Playtesting Again

One of the key aspects of design is playtesting. Knowing how a game shoudl work, and comparing it to how it does work at the table atre often two different things. 

I wanted to give my game "Bustle in your Hedgerow" a run at the semi-regular gaming night at The Press (I've mentioned this a few times one the blog so far... an example is here). Out of the five nights we've had at The Press this year, I've got a group who have participated in three of the games I've run. When they show up, they do so an hour early to make sure they get my table (which is nice). I basically try to run these sessions the way I'd run a convention game, they pay money to play, they're here for a good time. So I collaboratively tell a fun story with them. They might succeed, they might fail, but either way they'll contribute actively to a story that they'll remember. I expected to have them again last Thursday night when I ran "Bustle" as a part of the Horror Halloween game night. I know that those players wuld have put the game through it's paces by pushing the rules while being content to run with the story wherever it might have gone... however that wasn't the case.

Beside myself, I had five new people seated at my table. Two seemed to be carers for two others, the carers didn't want to play, they were either intimidetd by the idea of roleplaying games, or it was just out of their comfort zone for the moment, but they wanted to sit and watch the pair they were there for. I've run games for highly autistic and otherwise neurodivergent folks, so I recognised a lot of the signs in these two players. Maybe I've misread the sitation, I don't know...but it really looked like that. The fifth person joined the table a minute or two after they sat down, he had a bit of D&D experience, and was willing to try something new.

It wasn't the playtest experience I was expecting, but it was valuable none-the-less. 

So what did we learn?

I basically had to run a stripped back version of the game, but it worked. As a bonus, the stripped back version kind of worked better than I had expected, and made me think about certain simplified elements that the game might benefit from.

In the game I had generated 10 possible characters for the players to choose from, but since they had no real context about the game it didn't matter too much what they chose. A lot of the time, I was looking at character sheets and offering suggestions for what character might be able to do, and I was showing how characters could do things that might have used the assortment of equipment, allies or information they had picked up along the way. 

I skipped over a lot of the dramatic elments and penalties, because these players just weren't looking lie they were the types the enjoy that sort of thing. I basically told them that I was playing the game to showcase it on "easy" mode. We also hardly used the special powers of the scarecrows in the game because the players were having enough fun with simply being monsters. (If I get my "regular" group again, I'd be interested to see how they'd handle things, and whether they'd get more creative with the powers presented)

I've also had this thing in the FUBAR system where there are core and non-core traits. Core traits make things easier to do because you get bonuses on your action, they are also defined by the fact that they are written on the character sheet. Non-core traits give you a more significant result but only as long as you are successful. This is something I've played with a few different ways in the various incarnations of FUBAR. In some versions of the game, where you roll dice, you might roll an extra die for every non-core trait that you use (where every successful non-core die adds a bonus success to a successful result). There has often been a way of reducing the benefit of these traits by applying difficulty, or heightening risk. Positives and negatives cancel out...but this can get confusing, especially with players after something simple to just tell stories...and especially when there are other moving parts affecting the outcome (such as those powers that weren't used). 

The game basically worked if we just tallied up all the positives contributing toward the oucome, and all the negatives. Then cancelled things out. We didn't worry about multiple degrees of success, the simple narrative didn't need them. However, that led to a new idea of precision versus power.

For this game, the randomiser is a deck of cards. I'm going with a regular deck with the kings removed, but jokers left in. That's 12 ranks per suit maxing out at queen, because the most powerful figure in the Scarecrow setting is the May Queen.

4 ranks are bad (A,2,3,4), 4 ranks are mediocre (5,6,7,8), and 4 ranks are good (9,10,J,Q).

A typical action draws 2 cards, one is allocated to success, one is allocated to sacrifice. Is it more important to you to get ahead, or is it more important to avoid problems? With these numbers there's a 5 in 9 chance of drawing at least one card that succeeds, and an 8 in 9 chance that you'll draw a combination of cards that lets you try again. There's not much chance that things will stall. 

An action where the character has a bit of an advantage, they get three cards and pick the best two. This gives them a 17 out of 25 chance of drawing a card that will give them a success. The better their chance at performing a task, the more cards they potentially draw, and therefore the more chance they'll draw a card high enough to succeed. 

Earlier versions of the game have defined the benefits that improve chances of success separately from the benefits that increase the magnitude of a success once it happens. However, this is feeling like a bit of a false dichotomy in some cases. 

If there are no advantages on an action, this doesn't make much difference. The player only draws 2 cards.

Once an advantage applies, the player can allocate it to precision and increase their chance of succeeding. Or they can apply it to power, and increase the magnitude of a successful action.

Once two advantages apply, they can both be applied to power, both to precision, or one to each. 

Once three or more advantages apply, the player can apply them how they see fit.

This also opens the option of specific traits that only apply to one of the other. A chainsaw might never be capable of precision, but it always deals more substantial damage on a successful hit. A scope on a rifle might be the opposite.

The whole process also works in the reverse situation. Negatives might make a task harder, or might may the fallout bigger if it goes wrong.

Anyway...That's the direction the game's heading at the moment.

At the end of the session, the two carers said to me that they'd like to have a go next time because it looked like fun, and once they had seen it in action, they could see why their companions loved the idea of tabletop roleplaying games