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Friday, August 19, 2016

And now, the results of an impartial playtest of Saga of a Strange World. Presented to you in "copied from facebook" format (the most superior of all formats)

https://www.facebook.com/rsrc.php/v2/y4/r/-PAXP-deijE.gifJoel T. Clark
Hey Damien, tell me what you thought of my game next time you're on
I'm heading into re-writes right now, so some feedback would help to give it a direction
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Damien
Okay then.
Lemme get my notes real quick.

Joel T. Clark
Damien I could kiss you

Damien
Okay first off, here is what we ran, just so you can know what we did to shake it up.
Denizens of hell, hear rumors about a map that is able to shift along with the landscape of hell. The only actually accurate map in existence. So the group plans a sort of heist to go and take it.

Joel T. Clark
Holy shit, that is rad

Damien
The group consists of a magic user, demon blooded and damn proud of it. Racist as hell too. Then there's a snake oil salesman of sorts who, due to a series of strange events, had found his way into hell and now cannot leave. Then there was a strongman with a bone to pick against the guy who had the map. And finally a traveler from the underworld who was planning on offing themselves anyway, and decided it would be best to go out with a bang.

Joel T. Clark
So, that's fucking metal

Damien
Alright for the good parts of it first.
The game has a REALLY flexible setting. Character creation was a blast and we spent at least 2 hours just shooting concepts back and forth. I like what you did with the setting, and so did the players.

Joel T. Clark
Good to hear. Don't hold back with the bad though

Damien
Oh, I won't. I'm going good, bad, then weird.

Damien
Second good thing: Magic and Martial Prowess. The guys have really been into Dark Souls, where magic and martial ability are hand-in-hand, and we didn't see much restriction on having either. I had them do a roll off, to represent the difficulty of plying a secret from a mage, and then explain how they got it. The strongman took up on it, and had beaten a mage nearly to death for his secrets.

Joel T. Clark
Haha, that's cool

Damien
Now for the bad.

Damien
The Doom Chart. It's a cool idea, but it should really be listed as optional. This comes into play because the strongman, after an encounter with some brutalistic torture daemons, had to hop and fight one handed for much of the adventure. He said he'd rather have made a new character, but we wanted to stick to By The Book rules to see how they hold up.

Joel T. Clark
That is also cool. I think I might just make it easier to live with being an amputee. Maybe demon limbs....
Anway, go on

Damien
Next up for the bad is Morale. It's cool, but I think it should stand on it's own, rather than HP. Two of the encounters ended up fleeing outright, despite having higher number than the party.

Joel T. Clark
Yeah, I was wondering about that. My playtest had similar results. I think I might put in a modifier based on the leader's reputation or something

Damien
Yeah. That would be a good idea. Or maybe a more in-depth list on modifiers to morale in a given situation.
Now for the weird.

Joel T. Clark
Both good. I like the result of combatants running away without the need for anything too cumbersome. But its good to get this feedback early: an elegant fix could make it play niiice and smoooth
Yeah lay it on me!

Damien
Reputation was a strange thing to tinker with. i mean, story-wise I understand it's implications. You're a well-known and popular character. But it was strange that the characters convinced a bunch of menial Oil Harvesters to join them in gallant combat simply because they were very popular. At one point, it had turned into combat golf, with all these people clapping as they watched the heroes dropkick a group of guards.

Damien
Sorta like Fable, really.

Joel T. Clark
Huh. That is pretty weird. could you unpack "combat golf" a little? That sounds like a scene worth examining

Damien
Okay, picture this. We have a group of adventurers that have convinced a group of 12+ folks to follow them. You have a crowd now observing your acts. But because you are strong enough to handle things for the time being, the adventurers keep the crowd as backup. So while the action is going on, you have spectators, much like at a large golf game, who just watch and clap while the adventuers do their stuff.. Their morale isn't being damaged, the adventurers are being aggressive enough to keep aggro off of them, so the people are just watching for sport. I eventually added some flavor of them calling out point values for certain heroic actions and cheering.

Joel T. Clark
Well... I will grant that is weird, although kudos to your players for some seriously strategic thinking. It gives it a bit of a "gladiatorial arena" vibe but... You know? I'm not unsatisfied with it

Damien
Yeah. It wasn't bad or good, it was just strange.
I will say this much though, if you could factor in something of that nature, like a "crowd pleaser" system to quickly boost reputation or morale, that would be neat.
Basically think like a brave knight having a cheering entourage.

Joel T. Clark
Well, there are the bards. Although I think I might write in some gladiatorial stuff for hell now.

Damien
All in all, it was a pleasant experience. Although we all by and large agreed that you need to put in some examples.

Joel T. Clark
Haha, very well. Damien thank you so much for this! I can't ever properly express my gratitude

Damien
No problem man. I hope to see some interesting changes and improvements. Also, just as a personal thing, if you add somewhere in hell's lore that they do gladitorial combat to settle some instances of arguments or whatever, i would be 100% down with it.

Joel T. Clark
Well, the mortal plane recognizes hell's aristocracy because of the suggestion of my wife. So why not have hell do some ceremonial gladiatorial melee?

Damien
That would be superb.
It could also give an easy adventuring hook or character starter, for those that wish to begin as a denizen of hell.

Joel T. Clark
Hell yeah (to coin a phrase).It doesn't seem like there were any big balance issues or anything outside of the Doom chart?

Damien
Not really. We looked at the Prowess system and related it to the PP system from pokemon, in a way.

Joel T. Clark
Huh. I guess it is a little like that.
I mean, I'm too metal for Pokemon.
:Metal Face:

Damien

SO METAL

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