[Night and Day] First 3 sessions, some initial thoughts and opinions

[opsneakie]

Okay, so I haven't posted anything to the Forge in a long time, not really having anything to post, but I've finally gotten around to running a test campaign of Night and Day. The ruleset has changed a good bit since the last time I posted, so I'll do the one-paragraph recap.

Characters have no stats, just skills rated from 0 to 5. Each skill can be used either offensively, or defensively. When a conflict comes up, both sides roll 2d10 of different colors. one d10 represents attack, the other defend. Both sides then add any applicable bonuses to their attack and defense dice (weapons and offensive skills for attack, armor and defensive skills for defense), and compare the totals. For every point your offense beats your opponent's defense, you inflict one point of damage on them, and vice versa. The 2d10 roll means that both sides of a clash can take damage simultaneously, or that neither side deals damage (which was often the case).

Then, characters have powers. These are fueled by conviction points, and let them do cool things like jump extra far, move faster, turn invisible, turn the ground to lava, and more. Conviction also lets you boost any roll by 1d10 for one point, and fuels the Human Spark, which is massively debilitating to supernatural creatures, for three points of Conviction.


So.

I've been throwing encounters at the players, trying to see how much Conviction I should be giving out, and trying to figure out how to get the encounters well-balanced so they would be something of a challenge without brutally murdering the PCs. The first thing I ran at them was a pile of about 15 bandits, with +1/+1 to attack and defense respectively. They were minions, extras as far as the plot was concerned, so they got 1 hit point a piece. WIth the exception of the character who was unarmed and had no combat skills, the party dealt with these minor baddies with ease, taking almost no damage and dishing it out without any real need to use their powers or anything like that. They got to town, and immediately pulled a U-turn back towards the kingdom's capitol, on the trail of an assassin who has killed two people seemingly without reason.

On the way back to the capitol, they end up catching up to the assassin on the road, and even go so far as inviting him to ride with them. He seems nice enough, doesn't kill them in their sleep, that kind of a thing. On their second night out a group of raiders from the neighboring kingdom swoop down on them, with a pair of Midnight serpents. I gave the raiders some armor and some skills, so they were +2/+2, while the serpents were +3/+1 with 5 health a piece. The pure addition of hit points made them both much more effective and made them seem more dangerous, probably more dangerous than they really were. The players took a couple points of damage here and there, but basically weathered this fight without any difficulty as well. The snakes took a bit longer to kill, and the feel was definitely right. They sliced through the minions pretty easily, but the bigger monsters posed some threat and were sufficiently supernatural.

The problem I was starting to run into was that most of the combat encounters just weren't hard enough. Characters were not really running into any trouble taking out the monsters, and in a game about war, this could be a serious issue. They let me run a combat test at the end of the second session, with a group of spearmen in a phalanx formation, and some archers behind them. This comabt was certainly much moer engaging, as the characters had to find ways to break up the spear wall. I ad hoc added a +1 defense for each adjacent shield-locked ally, so most of the spearmen were sitting on a +5 defense, which made them very difficult to kill despite only having one hit point. I felt like this encounter was a little better, but still, the players weren't taking much damage or being forced to bust out those powers.

Third session, we were down a player, so I threw together some side quest about helping a Daylight-aligned high priest clear out the catacombs beneath his temple. The players agreed, tempted by a large bag of gold, and headed into the tunnels. At first, they were most interested to see if previous high priests buried there had any treasures they weren't using, and starting looting graves. Since it was a greedy, self-serving action, I called for an alignment roll from all of them, to see if they would shift towards Midnight. Two of the three players did, and the alignment shifts were starting to do interesting things to some of their powers. So far, the alignment shift mechanics were working perfectly. The PCs encountered some ghosts that offered no more than a token threat, and pressed on deeper into the catacombs. The air started getting noticeably warmer, but the characters and players thought nothing of it, until they could see what looked like firelight around a corner ahead. This was the encounter I had really been looking forward to testing; a firebird, a fairly strong creature of Daylight. His stats in the test game were set at +7 attack / +6 defense, and 30 health. Compared to everything else they've fought so far, this thing is a much bigger threat.

The players recognized the threat they were in right away, and on their turn, one of the more heavily Midnight-aligned ones used her Human Spark, which dealt (with her Midnight of 5) 5 damage to the firebird, and gave it -5 to all rolls. Now it was down to a +2/+1 and 25 health, still a dangerous enemy. The two melee fighters moved in to engage the creature, while the third character decided a bow would be better than getting in close. The firebird was launching fiery quills or feathers at the archer, while lashing out with beak and wings at the other two characters. They inflicted some heavy damage, but not before the firebird got to use a power of it's own and inflict some serious damage back. The players were forced to expend a fair amount of conviction just to keep their characters ahead in the fight, which was mostly what I had been looking for in the combat encounters.

So, the thing I learned about combat encounters was to make them about 25-50% harder than I had been. More minions, more middle of the road monsters, and strong monsters that can inflict serious damage. That way, players will have to expend their resources to stay ahead of their enemy's superior numbers.

the question I have to pose is roughly shaped as follows. If I want the players to be willing to part with Conviction and/or required to spend it to win encounters, how much should I be giving them? for reference, a minor power usually costs 1-2, a moderate power 3-5, and a major 6 and up. Adding a d10 to a roll or standing up after being knocked to zero health costs 1, and the Human Spark costs 3.

If I want the use of minor powers to be reasonably frequent, moderates between once an encounter and once a session, and majors to be around once or twice in a sizy story arc, how can I get Conviction gain to work properly?

Additionally, will it be a problem to have the players facing vast numbers of enemies, given that they have a number of advantages over them (multiple hit points, powers, higher skill levels)? or should I keep it to smallers numbers of stronger opponents?

