Robots & Rapiers Adventure and Pregen Characters availab

[Valamir]

Alright.  It took a good bit longer to finish than I'd anticipated, but the much awaited sample adventure and pregenerated characters are available here.

This is a 30 page adventure written in classic old school module style complete with (draft versions) of location maps.  As an added perk I generated it completely at random from the R&R scenario generator and included my notes on how that process works at the end.  There are also 4 pregenerated characters available so you can jump right in.

While all feed back is appreciated, I'm also hoping to find some folks willing to seriously playtest the game.  The core mechanics I feel are pretty solid and exciting, but as with all game projects (especially one written by an acknowledged Simulationist at heart) all sorts of extra little "but you got to have rules to account for" fiddly bits have crept there way in.

I fully intend to exorcise all of the fiddly bits that are extraneous, don't add anything to the enjoyment of play, and thus serve no real purpose.  To do that I need you.  Real players, really playing the game, who aren't me.

Over the course of the next several months I'll be finishing up the rules for favor and reputation, and, with the eagerly accepted help of Seth Ben-Ezra, working on a fully integrated life style system (what does a partially sentient swashbuckling robot do when he's not engaged in high adventure anyway) inspired by the Pendragon Winter Phase and old En Guard rule sets.  The Character Creation system will also be given a much needed thorough rehashing until I'm happy with it...which I'm not currently.

But the core resolution system, action point system, and most importantly the Transformation / Improvement system are all available, functional and fully playable.  

I'm playing through the sample adventure myself right now and learning ALOT from even just the first couple sessions.  I also want to learn from you.

It is my intention to make this game one that will truly knock your socks off.  It isn't there yet, but I can see it taking shape, and damn if it doesn't have me excited.

I eagerly look forward to your feedback and as much actual play as you all are willing to do.

Thanks

[Jack Aidley]

Hi Ralph,

I like the look of this. I'll the run the sample game when I get a chance, and let you know how it went. I may not get a chance for month or three though.

[sirogit]

First, let me say that the game is excellent and considerably more polished than alot of games released commercially.

The gm and a friend of his were discussing the issue of combats being one-sided, wheras I felt it was rather genre appropiate and somewhat intentionial, right?

I really liked the many different ways in which you could spend successes, but I didn't really get the whole buying action points thing. Action points are a pretty decisive resource in a fight, and it seemed like you could buy more action points faster than you could spend them quite easily.  I'm guessing it would of made more sense if other people were interupting your actions to do simialr tactics themselves, but that didn't really happen last night.

Some of the ways we used successes:

Me(Charles) using my succeses in socializing with a tin-can style prostituite to convince her to pretend to be Alfredo's wife, thereby decreasing his luck with charming another lady of the evening.

Devon throwing a table cloth over three guards, applying the successes as multiple locomotion penalities

Me using the successes in grabbing the leader's neck as using him as a human(oid) shield, a persistant +1 to defense.  

I was definately going over the edge as an Anti-hero in multiple cases, I believe.

The biggest problem I had was with the delays during combat. I personally feel like the combination of a target number and counting dice adds abit to that time, as well as the multiple roll damage system, but that could have been more of a learning period thing.

As exciting as combat generally was, There seemed to be some rather bland actions at points, paticularly of the "I waste him with my rapier" type. Probably would've been diminished with more attention given to the linking actions thing. Other people took some time to think of neat actions but couldn't do it because of some detail. Though I never had that problem, as I'd usually spend Inspiration points to make that detail present/not present.

So, if the game took minimal time describing normal sword blows to save more time for the intereasting stuff, I think it would've been prestine. Otherwise, it'd just take some more encouragement to put a little more thought into those sword blows.

[DaGreatJL]

Hey, I was the GM of sirogit's game, and I had some comments of my own.

First off, let me say that the game was really well done, and everybody involved had a blast. Now, onto the main thing I wanted to talk about:

The way action points are used and gained seemed to be somewhat unbalanced. There were two large scale combats (by 'large scale', I mean all the PCs were involved, and fighting a group of NPCs, as opposed to one-on-one duels). In both cases, the PCs had both initiative and an action point advantage; they soundly trounced the opposition, with most of the enemy robots not even getting a chance to counterattack. Basically, they would take an action, use one success to gain an action point, then spend a point to take another action. Their die pools and stats gave them an average of 3-5 successes per roll, so they could continue like this ad nauseum. Now, the way the battles started had a large effect on this; the PCs started with an average of 3-4, while the NPCs had 0-2; more balanced distribution would've changed this. There was a secondary effect of this as well; one character could go on and on taking actions, while the others would have to sit on their heels until they got tired. This wasn't that big a problem in the game I ran, as the players usually passed after they pulled off a really cool combo or trick or something, and sharing the spotlight; however, the possiblity of one player hogging the spotlight and dropping all the NPCs themselves existed in theory a couple of times.
One suggestion I have as a possible rule change would be to set something up where gaining action points after the beginning of combat would have a dimishing returns thing; the more you had in stock, the harder gaining more would be. This way, players would usually want to keep their pool from getting too high, and since they have fewer action points, they have to be more clever with their use. Another idea I had just now would be to have them use successes to roll for more, as opposed to just converting them. That way, they'd spend three successes and maybe get two points.

[Valamir]

Hey guys.  Thanks for giving the game a whirl.
We ran into the same issue in our playtest regarding how easy it was to replentish Action Points.  Definitely one of those things that doesn't come out until actual play.

I think we came up with an easy solution, however.  Think if this would have made a difference in your game.

"A player cannot spend an Action Point to take the next turn, following any action during which he purchased Action Points".

What this should do is eliminate that use 1 action to buy 1 point and then turn right around and spend it problem.  It should also allow the full Turn Order to get cycled through more frequently as players either have to allow themselves to go to the end so they don't run out of points, or have to acquire more points which will send them to the end.



Another option I've been considering but haven't tested yet, is to eliminate Action Points altogether as a seperate resource to keep track of.  With this idea the Turn Order sequence would work exactly as it does now, but instead of Action Points, players would spend Power (which any robot could do) or Inspiration (which only Sparks could do).  This likely would involve changing a bit how much power robots typically have, but might unify the system more.



Sirogit:  That's exactly the kind of use I envisioned for the successes, so I'm glad to see that working.

I am slightly worried that the system as it stands requires too many rolls.  Only more thorough playtesting will tell for sure.  One thought we proposed was to lower the average Attribute score (which would lower the Target Number for the rolls) as a way of reducing the number of successes slightly and keeping the dice pools from balooning too far.

[DaGreatJL]

I think we came up with an easy solution, however.  Think if this would have made a difference in your game.

"A player cannot spend an Action Point to take the next turn, following any action during which he purchased Action Points".

What this should do is eliminate that use 1 action to buy 1 point and then turn right around and spend it problem.  It should also allow the full Turn Order to get cycled through more frequently as players either have to allow themselves to go to the end so they don't run out of points, or have to acquire more points which will send them to the end.

Sounds like a good idea. We'll maybe give it a whirl at our next game on friday. Out of curiosity, should we want to discuss the game further, should we do it here, or in the Universalis area?

[Valamir]

Here is fine, or Actual Play.