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Author Topic: Playtesters needed for fantasy adventure/skirmish game  (Read 9560 times)

Offline KJoelN

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Re: Playtesters needed for fantasy adventure/skirmish game
« Reply #30 on: November 23, 2016, 09:06:13 PM »
Do you want grammar and style feedback?  I can mark up the PDF like nobody's business.

Yes that would be great thank you!

 
I think that would make it a bit of a hassle. Having a torch light a board tile seems fast and cool, especially if parties split up somewhere (with scenarios that have tight timing for instance). With torches having the chance of fizzling I think it can add a bit of excitement. I also see nice ideas of creatures (or abilities) that get extra bonuses when fighting in the dark. For instance, a Goblin Sneak who gets Back Stab when fighting in the dark.
I'll test it all this Thursday!

Ok sounds good. I think I will add info about if a room is dark and gives penalty in the scenario. I need to think about this , it has to stay simple and manageable. As I'm thinking now monsters are unaffected by darkness but it would be cool if some monsters fight better in darkness. Nice picture!

Like the others said, radius would be to much, and I'm pretty sure you forgot to mention that -1 penalty in darkness ;)

Will test the torch-rules as well then.

Yes you are right my mistake:) All characters get -1 on all their rolls when fighting in darkness. As long as there is one character equiped with a torch in the room no penalty.

I need to establish a to do list that I can share with you playtesters so I don't forget stuff and you can check on me:) Right now I'm working on a new scenario but I will try to dedicate one night a week to check things off this to do list.




Until the last torch!

Offline Comsquare

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Re: Playtesters needed for fantasy adventure/skirmish game
« Reply #31 on: November 23, 2016, 09:34:21 PM »

I need to establish a to do list that I can share with you playtesters so I don't forget stuff and you can check on me:) Right now I'm working on a new scenario but I will try to dedicate one night a week to check things off this to do list.






Kjempe god idé, Joel :)

Offline KJoelN

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Re: Playtesters needed for fantasy adventure/skirmish game
« Reply #32 on: November 23, 2016, 11:23:03 PM »
Kjempe god idé, Joel :)

Gott:)

I have added a to do list and the charts for critical failure and the camping chart to the dropbox folder. I´m not sure about the camping chart yet. Maby I have to add some rules depending of how many heroes that are used. But on the other hand larger groups have to use more actions to heal each other and thus are more likely to encounter enemies (they do tend to make more noise)

Please let me know what you think

Offline Malebolgia

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Re: Playtesters needed for fantasy adventure/skirmish game
« Reply #33 on: November 24, 2016, 06:59:33 AM »
Checked it out, looks nice. A textual suggestion for the first chart:

The attacker drops his weapon on an adjacent square. Roll a D8 to determine where, with the 1 being the attacker's facing. Count clockwise to determine the location. Anyone standing on the weapon may pick it up by performing a successful focus action.

Option 6 sounds really harsh, especially if you are armed with an armour piercing weapon of doom. Maybe make this half damage?

And in the Camping chart, I don't see an option of encountering only the Hard monster. It's always M+H. Maybe add just a H option?
“What use was time to those who'd soon achieve Digital Immortality?”

Offline Comsquare

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Re: Playtesters needed for fantasy adventure/skirmish game
« Reply #34 on: November 24, 2016, 08:36:54 AM »
Checked it out, looks nice. A textual suggestion for the first chart:

The attacker drops his weapon on an adjacent square. Roll a D8 to determine where, with the 1 being the attacker's facing. Count clockwise to determine the location. Anyone standing on the weapon may pick it up by performing a successful focus action.

Option 6 sounds really harsh, especially if you are armed with an armour piercing weapon of doom. Maybe make this half damage?

And in the Camping chart, I don't see an option of encountering only the Hard monster. It's always M+H. Maybe add just a H option?

