Playtest report - English edition

... Because I'm running the game with my French group next week.

Before I do anything, let's meet our participants!

GM Nai: That would be me, I've started playing DnD about 12 years ago with a single session of Second Edition, and then moved on to third, which I played essentially every day during high school. When 4E came out, I fell in love. 8 months later, I got bored, joined the OSR and have been running retro-clones since. I've also GMed pretty much all of the major RPGs at some point, and ran quite a few small press games. Even though I've been playing a lot of DnD lately, I dream of narrativist gaming at night

Alex: Alex doesn't have much experience with roleplaying games. I introduced him with Anima: Beyond Fantasy (forgive me) and he has since joined the band. He's played a few indie RPGs, some retro-clone games, a session of VtR and a session of MHRP. He played the Cleric of Pelor

Kevin: Kevin as pretty much only played 4E. He's just joined the group and it was his first game with us. He's been looking foward to, on one hand, try out 5E, and also wishes to try out old school games at some point in the future. He played the rogue.

Frank: Frank's been a good friend of mine since high-school, and he's there at essentially every one of my gaming sessions. He's a less of a narrativist gamer than I am, but our tastes are pretty much in sync. He played the fighter.

Francis: Another high school buddy from way back. As far as I can tell, he likes everything. Especially superhero RPGs, but he's not really fussy. I've never really seen him complain about a system. He played the wizard.

Shea: Shea's played one other gaming session with me, using ACKS, but otherwise as no experience in roleplaying games whatsoever. He's very eager to learn, though, and is quite active for a newer addition. He played the Cleric of Moradin.

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My Opinion, Pre-Game

I'm a neophile. I like shiny and new, but knowing myself as being such a person, I tried as much as possible to keep my excitement down, as to be able to get a decent playtest, instead of turning into a blabbering schoolgirl.

I still really liked this. I thought advantage was a really clever mechanic and seemed to cut down on a lot of math. I loved how it was, to me, a modern retro-clone, alittle less retro than ACKS and LotFP, sure, but still a second generation retro-clone. I loved the old school monsters, but also loved that each of them had a little twist. The spells were all nice and flavorful, and having both Vancian spells and cantrips/orisons meant everyone could do something every turn. In short, I had be overcome by my neophiliac ways.

The Game Session

The party murdered everything. It started with the kobolds, who were victims of bad luck, outside of their caves. On of them escaped, got reinforcement, and set an ambush inside the cave. The party never came, they left for the goblin's den instead.

First encounter things of note : Nothing of note, really, the rogue tried to hide in a bush and failed miserably, but it was a kobold massacre.

Things got crazy, fast. The 8 or so goblins were getting crushed, and a few of them decided to run off and plead to the hobgoblins in room 23 for help. 13 hobgoblins went down the stairs, and they were all murdered one-by one, save one of them, who after getting seperated from his group, went to get the Ogre to help and ran. The ogre died in about 3 rounds, not hitting once.

Second encounter report : I thought that was getting out of hands, fast, but it ended up being a really tense and fun encounter. Everybody spent some of their ressources, the cleric of Moradin's Defender ability made him and the fighter a terrifying. The rogue kept finding ways to improvise ways to hide, get advantage and get his Sneak Attack in. The wizard went down, but succeeded his first death save. The cleric of Moradin went down to 1 HP.

The players essentially kidnapped the hobgoblin children and gave them to the church of Pelor, back in town. Took the day off and came back the next morning.

They came back soon enough so that the ogres corpse was still there, stinking up the place something fierce. The went to explore his den, finding a few things he kept to himself, including the keg of brandy. For some reason, the Fighter and the Cleric of Pelor decided to get drunk in the middle of the caves, and start partying loudly. This, obviously, was a terrible idea, calling over about the 20-something goblins nearby, and their warchief.

