We've started our 'Prison Planet' mini-campaign to test N.E.W, and to give us a mental break before we finish up our high level 4E D&D campaign.
A short session write-up is here.
Below is the feedback I have from the character creation and short first session.
GM comments:
It was hard to build an encounter. I didn't know how the level of the enemies related to the PCs. Given the sub-systems for spaceships and so forth, I feel an encounter system is appropriate.
Does REP, LUC and TECH start at 0 or 2? What about credits? Shouldn't all of these scores be at the grid at the top of the character sheet?
Also the grid at the top of the sheet is in the wrong order from the character building grid at the bottom.
For countdowns, is the dicepool made up of the attribute score, or the attribute dice? If dice, the countdown won't last for very long.
Comments from Various Players
GENERAL SYSTEM
Many features make it seem designed for more competent characters. Beginning characters are going to have most rolls at 2 or 3 dice, so a difficulty of 10 and taking dice away for exploits make it extremely hard to do anything. If it is designed for more competent characters, make starting characters more competent.
GENERAL CHARACTER GENERATION
Is the system supposed to be generic or not? The rules and careers imply a setting, rather than something generic.
Some exploits are too specific, eg. persuasive only affects buying things
Player T notes "Are we actually expected to build characters with this "random chance" stuff or is it just optional? Early D&D was much-maligned for suggesting this. Sure it's fun and can be interesting, but sometimes you want to make a specific character and it gets in the way, because most of them do have a significant impact on the build. When making the builds I pretty much ignored any size changes (from rolling very high/low on weight/height mod) simply because it seemed a bit too powerbuildy to choose one, and instead I selected from within the same-size range. Might be better if special size was selectable as some kind of exploit or point spend."
Career system incompatible with a generic game, as characters far too narrow and too few choices for the wide array of possible settings. Need a defined setting or more flexible system.
Careers very restrictive in requirements and abilities, must take 'empty level' careers, get feats that don't suit character, etc. This forces players to choose between taking careers they want and minmaxing for the skills they want by taking weird careers choices (“I wanted to be a cop, but I became an assassin so I could shoot properly”). Also results in cookie-cutter behaviour - all people with career X use exploit Y because they all get that exploit.
Very few sci-fi careers, they seem mostly generic modern-day. No careers for common sci-fi characters such as astronaut, colonist, corporate, cyborg, genetically engineered, hacker, security officer, mercenary, explorer, AI, other types of robot, uplift, activist, techie, mecha pilot.
Players wanted a skill tree diagram.
Missing career – band member.
Assassin in military rather than criminal.
A lot of focus on military careers, others do not have detail. Many careers fairly similar.
Military careers are more flexible - more than one way to get the same career.
Player M asks "WTF is a space jockey? do they ride space horses?"
ALIENS
Aliens are stereotypical and similar to humans - they even get the same age categories.
EXPLOITS
The LOG attribute exploits actually refer to INT.
Attribute exploits for Log all rely on having a decent Int, making them useless for certain builds that have good Log but no Int boosts (and most of the Log careers don't increase Int)
The CHA universal exploits are too high to apply to be accessible beginning characters. The players suggested a range of low stat exploits
Some exploits are too specific, eg. persuasive only affects buying things
The exploits only seem to relate to combat.
Not enough exploits to suit social characters; the exploits were mainly used for combat.
SKILLS
Skills are confusing - what do they actually do? Many are self-explanatory, but why is "Carousing" a specific non-hobby skill? The skills section opens with saying the list is open-ended, but since your starting skills have a set list it would be helpful to at least explain what some of them are used for in that chapter (some skills are explained better later on, but it's difficult to reference them).
AMBUSH TURNS
Which attribute is used to calculate ambush turns? It just says "an attribute check". So, any one is fine? Or Agility only? Intuition?
INITIATIVE
Player T notes: "How do you calculate initiative? It says in Combat it's a straight Intuition check (presumably with +1d6 for Tactics, unlike derived stats) but if you look at the sample character sheets some have Initiative of 5d6 despite Intuition dice pools of 3d6. Conflicting information. Luck/Rep dice pools are also in conflict here, I left them uncalculated in my builds."
CLIMBING SPEED
Climbing speed can be raised to equal Speed by taking the Nimble exploit - is the Climbing skill's effective +1 to Agi overwritten by this, or applied after?
