Sun 24 Mar 2024, 18:59
Alright. I've gotten a chance to read through the whole quickstart ... and there's quite a bit that needs to be discussed beyond just my defensive reactions reply above. Please note that while I am critical about some aspects of the rules, I also understand that this is essentially a "pre-alpha" and I firmly believe by the time this project goes to print, once we go through the comments and revision process like we have in other kickstarters, we'll end up with something truly amazing and unique. Note that a lot of this has already been discussed in great length on the Coriolis channel of the Free League Discord.
Pages 15, 16, and many more - Attributes/Talents/Gear: This is a BIG departure from previous Year Zero games. In those games, Attributes never changed past character creation, and advancement was for skills and talents. But in Great Dark, many more dice are added to Attributes and Gear, with only a small amount on Talents. The reason this concerns me is that this seems to limit character advancement if it follows the path put forward by previous games since there’s so much more emphasis on Attributes and Gear than on Talents. Are we able advance Attributes in Great Dark? Note that I have nothing against changing things up. I’m just worried that players will feel disenchanted by lack of meaningful advancement.
Page 16 - How to Use Talents: The box states that talents can be used with multiple applicable Attributes, which I think is great … but then, in the pregen characters, there are several talents that specifically say they are used with specific attributes. There are also talents, like Sharpshooter, that could only be used by one attribute even if not stated. So there’s a lack of consistency here? Because of how niche Talents are compared to skills in past games, I think there’s going to need to be a lot of tuning involved to make sure they can be used in more than just one specific way if that is the dev goal for them.
Page 17 - Supply: I’ll cover that in the delving section as there’s a lot to discuss here.
Page 27 - Blocking and Dodging: Just to go into more detail, I see now that it appears that the Blocking section was copied from previous Year Zero games (with fast and slow actions), and Dodging from Dragonbane (with only a single action). Was wondering why Blocking was so weak. Here, devs need to make a decision. Either they bring back the Slow/Fast action economy and use that defensive system where blocks and dodges are called *before* an attack is rolled, or stick with Dragonbane’s style where blocks and dodges use up the one only action but are called *after* the attack hits. You cannot have a system where blocks and dodges use up all action but are called before the attackers attack roll as that would make defending utterly useless from an action economy perspective. No one would ever ever defend.
Page 28 - Reload: It doesn’t seem to be mentioned here, but does Reloading cost an action?
Page 29, 33, 37: Recovering from damage, despair, blight: I think there’s a line in here about resting rules coming later, but this is really important to know now as we need that for this quickstart adventure. Right now, all we know is that we recover one each per shift, but we don’t even know if it’s a shift resting or a shift of action.
Page 43 and onwards into the adventure - The Delve: There’s A LOT to talk about here. I’ll just list these in bullet form:
- There’s a comment about the number of supplies used being the average for a 4 person party, without actually saying what’s used on a per person basis. Right now, the system punishes small groups and buffs large groups simply because the total supply count, and the amount that needs to be carried, doesn’t change regardless of group size.
- Supply includes food and water. But taking off a helmet to eat and drink while wading through Blight infested areas does not seem like a terribly good idea. I’m guessing we only eat when we rest in a safe area, or when protected by Bird?
- Running out of supplies states that PCs take damage/despair/blight every marker without supplies. But it doesn’t state if it’s one PC at a time or all of them at once each marker.
- When Scanning through the markers, is the scanner and Bird doing the entire delve at once or just sections at a time? Just to clarify, the Logic roll is to map the area, and the Insight roll is to see if the Bird detects all Blight? What happens if the Insight roll is failed? Can you try again like you can with scanning? Also, while we now there’s a penalty for moving through a marker without knowing the Blight, what about moving through the marker without having mapped it?
- Just for clarification for future content, terms like “down the hole” and “down into the abyss” seem to indicate that delving is always a vertical drop. Is that just the case in this adventure? Are some delves horizontal journeys like going into a cave in a mountain?
- Are all delves linear and straight forward? Will there be mechanics for dealing with maze like structures?
- Are players rolling for blight at each and every marker of a delve? Or after the number of markers the delver passed by rolling? I get the impression it’s the latter.
- How LONG does the delving process take. I can’t seem to find any indications of time here. Maybe I missed it? This is really critically important here as explorers need to eat, drink, and rest. Also, since events can happen where the Bird is involved, we need to know due to Bird’s energy recharge rate.
Page 48 - The Bird: First off, I absolutely LOVE the idea of the Bird. I can guarantee that everyone will love the Bird. Forum threads will be started for people talking about their birds, lol. Just a couple of questions:
- I believe it says the Bird recharges energy per shift? Just like the Recovery question in the combat section, does Bird need to ‘rest’ to recover energy, or is it automatic each shift? Also, does it charge ALL its energy or just one per shift?
- I don’t remember if it’s in the QS or was brought up in interviews, but it looks the Bird will have an advancement system much like group advancement systems in other Free League games like that of the castle in Vaesen. This is AMAZING. People will love this. BUT … the Bird has HP, which means it can get hurt and possible killed. So what happens to Bird advancement in the instance where we then have to get a new Bird for the group?
Page 82 (I think) - the Doctor Talent: It says this talent allows you stabilize someone with Logic. Does that mean that no one BUT a Doctor can do so? Past Free League games have always had a Medicine skill, but people could still roll base attributes if they didn’t have any points in there. But this Talent seems to infer it can’t be done without it? If so, this game suddenly gets a whole lot more lethal. So some clarification here will be needed. Or the talent reworked so that it gives a bonus instead.
Alright, that’s all I can think of right now. Thanks for reading and I look forward to further discussions about Great Dark during it’s crowdfunding development.