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Observations from My First Few Rounds of Playtesting
So I have been able to complete my first few rounds of play testing over the past month for my game and I am happy to say that the play-testing for the most part has been a positive experience to open up my eyes on some blindspots in my game design.
I've been running a highly modified version of the Crossroads of Chalden. I decided to run a pre-made adventure mainly to get a baseline of where my assumptions were for math and encounters in AD&D, since that is the primary baseline that using for OSR compatibility. I liked this adventure concept because it had several opportunities for social encounters in addition to combat and some dungeon delving.
So here are some of the initial observations and feedback that I have received from the first few play-tests so far.
Traits and Characteristics
My system of using Traits and Characteristics seem to be generally well received and I think the players I have played with like the idea that relevant traits can be stacked to improve information or rolls in a situation. There is some negotiation that is required because the Traits are generally very ambiguous in their nature. That is by design, but I think the players did not expect to have to negotiate that in play.
I was originally doing an exercise where characters had two scores for each of their Characteristics. One would be for their Difficulty Checks (DC) and the other would be for their Saving Throws (ST). This proved to be too confusing for players, especially when they needed to adjust the scores when they took damage, so I made a change to opt to a single score value. The players will roll under their score for their save and over for checks. This proved to be much better received over all and less confusing.
It has made me think a bit more about the stats as health mechanic though. I was taking this concept from Into the Odd and Cairn, because I really liked the idea. The issue I am finding from the 2-3 combats we have run so far, is that players haven't really been coming out of the combat with decreased stats that would challenge them later in the adventure. More often than not they come out unscathed (taking only Breath damage) or going down completely from combat. I'm not quite sure what this means. I'm using straight 3d6 Characteristic (i.e. stat) creation and the idea is that as players adventure, the wilderness will take its toll on them, making them weary and making checks and saves harder as time passes. I'm not quite sure if I need to boost this roll to a 4d6 drop the lowest to give a bit more meat to the stat, especially because the save results in them become incapacitated if they fail? I mean a 1st level Basic and AD&D character only has between 1 and 8 hp right?
(Side note: I am quite bummed to get rid of my concept since I thought it was an elegant solution to the DC/ST problem in many games, but it just is incongruent to the idea of damage passing through to the skills. I might seriously discontinue the damage passthrough idea and think of another way to do "health".)
Combat
My combat system is also mostly received well so far. The group of players I have been testing the game with are definitely more combat type D&D players (as opposed to role-play) so I think they generally have taken to the sort of tactical nature of the combat.
I did a major simplification of the weapons and armor to simplify the roll tables and have less confusion. I was surprised to find that some players really struggled with not having specific weapons listed out for them (i.e. sword, spear, axe, crossbow). I just have a weapon weight like light, medium, heavy, and then the damage type with the intent to allow characters the freedom to designate whatever weapon type they wanted. I thought this would be a good balance between the randomly rolled characters and creating something they could call their own. I don't think I'm gonna change anything here, but it was just an interesting observation.
I definitely need to do some work on combat stances a bit more. I am not super happy with the "Called Shot" mechanic since it doesn't make sense from a math point of view and it also sucks to not take an action during your turn. Just doubling the dice and being able to hit a hidden enemy isn't accomplishing what I want it to do.
I've noticed that almost everyone takes the Aggressive stance to get that +2 to their damage whenever they can.
The Rally ability needs some tweaking, but I am not quite sure what to do with it yet. Since combat on both sides is resolving "simultaneously" does the 1d4 rolled on the Rally become a "temporary HP" if the character has full Breath at the start of the round? That makes sense mechanically, but doesn't quite sit right with me since it adds another level of stat tracking? I'm trying to keep stat tracking minimal for mental load. I need to think about that more.
I"ve noticed that my system uses a lot of d4 rolls. Enhancements are +d4, the Rally is a d4, and some weapons are even a d4. Rolling a d4 just doesn't feel good. Do I boost it all up to a d6? That makes sense, but that will immediately increase the number scaling by a significant amount, especially when I am trying to keep all of the number totals and calculations under 20. I also wanted to avoid situations where we have stat or flat bonuses to rolls.
I would love to get some insight from anyone willing to share. I have another play test coming up up in February with another group who has a totally different play style, much less combat and stat focused, so I am curious what I will come away with from those sessions.
v0.1 - Adventuring
Let's start to get into the meat of the system a little bit more. I am going to break down the next few posts/chapters to cover the general flow of the game including Adventuring, Delving (going into dungeons), and Encounters. These three chapters are hierarchical in a way, with Adventuring covering the most broad strokes and then each subsequent item will cover smaller and smaller gameplay scopes.
Why OSR(ish)?
If you have played any OSR based games before, then most of what you will read in the Adventuring chapter will be generally familiar. I've tried to take the general concepts and ideas that are common amongst various OSR systems and distill them down into simplified rules.