Option 6 really sounds harsh, but so is life  ;)

Offline KJoelN

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Re: Playtesters needed for fantasy adventure/skirmish game
« Reply #35 on: November 24, 2016, 11:53:14 AM »
Checked it out, looks nice. A textual suggestion for the first chart:

The attacker drops his weapon on an adjacent square. Roll a D8 to determine where, with the 1 being the attacker's facing. Count clockwise to determine the location. Anyone standing on the weapon may pick it up by performing a successful focus action.

Option 6 sounds really harsh, especially if you are armed with an armour piercing weapon of doom. Maybe make this half damage?

And in the Camping chart, I don't see an option of encountering only the Hard monster. It's always M+H. Maybe add just a H option?


Thank you for your input. Thats better I'll edit that.

Ok lets say half damage rounded up:) 

I'll take a look at the camping chart

Offline Malebolgia

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Re: Playtesters needed for fantasy adventure/skirmish game
« Reply #36 on: November 25, 2016, 08:28:06 AM »
We played our first game yesterday…here are some shots:


The door opens…


And the Orc charges in! He battles with the heroes and gets cut down. He did manage to inflict some nasty wounds.


The goblins also dance with the heroes, but also get killed. The heroes pause for a while to heal their wounds, but this attracts an Orc and a Goblin!


The heroes manage to take them out, but they still are beat up. The Barbarian hacks the lock to bits and kicks open the door.


The ranger fumbles with the chest’s lock, so the Barbarian moves in again and takes the lock apart with his Battle Axe. Inside they find a healing potion and a ring of resurrection.


They open the door and the cleric and ranger get hit by the arrow trap. The Barbarian manages to raise his shield in time. The heroes move for the door on their left and once again the Barbarian unleashes his hate on the lock.
The Goblin shaman and his cronies! The heroes prepare for the last fight…


And it indeed is their last fight as they get cut down by the dreadful Orcs. RIP…

Fun game! I’ve used my old Heroquest miniatures on purpose, to get that nostalgic feel :D. Thoughts on the game in the next post.

Offline Comsquare

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Re: Playtesters needed for fantasy adventure/skirmish game
« Reply #37 on: November 25, 2016, 08:34:01 AM »
I told you about the Health Potions, didn't I?  ;)

Great looking setup, by the way.

Offline Comsquare

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Re: Playtesters needed for fantasy adventure/skirmish game
« Reply #38 on: November 25, 2016, 08:41:25 AM »
By the way, how did they heal their wounds in the "Camping" phase?

Offline Malebolgia

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Re: Playtesters needed for fantasy adventure/skirmish game
« Reply #39 on: November 25, 2016, 09:02:28 AM »
  @Comsquare: The Cleric did Mend Wounds…over and over again.

Okay, what did we think of the game?

Things we liked:
1)   In general it was fun! It had the oldskool feel and the mechanics were easy to follow and players could start fast.
2)   We REALLY liked the equipment and ability cards. They really help making a personal character and no 2 rangers have to be the same. Just pick different equipment and abilities and you have different characters. Really nice.
3)   The items are nice and work well (well, the healing potion is a tricky one, needing a focus action).
4)   Critical hits and failures are cool and don’t happen too often.
5)   The story in the scenario is great. It has good atmosphere, is moody and spooky and helps to get that RPG feeling. Really nice.

Things we disliked:
1)   Combats involve a lot of dice rolling. Because characters can defend/evade around 50% of the attacks miss. And most creatures require 2-3 hits to go down. So that takes quite some time. In the end we weren’t the biggest fan of Defend/Evade as it mainly slowed down the pace. Sometimes we had a full combat round without anything happening due to good Defend/Evade rolls. That felt a bit boring now and then.
It also removed the fun of critical hits. A player would roll a 6 and then another successful roll and was stoked he got a critical hit! I then rolled a 5 and defended the critical hit. And the elation died.
2)   Armour Penetration is too high. Armour often is pointless as most creatures had an Armour Penetration of 3-4+. So they would simply stab right through it. Or as a player said about armour: go high or go home. It’s only interesting once you get to Armour 6 or so.
3)   The creatures are extremely strong! Especially the Orc was insane: Melee3+ with a Battle Axe and SB+4 meant he hacked into the heroes for so much damage they just couldn’t withstand them. Even the goblins are painful with their relatively good stats and high damage spear.
4)   It felt a bit off you could strip the creatures of all of their equipment and move around like a pack mule. The Ranger took the Goblin’s leather armour and then donned it. That was a bit weird. And it felt like buying Armour from the start was pointless. Just kill a creature and take its armour. Cheaper and more effective.
5)   Camping is a bit tricky. The heroes really needed to heal (but with Mend Wounds that went very slowly due to the 50% chance of getting the spell off). So first they needed 8 actions to get them patched up enough to get going. The camping brought along another Orc and Goblin and they again got hit hard. We then ruled that Camping wouldn’t trigger again and they needed *14 actions* to get going again.
6)   Having the ability to destroy all locks with bashing is a bit too easy. Now they simply evaded the Troll by  bashing in the door.

