Tue 17 Jan 2017, 01:38
*phew* that was the finale of our first Mystery in '84.
I planned way too much.
Will structure my scenarios with fewer steps going forward (group '85 and '86 of the trilogy).
We tried out extended trouble and got a nice: "oh shit, we're going up against that?!" Followed by a "okay, I'll do this, and you'll do that... and then you'll finish it with..."
They faced the despair of a 9 threat level opponent (a military robot) and managed, with the last roll, to get from 7 to 10 total successes. So, nailbitingly fun all the way.
The fun of mixing Everyday life and Mystery scenes were great.
Luck points added a fun bonus to rolls.
Healing conditions through scenes is a fun mechanic. I like it that an emotional and well-played scene in the Hideout could restore everybodyin the group. Powerful, but necessary.
We ran into, in our group's opinion, problems with some rules balancing:
1) "Helping others suck"
Making a roll, which you can't push, and will get condition from failing is a lot of risk. And the result are most often 1 to 2 dice, max.
Those are used by the other kid, and are then 1/6 chance of a success.
So. Rolling amaaaazing (3 successes) still only gives you a 50% chance of a successful dice.
These would either 1) have to be more powerful, or 2) less punishing.
2) "Pride should be more strategic"
I realize this comes out of (partially) tge extended trouble rules but... An automatic success is still no bonuses, or only counts as 1 success.
I suggest: pride can be used to EITHER add one success to the roll, OR automatic success – player chooses which bonus to use.
Sometimes you really want one more success to buy bonuses. And sometimes you just want to scrape by and succeed.
3) "Bonus was confusing"
Is a total bonus of +3 the cap of any and all bonuses or just the ones in each category?
Can I have a +2 item AND +2 information AND +2 from assist AND +1 from a Leas skill's dice pool, for a total of +7, or are some or all of these capped at +3 (which would, in the latter case, put the maximum amount of dice rolled, ever, at 13 dice, 5+5+3)
4) "Complications were tough to figure out"
What counts as a complication, or rather, do I succeed if I pick a complication (but have to, at a later point, face the result of that) or do I fail still?
5) "Iconic Item reuse"
(some) iconic items were maybe over-used, but they did feel iconic, and helped establish the characters, so I was fine with that. If they are meant to ONLY be usable once, I'd say that's a flaw. They would be too weak and not be more iconic than anything else. I like the idea of other items being one-use only, but not for iconic ones.
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I think that was the initial report.
The game looks really promising if a few clarifications can be made and some balancing issues can be ironed out.
I got roleplay out of my players that I've never gotten before, which was great fun.
Last edited by
Karbonara on Tue 17 Jan 2017, 08:35, edited 1 time in total.
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Rollspelens andra guldålder är här!
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Spelutvecklare, skribent, och Fria Ligan hang-around. (Det bara blev så.)