Why am I focusing on this OSR concept though? Well, this is my first game design, and I am new to this. I might as well start from a solid foundation, but it is mainly because there is a breadth of content out there for these system and play settings already. This is a passion project for me and I can fully recognize that I am not going to be able to write dozens of adventures, supplements, and random generation tables. Those are already being made and have been made for nearly fifty years. I'm aiming for general OSR compatibility to leverage that content that is already out there.
The OSR (and NSR) communities have really caught my attention over the past year or two since the OGL debacle. I find the approach to play in those games is really appealing to me and I appreciate how the math is structured, and how general play is approached. The emphasis in many of those systems on resource management, compromise, "low number" math, and "rulings over rules" really appeals to me and I think it is really conducive to a West Marches style game.
Now, I don't think what I have below is inherently a "rulings over rules" approach, as there are plenty of rules here, but I wanted to break things down into what I felt were the most logical terms and conditions that relate generally back to our own world when trying to develop rules. I wanted to create enough rules to make sure everyone could easily understand the game, but at the same time, not need to go back and look something up back in the book.
This is perhaps most clearly represented in the adventuring phases in a day.
Phases
Phases of the adventuring day is something that is very common in many OSR systems. Some systems use hours, some use varying phases. I broke this down into the four most common terms that we use in our natural world: Morning, Afternoon, Evening, Night.
I also wanted to make sure that I do not reference time in any more specific detail than those four phases. I've found in most cases getting into any finer detail (for traveling) just adds unnecessary complexity that bogs down the gameplay at the table.
Refuges
One idea that I am developing to my game is the concept of a "Refuge", a set of secure supplies and a safe place in the wilderness where players can rest and recuperate. As I mentioned in the Principles and Concepts post, the world is dangerous and managing risk and reward is a strong component of this game. It is hard to heal and players in fact won't be able to heal when they are in the wilderness adventuring, unless they can find a safe harbor that has a bed (i.e. a town) or a refuge. A Refuge is an expendable resource that players can setups a key strategic points in the world that might be the different between life and death.
It costs a lot of time and resources to setup a Refuge so characters will have to determine how to best deploy one.
Player Roles
Finally, another idea I am trying to play around with is the Player Roles. This is not a new concept for many classic games. Many will designate a player at the table to draw the dungeon map or to summarize the adventure. The more administrative work I can offload from the GM to the players I think is good, as it will incentivize players to remain engaged with the game even if their character is not active. This is a problem that I have seen across game tables, so I am hoping i can "kill two birds with one stone" here to offload some responsibility from the GM and also give something to the players.
I want to bring this into the game world though as well, to possibly incentivize players who may not want to do something like that. The preliminary set of roles I have defined can also apply to the characters as well as the players. It is the hope that this will provide a small bonus in the game that will encourage players to want to take on these roles at the table.
v0.1 - Town Creation
Let's begin our look of the play system with what I think is one of the starting points for a West Marches campaign, the Town. When I envision play in a WM campaign I picture the game centering around the home base that the players will be basing their adventures out of. I would like to have the town develop as a character unto itself as the game progresses. Characters will come and go in the town, some will die from adventuring or living on the frontier and I want that to be reflected in the story that is told.
I've gone back on forth on a bunch of different town creation ideas over the past several months on my internal documents. I've toyed with some pretty in-depth ideas on creating a town, applying a layout to the town and having that recorded by someone in the player party. After some internal play-testing of some concepts, I found that what I was originally going for ended up being way to complex and crunchy for town creation. As much as I want the town to be an integral part of the gameplay experience, I came to realize that players don't want to spend a ton of time setting up the town, its denizens and all of the relationships. I also realized that all of that stuff doesn't have to happen before the game starts. One of my core tenants with character creation is that your characters aren't heroes before they start this game and to a large extent, who they were and their backstory before this town doesn't matter. Your character will be made through their adventures. That same concept needs to apply to the town itself, that the makeup of the town, the flavor of it will all be determined from the play that occurs moving forward, not from before hand.
It was with that in mind that I scaled back my town creation concept quite a bit. I wanted to create something that was fun, quick, but still gave the players a general concept of how their town would be laid out and who the people in the town would be.
With that in mind, players will basically throw their dice set onto the table and assign houses/backgrounds from there. Someone at the table can quickly transfer that idea over to a piece of paper for tracking purposes. Over time as the town grows, denizens change and things change, that town layout and detail can change. Ultimately, I plan to design a town "tracking" sheet that will allow someone to easily track the denizens
Things can be loose here and not all of the townspeople need a name or need to have their profession fully fleshed out. All of that can happen later when/if a character comes into the story that is being told.
v0.1 - Principles and Concepts
I am proud to to say that I have my first nearly complete version of Beyond the Torchlight written up and I think it is time I start to share the information to begin the feedback and review process. Over the next week or so, I'll begin to share portions of the files for review and comment.
I welcome feedback and comments either on this blog post, over on Github or in the Good docs link below:
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