This is my third playtest of the Monster Rules system.  My first two consisted of one shot scenarios.  This third playtest involved a long multi-scenario plot arch.  The genera was superheroes.  I wrote the plot-arch, then gave it to my friend to build characters.  I built the scenarios with who I wanted to play each side in mind.  However, I allowed him to switch the sides if he wanted to.  He did not.

The first scene was called Hero VS Hero and involved his team of Rune Master and his apprentice Cantrip in a "friendly competition" with another local superhero team, consisting of Lady Light, Freebase and the Amazing Kid.  A gang known as the Black Panthers was on a rampage and the objective was to bag more of the gang bangers then the other side.  After a player moved a piece they were allowed to make one of the gangsters make one action.  Each gangster bagged by a super granted that team 1 point, but each civilian or other hero who was KOed or controlled reduced their point total by 3.  There were 14 gangsters and 14 civilians.

Both sides carved a deep gash into their enemies.  Neither side had any powers which would allow them to move first, but Amazing Kid had a d12 as his default dice while both of my friend's characters had a d4.  By the end of the first round, I had bagged 6 gangsters and my friend had bagged 4.  I rolled initiative and rolled a 1.  My friend rolled a 4.  He successfully defeated 2, but made a horrible roll against the last gangster and the gangster made the Fatality roll.  I was able to defeat 2 gangsters for the win.

The next two scenes were non-combat.  My friend first had to apply to various groups for funding so he could purchase more units.  He had a minor penalty to this roll as a result of loosing the first battle.  This series of social rolls would determine his starting point total for the remainder of the games.  He scored 700 extra points out of the 900 possible.  My friend had an ice based tank champion join his team.

In the third scenes involved The Butcher robbing a bank.  In the third scene my friend's team made investigation rolls to figure out where he would strike next.  My friend made 2 out of the 3 rolls, negating all of my advantages I would receive in the next scene but not achieving any himself.

In the fourth scene The Butcher and his dog named Dog (The Butcher is not the most intelligent or creative individual) attacked the bank.  My side needed to get to the vault, break it, grab the money and get out.  My opponents need to stop me.  My opponent had 1200 points worth of minis to my 450.

I was able to get The Butcher to the vault, break it and grab the loot.  By that time The Butcher had 10 points of damage.  (He had 11 life.)  My friends champion has engaged in melee combat with The Butcher.  Is The Butcher leaped away, the champion made one final melee attack and scored a single wound.  I rolled my fatality check (1d12, target number 11 or 12) and got a 12, allowing The Butcher to leap his way to freedom.

The final scene we played today (but not the last in the series) involved the portal that opened up for The Butcher and the creatures that poured through.  I started the game with 20 Zibs (25 point minions) and The Nameless Mistress who could summon Zibs and control dark and evil energies.  Because I won the last scenario, I also started with The Butcher and Dog with their wounds healed.  My friend had all the surviving characters from the last battle, but their wounds were not healed.  However, only one character (Cantrip) was damaged and not very badly.  This fight was just that, a basic open combat.

The battle went back and forth for a while, with The Butcher and my opponents champion slugging it out while Rune Master scoured my minions with his area of effect light magic and Dog gnawed on Cantrip.  In the end my friend's champion defeated The Butcher but was KOed the next turn by my Zibs.  Dog took out Cantrip and was defeated by Rune Master.  Rune Master also managed to defeat all of my Zibs except those Nameless Mistress summoned.

At the very end Rune Master and Nameless Mistress slugged it out.  Rune Master's mass light was very effective against Nameless Mistress's invisibility defense.  However, the Nameless Mistress was able to defeat Rune Master in the end.

Because my friend lost this last scenario, the next scene will be a possible victory condition for me.  My friend will have the access to all of his character, returned to full strength, plus my characters from the first conflict.  He will need to fight all of my remaining characters (also fully healed) with the Zib total returned to 20.  Due to the amount of damage he inflicted on my forces in the scene I don't believe that I will be able to win this early in the story arch.

Over all it was a fun experience.  I learned a fair amount about the system, including a few bugs which need to be worked out, all of which I will discuss tomorrow when I give my feedback.

Best,
        Bill

Awesome! I cannot wait to hear all of your comments, good and bad.

