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My Saga playtest, and another rules update |  |
On Saturday, I got together with my friends Mike and Rich, and Rich’s friend John, and we played some Saga/Wild Blue. All three players were Wardens (a sort of jurisdiction-transcending lawman), and were sent to investigate a series of murders in a tiny village called Tom’s Crossing. Mike played Thor, a hulking berserker formally of the Tribes of the Dragon but now a Warden. He didn’t say much, but what he said carried a lot of weight with those he talked to. Rich played Cristof, a nobleman’s son with some magical powers who wanted nothing more than to redeem his family’s tarnished name. John played Mason, a cunning thief-turned-Warden whose primary goals were sex, greed, and proving himself (probably in that order).
There was a lot (and I do mean a lot) of talking and investigating, and only one big fight at the end. There were a few minor social conflicts throughout, but overall I think I could have made the game more challenging, rules-wise; most of the NPCs were pushovers (though the PCs never actually won one of the social conflicts; it ended in a stalemate, but they found information through . . . alternative means). The final, climactic battle went pretty well, I think. There was some physical combat and one big push of mental combat toward the end that did some serious damage to the PCs. They wound up winning, but I think they doubted that they would for a second there.
Things I took away from the game were that the rules on pushing needed to be revised, clarified, and made more useful (which I did in Beta 3, yesterday). I also looked at kismet damage and how it works, and revised it to make it a little more deadly. I also noticed that the PCs tended to roll huge handfuls of dice when they were playing to their strengths. As in, 20 or more. A few too many, in my opinion. So, I’ve done two things in Beta 4 to combat this issue. First, I’ve made a few changes to the way assets work that, I think, will make them easier to use, will reduce the number of dice rolled somewhat, and will make conflicts a little more challenging for the PCs (all goals I had in mind when I made the change). I also added a rule whereby you can trade in three dice for an automatic mark.
At any rate, here’s Beta 4. Hope you like it. Really, these changes should have been in Beta 3, yesterday, but I didn’t think of them then. It was 1am, after all.
June 13th, 2007 at 9:33 am
From a player perspective - Overall a very positive gaming session, lots of fun was had, bad jokes were made, the berserker went berserk and possibly ruined all our plans….*@#$&# berserkers. (not that he shouldn’t of played that way, I mean, after all, he’s a berserker.) Oh, and quite possibly the most important side effect - creation of a new gamer. John really enjoyed himself, and wants to be in on future gaming. But now on to some comments on the system.
Things to improve upon -
Kind of hard to learn/So much to keep track of - I haven’t actually read through the rules (but I will soon, and post comments for you) so we all learned from Brian’s explanations. Since I’ve playtested the system before and I’m into working on rules systems and such, I didn’t have too hard of a time grasping the mechanics. Mike faired alright with it, but John was pretty well lost in it all. He was getting confused with all the options for activating skills, why traits don’t always apply, how specialization works, etc. In all, I might say that the system is too complex to recommend for beginners. However, as noted before, John did still have a good time.
Character specialization - like most point based character systems, you run into the “highly specialized” issue. This is where characters are very good at what they do, and really bad at the rest. While this can make for some better roleplay (characters who are good at everything are so boring), it can make for excessively challenging conflicts. When the BBEG can attack anyone either Physically, Socially, or Mentally, it gets difficult to mount a suitable defense. The broad interpretation of the skill sets helps counter this, since we saw Academia, Subterfuge, and another skill used against mental attacks and even awareness and legerdemain as physical defense. I guess some of the issue may have come from the lack of knowledge that the players had in creating the characters - we were all mainly focused around physical aspects of the world.
Massive quantities of dice - not necessarily a bad thing, but it really starts to bog down play when counting out 27d6 then hunting for the successes. Play is even more bogged when you run into silly dice superstition like rolling one die at a time.