Third Encounter report : That was a strange encounter. The goblins barely managed to scratch anyone (the two that were hit were intoxicated, thus took less damage), even if they had surprise and were, well, a hoard. The wizard cast sleep and managed to knock out about two thirds of them, there were 8 goblins and the warchief still up. The rest of the round was pretty uneventful. On the goblins second turn, the warchief managed to hit the Cleric of Moradin, making it so all of his 8 goblin buddies had advantage against him for the turn. The cleric then proceded to dodge 8 goblin attacks while they had advantage, it was a little ridiculous. The team barely took damage, and pressed on.

Our heroes went on to find the hobgoblin warchief and a retinue of guards (like, 10-ish of them, if I recall right). Using the oil in the rogue's bull's eye Lantern, they slicked the stairs down of which they were fighting, and won, mostly to pushing, slipping and shoving. The lone hobgoblin warchief yielded at the end, accepting (with blood oath) to defend the nearby village for a year and a day, in exchange for his life and the life of his few remaining men.

Fourth Encouter report : Clever thinking can and will always dominate combat. Oiling stairs is always funny, too.

Thoughts About the Playtest

We had a blast. My favorite bit was the lack of flanking mechanic forced the rogue to find new and interesting ways to hide and get advantage. I really liked the spells in general (perhaps except spiritual hammer, which, when used, was a little underwhelming due to misses, but I digress) and absolutely love the advantage/disadvantage system. The character sheets were nice and it was really easy to explain what worked how to all the players, even the ones with little experience in RPGs.

The only thing I found a little off was the Comprehend Language spell. I felt like it should've had a ritual version. Just saying.

I'll post the player reports when I get them.

Great report, sounds like it was fun. I look forward to seeing the player reports!

Solid playtest, thanks for sharing your experience.

Agreed on the comprehend languages ritual version. That's exactly the sort of spell that should have one.

Cheers!
Kinak

Just a trend I've noticed that really came out with your report: people who seem to have a lot of fun with the playtest play the game in an old-school manner (creative players, quick thinking, intelligent monsters, living world) whereas those who really hate the playtest play the game in a new-school manner (room-to-room slogfests of static encounters, rigid thinking, over-reliance on character powers, little improvisation)--and I say this as a relatively new-school gamer who grew up on 3.5 and likes his shiny fighter powers.

B.T. said:

Just a trend I've noticed that really came out with your report: people who seem to have a lot of fun with the playtest play the game in an old-school manner (creative players, quick thinking, intelligent monsters, living world) whereas those who really hate the playtest play the game in a new-school manner (room-to-room slogfests of static encounters, rigid thinking, over-reliance on character powers, little improvisation)--and I say this as a relatively new-school gamer who grew up on 3.5 and likes his shiny fighter powers.

Click to expand...

Not untrue, but it's not necessarily a habit that can't be beat. Our rogue has never played anything other than 4e, save a couple of convention games a few weeks back, and he did a great job using creativity to give himself Advantage. That being said, he did mention after the game that he found it a little daunting, admitting that, as a 4E player, he wasn't used to thinking outside the character sheet box. I think he took cues from the guys with old-school experience and helped a lot.

Frank's playtest report

Overall experience

It felt really old school. In a good way. I was genuinly afraid my character would die, which adds to the fun of the game. In fourth ed, I never felt like the team could fail but this time. We were in deep trouble more than once. Other than that, it's fun to see people trying to think out of the box, especially for the rogue.

DM's note: Well, I'm not willing to say that 4E was all that kind to its players, I've seen TPKs and have had character deaths on balanced encounters. But I digress.

Likes

Old school goodness, really simple and streamlined rules. Advantage and disadvantage system is fun.

DM's note: Advantage/disadvantage system seems to please everyone

Dislikes

Fighter lacks versatility at level one. You pretty much just hit things. But something tells me you'll get more options as you level up.

DM's note: A lot of the players complained about that, but chalked it off to being first level, thus weren't really bothered by it.

If you could change one thing, what would it be?

Add a theme for people who like to play with the battlefield a little. Maybe so that it gives bonus to improvised weapons or something.

