Post by Ziphion on Sept 4, 2014 8:44:17 GMT -8
I GM'd the first encounter of the Simple System demo, and I'd like to share how it went!
First of all, here's a list of all the changes I made to the original demo before we started:
We had five players (my regular D&D group). We had a stealthy, corrupt, overconfident, paranoid con artist with a burst rifle; an arrogant, flirtatious hacker with a compact multiray and lots of street cred; a charge-happy skirmisher with a machete who is addicted to painkillers and perpetually itchy; a cruel slippery target with an electro-lash and wicked sense of humor; and... the Hound. My wife really wanted to be the Hound from Game of Thrones, since one of the character tokens I made kind of looks like him. So: lethal combatant, skirmisher, axe blade, grumpy, coward (with respect to fire). (Interesting side note: four out of the five players chose a character with the opposite gender!)
Drake busted the party out of the holding cell; the con artist looted the downed guard outside and came up empty-handed (critical failure). Drake burst into the next room guns blazing, and the guards began to fire on him. The hacker slipped into the room and quickly stunned one of the guards with her multiray, while the electro-lasher rushed in with her whip cracking and attacked another guard. The Hound ran up to an opponent and cleaved him right in half in one hit (critical!). The con artist fired her burst rifle from the entrance of the room, and the addict charged in recklessly at a pair of guards standing in the corner. A pretty good opening salvo!
Great moment: the electro-lasher rushed at one guard and tackled him to the ground, landing on top of him. I'm not sure what cruelty she was about to inflict, because a neighboring guard grabbed her and pulled her away onto the floor (opposed strength flip). She then wanted to attack with her electro-lash from the ground at both guards' legs, so I interpreted this to be a -1 penalty to both attacks (on top of the penalty to attacking multiple targets), but she could knock them prone with a result of ✔✔ or better. She used a hero point, made the attempt... success! Both guards were now on the ground next to her. Drake ran up and attempted to stomp one of the supine guards, but flipped a critical failure; not only did he miss, but the guard on the floor grabbed Drake's boot and pulled him to the floor as well. Four people, lying in the middle of the room during this tense firefight. Nuts! With the help of the other party members, Drake and the electro-lasher survived the floor battle with only a few bumps and bruises.
When only two wounded guards remained, they dropped their rifles and surrendered. The addict and electrolasher pulled them into the holding cell for interrogation, with a sort of good-cop-bad-cop vibe.
Electrolasher: TALK! Where are we! Why were we taken here! -whip cracks-
Addict: If you give us good information, we'll let you go free.
Electrolasher: And if you don't, [various threats involving inserting a variety of explosive devices in uncomfortable places]
Guard: I-I-I don't know! I'm just hired muscle! All's I know is these guys do some crazy experiments here, something to do with cloning or something.
Addict: Are you saying we've been cloned?
Guard: I don't know your specifics, I'm just here to keep you locked up!
Electrolasher: KEEP TALKING! What are your parents' names?
Guard: What?
Electrolasher: -whip- I SAID WHAT ARE YOUR PARENTS' NAMES?
Guard: Ahhh! M-M-Martha and Susan! I lived in a very progressive household!
Addict: When's the last time you talked to them?
Guard: It's been a while, maybe a month?
Electrolasher: YOU'RE A BAD SON! -whip- -whip-
Guard: Ahhhhhh!
Yeah, I gave 'em a hero point for that.
The hacker hacked the lifts, and the party escaped into the slums.
That's as far as we got, since we only had about an hour and a half to play; plus, the players obviously weren't very familiar with the system, so it took a long time to get into the swing of things. We were using a kind of weird setup where we were all sitting around a living room in front of a TV which was displaying the map with the tokens on roll20 (without DI's new module), and I was using my laptop to move the tokens around, but each player had physical cards (character sheet, resolution decks, items). That system works well for our regular D&D game since we've got a lot of macros set up, and the players just call out what they want to do. But with this, we'd have this weird situation where I'd say to someone across the room, "Ok, flip your Agility", and they'd flip and say "I got two checks", and I'd say "Ok, I'm flipping the guard's defense, and I got one check, so you hit!" but we couldn't actually put the cards next to each other so everyone could see. We don't have a big table to sit around, so for next time I'm eager to try out the new module and put the resolution deck stuff up on the screen.
Feedback: Everyone said they had fun, though the system took some getting used to. They all recognized the potential for awesomeness. Compared to the disaster that was the first time we played 4e together, this went pretty smoothly. I noticed that this group of players, who usually don't roleplay or go off the rails very much and treat our regular game somewhat mechanically and tactically, were definitely more drawn in to the roleplay element this time, thanks to the flaws and the looser ruleset. They also enjoyed the fast character creation, although one player mentioned that while their D&D character sheet pretty clearly delineates every possible detail about their character, the Simple System character card collapses a lot of that down and simplifies it, which gave them a less clear picture of who their character really is and what they can do. But I think that feeling mostly comes from having more familiarity with D&D, and also that the demo doesn't have an overabundance of options for skills, flaws, and especially powers.