The fuzzy line - I’m talking about the one between RPing out an interaction and running a social conflict. In your post, you mention that we didn’t actually “win” any social conflicts - I think this stems in part from the habits we may have from other games - roll a gather information check and what you get is what you get vs. this system’s “roll to see if you break down the defenses, nope, try again, nope, try again, ok, you have worn them down” (it wasn’t quite like that, but in a way) Some of this may be settled by stating clearly “You are now in a battle of wills - if you win the battle, you get the info you want. If you don’t, you won’t get the info and you’ll suffer X as consequences.” Or, as players go along they’ll start to understand what the consequences will be and they no longer need to be spelled out. Since each “round” that we played gave us more info and we were talking a lot of it out, finishing the conflict “per the rules” didn’t seem necessary.
Kismet - What is this Kismet stuff, really? And why should it make damage into a 50/50 good/bad toss-up? I’d consider that every mark on a kismet roll can be spark, but every other result is doom.
Wow, I can really get to typing sometimes, huh?
What to definitely keep - FUN. We had fun. Therefore it was good. But more specifically -
Character creation - I had some fun with this, especially coming up with new traits and specializations. It’s also cool to see how you can use the traits in new and exciting ways once play has started.
Drives - While we saw very little in the way of mechanical “gain” for the players from the drives, I think it was very helpful for everyone to have these defined on paper, right in front of them. While I initially was opposed to the idea of a mechanical drive aspect that allows players to gain bonuses from the kind of roleplaying that they “should” do anyways, I found that having it there really was encouraging to all of us to try and fulfill those drives.
“Spark” - used for narrative control and story effect was pretty cool, but might have had less impact than I would have liked. At one point it seemed that we would spend spark to undo things that could have been undone with fortune instead. It may be worthwhile to investigate the possibility of drive-generated spark for storytelling only, and scenario based XP or similar for character improvement.
Story driven - the ability to run a game that everyone is into despite the lack of “overt conflict” is a real accomplishment. Not sure if this is more a reflection of the GM or the system or both, but whatever it was, it worked, and we’re all looking forward to playing again.
Skill usage - already been mentioned once or twice, but the ability to use almost any skill that can be made relevant in some way. Another great way that encourages some creative thinking and RP.
What to rattle around in your head -
Magic system - magic systems are tricky to nail down. I liked the broad, sweeping definitions vs. specific spells and effects. I like the idea of resonance. I didn’t like the seeming lack of effect that magic had (and some of that may have been that I wasn’t applying it to skills appropriately). I didn’t like the way resonance works - almost too arbitrary, and with more than one magic user, a GM would have to be painstakingly careful not to invoke resonance on one more that the others. May I suggest - Whenever a magic ability is used, a character gains resonance - For a discreet use, one resonance token is gained; Continued use in a conflict situation accumulates 1 resonance per round; Using a gift for an entire scene causes a character to gain 3 resonance. Whenever a character gains resonance, they make a resonance roll. Each mark causes the character to lose one resonance token. Each 1 or 2 invokes one of their drawbacks and causes them to lose a resonance token. A 3 or 4 has no effect. A character automatically loses 1 resonance at the end of each scene, but must make a resonance roll at the start of the next scene. As an option for GMs, each time a character gets a 1 or 2 on their roll, instead of immediately activating a drawback, they can pool those dice for use at an appropriate time in the game.
Lastly, inverted traits - Allowing inverted traits to be bought off by fortune points is fine, but it’s also good to offer an alternative method - “I need a drink” should be able to be bought off by taking a round of conflict to do nothing but get out the bottle and take a swig. Lawman could be uninverted by intentionally commiting a crime (in view of those for whom lawman was a negative quality)
There, hopefully this feedback isn’t going to cause a short circuit. Again, overall great session on Saturday, and looking forward to playing again. I’ll send you an e-mail with some Eberron character ideas I’ve been working on, and we’ll see if something resonates to stimulate your GM juice. Also, LMK if you want more exposition on anything mentioned.