DM's note: Character creation can't come soon enough for any of us.

What was your favorite moment and why?

When we oiled the staircase to beat the hobgoblin horde. Because it was the perfect example of thinking out of the box.

DM's note: That was pretty great.

Did you feel like your character got the chance to shine? How so, or why not?

More or less. I had a moment to shine everytime I dealt damage, because fighter kills things good.

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Four more players to come whenever they send their reports in.

Kevin's Report

Overall experience

I've never really played a rogue before, so I tried to list all the rogue tropes and make my character the exact opposite. An honest, hard-working, loyal repairman. I think it worked well, which is a testament to how these classes can both capture the traditional feel of the archetype, but also be open to interpretation and reskinning.

I was supposed to be master of all skills. Unfortunately there wasn't much chance to do some skill mastering in the game so far, the best I had was a few stealth checks (and most of those ended up being 13). I started thinking that I would be constantly hiding behind someone, and shooting from advantage, but I found pretty quickly that using half my actions to attempt stealth just took up too much time. It really pushed me to look around the environment, find things I could use to get advantage and get my sneak attack in there. Combat was fast paced, I think on par with Pathfinder, although it did take us a bit of time to get used to the characters and look up spells. (I was a big fan of power cards specifically for spells in 4e, with everything you need to know right there on it, instead of looking through a big book for the five spells you have memorized.) I also kept wanting to do more on my turn, but that might just be bias from 4e.

We had both the chance to be overwhelmed (those hobgoblins almost took us down) and to overwhelm (hacking through kobolds and goblins was a cinch, especially with a big blasty wizard on our side). I had a lot of fun, and wasn't hindered at all by the rules, which I think means they worked very well. Looking forward to playing more.

DM's note: When/if you guys hit the kobold caves, you'll get your opportunity to use your thiefy skills.

Likes

Hit dice seemed like a good way to recover a bit after a fight, although I really can't tell at this point how well they'll work as we gain levels. I really like how themes and backgrounds are split up into combat and roleplaying, how you can min/max for combat without your character development suffering.

Dislikes

I still have issues with the advantage/disadvantage system. First, making everyone roll 2d20 most of the time means most people will need a second d20 to play (most will want one, anyway). It also makes it feel like a different game. Instead of anything riding on one die, it's riding on two. I worry critical hits will seem less amazing when you're twice as likely to get one. I know statistically it only bumps up the expected value to 13 or 14, but I'm sure people will start saving their big attacks for when they have advantage. It'll make something like the cleric of Pelor disintegrating the ogre with Searing Light just not be as impressive, it'll be more expected. But, I know it makes the calculations so much simpler, and it really is a neat way of keeping track of things. In a non-D&D game, I'd be all over it.
Also, I glanced at the Bestiary. I really hope they develop stats blocks as easy to read as they had for 4e, those things were great.

DM's note: I'm just glad there's no confirming criticals, really.

If you could change one thing, what would it be?

Character abilities are all very straightforward and clear, but they're scattered. I had to flip between my class features and theme feats and basic attacks for a bit before I got the hang of everything my character can do. I know it's probably just a matter of organization on the character sheet, but I'm hoping these can be brought together, maybe into a COMBAT section.

What was your favorite moment and why?

Deciding what to do with the hobgoblin children was a classic D&D moment, I'm glad it was in there. I also thought it was great that we had a big discussion about it, brought them back to town to start training them for paladins of good, then the next day came back to the caves, immediately found some goblin children and killed them because we didn't want to go through it again.

Did you feel like your character got the chance to shine? How so, or why not?
For sure. The rogue feels like the most well done character so far. From what I understand about older rogues (granted, that's mostly from the Legends and Lore column) they needed to spend every turn trying to get advantage. I was certainly desperate to, and I know that'll only get more intense as Sneak Attack increases every level. I didn't feel I was a necessary part of the group, in combat or out (especially since we didn't find any locked doors or traps), but I definitely had a chance to do interesting, rewarding things every turn.