The German Playtest of FtA!

[RPGPundit]

Settembrini has completed the first ever demo game of "Forward... To Adventure!!" at a con in Germany. He had this to say about it:

"Bad and Good News
The game was played on sunday, thus there were fewer players overall on the Gaming Convention. Three games were cancelled altogether because lack of players. FtA! wasn´t one of them. My reputation of being a kickass and still story sensitive (while far from story focussed) DM was enough to lure three gamers into the lair of FtA! although nobody knew it or had heard about it beforehand. Thus only the very brief description which sounded awfully like a fantasy heartbreaker were known to the players. One player said he wouldn´t have bothered if it hadn´t been run by me.
If you ask what kind of games didn´t find more than one player? Swine favorites like HKAT!
So now on to the good news. The players, two of whom were very proficient with D&D, really liked it. The DM, me, had almost no problems in running it as written.The players were hooked in a way that they were instantly making suggestions on how to improve the game. Still I might have done something wrong: I chose a classic dungeon crawl and it was played just like that: slow, thinking ahead, paranoid and lucreous. Interestingly, the player who was the perceived "winner" was the one who got away with the loot. So maybe Jrients theory on innate scoring through wealth increase was not as far off as I thought.
But the game wasn´t really moving as fast paced as it would have been in my old Star Wars D6 days. I don´t know if fast pacedness is a design goal.
To my big surprise, generalized combat was enjoyed by everyone at the table, that was one of the universally liked features. I still have my gripes with the 3w6 though. Adding them up slows the game. I´m really considering using a D20, may the third world use a 3w6, but I think the speed increase might be worth to anger the pundit. But that´s just cosmetic I think.
After the good chilean red dry wine and cheese, I lay myself to rest after two days of intense DMing (CofC yesterday, with Swine players galore, FtA! today). Blame grammar and spelling misteks on cheese (or wine)."

Sounds great, Settembrini! But wait, he has some specific comments about the game, which I will respond to now:

"There should be a rule for ranged touch attacks, that is if you try to hit a square or an object without needing to penetrate armor. I had to made up difficulties for hitting a square with an oil flask and stuff like that."

Yup, that's a good point. The problem is that I can't put in rules for every possible scenario; or else we'd be as big as D&D and the game would lose its purpose.  So I'd say treat it as a stunt.

"There should be a rule for getting at least 1 Hitpoint per level, the Rogue-Wizard had CON -1, rolled a 2 and had 1 HP for the rest of the game. If he had rolled a one, he would have been dead from the start."

I had assumed that was the case, good catch in pointing out that I hadn't actually specified that, seeing as how a beginner might mistakenly think that you could start the game with negative HP, or lose HP as you level!

"All of us were puzzled by the fact that quick casting checks were INT based opposed to casting checks which were based on WIS. And I din´t like that you had to roll two times for quick casting. I think there should be a more elegant, streamlined rule for quick casting with only one roll."

Here's where you have to read the description of what magic is and how magic works to understand the reason that the caster check is WIS.  Its because when you are reciting a spell in FtA, you are channeling words of power, using your body as a channel. So its a check to see if you can resist the rush of energy and channel the power without it overwhelming you. Its a will check.
On the other hand, quick casting is trying to do the same thing, only to remember all the correct words and pronounciations and say them all quickly, like a tonguetwister. Thus its based on INT.
You don't actually have to roll two times for quick casting. You roll once for quick casting and once for the actual caster check. The quick casting check is to see if you don't stumble your words. The caster check is to see if you also resist the force of the energy coursing through you.
Remember: the quick casting is optional. You can choose to not do it, but then your spell releases at the end of the round instead of the beginning, and if someone hits you before it releases your spell is cancelled. So quick casting is always a conundrum, it increases the chance your spell will fail, but if you don't do it someone else could get the drop on you and take you down.
From the design point of view, Quick casting is meant to serve two purposes: first, it was to solve a problem I had about whether magic should happen at the beginning of the round, or at the end? If I did it at the beginning, that would make wizards too powerful, because they could act before anyone else, and would be able to blow opponents away before the opponent could act. If I put it at the end, it would make wizards too vulnerable, as they could be taken down before they can ever launch their spells. So the solution was to provide the choice; a wizard can fire off a spell quick cast at the beginning of the round, before anyone else acts, IF he manages his quick casting check (and his regular casting check; two rolls, two chances to fail instead of one). Otherwise, he can wait to the end of the round, and have to make only the regular casting check (one roll) but in the meantime could have his spell disrupted.
The other purpose was for general game balance. Wizards at higher levels can quickly become very powerful, and the quick casting mechanic is something that helps keep them in check.

"The magic system and the casting check idea were lauded repeatedly, and it was suggested to generate a table of modifiers to the casting check. They should allow you to do metamagic feat stuff like increasing the number of targets, range, dice based effects and so on. Thus the very narrow spell selection could be used more creatively."

I'm very happy to hear that. My players have liked the magic system too. The table of modifiers is a bit too complex, I think, for the game, instead the GM should make up any modifiers he thinks are important. Like I said in the rest of the game, a DM can give + or - 2/4/6 depending on what he thinks is affecting the situation in any check.
It'd be hard to have "metamagic feats" since there aren't any feats in the game. However, I think it'd be quite possible to do Stunts with spellcasting, using spells in different and creative ways, or spending a round concentrating to "extend" expand or empower the spell. That would be good.

"Everyone wanted more schools of magic."

Well, there are 17 in the game. That's not bad for the basic book. But yea, more schools would definitely be in mind for the future. There's no summoning or necromancy list made up yet, for example. The biggest problem would be that you have to be really cautious to maintain some game balance with the lists. I tried to give each list at least one or two specific things that only that list can do, and tried not to have any single list be way more powerful than the rest. Though even so, there are certain lists that are more useful than others to adventurers.