Suggestions:
1)   Make Defend/Evade a passive modifier to attack. This way it’s not another roll to be made. So for instance, an Orc has Defend/Evade -0 and a Goblin Defend/Evade -1. The Goblin would inflict a -1 modifier to the attack roll and the Orc doesn’t. The Orc is big and lumbering and can’t really defend…but has many hp to soak up the damage. The Goblin on the other hand is harder to hit, but has low hp.
It will speed up the game and this way you cannot defend/evade a critical hit (which is more epic I’d say).
2)   Armour Penetration really needs to be lowered to make Armour more interesting. Now most weapons stab right through them, making them a bit pointless. Which is a shame as it should help stop the damage.
3)   The creatures need to be worked on. I’d give them weaker stats and weaker weapons. After all, these are the creatures you’re starting out against. So I think they need to inflict a maximum of 6 damage per attack. Otherwise the heroes have no chance at all. You could make stronger versions of the creatures as challenges for later levels (Orc Veterans or such).
4)   After killing creatures, heroes can rob their gold and maybe make a roll on a table to see what else they will find. But I’d stay away from taking their equipment, it felt wrong and weird. Also speeds things up. And we think heroes need a maximum carrying capacity to limit them a bit. Now they could be carrying around everything they found. Maybe SB+2? So the Barbarian could carry 5 extra items and the Ranger could carry 2 extra items (so stuff not being equipped).
5)   As the game is now camping is scary. The monsters hit so hard that you don’t have time to camp because you will get hit again. But you will need to camp to heal. Argh. But if the monsters get tweaked then camping will be fine. But I’d say that you roll once per room for camping. Not more, because it slows everything down.
6)   Introduce magical locks which cannot be broken. This can help lead the game more to certain encounters and not make it too easy with high damage dealers.
7)   Some of the ability cards need some work and tweaking. No big things, but they need some change in text and effects. For instance Battle Cry lasts until the character takes another action. That felt wrong as it now always needs to be your last action to work well.
8 )   I’d remove the Focus roll on some abilities or items. We weren’t a fan of Focus on the healing potion as the barbarian apparently has a hard time drinking from a potion ;). Same goes for an Orc going Frenzy. It only goes off on a 6+. Never happened and cost him an action each time.

The players didn’t pick up any torches, so we didn’t get to test them ;).

So the game sure is in the right direction…but we think  it needs work to get it to the next level. Most important thing is we had a good game, which is what it’s all about. If you have questions about what I typed, let me know!

Offline Comsquare

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Re: Playtesters needed for fantasy adventure/skirmish game
« Reply #40 on: November 25, 2016, 09:24:48 AM »
Looks like your first game went worse than mine.
Or maybe we were just lucky with our dice-rolling.

Armour might seem a little weak, but not unrealistic.
A spear for example is a pretty good piercing-weapon in real life  ;)

And regarding the healingpotion, I'm not sure if you have to take the focus roll during the camping-phase as well.
It says you can use items for free, so maybe no roll is needed.
We played it like that, and just used to do the focus roll while still in battle.