One suggestion I really liked was that "Flaws" should be changed to just "Traits", and they can have a negative, positive, or neutral connotation. As it is, having only negative traits with incentives for roleplaying could push the party towards acting negatively, and not everyone wants to feel forced to act cruelly or arrogantly or whatever for extra Hero Cards. There could be a trait called "Lawful Good", for example, which I don't think most people would call a "flaw", but it plays the same way: if the party wants to do something unscrupulous like loot a house, the Lawful Good character could object, possibly causing strife and preventing the group from picking up some valuable treasure. I'd award a Hero Card for that. Hell, one of our players pretty much acts that way already in our D&D game as his Don Quixote-esque paladin.
Someone else made a cosmetic suggestion: Remove unnecessary color from the character cards and resolution deck. As it is, some colors are mechanically important and others aren't, so for newcomers, it's confusing to new players who can't tell the difference. E.g. "What's your defense?" "Green! Wait, that's just the color of the shield icon. It says 2, so... yellow!" He suggested making the checks and strikes on the resolution cards the same color as their side of the card, so blue checks/strikes are blue, green check/strikes are green etc. He also thought that if that color change were made, that O's would make more sense than checks, since at a glance they look more different than X's, and also that they look the same from any angle (so you don't have sideways or upside down checks when looking at your card from different sides).
All in all, a success! We'll pick it up again next week hopefully.
First of all, here's a list of all the changes I made to the original demo before we started:
- Updated resolution deck (probabilities, criticals, colors)
- Updated/altered character cards (colors, derived stats) (picture)
- Increased enemy life points by 2 (since PC life points were increased by 2)
- Removed “Hard Hitter” from skill options (too overpowered compared to other combat-related skills; this is before DI nerfed it)
- Let the players spend up to two points per ability during character creation, instead of one
- Made a change to Axe Blade: I wanted to tone back the power of this weapon a bit, so I added a property: if you flip strikes when attacking with this weapon, you receive a number of complications on your next defense flip equal to the number of strikes. That way, this powerful, unwieldy weapon will provide more incentives to attack-focused characters than defensive characters.
- Made a change to Assassin’s Machete: It seemed underpowered, so I added a line to Crushing Blow: give the target a complication for their next attempt.
- When using Charge, after the attack, make an unopposed Build flip to avoid a complication on your next attempt (as you normally would when running).
- Allowed players to choose as many or few flaws as they like
- Changed movement so that moving diagonally cost 1 instead of 2 (we were all too used to D&D 4e to switch; though we toyed with the idea of making diagonals cost 1.5 squares of movement)
- Added three powers, so that players that put points in Build, Resolve, or Intellect get a bit more combat utility (PCs get a power if they put a point in the associated ability score):
- Rapid Regeneration: At the start of your turn, you may spend one Power Point, flip a card, and recover Life Points equal to your Build’s pips.
- Learn From Mistakes: When you miss with an attack, you may spend one Power Point and make an unopposed Intellect flip. If successful, you may make a basic attack with a bonus to damage equal to your Intellect’s pips.
- Endure Pain: When you take damage, you may spend one Power Point and make an unopposed Resolve flip. If successful, you may postpone taking that damage and all other damage until the end of your next turn. If you still have Power Points available, you may use this power again at the end of your turn to postpone taking the damage another round.
We had five players (my regular D&D group). We had a stealthy, corrupt, overconfident, paranoid con artist with a burst rifle; an arrogant, flirtatious hacker with a compact multiray and lots of street cred; a charge-happy skirmisher with a machete who is addicted to painkillers and perpetually itchy; a cruel slippery target with an electro-lash and wicked sense of humor; and... the Hound. My wife really wanted to be the Hound from Game of Thrones, since one of the character tokens I made kind of looks like him. So: lethal combatant, skirmisher, axe blade, grumpy, coward (with respect to fire). (Interesting side note: four out of the five players chose a character with the opposite gender!)
Drake busted the party out of the holding cell; the con artist looted the downed guard outside and came up empty-handed (critical failure). Drake burst into the next room guns blazing, and the guards began to fire on him. The hacker slipped into the room and quickly stunned one of the guards with her multiray, while the electro-lasher rushed in with her whip cracking and attacked another guard. The Hound ran up to an opponent and cleaved him right in half in one hit (critical!). The con artist fired her burst rifle from the entrance of the room, and the addict charged in recklessly at a pair of guards standing in the corner. A pretty good opening salvo!
