I'm afraid this is going to be a long post.
Twenty days ago I did a Hierarchy playtesting. I'm sorry I had no time to rewrite my draft notes until now.

I talked with the people of the RPG-society named "Asociación Roleros Independientes Pucelanos", who are also organizing the next national games-meeting PuCLN in Valladolid this summer. They are very nice and cheerful people, eager to try new things. I want to thank them. They managed to get a group of 13 other people for the playtest.

Except me, nobody had previously play to any story-oriented game, or any game without a traditional GM figure. Most of them were experienced role-players of classical games. However, some of them were more newbie. Most were well-known among them, but there were two new members of the society that were checking-in that day. Only three of the players were female.

Such a big quantity of people are difficult to organize. First thing to notice, in a 3 hours slot we managed to actively play only for around 2 hours.

In those 2 hours we created characters and played only 1 turn! Many things took more time than expected. Anyway we think that it may be easily reduced if some of the people were previously introduced to the game.

1. Character generation (More than 30 minutes).

Describing the different character types, drawing the talisman and randomly selecting casts took approximately as much time as drawing the assets and choosing a precious. For Samurais there are a lot of assets to draw.

Selecting the points for the stats was not taking really long. Even explaining them was quick. I understand Ron's previous comments about reducing the number of them, and I agree that they may be reduced without much loss in the game, but I don't think it will speed-up the character generation process so much. It is not the critical point.

All people nicely got the open nature of assets. I asked them to draw something and write a couple of keywords under the drawings. I was amazed at the nice things people brought to the table and the funny drawings most of them did.  From abilities to useful tools, magic elements or personality traits. I think that the drawings really help to focus the asset ideas. Even somehow abstract things like social abilities or personal quirks were drawn. If you want I can scan some of the character sheets for you.

About precious: Old masters and lovers were the most common choices. But we also had a heir, a lost brother and ... an old-woman puppet.

2. Initiating the game (Less than 30 minutes)

After some suggestions of possibilities, the Emperor proposed a trouble related with a big army which was plundering the cities of the empire. The big boss was a demon and there were supernatural forces involved. The first mission was to cope with an army-branch approaching one of the empire towns.

Unfortunately, the Emperor was a role-player with not so much experience. I talked with him afterwards and he was saying he had begun to role-play not so long ago, that he had no game-mastering experience and thus, he was not feeling so much comfortable with the role of proposing the missions. He was not so much inspired. Anyway, he did his best.

I spent some time here explaining the conflict system. I should have done it during the first conflict, like in the accomplishment phase of DitV.

The Daimyos contest for the privilege of guiding the army was quick. Both of them had Honor 1, and thus, they were using only 1 die bids. There were around 2-3 dice per player on each conflict round. The Daimyos have very few assets. Thus, it is difficult to introduce more dice. After equalization both had two dice.
In the first round both lost their Honor cover, in the second round a new tie, in the third round another tie, and in the fourth one, a player got bigger dice than the other and win. The protecting Honor rule extended the conflict for one one extra round, and there were 2 rounds of ties before resolution. With Honor less-equal 2, there is no possible strategy in the bidding. The dice decide the result.

The other Daimyo was offered the opportunity to subvert the quest. He was hesitating to be rude with all the other players, but most people encouraged him to try to betray them. They wanted to see how the thing worked. He tried the subvert and got it. The conflict resolution was highly similar to the previous one. I had the feeling that the possibilities were more or less fifty-fifty.

3. The personal quests (Around 30 minutes)

This was clearly the best part. I explained them that there was only two types of quest in the rules for the moment. But for the playtesting it was enough. I insisted that the talisman discovery should be more difficult than the rescuing the precious. Most of them chose to rescue the precious. Only a couple of girls tried the talisman discovering.

I chose the player to my left and acting as GM showed how to introduce the precious quest asking him questions about who the precious was. I played up to the first conflict. I tried to explain how conflict-resolution works (for all of them it was their first exposure to it). Then, everybody begun their quests. I'm not sure about everything that happened here and there, but the general feeling was very good. I advised them to include at the very least two or three conflicts, and use them to try to escalate to a climax. I think most of them were getting the main idea quite well. Some people were still using classical game-mastering techniques, and I even heard them sometimes saying "No, you can't do that". But this is a matter of tuning.

One of the big problems we commented afterwards was the difficult of measuring the opposition range. Most of us were instinctively introducing conflicts with as many dice as the ones the player was throwing. The information Troy is adding in the new quests-list will help a lot.

BTW, even being subverted everyone except one player rescued his precious. But I think everyone lost one or two conflicts in the way. Thus, it was nice and everyone was happy.

