[Low Power Fantasy] Playtest 3, Session 1

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

I held the first session of the third playtest for a new game and system engine last Saturday.  Before I start describing the session, I'll link the power 19 for the game here: http://legacyjournal.blogspot.com/2008/02/power-19-for-low-power-fantasy.html
You can view a generic, stripped down version of the rules here: http://www.divine-games.org/GAME-1stDraft.pdf

Alright, so let me outline who we have playing. 

Dave: system monkey, powergamer, playing an Elven Ranger
Mike: a narrativist in the making, addicted to WoW, playing a Halfing Thief
Joe: a new guy, orgasms over Tolkein, playing a Dwarven Warrior
Rob: all around nice guy, playing an Ogre Wizard

There is no healing spells or feats in this game, so those expecting to see the requisite priest class will not find one.  I have various reasons for not including mass healing, but I won't go into them in this play report.

Each player has to choose a Destiny for his character.  Dave chooses his character to achieve immortality.  Mike chooses to have his character find out why his family moved to the village and why they won't leave.  Joe wants to save the life of a condemned man, and Rob wants to find an ancient sword of his people.

As it was the first session, I needed a hook to get started.  I imported the setting from Hunter's Rose, my submission for last year's game chef competition.  You can download it here: http://www.game-chef.com/workshop/uploads/hunter1a.pdf

Quick Summary: think a mythical Dracula's Trasylvania where one village is beset by all the monsters of the dark.  Their only hope is in a race of "supermen (and women)" born to blessed women of the village.  They hunt, kill, and drive out the baddies while keeping the peace inside the town stockade.

Starting out, we make characters.  I run them through it in less than an hour.  Since we had a new guy, it took some explaining- which is fine.  Also, the guys wanted to recount their exploits from the previous playtests.  That's always fun.

So we get to playing.  I print off some maps, a few pictures of important NPCs, and a couple other visual aids to get everyone on the same page.  I have about a dozen things sketched out on my version of the map that I think might come up along with some min-adventure hooks to get the players started exploring their characters' Destiny.  I'll cover my favorite scenes.

The first scene was just setting up the situation.  The characters were just inducted into the Huntsmen organization.  They were given bunks, trunks, and weapons.  Then I assigned them "duties."  For the first week of the month, the characters must work the wall of the stockade.  That means, they guard the village and can't leave for any reason.  For the second and third week of the month, they work the path.  That means they must patrol the valley and are not allowed to return to the village unless it is for an emergency.  The last week of the month they are given leave.  They are allowed to do whatever they want.  I wasn't sure about this idea.  I wanted to add some structure to the campaign to help generate cool conflicts in different areas of the setting. 

The next few scenes just introduce them to the setting and system.  They track down a guy who was steeling coal from the town's boiler works.  They drove off some wolves attacking foresters.  And they escorted a merchant from the village to the waterfalls on the edge of the territory.  All the dice rolls were going fine.  The wolves gave them some trouble, so I decided to throw some more at them after the falls.

During the night, 3 of them attacked.  The PCs barely defeated them again, but in the middle of the fight, Mike said, I wonder if there is a big one watching in the forest.  I thought that was cool, so after a perception check I told him his character could see a large pack leader watching the fight in from a distance.  In the morning, after they rested, they tracked the pack leader deeper into the woods.  I wanted them to control the action as much as possible, so I just kept asking leading questions.  What do you do?  What do you find?  Rob said, "We're getting close to the river.  It'll be easier to track it there."  So yeah, that's fine.  I have a whole day pass, so they have to sleep by the river that night. 

I throw them a curve.  That night I have the fog roll in.  I tell them it has a slight electrical tinge to it.  It feels like their exposed skin is being shocked over and over by static electricity.  I had nothing in mind, just let their imaginations work.  One of them said, "There must be a sorceress nearby!"  Brilliant!  So I jot some notes down about there being a sorceress nearby.

I want to quit wasting time, so after they make a few successful tracking rolls I say they reach her hovel out in the pine forest.  I ask, so what's your characters' experiences with sorcerers been like?  Joe said, "I think they're evil."  Rob said, "I could learn spells from them."  Mike and Dave weren't sure.  I said, ok.

They sneak around the back of her hovel and peak in through the back door.  There's the wolf and the sorceress appears to be working on some potion.  Uncharacteristically, they didn't plan much.  I'm used to these guys being really tactical about these things, but this time they weren't.  They flung the door open and said something really cheesy like Halt in the name of the Huntsmen! 

The wolf attacked and sorceress soon followed.  The four PCs were able to handle it without too much trouble.  Rob's character got knocked out, but other than that, nothing serious.  In this system, when a sentient creature (including PCs) has zero or less "Hits" they are knocked unconscious.  To kill someone, you have to announce you are committing a "Killing Blow."  The wolf was dead, but they tied up the sorceress.

After searching her house for a bit, they woke her up and interrogated her for a while.  They made three successes, so they got three pieces of information.  First, she hated Huntsmen because they generally killed her kind.  Second, she was looking for an old hermit in the north she wanted to find in order to get a secret about the Huntsmen.  Third, she had no idea what the secret was.

After that was over, they had to decide what to do with her.  This was really interesting.  They weren't allowed to return to town.  They didn't want to let her go since she'd just end up being an enemy they'd have to face in the future.  They were not comfortable with executing her at all.  After a good half hour or more of debating, they decided to execute her.  The reasoning was that she could be considered a threat to the village and therefore it was their duty to eliminate that threat.  Dave did the deed, even though he really didn't want to, because he was the only one with a large bladed weapon. This was the coolest non-mechanical part of the session.  They had to deal with a real moral dilemma.  They weren't ready for it, but their actions led them right to it.  We all agreed that the system worked very well, and these were the sorts of situations we'd like to see more in our play.  It was fun and enlightening.

Anyway, I made lots of notes about the mechanics.  Here's my list of changes I need to make:

-Rate of Healing should start at 1/hr (it was zero, which was dumb)
-For Diplomacy, 1 success = Yes but, 2 success = Yes, 3 success = Yes and
-Characters should start with only 1 or 2 relationships (they could start at 3 which is max)
-Rolls must have at least 1 success in order for a player to save any dice for Advancement
-Increase any and all .5 dmg values to 1 (whole numbers are better)
-Abilities need to be tagged as Constant, Instant, or Once per Cycle (session)
-Once you fail at interrogation/diplomacy, you're done getting information from the target
-Add carrier pigeons to setting
-Increase cost almost all advancements by 1 (they are easy to get and addictive)
-Add in easy to use range and hardness values/modifiers
-Character sheet needs a place for Advantages, less space for Destiny
-Add in rules for blind/darkness fighting

As far as the mechanics' performance went, I was fairly pleased.  Dave saved up almost 50 Advancement points in 7 hours of gaming.  That's too many.  I'd prefer the number to be between 10-25 not including the automatic 5 at the beginning of every session.  However, I never felt once that the characters were overpowered.  I have two regrets. My first regret is that I didn't challenge them a bit more in combat.  Next time, I won't be so easy on them.  Second, no one remembered to advance their Destiny.  They were having too much fun just playing. I'm not sure how to correct that.

Thanks for reading guys,

Peace,

-Troy