I have been pounding away at the rules every free moment I get, but do have a game scheduled for tonight. I would like to incorporate any ideas or concepts you might have.

Matt

By the way, as I have been updating the rules, I am thinking of condensing most of the trade-specific skills into a single skill listing called Profession. Basically it would allow you to describe a trade, such as scientist, reporter, business tycoon, whatever and score a PL for it.

With Default Dice, I don't know that it is neccessary to list eveything. Only those things that a character would excel in.

What do you think?

My Feedback:

The Good:

Minions.  In my first playtest they had no significant in game effect.  In this one they were very potent but quick to die if the opponent has area of effect powers.  They added a lot to the game without taking a lot away.  They still need some minor tweaking, but on the whole, they worked very nicely.

The scenario creation system I used, where Player 1 builds scenario and Player 2 chooses sides, worked nicely.  There is an incentive to keep the game balanced without any hard restrictions or creativity limitations.  The only limit is only one player can build each scene this way.

The removal of stats made the game much easier to understand.  My friend could not figure out powers converted to which dice in the first two games.  He did not have a problem this one.  Removing attributes made the game much smoother and simpler.

I like the new Cosmic/Unearthly/Might/Etc rules.  They seem nicely balanced.

The Bad:

Minions.  While on the whole they have been vastly improved, there are a couple key abilities which make them more powerful then champions.  Minions must not have access to either the Bodyguard ability or the Heroic Recovery ability.  The first allows their controller to shunt all the damage to half the minions.  The second allows them automatically survive a single attack.  These abilities are fine for 100-300 point heroes and 450+ point champions, but paying 25 points for minions each of which can each need to be hit by 3 attacks to die, no matter how powerful those attacks are and once you hit them that third time another undamaged one can redirect the attack to it.  This gets even worse when you have 20 of these things pulling attacks away from more powerful characters.  This becomes absurd when you have a 150 point hero who can generate up to three of these creatures per turn.  Effectively the opponent's forces need to be hit your characters 9 times each turn before they can do any damage to your army.

Character creation is very difficult due to how spread out the abilities are.  My friend's team was very sub-par because he was overwhelmed with options.  I know Matt is working on correcting this problem as I write, but I need to say it anyway.  There are so many abilities like Wicked which costs 25 and gives your character a +1 to every action.  The only difference between them are the prerequisites.  Wicked requires you to be evil.  Evolved only helps mutant powers.  Etc.  There are a lot of powers like these which are slightly different, but hide the truly unique powers like Eternal and Charge.  The travel powers are another example where you have a lot of powers all of which do almost the same thing.  Not only do the powers need to be condensed, but once condensed, they need to be categorized by effect, not simply written down in alphabetical order.

The Hesitation rules.  They are silly.  If you have a 400 pound mutant and declare that he charges up to an opponents character for his first action and pounds him into the dirt for your second and third and you happen to miss guess the distance between your mutant and your opponent your mutant runs his full distance, stops, uses an action hesitating, then may walk the rest of the way to your opponent.  You are not allowed to measure the distance.  You must declare your actions before you make them.  If you make a mistake you must use an action hesitating to change it.  This all strikes me as absurd.  It is extra rules baggage in a game which is already far to rules heavy.

The Ugly:

The only way to reasonably fight minions is with area of effect powers.  The only reasonable way to roll the defense for these area of effect powers is to roll the defense for all the minions at once.  This can take a lot of dice.  I used 14d8 for my first minion defense roll and 6d8 for my second.  I then rolled all the fatality rolls en-mass as well and just chose which minions died.  This is not in the rules, but it would have taken for ever to make all those defensive rolls one at a time like the rules require.

Complexity is still a real issue in this game.  There are simply to many rules in the game.  One solution would be to take some of them, like the cover rule, and move from an actual rule into a scenario design option.  So the scenario might have a fallen over dead tree which provides +2 to all defensive rolls if you are behind it.

Best,
        Bill

Matt,

By the way, as I have been updating the rules, I am thinking of condensing most of the trade-specific skills into a single skill listing called Profession. Basically it would allow you to describe a trade, such as scientist, reporter, business tycoon, whatever and score a PL for it.