The girls in the talisman discovering quests got a little bit stagnated and we were waiting some time for them to finish. As I said it should be more difficult to discover the talisman I think they were trying to create hard opposition. I should have advised them a little better about how to introduce and find conflicts. I noticed they were using some task resolution occasionally and the one who GM-ed last, she was trying at the end to force the other to the conflict she wanted, even using the "you can't do that" sentence to break the tries of the other to find an alternative way. Again I think it is a matter of tuning them to this style of play.

Some people were taliking to me after play about the problem of people who may finish to early their personal quests. But I don't think finishing the personal quests more or less in similar times should be a problem after the first try.

Another point. As we had been subverted we were loosing one die in every round of each conflict. This reduced the number of dice per player on each round from approx. 2-4, to 1-3. Very few dice involved make the dice mechanics less interesting. I guess, that when subverted, it is a better idea to add one or two dice to the opposition each round, than loosing the best player die.

General feeling was pretty good, and the split of the group worked perfectly. The Emperor and the non-questing Daimyo looked happy participating as masters.

About dice-mechanics. People liked them, but the feelings commented previously were increased. Everybody has 1 Honor point in the first turn and NPCs have also the same Honor as players. Thus, everyone was forced to 1-die bids. As all NPCs has the same Honor as the players, all the personal-quests conflicts had one round of honor loosing that I think was not so much interesting. We were guessing afterwards what would happen with more Honor. It may become worse, with several rounds where nothing happens until someone looses the Honor-cover and gets touched, loosing the conflict. Indeed, nobody needed to use the wounds rules.

During conflicts, most of us were generating NPCs or fall-out information which we really wanted to use in following personal quests. We were thinking that the player telling these details to the master of the next personal quest could not be enough to create authentic continuity. We should had tried to put in common some of the details about results of personal-quests.

Another thing we talked after the play was that most of us would like quests with more players involved. I know Troy is on it.

4. The end of the quest (The last 30 minutes)

After the successful personal-quests stage, the Daimyo's one was presenting some troubles. This was the only part of the turn that seemed to work not so well.

a) The inexperienced Emperor was not having so much ideas to propose interesting and connected conflicts to follow-up. We played only two simple ones. An ambush of the enemy army-branch near a village and a final combat between the Daimyo and their boss. Both combat oriented.

b) People felt that they were all involved in the conflicts, and wanted to do something to show-up. They begun to justify what they were doing to give the Daimyo their one-die-per-player. But it was a little odd. Many times the reasons were poor, mainly because the conflict was focused on the Daimyo actions, not in them or in their abilities or profiles.

c) Nobody found a reason for not to give a die to the Daimyo. If the quest is not successful everybody looses the same as the Daimyo. It only benefits to the Emperor and the other Daimyo.

d) There were 11 extra dice for the Daimyo coming from her army. Thus, the Emperor was presenting conflicts in the same range. Measuring the opposition of this kind of conflicts is even more difficult than in personal quests, with so many different sized dice involved. At this point the Daimyo had Honor 2, thus, the NPCs army was using Honor 2. They were still constrained to 1-die biddings, with around 14 dice on each side. A little boring, as the result is already decided by the dice.
Anyway, during the first conflict we forgot the rule that says you can bid only half your Honor, and they were bidding with 2-dice. With 14 dice to choose it is a little bit complicate to choose the bids and it takes long time because people try instinctively to optimize. But, at the end, the best strategy was more or less clear. The rest of the people were somehow disconnected during the resolution.

Conclusion: This part of the turn was not so successful. People want to be more involved and the resolution system with so many dice around is not more interesting. The conflicts take more resolution time in the moment were less people are fully involved.

5. Uprising

We didn't play this part. People were a little bit disconnected after the big quest and the uprising looked like taking long time. This part is also sequentialized by rules. I think it would be better to find a way of playing personal challenges simultaneously.

BIG conclusions

People liked the game concept, and they liked mostly the personal-quests part, which worked pretty well. The big-quest stage of the turn was more problematic, and the uprising stage would probably benefit of the possibility of parallel challenges.

The game uses very well some ideas: The choosing of free-traits as assets (with their drawings), simple support for splitting the group in an organized way, and collaborative on-the-fly creation of mini-quests.  The people grabbed them without any trouble.
Indeed, some of the players have become interested on story-oriented games due to this experience.

Someone commented it could be a good game for conventions. It deals with a lot of people nicely.

Thanks again to the people of the "Asociación Roleros Independientes Pucelanos",
Arturo

PD: I encourage you Troy, more than ever, to continue working in this game.

Heya,

Sweet! Thanks for the report, Arturo!  This is the largest group the game has been tested with so far, so I'm totally pumped about your report.  Let me see what I can reply to:

1. Character generation (More than 30 minutes).

Describing the different character types, drawing the talisman and randomly selecting casts took approximately as much time as drawing the assets and choosing a precious. For Samurais there are a lot of assets to draw.

