TSOY owners' survey

[Thor Olavsrud]

I just answered the survey myself. I think TSoY is an awesome game. I think its failings* have been the fact that Bringing Down the Pain takes a little too long to resolve and it is unclear whether you can create new abilities for your character or are limited to the core abilities + cultural abilities.

* I don't really consider the failings as much as mechanics that are slightly less awesome than they could be.

It sounds as if your revision ideas will address both these areas. Awesome.

As I noted in the survey, I think it would be beneficial for the revision to spend a little bit more time on Intent in conflicts and also discussion of the consequences of failed Intent.

Some discussion/guidelines on how to create new cultures (i.e., Abilities, Secrets, Keys, etc.) would be great.

[Clay]

I'm gonna chime in on the side against fudge dice on purely asthetic reasons.  I already own a lot of six sided dice.  I like six sided dice.  My players and I already have these dice. We don't have fudge dice, and since we don't play fudge aren't so likely to buy them.

Requiring us to purchase an additional set of dice creates another barrier to entry for this game.  As an indy game it already has a pretty high barrier, because people don't want to invest a lot of time in something they aren't familiar with. Adding another hoop to jump through moves the barrier higher.

I agree that Bringing Down The Pain takes too long. I don't think that changing the type of dice is the way to solve that problem. Changing the scale for damage will speed things up, allowing each individual blow to have a more serious effect on the target.