N.E.W. Playtest Feedback - Prison Planet - System Notes - Sessions 2 and 3

[Tashtego]

Here is some feedback from sessions 2 (Block Wars) and 3 (Outbreak) of Prison Planet. See links for story notes.

Playtest comments from Session 2 and 3 of Prison Planet:

System
System feels very swingy to players, especially as dicepools increase. One player said it was fun building a character, but not much fun to play because of the swinginess (i.e. too variable/volatile between missing and hitting. "I would play it again if fixed"). One PC kept rolling low despite 6 dice. It was hard to hit the suggested target numbers – either PCs missed a lot, or piled on the XP to boost stats/skills and then became extremely competent. It was hard to judge how effective characters were because of this swingingness, and this gets worse as more d6s get added to the dicepools.

Luck dice feel to weak to compensate for swinginess.

Skills/Exploits
Confusion about INT and LOG exploits – some INT exploits should apply to LOG. Not enough LOG exploits for science characters in combat (e.g. jury-rigging, analysing weaknesses).

What is the point of the Intuition skill? (I said to use it like perception, however, I don't think that there should be a skill with the same name as a stat.)

Countdowns
I wasn't sure whether to use Endurance dice numbers, or the stat number to represent PCs' infection rates during the Outbreak scenario. I didn't feel enough advice was granted by the current rulebook. I used to END stat eventually, but some players got really confused between the change in systems.

"So, roll your END score as dice... no, not the number of dice written under the stat, but the actual END number as dice. Roll it, how many sixes do get? Good, now for each six you get, reduce your your END countdown number, not the actual END stat, but a different number on your sheet.."

"Why can't we just roll d6s and add them up normally?"

"This is supposed to build tension!" [More explaining!)

Some of our casual players were still confused by the change in systems.

Combat
How do you aid another in combat?

It was thought odd to have such variable to hit pools but static Defence. (Maybe have rolled or opposed defense?)


XP
I gave out XP! I wasn't sure how much to award, so just gave out 10,000 per session amounts. PCs become very competent in their target areas, but incompetent in others. It didn't feel like the system was rewarded well-rounded characters. One player pointed out the issue between the linear XP system and the exponential dice scaling. It was odd to have the career/non-career system upgrade, given the focus of the career system in building characters.

Player Comment: "So I’m upgrading Tyke, and I realised: there’s no guidance for how much XP to give out to GMs, right? And to players, the difference between ‘cinematic’ and ‘gritty’ advancement is basically gritty = cinematic x 2 (except for careers). So that distinction isn’t meaningful to players, and makes things more confusing - instead, the GM advice could be to divide XP given by 2 for gritty campaigns, and give double XP at a point where players could advance their careers."

 

[Morrus]

Thanks for the feedback! If I might offer some advice? I realise the rulebook has no advice or guidelines in it yet - that'll likely be the last thing I do, along with the examples of how to play an RPG - but I can try to put some stuff down in writing here.

System feels very swingy to players, especially as dicepools increase. One player said it was fun building a character, but not much fun to play because of the swinginess (i.e. too variable/volatile between missing and hitting. "I would play it again if fixed"). One PC kept rolling low despite 6 dice. It was hard to hit the suggested target numbers – either PCs missed a lot, or piled on the XP to boost stats/skills and then became extremely competent. It was hard to judge how effective characters were because of this swingingness, and this gets worse as more d6s get added to the dicepools.

Could you give some examples? 6 dice is a very large dice pool - an attribute of 21+. Or is that including situational modifiers?

What were the suggested target numbers? Are we just talking attack rolls here, or other attribute checks? Are they spending dice to increase damage or achieve effects?

Confusion about INT and LOG exploits – some INT exploits should apply to LOG. Not enough LOG exploits for science characters in combat (e.g. jury-rigging, analysing weaknesses).

What is the point of the Intuition skill? (I said to use it like perception, however, I don't think that there should be a skill with the same name as a stat.)

There are indeed some legacy INTELLECT references. INTELLECT got split into LOGIC and INTUITION, so what you're seeing there are errors. Generally speaking, if it says INT but it feel like it should be LOG, it probably is LOG. My apologies; that definitely needs cleaning up.

I wasn't sure whether to use Endurance dice numbers, or the stat number to represent PCs' infection rates during the Outbreak scenario. I didn't feel enough advice was granted by the current rulebook. I used to END stat eventually, but some players got really confused between the change in systems.

