Play testers! Where?

[LooksAtYouFunny]

Just a little update.

got the first full feedback at another forum.
I've coppied the text here fore all to read, so as not to advertice for other forums.

So. Bob and his group have been testing my game. And with bobs permission. Here is his feedback. (I will break it up and answer it part by part)

Enjoy. (Or not, I don't know.. ;))

Oh, I will

Creating The Characters.

This step went pretty well, the players wanted more customization to the stats, so I let them move up to 2 points between the stats.

At the end, this what we got: (names are fake, I don't remember the name of each character..)



Bob, The mighty DM.
John, The thief.
Philip, the wizard.
Ed, the Warrior
Sam, The hunter.

Now, they thought that 4 classes is not enough, but I will tell you suggestion in the end.

Cool, I will look into the allocate 2 Attributes possibility, if more of the play testers find that to be the way, I actuealy think it will be the standard rule (and then my group can just stick to their non changed Chars ;)

As for the character classes, I will answer later where you also write more.

Explaining the system
They really liked the MasterDice system, me too.
it mostly because we only have 2 sets of D&D dice, so we always have problem when we want to roll 6d8..
However, d6 are more easier to get, from the monopoly box and other games that use it..
So we picked our beautiful green D6 from the D&D set to be our master dice.

They also liked how simple the stats are, only 4 stats, HP and energy.
Although it did made some problems, but you will see it later.

I’m glad to hear you enjoyed it, and yes. D6’s are partly chosen for its accessibility.
Hehe, my wife always uses a green MasterDice and black for the rest.

Simple stats :) will answer at the problems section.

Making some combat test.
So I decided to now split the party for 2 combat matches, the first It was the Warrior and mage vs the Rouge and hunter, the wizard and warrior won, but barely, so I did not see any overpowered class, the second one was the Wizard and hunter vs the rouge and the fighter, this one was mostly to see how good the hunter is in close combat, and he is OK, but his team did lose, so I guess he CAN replace the warrior, but not perfectly.

See this is important stuff, nice to know the balance is there with other players to, I have been tons of nervous that my own group simply had came into a pattern, and that the characters might be all out of proportions

Starting an adventure!
I did some really basic adventure, just to see how it goes, there was some crappy plot about orc and goblins and the power behind them, which was a troll. (which is legendary, and rare)

So, the combat went really good, first battle was 3Implings and 1 goblin.They defeated the Implings too easily, but I guess the Ipmling are just easy to kill,so in the next encounter I put only one Impling, 2 goblins and 1 orc. This was a hard encounter and the wizard almost died.

At the end they fought the troll, and somehow managed to defeat him. (I leveled them to level 3)

Cool you did an adventure, and yea, Implings are weak, but they can also be the bane of warriors if used as hit and run eneamies.
You put the “Trolls are legendary and rare” in paranteses? Just a note or?

None combat encounters.
Those were good and bad, most of the problems were here.

You see, the problem with only 4 stats and not a very big variety of skills is that sometimes we did not know what to do, like: "No, he should roll a History check" "No, it's defiantly a Arcane check"
But those were minor problem, which I fixed by saying "DC for history will be a bit higher, as it's more related to Arcane". Those problems occur in D&D games as well.

The big problem was, that you forgot or something, 1 very important skill:
Strength.
Most skills we easily found a way to get over with one of the skills or stats, but when it came to kick open doors we did not knew what to use, if it was, for example a balance check, it was, of course a nimbleness check (I used nimbleness as DEX a lot of time..). but we had nothing to use to break doors and that kind of stuff.

the minor problem, yea I know. I think most of it comes from me not giving
A: an example game to play first, using the skills.
B: I havend gone to in-depth on the skill yet in the book, might need to add more samples as how to use them.

To the major problem.
Hmm, yea I see. Might add Strength, Intelligence and Presence as skills to cover the Physical, mental and personalaty powers/actions, not already there. I’ll look into this.

Suggestions to improve:
1. add some more skills. but only really necessarily ones, so it wont end up as D&D 3.5 with around 20 skills.
2. add more classes, or even something I like more: add class improvement/class paths.
For example, a make can "Evolve" to either a wizard, who is more damage, or a shaman, who is more a buffer or a priest who is more a healer.Everything your mind can think of..
3. add some CR system, so that it will be easier to know how much and what kind of monsters I need for a good challenge.
4. Add more monsters.

1: see former answer.

2: we actuealy have the draft for this already, but we simply won’t add it before we know the rules holds up :)
But to quickly tell what’s in the pot. Sage levels. Sage levels are “classes or class paths” available from level 5 or 8 (we haven’t decided upon this yet.) Sage levels will be a mix of two former classes, so if you are a mage, you can chose to mix it with Hunter, and become a Druid (hunters that mix with mages becomes guardians) Druides then gets some of the Hunter’s low level powers as automated abilities in the next levels, gains access to some of his selectable abilities, gains some of the higher level automated abilities from both mage and hunter, and gains one special ability only for him at each level interval. So, not as powerful as a mage nor a hunter. But with something from both, and some things unique for him.

3: Oh… I had 100% forgot about that, I had simply made the monsters at the game goes on. Damn… well ill try to figure something out… stupid me…

4: oh there will be. Right now we have 18 different monsters all don (if the system don’t change to much) besides that we have 32 other monsters that have not gotten stats yet, as we don’t want to change to much when the rules are set in stone for first edition to goes to the print (or if nothing else, the PDF market) and then we will add them.
One sad thing do to consider is, that we have to pay the artist per image we want for the book. So either we have to go with fewer monsters portrayed, or simply monsters without images. But since we try to add unique monsters, it’d be sad to have them as “blank” images.

So unless the fund raiser before the editor part goes like a dream of the gods, well. Then we must prioritize.

Overall
Was a good session, read the suggestions, tell me what you think.
Sorry for grammar mistakes and stuff, and if I did not read or understood things right, tell me, and feel free to ask things.

Thanks a ton :) you have been wery helpful. As a reward, you and each member of your group will get a free PDF of the game if it ever comes out, if you want. I’m also willing (I am close to say that I insists, but I know some people don’t like this) to add either your names, or the name of your group in the Thank you (acknowledgement) part of the book.

So thank you Bob. Nice read to get :)

Looks At You not so funny but with a nod of acceptance.