Fae Noir: Vote Early, Vote Coffin First Playtest

[JustinB]

We ran a playtest of the second Fae Noir adventure module this past Sunday and it went much better than the initial playtests of The Paris Escapade, which is encouraging. I'm thinking that the author's initial goals for The Paris Escapade may have been too ambitious even though the product ended up being pretty good in the end.
Anyway, I'm probably going to engage in some spoilers, so if you're planning on playing the module either at one of the conventions we're hitting this summer or on your own, don't read past here.


Character creation went fairly quickly and, I think, if we'd had one or two actual copies of the book (currently at the printer) there wouldn't have been any trouble. We had a good range of characters and, interestingly, only one person actually chose to play a human, which is good because it means that people want to play the fae species.

The initial scene of the adventure went well. The characters heard screams, went outside, and killed a zombie attacking a woman. In our particular group, one of the play-testers was playing a cop. The story calls for the party to be pursued for the rest of the adventure by the police while they attempt to clear their names of a murder that they didn't commit. Having a policeman in a party doesn't seem to be that unlikely an event, so there will need to be a note on this in the final draft of the adventure. The presence of an actual police officer on the team removed the originally planned motivation for the rest of the storyline and the author was forced to scramble for the rest of the session to keep things on track. This didn't USUALLY cause much difficulty, but it can and should be avoided with additional motivators.

Second, the players were able to capture a character that I suspect wasn't supposed to be captured in this early scene. I personally believe that if you want someone to avoid capture, you don't put them in a scene. Especially in a game like Fae Noir, which is fairly gritty in conception. I will have to work with the author to make sure that he has planned contingencies for this situation.
In any case, we drug this character around with us for the rest of the adventure (he was the brother of one of the men making the zombies) and used him as both a human shield and information well.

The jewelry store scene was also interesting, but had its own weaknesses. I, frankly, had not assumed that it would be a particularly difficult combat. However, the fact that one member of the party was able to smack the jewelry store owner with a table and keep him pinned under it while everyone else killed the golem, made it much easier than I had expected as the pinned jeweler was unable to engage in the fight. The golem needs more effective armor if he is to be a credible threat.

The bank sequence (the one part I've seen the actual pages for) needs significant rewriting. It reads like a D&D scene with Spot checks (What is a Spot check? There is no "Spot" in Fae Noir.) and an imperfect understanding of glamour rules among other things. During the playtest, however, the bank sequence was a hell of a lot of fun, as the party fought off 8 zombies and badly injured their master. One bad spot came when the bank guards appeared to be totally fine with an ogre waving around a battle-axe, but as soon as a gun came out, they were like; "Oh noes! A gun! No guns!" Bwah?

The final sequence on the docks was AWESOME. This was supposed to be a big, set-piece battle, but to my mind it played out exactly like a Fae Noir sequence should. Instead of running in guns blazing, the party snuck in under the cover of an illusion, spied on the two head bad-guys, caused them to fight through the application of more illusions, and then brutally took down the necromancer with a single, surprise blow. Fair fights are for morons.

Player concerns about the module were: Lack of motivation for characters to pursue the plot.

My concerns were: Apparent lack of knowledge about rules and setting on part of author.
                             Failure to take into account the fact that in any party there will ALWAYS be one person playing a giant, terrifying ogre.
                             Lack of motivation for characters to pursue the plot.

None of these concerns are a crippling failure. At most, the module needs a few tweaks and another playtest or two. I suspect I'll have a lot of rules and terminology cleanup to do when I start copy-editing the final draft, though.

[Emily Care]

Hi there Justin,

Sounds like a successful playtest and a good adventure. How did the rules help you to have these scenes?

best,
Emily

[JustinB]

We've noticed that the damage system (and the combat system in general) fosters a certain style of play. Specifically, because combat is dangerous, players are more willing to talk out a situation or otherwise work things out without actually using a lethal weapon. Similarly, because even a handful of police are a credible threat, the characters don't get to stomp around doing whatever they like, knowing that no matter how many members of the "town guard" are thrown at them, they will survive.
However, the thing that continually stands out most in our play sessions is a relatively minor thing. In Fae Noir there is a skill called Makeshift that allows a character to use anything as a weapon, and there is a table of representative objects like chairs, books, etc. in the equipment chapter. For some reason, the very existence of this skill tends to make every combat completely insane. For example, in the bank scene, the necromancer was there to steal a safety deposit box from the PCs. When his disguise was compromised he ran, but left the box behind. So one of the ogres picked up the box and pitched it at him, nearly breaking his spine.
In the jewelry shop, rather than outright kill the jeweler or just "punch him" the ogre picked up a table and held him against the wall. That's fun stuff!
Finally, the fact that you can theoretically kill someone with a single gunshot makes illusions much more useful, and interesting, than they are in most other game systems, providing a real edge to creative players of fae characters.