Aegri Somnia play test

[Seth M. Drebitko]

Alright well I have managed to carve out some time to finaly post about the playtesting going on.
The First session used the very basic first version of beta rule set found here. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=15478.
The second session uses beta rule set two found here.http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=15614 So far the rules are not really changing I will keep updating the second rule set.

A little back ground.
The characters inhabit a cube shaped world, each cube is the birthing place of many kinds of species each affiliated with a specific sides element. The elements are earth, metal, wood, fire, water, and air. because the people of the air side are all air based that side is not tied to the specific element, meaning that its not just free floting rocks just a little windy. Characters are not restricted to huminoid forms their are all sorts of fanatstic looking races.
To perform magic you must expend magical energy, unfortunatley thiscan only be found within the blood of intelligant creatures.

[Seth M. Drebitko]

ok lol not that I have power again lets see if this post can make its way to the site. Realy sorry it took so long to get the post up.
The game begins with soft music in the form of a gentle panicked beat that becomes more rapid as the players wake up to realize they are in stone coffins. (I like music in the background) They each step out and they can only remember the basics about themselves but only to a point it's like every thing has been wiped clean. They each look around they some how know the as much as each others knows about themselves, but can't remember meeting, only thing is they get a friendly feeling from one another. Looking around they figure out that they are in some kind of museum or some thing they find in the center of the ring of coffins are a series of display cassis each having what the characters know to be their equipment in them. They brake the cases and then take their stuff, now things get interesting.
The characters hear a grinding of stone coming from the door way behind them and turn to see the statues that were there have spun around the statues look like guards might look from their time period. In a moment of confusion and worry the players try to knock the statues over but as they approach them and before they reach them they strike them with the scimitars they were holding. Combat starts at that, in the beginning it is cumbersome with the initiative but in less than a full round the had things figured out. The issue of how many actions could be taken and what an action was came up and rather embarrassed I realized I had not covered that. In the end I decided to stick with one action per attack/spell per person, and any number of defensive actions. As combat dragged on people could not understand the concept of gambling dice and gaining the amount back that they scored so I pitched that out the window mid session because I can't have a game that half the people buying don't understand.
As combat came winding down to a slow end at that point the wound mechanic was just if you failed no matter how much by you took a point mistake. So half way through the combat they a man steps from the shadows and waves his hand the constructs go back to their places, he says his name is elander. The players ask what's going on and such he explains that he came from the future of their world to collect hero's of ages past so that they may aid him in freeing the world. They tell him they have better things to do and start walking away, he quickly tells them to check the backs of their necks. In dried blood are the runes of a spell. He tells them they are bound to him and he is all that's keeping them alive if they do not help him they will die. The party continues on traveling north talking amongst themselves, speaking with Elander about various things and the whole way he explains that they must find a series of marble hearts with small diamonds ordaining them.
When the hero's get to a university town they find out that a heart shaped piece of worked marble with diamonds in it was found in the query . They go to an in get some rooms and spend a day or two waiting for an exhibit of the item to open. While waiting they ask around and get some info on the thing they don't get much but a few people have some interesting ideas of where the object came from. The group eventually goes to the exhibit and in an unquestionable act of stupidity just smashes the glass case it is in grabbing it and bolting. They soon enough find out what a gun is, and take out some innocent bystanders on their escape.  Over all one new character needed to be made for next session. One off setting element is the players use of magic which is fine it was just that because they worked like normal phrases they were throwing spells all over they place without penalty.

So we learned that:
The party is not that smart.
The system is kinda sluggish.
No matter how simple you want to keep things if you are working with any thing that can function beyond a human level you must set a certain new set of boundaries for it's use.

[Seth M. Drebitko]

All right guys and gals, on to the next session.
I made more than a few changes to the structure of the game to put more balance in play, and an hour or so was spent rehashing characters.

The characters are on the run now but before getting far one of the players drops the stone. When they go to pick it up it starts spinning until it forms into a liquid and quickly jumps painfully into the body of one of the characters through the chest. As they continue on they are drawn by Zac's character (the one who got the stone) towards the North west. Eventually they reach the edge of the woods and meet a playful fae. the game broke down into one single combat of them protecting the fea. It went slow and dragged on because of the current versions combat system, and magic seemed to be still thrown around a lot, even out of combat.
The game boiled down to the players getting to more hearts from the fea king as well as finding out that their race was oath bound to zac the holder of their ancient gods heart. (I am sorry I am real busy so I don't get to put a lot of detail into the posts.)
What we learned:
Magic is stilled to much of an end all. In response we will try to make it so that if a person fails their magic difficulty rate set by the GM they take a number of minor wounds equal to the amount they failed by.
Combat drags with so many rolls, next week we will have the player roll the stat relevant to the action, adding any phrases that apply to damage and hitting, into one roll. Defender will do the same with dodging and soaking damage. Then at the end the defender will just have to make their damage roll to not take mortal.

[Jasper]

Hi,

While this is not a bad start, the most useful thing to know about actual play is really what the players do. You've described actions in-game, in broad strokes, but haven't described what players said or did, or how the used the rules -- or failed to. Frex, you say that the rules are sluggish, in part because there was too much rolling -- but how did the players respond? Were they visibly bored? What did they say about it? More generally, did they use the combat (and other) rules exactly as you imagined or did it go differently?  In-game events don't really tell us anything about this kind of thing, and that's what's most important.

So give us some more detail, maybe just on the problem areas, and more about the players and what they did. Right now, there's not much I can say about the session.

Edit: If I could make another request, breaking your posts into more paragraphs would be a big help when reading through them.