Any playtest stories from the Weekend

[Stormonu]

Seems like by this time in the last playtest, we had scores of playtest posts about people's actual game experiences with the play packet. Perhaps the delay is due to Folks being at Gencon, but I thought I'd put this out to get the ball rolling.

And sadly, no, I haven't gotten to run a playtest for the new packet; I don't think I'm going to get to playtest at all this time around

 

[Ellington]

We had a short session last night. You can check it out here.

 

[pauljathome]

Seems like by this time in the last playtest, we had scores of playtest posts about people's actual game experiences with the play packet. Perhaps the delay is due to Folks being at Gencon, but I thought I'd put this out to get the ball rolling.

And sadly, no, I haven't gotten to run a playtest for the new packet; I don't think I'm going to get to playtest at all this time around

At this point, neither my group nor I care enough to actually playtest these rules. Its obvious from a quick reading that they're
1) Very, very unfinished and significantly unbalanced
2) Not to our tastes.
3) Going to change hugely anyway

I really hope that I'm an outlier. If I'm not, then the playtesting will definitely yield very, very skewed results.

 

[Agamon]

I'll add 4) the updates are insignificant compared to the time to get them (so far, anyway). If we got more timely updates of less significance or slower updates of greater significance (which was my expectation), I'd be happy to playtest. But as it stands, my group has moved on to playing ACKS and we don't have time to play more than one game.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

At this point, neither my group nor I care enough to actually playtest these rules. Its obvious from a quick reading that they're
1) Very, very unfinished and significantly unbalanced
2) Not to our tastes.
3) Going to change hugely anyway

I really hope that I'm an outlier. If I'm not, then the playtesting will definitely yield very, very skewed results.

Playtesting is all about those points! Identify where it's unbalanced, tell them what isn't to your taste and help it change hugely. If it was finished, it would just be playing.

 

[IronWolf]

Playtesting is all about those points! Identify where it's unbalanced, tell them what isn't to your taste and help it change hugely. If it was finished, it would just be playing.

I do agree with you that playtesting is what helps sort this all out.

But I can certainly understand people reading through something and seeing it so outside of what they want in a game that they lose their motivation to actually playtest it.

I find myself in a similar situation. The first playtest hit right in the general area of my expectations of what I would like to see in a game. This one does not seem near what I would like to see. I haven't ruled out playtesting it, but let's just say my desire to play with these playtest rules was greater with the first playtest than this one.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I got to run a bit of the adventure yesterday. I never had a chance to actually play the first playtest, so this was a good experience. Unfortunately, the opportunity appeared without any significant time to prepare, so I had to run the adventure without time to read the whole thing first. It's not very well designed for that.

That aside, we played. Character creation was fun, and for the most part it played like D&D. Advantage and Disadvantage worked as intended and were fairly dramatic. Nothing like having a raging Orc roll an 18 and then lose it because he rolled a 4 on his second die. It really gave the feeling of being out of control.

Sadly, I had two fighters, and we got so wrapped up in roleplaying that they both forgot about the new Combat Superiority mechanics, so we didn't get to try them out.

The only complaint from one of my players is that it provided even less ability to customize your character with skills than 4E did. I'm not sure I agree, but my group tends to enjoy huge, detailed skill systems like the one in Shadowrun. I could see something of that sort being a easy module to drop in, and I like the simple baseline.

I also want to praise the spell descriptions. I like the natural language, and feel they've done a good job being clear an concise with the effect descriptions. The only change I would make is to separate out the save information.

All said, it went well, but I need to play more to really get a feel for it. Hopefully I'll get another chance soon.

 

[Stormonu]

interesting - there is no poll attached. I wish they had done one to get an idea if folks agreed with the fluff or not.

Think I'll put one up here.

 

[pauljathome]

Playtesting is all about those points! Identify where it's unbalanced, tell them what isn't to your taste and help it change hugely. If it was finished, it would just be playing.

Right now its so far from what I want that it isn't worth much of my time. I'll respond to the questionaire that WOTC sends but that is all I'm going to do.

My time is valuable to me. If the game was close to what I want then I'd be willing to spend the time hoping that my suggested tweaks and input would be useful. But, they're not aiming the game at me (or they're REALLY missing the target) so my comments aren't of any real value to WOTC. Presumably, they already know that people who think Pathfinder Sorcerors and Wizards are sort of kind of balanced are going to look at that sorceror and think "Holy Crap. How could they put out something as insanely unbalanced as this is?"

 

[Raith5]

I am unlikely to test this. My 4th ed group has zero interest in DDN. Personally I want to see D&D go in new directions and try new things, so DDN is certainly going against my desires in most respects.

But I want to stay in the tent so to speak and have my say if I can. So I really value people's efforts to discuss their playtest efforts.