Offline Comsquare

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Re: Playtesters needed for fantasy adventure/skirmish game
« Reply #41 on: November 25, 2016, 09:34:58 AM »
And agree, there should be a limit for plundering.
And the use of common sense that the armour of a goblin wouldn't fir a human ;)

Offline Malebolgia

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Re: Playtesters needed for fantasy adventure/skirmish game
« Reply #42 on: November 25, 2016, 09:53:06 AM »
Looks like your first game went worse than mine.
Or maybe we were just lucky with our dice-rolling.

Honestly, I don't think so. I think an Orc will inflict 1 hit in general and will do an average of 10 wounds which are almost impossible to be negated due to the AP4. Even Goblin Warriors will hurt you with their AP4 spear.

Armour might seem a little weak, but not unrealistic.
A spear for example is a pretty good piercing-weapon in real life  ;)

But are we looking for a realistic game or a game that works well and is cool to play? ;)
I think the starting creatures shouldn't be that hard...and that all armour should have a use, which now isn't the case.

And regarding the healingpotion, I'm not sure if you have to take the focus roll during the camping-phase as well.
It says you can use items for free, so maybe no roll is needed.
We played it like that, and just used to do the focus roll while still in battle.

Yes, but then it would still suck for the Barbarian with his poor focus. I think potions should work automatically to keep it easy and make sure you can get the hard needed wounds back. And agreed, during camping they should auto-succeed.

And agree, there should be a limit for plundering.
And the use of common sense that the armour of a goblin wouldn't fir a human ;)

But common sense should either be described in the rules or be tackled by rules so you wouldn't need to. I don't care if we have to use common sense, but then it would be good to address this in the rules. Otherwise it can get confusing (like yesterday).

Offline KJoelN

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Re: Playtesters needed for fantasy adventure/skirmish game
« Reply #43 on: November 25, 2016, 12:38:13 PM »
  @Comsquare: The Cleric did Mend Wounds…over and over again.

Okay, what did we think of the game?

Things we liked:
1)   In general it was fun! It had the oldskool feel and the mechanics were easy to follow and players could start fast.
2)   We REALLY liked the equipment and ability cards. They really help making a personal character and no 2 rangers have to be the same. Just pick different equipment and abilities and you have different characters. Really nice.
3)   The items are nice and work well (well, the healing potion is a tricky one, needing a focus action).
4)   Critical hits and failures are cool and don’t happen too often.
5)   The story in the scenario is great. It has good atmosphere, is moody and spooky and helps to get that RPG feeling. Really nice.

Things we disliked:
1)   Combats involve a lot of dice rolling. Because characters can defend/evade around 50% of the attacks miss. And most creatures require 2-3 hits to go down. So that takes quite some time. In the end we weren’t the biggest fan of Defend/Evade as it mainly slowed down the pace. Sometimes we had a full combat round without anything happening due to good Defend/Evade rolls. That felt a bit boring now and then.
It also removed the fun of critical hits. A player would roll a 6 and then another successful roll and was stoked he got a critical hit! I then rolled a 5 and defended the critical hit. And the elation died.
2)   Armour Penetration is too high. Armour often is pointless as most creatures had an Armour Penetration of 3-4+. So they would simply stab right through it. Or as a player said about armour: go high or go home. It’s only interesting once you get to Armour 6 or so.
3)   The creatures are extremely strong! Especially the Orc was insane: Melee3+ with a Battle Axe and SB+4 meant he hacked into the heroes for so much damage they just couldn’t withstand them. Even the goblins are painful with their relatively good stats and high damage spear.
4)   It felt a bit off you could strip the creatures of all of their equipment and move around like a pack mule. The Ranger took the Goblin’s leather armour and then donned it. That was a bit weird. And it felt like buying Armour from the start was pointless. Just kill a creature and take its armour. Cheaper and more effective.
5)   Camping is a bit tricky. The heroes really needed to heal (but with Mend Wounds that went very slowly due to the 50% chance of getting the spell off). So first they needed 8 actions to get them patched up enough to get going. The camping brought along another Orc and Goblin and they again got hit hard. We then ruled that Camping wouldn’t trigger again and they needed *14 actions* to get going again.
6)   Having the ability to destroy all locks with bashing is a bit too easy. Now they simply evaded the Troll by  bashing in the door.

