Daggerheart 1.3 playtest dropping Tuesday.

[Micah Sweet]

part of a beta is taking feedback from your players (Aka your customers). If their user base is suggesting they want things a little less narrative and a little more mechanical…than as a design team they need to decide what that means. Right now they are seeing if this optional rule is enough. Maybe it goes too far, maybe they decide to go further.

The key is that they are experimenting, so let them experiment

I admit I am very curious about where on the spectrum of narrative - mechanical Daggerheart ends up on. The other GM in my group is very excited to run this for us.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Having helped playtest some board games in the past, very few games remain unchanged by playtesting…for good reason.

this is exactly the point of a beta, and it’s not like they swapped out core narratives for strict mechanics. The fundamental game hasn’t change here, they threw a bone to the more mechanical oriented tables as optional rules…I don’t get the issue with that.

Now if they made the optional rules the default, sure i could see the concern that they were changing their vision in the face of the committee, but that’s a stretch at this point

Well we certainly can't draw any conclusions yet, I think, but there's also a big difference between public playtesting and in-house playtesting. They often have different goals. Look at WotC.

 

[overgeeked]

I was supporting your post with an example.

Sorry. This place makes me jumpy sometimes.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yes, I know. That's literally what I said. That's a flaw in the player's attitude, not a flaw in the design of games.

“Win at any cost” is a fairly all-pervasive attitude. How often have you heard sports team coaches say “we are not here to have fun, we are here to win” or similar?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

If you write a game with a ton of features and rules that improve your performance in combat, this tells the players that this is the sort of game where mechanics matter and winning combats is a goal. So it is then strange to say that the player have "an attitude problem" if they try to play tactically using these rules to win combats.

 

[Stalker0]

Yes, I know. That's literally what I said. That's a flaw in the player's attitude, not a flaw in the design of games.

Ah yes blame your users, the first step to success for any budding enterprise

 

[SteveC]

“Win at any cost” is a fairly all-pervasive attitude. How often have you heard sports team coaches say “we are not here to have fun, we are here to win” or similar

I could not disagree with this more in terms of RPGs. I did hear it, but that was back in the 70s and 80s, and it was people who came to RPGs from miniature wargames and treated D&D as being just an extension of that. I definitely don't see this attitude in Critical Role, so I have no idea why it would be an expectation for an RPG they would create.

For me, what should happen is that different characters should always be a reasonable choice to take action in a combat. Maybe not the best choice, but a reasonable one. Maybe that means automatically giving some combat abilities, because I'm sure there will be some players who are going to create a character with entirely social/exploration abilities. And if the player and the group are okay with them not doing much in combat, I suppose that is okay, but I definitely think there needs to be some guidance and maybe even assurance that they will have something to do.

I don't get the vibe (especially in 1.3 where the GM moves and how to run the game are discussed a bit more) that this is a "combat as war" RPG. You can make any game serve any role, but I think in general they'd be better served by another system.

 

[Zaukrie]

I'll ask again, has anyone that actually played had a player take all the turns? Has any table not mostly taken turns like normal?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'll ask again, has anyone that actually played had a player take all the turns? Has any table not mostly taken turns like normal?

There has been nothing like sufficient playtesting of any kind, but there are several accounts of GMs house-ruling turn-taking in combat.

 

[Reynard]

There has been nothing like sufficient playtesting of any kind, but there are several accounts of GMs house-ruling turn-taking in combat.

Right, usually before they even play. Which is a bad way to test a game, but a good way to enjoy yourself by leaning on something you know.