Great moment: the electro-lasher rushed at one guard and tackled him to the ground, landing on top of him. I'm not sure what cruelty she was about to inflict, because a neighboring guard grabbed her and pulled her away onto the floor (opposed strength flip). She then wanted to attack with her electro-lash from the ground at both guards' legs, so I interpreted this to be a -1 penalty to both attacks (on top of the penalty to attacking multiple targets), but she could knock them prone with a result of ✔✔ or better. She used a hero point, made the attempt... success! Both guards were now on the ground next to her. Drake ran up and attempted to stomp one of the supine guards, but flipped a critical failure; not only did he miss, but the guard on the floor grabbed Drake's boot and pulled him to the floor as well. Four people, lying in the middle of the room during this tense firefight. Nuts! With the help of the other party members, Drake and the electro-lasher survived the floor battle with only a few bumps and bruises.
When only two wounded guards remained, they dropped their rifles and surrendered. The addict and electrolasher pulled them into the holding cell for interrogation, with a sort of good-cop-bad-cop vibe.
Electrolasher: TALK! Where are we! Why were we taken here! -whip cracks-
Addict: If you give us good information, we'll let you go free.
Electrolasher: And if you don't, [various threats involving inserting a variety of explosive devices in uncomfortable places]
Guard: I-I-I don't know! I'm just hired muscle! All's I know is these guys do some crazy experiments here, something to do with cloning or something.
Addict: Are you saying we've been cloned?
Guard: I don't know your specifics, I'm just here to keep you locked up!
Electrolasher: KEEP TALKING! What are your parents' names?
Guard: What?
Electrolasher: -whip- I SAID WHAT ARE YOUR PARENTS' NAMES?
Guard: Ahhh! M-M-Martha and Susan! I lived in a very progressive household!
Addict: When's the last time you talked to them?
Guard: It's been a while, maybe a month?
Electrolasher: YOU'RE A BAD SON! -whip- -whip-
Guard: Ahhhhhh!
Yeah, I gave 'em a hero point for that.
The hacker hacked the lifts, and the party escaped into the slums. That's as far as we got, since we only had about an hour and a half to play; plus, the players obviously weren't very familiar with the system, so it took a long time to get into the swing of things. We were using a kind of weird setup where we were all sitting around a living room in front of a TV which was displaying the map with the tokens on roll20 (without DI's new module), and I was using my laptop to move the tokens around, but each player had physical cards (character sheet, resolution decks, items). That system works well for our regular D&D game since we've got a lot of macros set up, and the players just call out what they want to do. But with this, we'd have this weird situation where I'd say to someone across the room, "Ok, flip your Agility", and they'd flip and say "I got two checks", and I'd say "Ok, I'm flipping the guard's defense, and I got one check, so you hit!" but we couldn't actually put the cards next to each other so everyone could see. We don't have a big table to sit around, so for next time I'm eager to try out the new module and put the resolution deck stuff up on the screen.
Feedback: Everyone said they had fun, though the system took some getting used to. They all recognized the potential for awesomeness. Compared to the disaster that was the first time we played 4e together, this went pretty smoothly. I noticed that this group of players, who usually don't roleplay or go off the rails very much and treat our regular game somewhat mechanically and tactically, were definitely more drawn in to the roleplay element this time, thanks to the flaws and the looser ruleset. They also enjoyed the fast character creation, although one player mentioned that while their D&D character sheet pretty clearly delineates every possible detail about their character, the Simple System character card collapses a lot of that down and simplifies it, which gave them a less clear picture of who their character really is and what they can do. But I think that feeling mostly comes from having more familiarity with D&D, and also that the demo doesn't have an overabundance of options for skills, flaws, and especially powers.
One suggestion I really liked was that "Flaws" should be changed to just "Traits", and they can have a negative, positive, or neutral connotation. As it is, having only negative traits with incentives for roleplaying could push the party towards acting negatively, and not everyone wants to feel forced to act cruelly or arrogantly or whatever for extra Hero Cards. There could be a trait called "Lawful Good", for example, which I don't think most people would call a "flaw", but it plays the same way: if the party wants to do something unscrupulous like loot a house, the Lawful Good character could object, possibly causing strife and preventing the group from picking up some valuable treasure. I'd award a Hero Card for that. Hell, one of our players pretty much acts that way already in our D&D game as his Don Quixote-esque paladin.
Someone else made a cosmetic suggestion: Remove unnecessary color from the character cards and resolution deck. As it is, some colors are mechanically important and others aren't, so for newcomers, it's confusing to new players who can't tell the difference. E.g. "What's your defense?" "Green! Wait, that's just the color of the shield icon. It says 2, so... yellow!" He suggested making the checks and strikes on the resolution cards the same color as their side of the card, so blue checks/strikes are blue, green check/strikes are green etc. He also thought that if that color change were made, that O's would make more sense than checks, since at a glance they look more different than X's, and also that they look the same from any angle (so you don't have sideways or upside down checks when looking at your card from different sides).
All in all, a success! We'll pick it up again next week hopefully.