"So, roll your END score as dice... no, not the number of dice written under the stat, but the actual END number as dice. Roll it, how many sixes do get? Good, now for each six you get, reduce your your END countdown number, not the actual END stat, but a different number on your sheet.."

"Why can't we just roll d6s and add them up normally?"

"This is supposed to build tension!" [More explaining!)

Some of our casual players were still confused by the change in systems.

I'm not sure, but I think you might be doing it wrong. You definitely shouldn't be writing anything down!

You form a dice pool equal to your stat. If your END is 4, you physically pick up 4d6 and place them in front of you. Each turn you roll the 4d6 and physically throw away any 6s (or whatever).

Trust me, it works! The prop usage of the dice really makes the difference. I've tried it loads of times now, and every time it feels good.

How do you aid another in combat?

It was thought odd to have such variable to hit pools but static Defence. (Maybe have rolled or opposed defense?)

There currently isn't an aid-another (very D&D!) combat action. I like the idea of specific exploits, though - aiding can take many forms, after all.

The static defence - it's a choice, yep. D&D makes the same choice - a static AC rather than rolling it each time. It's done to increase the speed of gameplay, as opposed rolls every attack can bog things down an enormous amount. That said, an optional rule in a sidebar allowing you to roll it each time wouldn't be a bad idea.

I gave out XP! I wasn't sure how much to award, so just gave out 10,000 per session amounts. PCs become very competent in their target areas, but incompetent in others.

10K for free per session? Yowzers! That's a lot! Yeah, your PCs are going to progress very rapidly at that rate.

How are they losing competence in areas?

Now, bear in mind that the XP system has not had the playtesting that the rest has, so your feedback here is immensely valuable. The costs are pretty much placeholder values right now.

It didn't feel like the system was rewarded well-rounded characters.

The intended effect there is that escalating cost scale for attribute and skill points. It becomes progressively harder to increase those attributes. Although if you're handing out 10K XP at a time, I think that would pretty much nullify the effect since they could afford even a attribute 10 upgrade every session. I envision upgrades from say 9-10 to be things they have to save up for for weeks, while a skill upgrade from 1-2, for example, they might be able to do every week. In that way, they're kind forced to diversify.

There definitely needs to be more guidelines for that! I assume you're giving monster XP as well as the free 10K per session? My advice would be to stop giving the 10K per session. Storyline rewards of a couple of hundred each occasionally when they accomplish goals are certainly appropriate, though.

That was a little rambly. Did it make sense?

 

[Tashtego]

Thanks for the feedback! If I might offer some advice? I realise the rulebook has no advice or guidelines in it yet - that'll likely be the last thing I do, along with the examples of how to play an RPG - but I can try to put some stuff down in writing here.

Could you give some examples? 6 dice is a very large dice pool - an attribute of 21+. Or is that including situational modifiers?

I have a player who specialises in optimising and breaking systems! His current character is:

6d6 to stealth - 2 AGI (Starting), Felan (+2 AGI), Scavenger (+1 AGI), Street Thug (+1 AGI), Burglar (+2 AGI), Infiltrator (+1 AGI), Burglar (+2 AGI).

So that's 11 AGI to start with, or 4d6, and then getting 2d6 in Stealth through skill raises.

So he was rolling 6d6, trying to hit the Demanding difficulty. The more dice you roll, the more variation you get in the rolls as the standard deviation increases.

A lot of his builds were focused on raising a particular stat. He's sent me some builds recently with 12 PSI, 16 Rep and so forth. I haven't audited them yet, but you can make very pointy builds in the system. (I can put up these heavily optimised builds in another thread if you're interested.

What were the suggested target numbers? Are we just talking attack rolls here, or other attribute checks? Are they spending dice to increase damage or achieve effects?

I've been using the table - 16 for difficult, 21, 25. Day to day tasks (routine) tend to fail as a lot of the PCs, even in the unoptimised ones, will only get 1-2 dice in routine tasks. They only started spending dice to for effects when they were confident that they could hit creatures in the system. At low dice pools - 2 to 3, there's not much interest in spending dice as you don't get enough of them. Aim and feint were very popular in combat. A popular turn combo was aim/attack or feint/attack.