A short session write-up is here.
Below is the feedback I have from the character creation and short first session.
GM comments:
It was hard to build an encounter. I didn't know how the level of the enemies related to the PCs. Given the sub-systems for spaceships and so forth, I feel an encounter system is appropriate.
Does REP, LUC and TECH start at 0 or 2? What about credits? Shouldn't all of these scores be at the grid at the top of the character sheet?
Also the grid at the top of the sheet is in the wrong order from the character building grid at the bottom.
For countdowns, is the dicepool made up of the attribute score, or the attribute dice? If dice, the countdown won't last for very long.
Comments from Various Players
GENERAL SYSTEM
Many features make it seem designed for more competent characters. Beginning characters are going to have most rolls at 2 or 3 dice, so a difficulty of 10 and taking dice away for exploits make it extremely hard to do anything. If it is designed for more competent characters, make starting characters more competent.
GENERAL CHARACTER GENERATION
Is the system supposed to be generic or not? The rules and careers imply a setting, rather than something generic.
Some exploits are too specific, eg. persuasive only affects buying things
Player T notes "Are we actually expected to build characters with this "random chance" stuff or is it just optional? Early D&D was much-maligned for suggesting this. Sure it's fun and can be interesting, but sometimes you want to make a specific character and it gets in the way, because most of them do have a significant impact on the build. When making the builds I pretty much ignored any size changes (from rolling very high/low on weight/height mod) simply because it seemed a bit too powerbuildy to choose one, and instead I selected from within the same-size range. Might be better if special size was selectable as some kind of exploit or point spend."
Career system incompatible with a generic game, as characters far too narrow and too few choices for the wide array of possible settings. Need a defined setting or more flexible system.
Careers very restrictive in requirements and abilities, must take 'empty level' careers, get feats that don't suit character, etc. This forces players to choose between taking careers they want and minmaxing for the skills they want by taking weird careers choices (“I wanted to be a cop, but I became an assassin so I could shoot properly”). Also results in cookie-cutter behaviour - all people with career X use exploit Y because they all get that exploit.
Very few sci-fi careers, they seem mostly generic modern-day. No careers for common sci-fi characters such as astronaut, colonist, corporate, cyborg, genetically engineered, hacker, security officer, mercenary, explorer, AI, other types of robot, uplift, activist, techie, mecha pilot.
Players wanted a skill tree diagram.
Missing career – band member.
Assassin in military rather than criminal.
A lot of focus on military careers, others do not have detail. Many careers fairly similar.
Military careers are more flexible - more than one way to get the same career.
Player M asks "WTF is a space jockey? do they ride space horses?"
ALIENS
Aliens are stereotypical and similar to humans - they even get the same age categories.
EXPLOITS
The LOG attribute exploits actually refer to INT.
Attribute exploits for Log all rely on having a decent Int, making them useless for certain builds that have good Log but no Int boosts (and most of the Log careers don't increase Int)
The CHA universal exploits are too high to apply to be accessible beginning characters. The players suggested a range of low stat exploits
Some exploits are too specific, eg. persuasive only affects buying things
The exploits only seem to relate to combat.
Not enough exploits to suit social characters; the exploits were mainly used for combat.
SKILLS
Skills are confusing - what do they actually do? Many are self-explanatory, but why is "Carousing" a specific non-hobby skill? The skills section opens with saying the list is open-ended, but since your starting skills have a set list it would be helpful to at least explain what some of them are used for in that chapter (some skills are explained better later on, but it's difficult to reference them).
AMBUSH TURNS
Which attribute is used to calculate ambush turns? It just says "an attribute check". So, any one is fine? Or Agility only? Intuition?
INITIATIVE
Player T notes: "How do you calculate initiative? It says in Combat it's a straight Intuition check (presumably with +1d6 for Tactics, unlike derived stats) but if you look at the sample character sheets some have Initiative of 5d6 despite Intuition dice pools of 3d6. Conflicting information. Luck/Rep dice pools are also in conflict here, I left them uncalculated in my builds."
CLIMBING SPEED
Climbing speed can be raised to equal Speed by taking the Nimble exploit - is the Climbing skill's effective +1 to Agi overwritten by this, or applied after?
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