Matt,

A couple more fairly minor things.  Currently Mass is purely dominant to Blast for targeting abilities.  Also, Mass x1 will negate hiding abilities like invisibility and ruin defensive abilities which do not protect as well or at all against area of effect attacks.

In your next version of the rules, you need to either explicitly state that defects in powers do not stack or explain how exactly they stack.  Right now each one says Half and the cost of an ability Halved twice is a Quarter and shall be interpreted as such unless specifically noted otherwise.

Heroic Recovery should cost more then 1 point of health.

I am looking forward to the next revision of the rules.

Best,
         Bill

Bill wrote:
Minions.  While on the whole they have been vastly improved, there are a couple key abilities which make them more powerful then champions.  Minions must not have access to either the Bodyguard ability or the Heroic Recovery ability.  The first allows their controller to shunt all the damage to half the minions.  The second allows them automatically survive a single attack.  These abilities are fine for 100-300 point heroes and 450+ point champions, but paying 25 points for minions each of which can each need to be hit by 3 attacks to die, no matter how powerful those attacks are and once you hit them that third time another undamaged one can redirect the attack to it.  This gets even worse when you have 20 of these things pulling attacks away from more powerful characters.  This becomes absurd when you have a 150 point hero who can generate up to three of these creatures per turn.  Effectively the opponent's forces need to be hit your characters 9 times each turn before they can do any damage to your army.

Bill wrote:
Character creation is very difficult due to how spread out the abilities are.  My friend's team was very sub-par because he was overwhelmed with options.  I know Matt is working on correcting this problem as I write, but I need to say it anyway.  There are so many abilities like Wicked which costs 25 and gives your character a +1 to every action.  The only difference between them are the prerequisites.  Wicked requires you to be evil.  Evolved only helps mutant powers.  Etc.  There are a lot of powers like these which are slightly different, but hide the truly unique powers like Eternal and Charge.  The travel powers are another example where you have a lot of powers all of which do almost the same thing.  Not only do the powers need to be condensed, but once condensed, they need to be categorized by effect, not simply written down in alphabetical order.

Bill wrote:
The Hesitation rules.  They are silly.  If you have a 400 pound mutant and declare that he charges up to an opponents character for his first action and pounds him into the dirt for your second and third and you happen to miss guess the distance between your mutant and your opponent your mutant runs his full distance, stops, uses an action hesitating, then may walk the rest of the way to your opponent.  You are not allowed to measure the distance.  You must declare your actions before you make them.  If you make a mistake you must use an action hesitating to change it.  This all strikes me as absurd.  It is extra rules baggage in a game which is already far to rules heavy.

Bill wrote:
The only way to reasonably fight minions is with area of effect powers.  The only reasonable way to roll the defense for these area of effect powers is to roll the defense for all the minions at once.  This can take a lot of dice.  I used 14d8 for my first minion defense roll and 6d8 for my second.  I then rolled all the fatality rolls en-mass as well and just chose which minions died.  This is not in the rules, but it would have taken for ever to make all those defensive rolls one at a time like the rules require.

Bill wrote:
Complexity is still a real issue in this game.  There are simply to many rules in the game.  One solution would be to take some of them, like the cover rule, and move from an actual rule into a scenario design option.  So the scenario might have a fallen over dead tree which provides +2 to all defensive rolls if you are behind it.

Matt,

Hopefully, the process has been simplified by doing away with the primary attributes and the power/special abilities condensation. I will look for more opportunities, but I don't want to reduce the game too much.

I am thinking of keeping some rules in as optional, and simplifying others.

I am working on a better categorization of powers.

The game over the weekend was fun. It pitted two heroes, Captain Fantastic (a default D12 character) and Bloody Mary against Skelos and his legion of undead.

The story: Skelos was attempting to poison Big City, creating the nations largest cemetary.

The Objective: The fight occurred in the Big City Water Works. Skelos was about to fill the water supply with a deadly poison. In order to do so, a player had to control the computer system, scorring 2 successes versus a TN 4 either to open a valve or close a valve.

To score a point, the valve had to start and end the turn in the open or closed position.

The game lasted 10 rounds.

In Round 1, Skelos moved first, and immediately opened the value. Then the heroes arrived.

