Feedback! Feedback! Feedback!
TAGS: #CORERULES
A lot of water has passed under the bridge: I had a period extremely intense which prevented me to keep the pace of posting here. This doesn’t mean I was away from the project, on the contrary!
I got final feedback from a playtesting group: a group of 6 players ran a stand-alone adventure. It had an investigative plot and it successfully ended. I had a detailed debrief from mr Peter, the GM: the overall outcome is more than positive. There are two qualitative messages which are worth to be reported here: firstly, the mechanics are far to be complicated as a reader of the rulebook can figure out. Once the logic of the main mechanic is mastered (it takes one session) by both GM and players, the game runs smoothly! The effort is far away from being high in this sense. It is a matter of acquaintance to a new game system. Players confirmed this idea because when I attended the closing session of the game, they were comfortable with any situation. The math in the mechanics is not that much, a mere matter of the sum of 3 addends… the GM however provided me with some hints on how to make more efficient the “GM Notebook” and make the in-game resolutions even faster than what he experienced. The second message is that the reduction of metagaming has not been fully perceived in the short-term, only a part of it emerged (some game mechanics were not completely deployed because these require a long-term play such as growth and evolution in Morality). The players, once acquainted with the game, were aware of these aspects and even if they tried to ‘better understand’ how the game runs they were not fully able to manage it in favor of their interests!
Then, two extremely useful suggestions in terms of corrections of the rules came out: one is referred to the number of actions according to the score of the exclusive skill; if possible, the option of 1/2 action per turn (i.e. a full action in 2 turns) has to be reduced as much as possible. I revised this rule keeping in mind that at least at rank 1 this option should be valid: the best solution would be to remove it at all, however the rationale of the presence of such a limitation – yes, it is confirmed that 1 action every 2 turns is somehow frustrating to the eyes of the player – is because of the possible abuse of the player (he could open a lot of skill, all with 1 rank to maximize the options available in any circumstance: just consider a man-at-arms who has high Intellect and is aged and, say, gets 27 points: he could open for instance all the weapons ES, each with 1 point in it… he would definitely have a potential!). The amendment is already present in the updated Errata Corrige available in the product page here.
The second hint is pretty specific and fosters the use of the shield: as a matter of fact, in melee a character tends to use the weapon both for attack and defense (he is supposed to have maximized the related ES)… this leads to the conclusion that the shield could come handy only in case of ranged attacks (it is generally not possible to defend against a ranged attack with a weapon). Despite the fact that a defense action with a shield has a bonus instead of a malus, the usage of this option was limited to very few cases. This led me to think about it and I came with an optional rule (which will be present in the “expanded rule” book btw): in case of defense with a weapon, a certain score in ES Shield trained can grant an additional bonus to the ARC. …but this is another book!
The overall conversation with Peter was really pleasant and full of insights and details which helped me to understand that the game does work indeed! Both Peter and me are really happy of the result!
As a conclusion, my personal invitation to anyone who is interested in testing the game or is already running a playtest to reach me for I am willing to support further tests and hear about the outcomes!