Looking for Feedback on a simple introductory "Party Game" RPG

[Selene Tan]

When working on a game, there are two levels / stages of feedback you can get: 1) Do these rules create the play experience I want them to? and 2) Does my explanation lead other people to play the game I designed? Right now, Adventuring Party has some pretty neat ideas, and a laudable goal, but it still needs work on both stages. (There are also some things you can do with the layout to make it easier to reference the rules, e.g. adding more headings and paragraph breaks. Take a look at the rules for a euro-game like Settlers of Catan to get an idea of what I mean.)

I like the board-game focus a lot. The reception of games like Betrayal at House on the Hill and Shadows Over Camelot suggests that it's a good way to introduce elements of RPGs to people who don't usually play them.

Rules questions and missing rules

In the Basic Premise section, you say that "Hero [players] only see the portion of the map which their character would see." How do players manage hiding and revealing portions of the map? If a player's character has been to a particular spot (e.g. a room) but that is now out of their line of sight, does the area have to be hidden again?

In Game Play, you say "Every turn a player can move all of their activated characters and perform an action." When a player is controlling multiple characters, do they get one action between all of their characters, or one action per character?

When comparing dice, does the opponent first roll their dice and then keep some of them according to the same rules as the instigator?  Or does the opponent use all of their dice? If it's the second, that gives the opponent a large advantage. If it's the first, do they do this simultaneously? In secret? One after the other so the second player can choose based on the first player's results?

Characters can hold 2 hand-held items. Do the items marked "Hand-held (2 hands)" count as 2 items for this purpose? A character can have one hand-held item in storage. Can this item be an item that's marked "Hand-held (2 hands)"?

Several times, you say that players "roll dice equal to their [insert ability here] score plus any extra dice they have
from equipment, magic or levels." Do players always add their level to their ability score when determining how many extra dice to roll? Or is something else going on?

What do pets and henchmen do?

How are quests, adventure scenes, and dangerous locations created? Who creates them?

Your sample adventures have descriptive setup text. Is this meant to be read to the players by the referee? Is the referee supposed to use it to make up some narration?

Rules feedback

For fast and newbie-friendly character creation, I advocate pre-generated characters. You could even put the characters on cards that act as a quick reference for all their stats and abilities. I have found that stat allocation can be a hangup for new players. It's not that distributing 12 points among 4 stats is "too complicated" for new players, it's that they don't have a full understanding of how the stats impact the game until they've actually played it. I've noticed that people are usually quicker to figure out what role or character type they want to play, especially when given a menu of choices.

Full-on character creation can be listed as an "advanced technique" -- something to try after having played with pre-gens.

I have serious misgivings about the dice mechanic. It seems like it will take too long for the amount of information it gives.  Basically, there are several small decisions to make -- sort the dice, find the largest set and run, decide whether a set or run is more advantageous -- with not that much payoff for each step. It's also difficult to get a grasp on the probabilities involved.

What's your goal with the dice? What does the current mechanic get you that you can't get with a more straightforward dice pool or roll-and-add mechanic?

I'm not sure how well the lengthy equipment list works for the game. In my experience, choosing equipment can lead to analysis paralysis when there are many choices, especially for players new to the game. When helping new players make characters for D&D and Tunnels & Trolls, I've noticed they tend to get bogged down in the equipment and spell lists. On the other hand, some people really like comparison shopping. And the equipment provides interesting exceptions to the base game rules, like the cards in Magic: the Gathering. Only playtesting will be able to tell you if there's a need to balance them or if some items never get used.

Rules that were hard to find

On my first reading, I completely missed the rule that characters level up when they successfully complete an adventure scene rated for characters one level above them.

I also missed the rule that all characters start with a Dagger. It should be in Making a Character, not in the Dagger description in the Store section. The paragraph at the start of the Store section indicates that players only need to look at the store after they've completed an Adventure Scene. I'll admit I didn't read most of the item descriptions.

General feedback

Other than that, there are some instructions that I think could be phrased better. I would probably rearrange some things, like putting the dice mechanic before the descriptions of action types.

Given your target audience, I think it might be worthwhile to break up the game into two parts. One part would be a full module with the basic play rules, pre-generated characters, and a single adventure scene with dangerous locations. The second part would be for "advanced" play, and include character creation, quest/adventure/location creation, leveling and store rules. You can offer multiple modules, each with a different set of characters and locations.

You should check out Drowning and Falling, which is currently my go-to game for introducing people to rpgs. (Dungeons and Vegas is a writeup of a session I played with 3 people new to tabletop rpgs.) It shares some goals with Adventuring Party, namely fast setup time and short session length. You can download a text-only version of Drowning and Falling from the game website.

[Zzarchov]

Hello,  to answer some questions.

1.) Yes I've run this for completely non-gamers (ie, no Gamers other than me at the table)

2.) Selene Tan, that was very, very helpful.  Often when you work on something you can't see things that should be obvious,  I've got a bit of a checklist ahead of me to work on. Thanks again.

3.)  The dice mechanic:

The dice mechanic is based a lot on Yahtzee, the question becomes, why?  Originally the rules seemed thus 'too simple' to people.   When I grilled someone for more info (which is annoying to both parties) I finally got the response there is no choice, its too completely random.

With the railroady nature of the game this strikes very true.  What real choice is available?  You don't have any sliding scale of risk V reward.   everything becomes a problem not a choice.   While its purely a game mechanic,  and for RP purposes its the same as a single roll,  when drawing in new players I've found its engaging.  It provides choice and holds attention long enough to focus on other aspects.

Rolling a pair of 6's (or Aces on poker dice) and three 2s (or 10's on poker dice) for instance.  Makes a classic gambling choice, you can score larger with three 2's, but you are more likely to succeed with a pair of sixes.  Do you gamble? or take the safe bet?

Purely "gamist" as they say, and it won't hold interest forever.  But it does provide an attention sink for the initial buy in.  That is my experience with it anyways, when playing with non-gamers.  Gamers have far less concern about it and often find it distracting and counter-productive.

As for ideal design audience.  Either a Gamer refereeing for Non-gamers, or Non-gamers playing with non-gamers.

[MacLeod]

I was idly pondering things and offhandedly thought of DragonStrike, then this thread...
Do you know of DragonStrike? Its basically what you are striving (minus a few points). =) I'm not 100% sure why I am bringing this up, but it would shed some light on things for me if I knew. @_@

[Callan S.]

My question was whether you'd had non gamers run this for other non gamers? If I'm just thinking why it wouldn't work for that rather than really knowing why it wouldn't work, by the same token you just think I'm not giving accurate feedback - the tie breaker is a playtest of non gamers running for non gamers. Again, taking it that this is to some large extent aimed at non gamers running for non gamers. Or is it for gamers running for non gamers and passing on their own way of running things?

[Zzarchov]

I was idly pondering things and offhandedly thought of DragonStrike, then this thread...
Do you know of DragonStrike? Its basically what you are striving (minus a few points). =) I'm not 100% sure why I am bringing this up, but it would shed some light on things for me if I knew. @_@

Yep, Dragonstrike and Heroquest, as well as another board/dungeon game calld Dark World.  More gamers than I can count entered the hobby by starting with those games.  Then their imaginations started taking off and they moved into roleplaying games.  Dragonstrike had the "bitchin" video though.

[MacLeod]

Dragonstrike had the "bitchin" video though.

Haha, yes! The most epic creation ever. I still quote that ridiculous thing from time to time. Weird thing about my experience with DragonStrike is that I played it after I got into RPGs. I think even board games designed to be introductory can still have use to veteran gamers.