Selecting the points for the stats was not taking really long. Even explaining them was quick. I understand Ron's previous comments about reducing the number of them, and I agree that they may be reduced without much loss in the game, but I don't think it will speed-up the character generation process so much. It is not the critical point.

2. Initiating the game (Less than 30 minutes)

The Daimyos contest for the privilege of guiding the army was quick. Both of them had Honor 1, and thus, they were using only 1 die bids. There were around 2-3 dice per player on each conflict round. The Daimyos have very few assets. Thus, it is difficult to introduce more dice. After equalization both had two dice.
In the first round both lost their Honor cover, in the second round a new tie, in the third round another tie, and in the fourth one, a player got bigger dice than the other and win. The protecting Honor rule extended the conflict for one one extra round, and there were 2 rounds of ties before resolution. With Honor less-equal 2, there is no possible strategy in the bidding. The dice decide the result.

The other Daimyo was offered the opportunity to subvert the quest. He was hesitating to be rude with all the other players, but most people encouraged him to try to betray them. They wanted to see how the thing worked. He tried the subvert and got it. The conflict resolution was highly similar to the previous one. I had the feeling that the possibilities were more or less fifty-fifty.

3. The personal quests (Around 30 minutes)

This was clearly the best part. I explained them that there was only two types of quest in the rules for the moment. But for the playtesting it was enough. I insisted that the talisman discovery should be more difficult than the rescuing the precious. Most of them chose to rescue the precious. Only a couple of girls tried the talisman discovering.

Some people were taliking to me after play about the problem of people who may finish to early their personal quests. But I don't think finishing the personal quests more or less in similar times should be a problem after the first try.

Another point. As we had been subverted we were loosing one die in every round of each conflict. This reduced the number of dice per player on each round from approx. 2-4, to 1-3. Very few dice involved make the dice mechanics less interesting. I guess, that when subverted, it is a better idea to add one or two dice to the opposition each round, than loosing the best player die.

General feeling was pretty good, and the split of the group worked perfectly. The Emperor and the non-questing Daimyo looked happy participating as masters.

About dice-mechanics. People liked them, but the feelings commented previously were increased. Everybody has 1 Honor point in the first turn and NPCs have also the same Honor as players. Thus, everyone was forced to 1-die bids. As all NPCs has the same Honor as the players, all the personal-quests conflicts had one round of honor loosing that I think was not so much interesting. We were guessing afterwards what would happen with more Honor. It may become worse, with several rounds where nothing happens until someone looses the Honor-cover and gets touched, loosing the conflict. Indeed, nobody needed to use the wounds rules.

b) People felt that they were all involved in the conflicts, and wanted to do something to show-up. They begun to justify what they were doing to give the Daimyo their one-die-per-player. But it was a little odd. Many times the reasons were poor, mainly because the conflict was focused on the Daimyo actions, not in them or in their abilities or profiles.

Indeed, nobody needed to use the wounds rules.

We didn't play this part. People were a little bit disconnected after the big quest and the uprising looked like taking long time. This part is also sequentialized by rules. I think it would be better to find a way of playing personal challenges simultaneously.

Hi, I am one of the playtesters. I am new to this forum, and I can't manage to make the quote system work, so for the sake of readability, I'll try with an old system. Hope you understand it well.

>> b) People felt that they were all involved in the conflicts, and wanted to do something to show-up. They begun to justify what they were doing to give the Daimyo their one-die-per-player. But it was a little odd. Many times the reasons were poor, mainly because the conflict was focused on the Daimyo actions, not in them or in their abilities or profiles.
>-This may be the hardest part for people to get used to.  At this point in the game, it's the Daimyo's show.  Everyone else takes their place as the soldier's under the Daimyo's command.  In this scene he's the protagonist and the other characters are just supporting characters.  It would probably help if I explained that more clearly.

Hum, perhaps, but we all looked a little silly just throwing our 1-die help and then staring as the Daimyo rolled them.

I think that the rest of us should have more to do, and more to both win and lose, in this phase. Perhaps we could help not only with dice, but by risking our own Honor to let the Daimyo bid more dice; thus gaining a minor benefit (less than the Daimyo) if we win, but losing it if we lose. It would also give the other players a reason not to help.

And, before I forget, thanks for writing the game :)

BTW, there is something Arturo has not told you. One of the players had never played any roleplaying games :) . It was absolutely no problem, and she enjoyed it :D

¡Quiero ser un simulacionista de peluche!

Heya,

I think that the rest of us should have more to do, and more to both win and lose, in this phase. Perhaps we could help not only with dice, but by risking our own Honor to let the Daimyo bid more dice; thus gaining a minor benefit (less than the Daimyo) if we win, but losing it if we lose. It would also give the other players a reason not to help.