In the following Rounds, the battle erupted. A few interesting match ups occurred. First, Captain Fantastic had the best chance of closing the valve, so it was up to him to get into position--but Skelos and about 9 undead surrounded the valve. So the heroes would have to wade through the legion to get to the valve.

Skelos' powers were all effects, which worked great against Captain Fantastic--but Bloody Mary was a Construct. So Skelos could only use his Legion to attack her.

In the initial rounds, Skelos kept summoning additional Undead and surrounded both Captain Fantastic and Bloody Mary. The heroes were able to eliminate several of the Undead each round, but by surrounding the heroes, the undead gained a surprise advantage (I used the facing rules), and over several rounds took their tole on the heroes.

By the beginning of the 5th round, it became clear that the heroes needed to turn the valve off. Skelos had already won 3 rounds.

Captain fantastic made a mad dash to the valve, taking another hit along the way and then only scoring a single success at the valve--skelos would win another round.

Bloody Mary finished off all but one undead and then moved in on Skelos, scoring a 3-wound hit and selecting to Destroy Skelos defensive-Relic power, reducing it permanently by half.

Skelos was forced to flee and then used his Fear power to entrap Captain Fantastic, who would not be able to attempt another action on the valve.

Things looked dire.

Bloody Mary moved in on Skelos then used a Heroic Deed to successfully hit Skelos and free Captain Fantastic with a Disrupt. He then severly wounded Skelos, whose defensive capabilites were weakned--but Skelos made his saving throws.

Captain Fantastic had to take out Skelos. If he Feared him again, it was the end of the game. So his first attack missed, but his second hit requiring Skelos to make another Fatality Roll which he failed, and died.

Captain Fantastic needed to score one more success with his last action to turn off the valve. If he did, the heroes would tie--if he messed up, the villain won.

Forgetting he had a Heroic Deed, he rolled a D12--and blew it!

The villian picked up a final round that put them 2 rounds ahead of the heroes.

It was fun. The Minion do work much better.

One thought on Area powers versus Minions, is to roll them in small groups of 3-4, versus larger groups. Both for speed and to spread the effects so its not all either or.

I am playing again tonight.

I really liked the idea of a generalist character with a higher Default Dice. He was effective, but lacked a lot of the special abilities that Mary had which allowed her to plow throught he Minions. In one attack, she used Cleave to successfully kill 3 Minions with one Action.

The Minions in mass were effective. They surround both heroes and would do two or three points every Round. It weakened the heroes substantially. They were also very effective in impeding their movements and shielding Skelos.

I also used the 2 dice Fatality Roll rule (a character with Life 10 would roll 2xD10 to make a Fatality Roll). It made the game more fun, because all the main characters were wounded beyond their Life and had to start making Fatality Rolls.

It made the use of Heroic Deeds and Heroic Recovery more painful and calculated.

I am working on the next rule roll which I will try to have by wednesday.

Matt

By the way, I forgot to ask. Did you feel that the non-combative actions--applying for more funding, etc.--added to the game or was more of an awkard delay?

Just wanted to get your and your friends take on the plot builder.

Matt

Matt,

That sounds like a lot of fun.  How many minions did your villain start out with and how many could he generate each turn?  You said that the heroes got bogged down without any mass removal.  Did it break down into a roll-roll-roll-roll-turn-roll-roll-roll-roll-turn scenario, or was it still fast paced and interesting?

I also like the idea of default dice heroes.  Perhaps a d10 hero with a single high cost equipment power would work nice as well.  The problem with the d12 and only d12 hero is their lack of special abilities and range.  (Not a game design problem mind you but a problem for players to worry about when building a team.)  They can be very effective in alternate win condition scenarios but are poor in straight brawls.  They become even better when you build a large multi-scenario plotarch which requires multiple abilities in order to maximize benefit.

The Construct special ability is something that I have not played around with a lot, but deserves playtesting.  It looks cool but will most likely need to be priced either up or down.  Immunity to control effects very powerful, but the ability does have a few drawbacks.  At this point I am not sure if it needs a rebate or a price hike.

By the way, I forgot to ask. Did you feel that the non-combative actions--applying for more funding, etc.--added to the game or was more of an awkward delay?