There are indeed some legacy INTELLECT references. INTELLECT got split into LOGIC and INTUITION, so what you're seeing there are errors. Generally speaking, if it says INT but it feel like it should be LOG, it probably is LOG. My apologies; that definitely needs cleaning up.

Ok.

I'm not sure, but I think you might be doing it wrong. You definitely shouldn't be writing anything down!

You form a dice pool equal to your stat. If your END is 4, you physically pick up 4d6 and place them in front of you. Each turn you roll the 4d6 and physically throw away any 6s (or whatever).

Trust me, it works! The prop usage of the dice really makes the difference. I've tried it loads of times now, and every time it feels good.

I was doing it to simulate the PC's resistance to the virus and was doing a roll for each day of the infection. We didn't have enough d6s to leave in front of each player to simulate the countdown going on, and given the gaps between each roll (each day of game time), they had to write it down, which could have contributed to the PCs misunderstanding the system or not making it clear. What you describe only seems to work for 'sudden' countdowns in one scene, rather than a long, gradual illness. Maybe I'll a shorter time frame countdown in the next session. You should also make it clear that the countdown dice pool is based on the stat number. It also seems odd to shift dice scales from the exponential one to the linear one!

There currently isn't an aid-another (very D&D!) combat action. I like the idea of specific exploits, though - aiding can take many forms, after all.

The static defence - it's a choice, yep. D&D makes the same choice - a static AC rather than rolling it each time. It's done to increase the speed of gameplay, as opposed rolls every attack can bog things down an enormous amount. That said, an optional rule in a sidebar allowing you to roll it each time wouldn't be a bad idea.

Yeah, I think you need something offset the volatility of high d6 pools. Have you thought about shifting from d6 additive pools to something with less of a high standard deviation? (e.g. 'success' based dice pools like WoD or Shadowrun, or even allowing pluses to a dice roll, like the d6 system?) Or maybe make everything opposed, so the GM rolls a dicepool against the player rather than using a standard difficulty table with set difficulties. Just a random thought.

10K for free per session? Yowzers! That's a lot! Yeah, your PCs are going to progress very rapidly at that rate.

How are they losing competence in areas?

Just being players! Beefing up their attack/violent skills and neglecting the rest. When I beef up the difficulty to challenge the players, others get penalised as they have low pools in other areas. As you move away from the career system to freeform XP, it doesn't seem to support well-rounded characters.

Now, bear in mind that the XP system has not had the playtesting that the rest has, so your feedback here is immensely valuable. The costs are pretty much placeholder values right now.

The intended effect there is that escalating cost scale for attribute and skill points. It becomes progressively harder to increase those attributes. Although if you're handing out 10K XP at a time, I think that would pretty much nullify the effect since they could afford even a attribute 10 upgrade every session. I envision upgrades from say 9-10 to be things they have to save up for for weeks, while a skill upgrade from 1-2, for example, they might be able to do every week. In that way, they're kind forced to diversify.

There definitely needs to be more guidelines for that! I assume you're giving monster XP as well as the free 10K per session? My advice would be to stop giving the 10K per session. Storyline rewards of a couple of hundred each occasionally when they accomplish goals are certainly appropriate, though.

I use flat XP (even in D&D) rather than monster-based fights. I prefer to design encounters with different goals (e.g. get the space ship to work, survive the radiation exposure) and base these as being equivalent to each other, rather that just using monster-based XP.

There wasn't a system for story rewards, or succeeding at encounters, or even a suggestion of how much to reward for an adventure or game session, so the 10K was a punt in that direction.

That was a little rambly. Did it make sense?

It did! I would suggest tightening up on the core first (given how you can easily get pointy builds from the career system) before working on the other subsystems.

 

[Morrus]

Hyper-optimization has been an issue from the start. I do keep tweaking and dialing down stuff to prevent it, but I don't really want to tell people they can't do that (after all, that sort of character could exist); I'd rather incentive them not to. Clearly that incentive still isn't there, even when you're presenting them with non-combat tasks which their optimized combat skills aren't helping with,

In a sense, it's kinda working - in that it sounds like the optimized characters are failing at regular tasks, and hopefully they're realizing why. But that's more punitive than I'd like. I want to encourage rather than discourage, and to do so during character generation, not a few sessions later when they realise their characters aren't as useful as they thought.

That needs some thought.

I imagine this is made worse by the incremental XP expenditure system, especially when they're being given vast amounts of XP to spend.