And, before I forget, thanks for writing the game :)

BTW, there is something Arturo has not told you. One of the players had never played any roleplaying games :) . It was absolutely no problem, and she enjoyed it :D

Troy said:

which part of the character creation process, if any, seemed unnecessary or redundant?

It's interesting that people didn't go for their talisman first, but still that's just fine.

I am very pleased that 13 people got through their personal quests in around 30 minutes.  That's spectacular!  I've tried the game with 6 people, and got through the quests pretty fast.  I'm glad to see the time stays about the same as the scale of people involved increases. That's a very good sign.

Balancing the # of dice with Honor with Victory in a conflict has been a real pain. [...] If you could propose your own fix, what would it look like?

I'm thinking about tossing the Wound rules.  Do you think I should?  What would be the pros and cons of getting rid of them in your opinion?

It would be nice to play more than one at a time, but I think it would be hard to keep track of who was moving up on the caste system and when. [...] So, what I've found so far is that it's best to do people one at a time.  I'm very open to suggestions tho! :)

I think that the rest of us should have more to do, and more to both win and lose, in this phase. Perhaps we could help not only with dice, but by risking our own Honor to let the Daimyo bid more dice; thus gaining a minor benefit (less than the Daimyo) if we win, but losing it if we lose. It would also give the other players a reason not to help.

BTW, there is something Arturo has not told you. One of the players had never played any roleplaying games :) . It was absolutely no problem, and she enjoyed it :D

Heya,

I've worked up three multi-player quests.  Let me know what you think about these:

Fortune Type: Slay the Oni
Requirements: Two players must work together
Opposition Range: 7-11
Reward: Gain +1 VP each
Failure: Lose +1 VP each
Description: You search out and confront an Oni (demon).  The two players combine their dice pools into one and work together to defeat opponents. 

Fortune Type: Duel of Honor
Requirements: Two players must work together
Opposition Range: NA
Reward: Gain +1 VP and +1 Honor
Failure: -1 honor to the losers
Description: Players must duel each other in a quiet and secluded valley.  The winner gains the Reward, the loser suffers the failure.

Fortune Type: Three Companions
Requirements: Three players must work together
Opposition Range: 6-9
Reward: Gain +1 to a Stat and Asset
Failure: -1 to one Stat
Description: One player must rescue a child hostage, another must find and kill the kidnapper, the third must sneak into the kidnapper’s home and steal his chest of documents.

Hi, Troy!

• Slay the Oni: I think I see what you have in mind. Joining the two pools makes this quest easier than other types of quests. Thus, even if there are other quests which allow you the win a VP + other things, this will be the easiest way to win 1 VP alone.
Victory points are not so much interesting at the beginning stages of the game, and specially for samurais which are more concerned by increasing their honor and other stats to try to up-rise a little. I see this mission as more appropriate for the active Daimyo and one Shogun who are preparing to up-rise immediately. I don't know if a Shogun would accept the deal but it could be interesting. I think it will not be used too much, but it is interesting to have such a thing in the menu.

• Duel of Honor: You say in requirement that two players must work together. I would say two players work against each other. This is really nice! What you achieves if you win is slightly more than you risk due to the extra VP, and there is a direct confrontation of characters. Surely people will like it. Indeed, it may be a good quest for people near to a direct confrontation in the next up-rising stage.

• Three Companions: Nice. A multi-single quest. You may get a nice benefit (nominally more than you risk), but you depend on the success of the other players. I think the best way to play the three parts would be simultaneously, with quick cuts. It should work fine.

BTW.... your opposition ranges are per conflict.
You may also consider the possibility to give a number of dice of opposition in the full quest, or a range of the number of conflicts in a quest.

Arturo

First of all, I should apologize because I missed the real name of the association "Rol Independiente Pucelano" (it may seem to be almost the same, but this is the official name), and because I said they were organizing the PuCLN games meeting. Well, the event is a really big one, and they are collaborating with other associations in this big project.

More feedback from the playtesters:
One of the players comments that he feels there is a lack of diplomatic, politic and betrayal possibilities (which were common in the medieval Japan) in the game. Specifically in the up-rising stage, because it is based in an open confrontation.

I have explained him that the conflicts proposed in the up-rising may be of any nature. Anyway, it would help to say it clearly in the rules. I think that the one who wants to rise-up is the one who should propose the conflict, choosing the terms and details (e.g. a political plot, an open attack in the woods, a try to poison the target, an intent to ridicule him to the eyes of the Emperor, or whatever), getting an advantage when choosing stats and assets.

Perhaps we may also think in something to introduce more diplomatics and organized-plots in the up-rising stage.

Arturo