Sorry for the wall of text.

[Vulpinoid]

If I want the use of minor powers to be reasonably frequent, moderates between once an encounter and once a session, and majors to be around once or twice in a sizy story arc, how can I get Conviction gain to work properly?

Simple answer...trial and error. Just keep playing it and modifying it until it feels better for you. I'm sure there are other answers and I'm sure someone will come along shortly with some further suggestions.

Additionally, will it be a problem to have the players facing vast numbers of enemies, given that they have a number of advantages over them (multiple hit points, powers, higher skill levels)? or should I keep it to smallers numbers of stronger opponents?

That's one of those questions that can basically be answered by thinking about what you want the game to focus on. I know that you've done some thinking about this in the lead up to this point of game development (after all, you've posted a bit about the game's evolution here).

If you're thinking of tuning the focus of the game toward characters vastly superior to the rest of humanity, lording over them like super-heroes and super villains, then it might be appropriate to have conflicts against vast groups of opposing minions.

If the tuning of the concept is more subtle, then hordes of enemies might not be appropriate at all. Such a game would probably revolve around hidden duels between powerful opponents in the shadows.

I'd inform this level of game play through the flavour text in the book, making plenty of in-game examples that reference the style of play you envision the game portraying (I know that there are people here at the Forge who will argue vehemently against this notion, but that's the way I'm tending lately).

V

[opsneakie]

Thanks for the thoughts, Vulpinoid. I think where I want the gameplay to go is a mix of the hordes and the dueling. I'll explain what I mean here. The initial design for this system came when I decided I wanted to have my players be able to fight a roaming band of orcs 50 strong or so. I thought about this a bit, and what systems I might be able to run this kind of a battle in. My first thought was that heavy task-res like D&D was right out, because the sheer amount of rolling would make my entire group brain-dead, and the encounter would take all night to run. So I started leaning towards more of a conflict resolution type of game. Conflict resolution works great for the big orc warband, I thought. You slice, you dice, encounter over, on to the story.

But if you run in conflict resolution, how do you make the big bad guy more meaningful than the orc warband? I essentially wanted a system where I could have the players fight a big horde of baddies, and have a satisfying time slicing and dicing their way through them, but still have a 'boss battle' where they would have to whittle down an extremely dangerous foe. So maybe the answer with the hordes of baddies is just to mix and match to suit. Maybe they'll fight a big horde of the villain's minions, then fight the villain himself with a couple of his elite bodyguard.

As for Conviction, they're gaining 1d10+5 at the end of every successful encounter, which I think I'm deciding is too much. Players started to get ridiculous amounts stashed up very quickly. Next time I run I'll be tuning the encounters much harder, so maybe they'll be forced to spend those points a little more. I think I'm partly wondering if there's a more interesting mechanic for Conviction gain, other than 'oh you beat up some bad guys, now have some Conviction'

[Vulpinoid]

As for Conviction, they're gaining 1d10+5 at the end of every successful encounter, which I think I'm deciding is too much.

Why just for the successful encounters?

Is conviction playing a function a bit like ego. If you manage to pulls something off successfully, your ego gets a boost; if not, your ego takes a battering?

Does conviction gain vary according to the difficulty of the opponents being faced?

Just some questions.

Here's some possible answers based on the idea that you've said conviction is being earnt too quickly...

If we assume conviction gain is purely about ego, then it might be suitable to modify the (+5) depending on the opponents faced. If the character easily laid waste to their victim, then they'd probably consider it "all in a day work" or "just a part of the job", I wouldn't give and modifier to the d10 roll in this case. If the characters faced a fairly decent opponent who managed to wound them, or cause a decent impact to the storyline, then a moderate bonus might be in order (+2/+3). If the opponent gave the characters a serious run for their money, or even brought them close to death then the full bonus (+5) might be appropriate.

Maybe conviction is gained based on whether people see the events that occurred. No witnesses, minimal conviction gain. Some witnesses, some conviction gain. Heaps of witnesses, full conviction gain. I might use a system of rolling 2d10 for the conviction gain in this case (plus the modifiers indicated above). If a character is acting alone, they gain conviction based on the lower roll of the 2 dice. If they are with their friends/allies, they gain conviction based on an average of the two dice. If they are working in full view of the public, they gain conviction based on the higher roll of the two dice.

Might not be what your after at all, maybe you want to swap these around...applying a more kaballistic view and using the high roll when working secretively or alone, while the low roll becomes appropriate when everyone can see what's happening.

I'm just throwing ideas out there.

V

[opsneakie]

Thanks for your thoughts. I got to run another session, and tried re-tuning the combat encounters. I gave the enemies much higher bonuses than I previously had, and the die rolls were a little wild. The players ended up about even on their Conviction after the encounter, since they had to throw out a fair number of powers to avoid being swamped. It felt much more like how I was hoping to have things done.

I think the idea of changing the modifier based on the difficulty of the encounter is great. That way a simple encounter where they weren't forced to use their powers wouldn't net them as much Conviction as one where they are using powers to stay afloat and coming near death. I'll think about gaining extra Conviction or something if you are witnessed and word of what you did will get around; I'm not sure if I like that idea yet or not, and I'd like to run a few more of the harder combats to see if the character's Conviction totals even out at all.

I've been having Conviction gain after successful encounters only mostly because it represents a character's belief in themselves, which is the source of the power they're drawing on. When your ego takes a beating, you have a much tougher time for a while. If you do something really well, your ego gets a nice boost.

Overall, the mechanics feel like they're really getting much tighter and smoother, which was the point of the whole playtesting thing in the first place. Thanks to the entire Forge for all your help with this one.