with pre-discussion, play and post-discussion. Thus, it's time to read the zine I just got!
3/X

Right at the start, the prologue makes a perfect work in presenting the central theme of this game - you're a ex-crew of bounty-hunters that has turned to another venture: hosting space cruises.
How will your former skills help or hinder you in this project?
4/X

After the usual list of material to play (3d6, printouts, deck of cards), the game flow is presented bsuccintly: a starting setup where collaboratively stuff is created, and roles are picked and filled (which should be presented later I guess), and a special event is played.
5/X

The main contract sequence is repeated 3 times, which sounds rather long, and has each of those times, the creation of a contract, more special events, and the playing out of 3 main events. Along with the special event to end the game, we're talking about 17 events (?)...
6/X

... so they must be somewhat to the shorter side, if this is effectively to be played in 1-2 sessions. Not sure anymore, but I suspect that the one time I played ACP, we went through fewer events.
7/X

But how does turn order rotate? Regarding the main sequence (contract sequence), the contract sheet goes around the table as contracts are completed. Inside that sequence, the players next to the one who defined the contract get to choose and play the events sequentially.
8/X

I do wonder about one of the contract sequence's special events, "Closed for Maintenance", which is not mentioned as part of this rotation (the other special event is). Probably once I know what it is about, I'll figure out the reason why.
9/X

What does it mean to be your turn to play an event? It means that you get to pick the event (even tho special events aren't chosen), probably read it out loud, and then coordinate and encourage the contributions of the other players, which sounds essential in a gm-less game.
10/X

A character starts with both a hunter role (from their former life) and with a host role (for their new life) - both have experiences that you can use once per event.
Now this sounds brilliant: hunter roles can only be used 1x. After, they're crossed out and replaced...
11/X

by a new host experience. This represents very well you leaving your old self behind to embrace the new one. Once a character has no hunter experiences, they remove that from their character and get a new nickname.
12/X

The characters' ship also gives some benefits, like useful items and ship NPCs that can be acquired and improved, but only used once per contract, so I guess you need to use them carefully. These give you bonus dice (for what, I don't know yet).
13/X

The next ~25 pages are dedicated to the several main and special events. I don't know how deep I'll go into them (to keep some surprise factor in this month's session), but it's getting late, so I'll think about it tomorrow.
14/X

But I can leave you with a sneak peek.
Look at that gorgeous art of a possible crew! And the event names are really intriguing.
15/X

Bah, let's go with a brief overview of the events. I suspect they'll answer some of my questions.
16/X

The introductory special event turns out to be exactly that, an introduction to the game. Where players gets to tell a story about their character, and answer crew-related questions.
A Team and a Star players are picked, no clue what that means right now.
17/X

I find it cool when this sort of character/crew building is part of the actual game.

The next special event (Closed for Maintenance) has those 2 aforementioned players acquire useful items for the ship while it's repairing. So it makes sense to be part of the cycle too.
18/X

In the penultimate special event, the lead player will take the role of a passenger who’s filling out a satisfaction survey.
Depending on number of successful main events (which is judged by that passenger), you have a better chance to succeed in the Contract.
19/X

Oh, it's also here that the lead player decides who’s that Contract's Star Player (the one who stood out the most) and Team Player (this one is self explanatory) that will go shopping for the following Contract! Interesting 🤔
20/X

Hmmm... looks like the last special event is almost at the end, so for the sake of consistency I'll jump the ~20 pages in the middle for now.

It's basically a conclusion where players get to ask and answer questions about their final impressions on the crew/contracts/...
21/X

I won't go into detail of the Main Events, because these are a central part of the game experience, and surely a lot more fun to engage in play.
What I can say is that they look like mini-games, that provide you with a specific challenge or situation for the crew to deal.
22/X

Broadly, each of these events is structured in 4 parts: setup, where the characters in the scene are established; event, where the Lead Player (and in a minor fashion, the other players too) defines the situation at hand, by answering questions/drawing cards/rolling dice.
23/X

complication, that adds a difficult new situation which players have to tackle; and resolution, that works almost as finishing a Contract: Lead Player rolls d6s (bonus dice if someone uses an experience/useful item/ship npc), with the highest roll deciding the outcome.
24/X

That's basically it, nothing too complex. The rest of the book presents the printouts, including all host and hunter roles along with a variety of sheets that are used in different parts of the game, which I'll explore later.
25/X

There's some important stuff on these printouts, it seems, and some of it is clearing doubts I had previously. The Special Event Closed for Maintenance truly is played 3x like the other stuff inside the Contract Sequence. And each Main Event can only be played once,,,
26/X

... which means that by the end of the game you'll have played all 9 main events.
There's a cool passenger generator which is guaranteed to be very helpful, in which by drawing a card and rolling a d6, you get a species, size and a main trait.
27/X

What follows are the roles available for character creation, which, just as with the Main Events, I don't wanna spoil too much. Each role has a bio with blanks to fill (and you're given some options to pick from) and a list of 6 Experiences that you can tick on/off.
28/X

Both the Hunter and Host roles make a great work of playing into the stereotypes for each genre, while also promising lots of laughs with the contrast between these roles in a character. You have options like Bounty Hunter, Doc', Captain or Mechanic, but also others...
29/X

...like ouctdated droid, lucky companion, live entertainment or chef. From a cursory glance, it seems like most experiences nicely tied to your role, and applicable to as many situations as your imagination allows you to.
30/X

The collaborative creation of the ship, corner of the galaxy and home spaceport is similar to character creation, since you get a text with blanks and options to pick from.

Last printout is Contract Creation, which is one of the aspects that I know less from up until now.
31/X

You don't get a lot of details on it in the "rules-part" of the book, so it must be explained here.

Basically, the lead player draws 2 cards, where each suit stands for a different contract and the number/face represents the passengers. They choose only one of them.
32/X

After that the lead player still gets to answer a couple questions, further defining the lead passenger, and contract details.

And that's it. This is everything you need to play a game of A Complicated Profession. I suspect you can read it back to back in a couple hours...
33/X

But you don't really need to - a dozen pages should be plenty, and the rest are events and printouts that you'll naturally read as they come up in-session.
In less than an hour, our indie ttrpg book club will be discussing our impressions, looking forward to it!
34/X

But I can already talk about some of my strongest impressions:
- for a zine this small, it's filled with great art (all events have one);
- you are given options and random generators for basically everything - if you wanna imagine your own stuff, you can, but the game...
35/X

...won't crawl to a stop if you can't remember anything, since you can fall back on the ideas provided.
- printouts are great, specially the fillable ones. For example, the Contract Sheet has space in it for all the stuff that you'll have to define.
36/X

- a gm-less, one-shot kind of RPG solidly structured is a good approach to guarantee that the session keeps going firmly without a GM, while giving enough freedom in its structure that players won't feel stiffled and 2 sessions won't feel equal. ACP does this perfectly.
37/X

It was drawn to my attention that the 2 full-spread art pieces in the book present the same characters, first as Hunters, and after as Hosts!! Damn, this is brilliant, don't know how I didn't notice it before!

So yeah, this is A Complicated Profession. Excited to play it!
38/38

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