"A streamlined feat system could be introduced, were you pay with those rare skill points.
There should be a list of languages.
Nobody could find out what the HalfMermen was supposed to be. We didn´t like it."

Well, the Stunts are sort of meant to replace the feats. Basically a stunt should be able to allow you to do anything a feat could (if you can beat the stunt check and explain how your character could do it).
Yes, there should be a list of languages. The thing is, since FtA has no setting yet, I haven't really gotten very far on that kind of stuff. The setting would pretty much determine which languages are allowed.
The Half-Merman is something from the Wilderlands. I added it because of that. It probably shouldn't be in the final version of the game.

"While there is a nice flexibility with skill checks, I would prefer to have each skill assigned just one governing attribute to increase playing speed. Net total modifiers could be written on the character sheet."

It is kind of a bitch for the character sheet to not have a fixed connection between skills and attributes, but otherwise you get into nonsense like Dexerity being used to open a lock, or Wisdom to construct a shelter with wilderness survival instead of Intelligence, or the classic where a 90 lb. weakling rogue with +4 Charisma has a better chance of intimidating an opponent than a Conanesque barbarian warrior with -3 Charisma or a dark-robed mage with evil runes all over his body and a -3 Charisma.

So, I think the versatility of my system, where things like Intimidation or Wilderness lore, or detect and disarm traps can be rolled with a different attribute depending on the situation, is worth the extra hassle of having to do one piece of addition.

"Two Players really liked 3D6 and wouldn´t exchange them for d20. They liked the adding up, it was me who was impatient, especially as I was faster than them to add up their rolls, so there were those two seconds of waiting for the player to anounce the result I already knew which bugged me. After a nights sleep I think it´s a personal problem."

This one does sound kind of like a personal problem. Different people like different dice. To be honest, I prefer the D20 myself, and you know that the reason I used the 3D6 system here was because in south america most kids won't own or even be able to buy other polyhedral dice.
But yea, some people like the D6 better. The Swine are obviously in love with the D10. Many people prefer the straight math of the percentile dice. A few even adore the "freak dice" like D4s and D12s.

"I was unhappy with the alignment system. I tried to run it as written, dishing out chaos points and law points for matching behaviour. But when the Orc player killed a dozen Pixies, I felt alone. He killed creatures of Chaos, which at least shouldn´t give him Chaos points. But it was unneccesary killing, which was sort of "evil". So I´d really had liked to give him "Evil" points for it, as law or chaos weren´t involved. I think I will add another Axis for stuff like this. Maybe selfish-compassionate would be more appropriate than evil good.
BTW the Verein/Club who organized the Con was selling some parts of it´s library, so I got me The Eternal Champion. Elric might be an important read for further understanding alignment issues."

The important thing is to remember "chaos" isn't "evil" and "law" isn't "good". A character might gain lawful points for slaughtering chaos creatures.  A character might gain chaos points for slaughtering chaos creatures instead. It depends a lot on the context and on the motivations of the character.

Ask yourself: "Did he slaughter the Pixies because they were causing chaos and disrupting the stability of the area?"
Then give him Law points.
"Did he slaughter the Pixies because he wanted to and could?"
Give him Chaos points.
"Did he slaughter the Pixies because it was what was necessary at the time, and it was the most natural solution to his dilemma, but he didn't feel strongly about wanting them dead?"
Then give him Balance points.

It requires trusting a little more in your Player telling you WHY his character does things; where his motivation lies.
Another trickier example is if your character slaughters some orcs who have kidnapped villagers and enslaved them.
If your character slaughters the orcs because they violated the king's law and were a menace to the villagers, he should gain Law points.
If your character slaughters the orcs because they took away those people's freedom, you should gain Chaos points.

Same act, same choice, but different motives mean different alignment points.
So the answer is to talk it through with your players and unless they're arguing something you totally disagree with, let them decide which alignment gets the die roll at the end of the session.

And thats another thing; since you only give alignment points at the end of an adventure, by then each character will have done many acts, and usually a general trend will emerge. If he hasn't done any single act that STRONGLY aligns him with one of the three alignments (like worshiping at the shrine of the gods of a particular alignment), then you can look at the overall trend. And what we've found is that usually at the end of the night most characters end up being defined down to two alignments; so player x might, at the end of the adventure, be able to put his die roll into Balance or Law. Player y might be "balance or chaos"; and then let the player decide.

"One more:
I couldn´t find damage tables for ranged weapons. And there should be a differentiation between easy, medium and difficult ranged weapons. Everybody should be able to use a crossbow, for example."

That would be a pretty serious one! But in this case, its a case of having missed the obvious. The Damage ratings for ranged weapons is on page 19, in the exact same table as the melee weapons.

Note that, actually, in FtA everyone can use a crossbow. Everyone can use a Two-handed sword too. The Martial training rules are set up so that you can use any weapon you want. Its just that if you have martial training in that class of weapon or that specific weapon, you will do slightly more damage and have a slightly higher critical range. But its a pretty small difference when you look at the numbers. There's no reason why a Wizard (who has no martial trainings at all) couldn't go around using a Halberd, if that fit the idea of the character.

Plus note that anyone can spend a skill point on gaining martial training in a specific weapon. Thus you can use a skill point to gain the extra +1 or 2 of damage and +1 to the critical range, if your favourite weapon happens to be one you're not trained in.

Thank you very much settembrini for your demo game. I'm glad to hear it was a success.

RPGPundit

(Originally posted March 13th 2006)