Suggestions:
1)   Make Defend/Evade a passive modifier to attack. This way it’s not another roll to be made. So for instance, an Orc has Defend/Evade -0 and a Goblin Defend/Evade -1. The Goblin would inflict a -1 modifier to the attack roll and the Orc doesn’t. The Orc is big and lumbering and can’t really defend…but has many hp to soak up the damage. The Goblin on the other hand is harder to hit, but has low hp.
It will speed up the game and this way you cannot defend/evade a critical hit (which is more epic I’d say).
2)   Armour Penetration really needs to be lowered to make Armour more interesting. Now most weapons stab right through them, making them a bit pointless. Which is a shame as it should help stop the damage.
3)   The creatures need to be worked on. I’d give them weaker stats and weaker weapons. After all, these are the creatures you’re starting out against. So I think they need to inflict a maximum of 6 damage per attack. Otherwise the heroes have no chance at all. You could make stronger versions of the creatures as challenges for later levels (Orc Veterans or such).
4)   After killing creatures, heroes can rob their gold and maybe make a roll on a table to see what else they will find. But I’d stay away from taking their equipment, it felt wrong and weird. Also speeds things up. And we think heroes need a maximum carrying capacity to limit them a bit. Now they could be carrying around everything they found. Maybe SB+2? So the Barbarian could carry 5 extra items and the Ranger could carry 2 extra items (so stuff not being equipped).
5)   As the game is now camping is scary. The monsters hit so hard that you don’t have time to camp because you will get hit again. But you will need to camp to heal. Argh. But if the monsters get tweaked then camping will be fine. But I’d say that you roll once per room for camping. Not more, because it slows everything down.
6)   Introduce magical locks which cannot be broken. This can help lead the game more to certain encounters and not make it too easy with high damage dealers.
7)   Some of the ability cards need some work and tweaking. No big things, but they need some change in text and effects. For instance Battle Cry lasts until the character takes another action. That felt wrong as it now always needs to be your last action to work well.
8 )   I’d remove the Focus roll on some abilities or items. We weren’t a fan of Focus on the healing potion as the barbarian apparently has a hard time drinking from a potion ;). Same goes for an Orc going Frenzy. It only goes off on a 6+. Never happened and cost him an action each time.

The players didn’t pick up any torches, so we didn’t get to test them ;).

So the game sure is in the right direction…but we think  it needs work to get it to the next level. Most important thing is we had a good game, which is what it’s all about. If you have questions about what I typed, let me know!

Hi!

I´m glad you had fun playing the game:) and thanks for the input it´s great. I´m really glad you liked the adventure cause that´s one of the things I have not got much feedback about yet. I´m going to go through it all in more detail when I get of work. Most of the things you disliked are think I can fix and balance. The main big issue seems to be the how defend/evade works. I don´t want to kill them of yet but I get you´r point. I have also found it to be to much at times.

One idea I have had is that every character only has three actions per round including defend/evade. This would limit the dice rolling and make you have to make choices when to defend/evade etc. Any thoughts on this?

When I worked on the game I wanted the adventuring characters to come out from a adventure barely alive and maby with some casualties. I think it will make you care more for your characters and adds a level of fear. It would be great to find that balance so thanks for your info!

And regarding the healingpotion, I'm not sure if you have to take the focus roll during the camping-phase as well.
It says you can use items for free, so maybe no roll is needed.
We played it like that, and just used to do the focus roll while still in battle.

Yes that´s right you don´t have to make a focus action during camping phase to use a item.


Offline Comsquare

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Re: Playtesters needed for fantasy adventure/skirmish game
« Reply #44 on: November 25, 2016, 02:47:44 PM »
But common sense should either be described in the rules or be tackled by rules so you wouldn't need to. I don't care if we have to use common sense, but then it would be good to address this in the rules. Otherwise it can get confusing (like yesterday).

You're right, it should be handled by the rules to avoid confusion (and boring discussions ;) ).

And sure we all prefer a cool and nicely working game to pure realism :)

 

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