Scene 2:  In Search of Funding
Setup:  The heroes of <player 1> need funding to recruit more heroes.
Player 1 Point Total:  One character from first team
Player 2 Point Total:  N/A
Special Rules:  This is a non-combat scene
Victory Condition:  The hero from <player 1> must make social rolls to determine the amount of funding available. There are 3 tiers of funding.  The hero may roll 3 times for each tier.  If this hero has at least 1 success for a tier then they may progress to the next tier.  The each successes for each tier will increase the point total for the rest of the game.
Effect:  Determines point total for the remainder of the game.

                              Difficulty    Point Increase

         Unfunded:           N/A         500
         The Mayor:           4       +150/victory
         The President:      8       +100/victory
         The UN:               12      +50/victory

Bill wrote:
That sounds like a lot of fun.  How many minions did your villain start out with and how many could he generate each turn?

Bill wrote:
You said that the heroes got bogged down without any mass removal.  Did it break down into a roll-roll-roll-roll-turn-roll-roll-roll-roll-turn scenario, or was it still fast paced and interesting?

Bill wrote:
I also like the idea of default dice heroes.  Perhaps a d10 hero with a single high cost equipment power would work nice as well.  The problem with the d12 and only d12 hero is their lack of special abilities and range.

Bill wrote:
The Construct special ability is something that I have not played around with a lot, but deserves playtesting.  It looks cool but will most likely need to be priced either up or down.  Immunity to control effects very powerful, but the ability does have a few drawbacks.  At this point I am not sure if it needs a rebate or a price hike.

Matt,

Good to hear that you were not bogged down.  I would like to start implementing the damage rules, but the complexity of the game without them is still a bit much for my friend.  I would like to start incorporating them as soon as possible though.

In my game I started with 20 minions and summoned 3/turn.  Mass removal balanced things out, but without the Mass part I believe that it would have been a long, slow game.  The grouping went a long way to counter balance the boredom as well.  I could attack with all 20 in one attack which greatly reduced the amount of time it took.

Part of me would like to see rules which would allow minions to attack individually at the end of a turn and but at the same time with each effected character making one defensive roll against it.  This would reduce the amount of time to would take minions to attack in those situations where you want to attack numerous times.

Best,
        Bill

Bill wrote:
In my game I started with 20 minions and summoned 3/turn.

Bill wrote:
Mass removal balanced things out, but without the Mass part I believe that it would have been a long, slow game.  The grouping went a long way to counter balance the boredom as well.  I could attack with all 20 in one attack which greatly reduced the amount of time it took.

Bill wrote:
Part of me would like to see rules which would allow minions to attack individually at the end of a turn and but at the same time with each effected character making one defensive roll against it.  This would reduce the amount of time to would take minions to attack in those situations where you want to attack numerous times.

Matt,

Its been a while since my last response.  Just finished the job interview today so I can finally get back to other things in my life, like helping you with this game.  So, without any further ado, here is my response:

I need to make the grouping of minions simplified and easy for everyone to understand and use.

If it seems your games are turning into slugfests--consider looking into the special abilities. They were created in part to avoid a dull I hit you for 2 points you hit me for 2 points game. Especially, if there is an objective that does not involve eliminating an opponent.

I also used the 2 dice Fatality Roll rule (a character with Life 10 would roll 2xD10 to make a Fatality Roll). It made the game more fun, because all the main characters were wounded beyond their Life and had to start making Fatality Rolls.

You could capture them in any number of ways, knock them across the game board, trap them under some object that is too heavy for them to lift, etc.

Bill,

I have been swamped as well. I am trying to get the next rev of the rules out asap, that has a lot of the elements I have discussed that aren't in the current rules.

Manipulation allows you to turn any Energy or Elemental power into a telekinetic ability, something along the lines of a Green Lantern power. Ad shape to it, and it can do a whole lot more--but I need to be very specific about that.

20 Minions! Ouch!

Like I said, I will try to get to the rules over the weekend.

I apologize for not having the rev sooner.

Matt

Matt,

Nothing to apologize for.  I'll start the ball rolling on the next playtest when you have the new rules posted.

By the way, did you notice that our thread [Monster Rules] An Outside Playtest has the most posts of any thread in this forum?  And its one of the most viewed threads as well.

Anyways, drop a post when you have the next revision of the rules ready.

Best,
        Bill