I wonder if dialing that back (the XP rewards) to a couple of hundred rather than 10,000 will help? With less to spend, they're less likely to purchase the high-cost increases. 10K is definitely an order of magnitude higher than I imagined they'd be getting when I wrote that XP system.

I also wonder if only allowing career increases rather than the incremental stuff will help.

 

[Wojorides]

When i was running the base exp per session was 1,000 Bonuses for mission completion, good role-playing.

We did do a few house rules. The characters could advance in careers. Since a great deal of time was spent traveling from one system to another (average trip was around 15 days one way) it made sense they would be working on their careers as they traveled. The way I handled it was they spent 1,000 exp at the start of the month towards a career. (easy to slow advancement by decreasing this amount) Academic careers should take longer reflecting time to study data and practice skills. They could not advance in some careers. Since we had few civilian equivalents of the military careers, the characters could not advance in rank outside of the military. For the Trooper career, limited to Sargent, they did not have a larger group to lead so could not advance further.

The primary reason we stopped was that players felt little or no sense of accomplishment in raising skills and stats even with allowing career advancement. We STRONGLY considered using the stats for dice pool and then adding a fixed number (Rank + 2) for skill increases.

Suggestions for organization of the book. The ship building should be an Appendix or at least at the end of the book. Characters aren't going to be able to afford ships, running costs not to mention repairs. And g_d help you if you get into a battle and have repair costs. Psionics should be moved to before equipment. It's part of character creation and should be with that portion of the book. Initial impression of psionics was not good, will try and find our house rules that made those playable and post them for your review.

 

[Tashtego]

[MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] - My players (who are so enclined) have enjoyed building and tweaking characters within the career system. However, if you optimise, it's easy to build a high stat character or a character with an effective stat/skill combo like the one I mentioned above. I think the main issue is that 6 dice are considerable powerful within the starting confines of the system and quite easy to build towards. Because each d6 is so powerful when used in a pool, optimised characters can be particularly effective, especially as their numbers of d6s increase.

I will use less XP next session. However, even with the massive amounts of XP I've been giving out, the volatility of the dicepool system still remains a core issue with the system.

I still recommend building a flatter core mechanic, so that each time a stat is increased, it's not as significant as a new d6. I don't think that the current exponential dice track serves to mitigate the system volatility for pointy character builds, as mentioned above.

With career increases, the system will become more like Traveller - where characters can't improve unless they take a few years of gametime to improve. However, I do enjoy incremental career upgrades from session to session.
[MENTION=6776304]Wojorides[/MENTION] - I also agree that the system should move towards flat bonuses. I don't know if this should just be for skills, or for attributes and skills. I think you want something that preserves the fun bits of the system (career stacking, optimising) with less standard deviation (aggravated by large d6 pools).

 

[Morrus]

Optimization isn't a bad thing per se. If that's how your players enjoy playing, that's how they enjoy playing. Any non-class based system can be heavily optimized absent system-enforced limits to stop you doing it. Actually, there's an interesting thread on these boards about that very concept.

The main pushback to optimization like that isn't so much system based - though the system can help - but adventure based. Players will tend to design towards what they think is useful in the game. What might be useful is a sample adventure where a broader range of abilities is clearly shown to be "optimal" and over-specialization is shown to be less so.

In part swinginess mitigates this in systems, in that despite the difference in dice pool sizes, there's always a chance of a bad roll or a good roll overwhelming it.

I think the massive amounts of XP are probably skewing your playtesting, unfortunately, which makes it hard to evaluate - after all, if you give D&D characters 10,000 XP every session, they're going to be rocketing up, too. I know you've already started your campaign, but if you do get chance to try it as written, that would be cool. One major issue is that the XP system and advancement is the least playtested aspect of the game, especially when folks houserule it out rather than testing it. The XP numbers are likely some way off - if I got 'em right first time, I'd be amazed!

Some of this stuff is easily tweakable without altering the system; there are a number of tweakable factors built-in. For example, the starting number of career grades is arbitrary and - currently - produced fully-formed heroes rather than beginning adventurers. That was deliberate because I wanted the playtesting to occur for now in that mid-range, but the final game will have a choice of campaign models; this is the "heroic" model. Some models have characters starting with just one career, and as you can imagine, they are far less competent.

A d6 is worth 3.5 points; it's a less granular scale than D&D, for sure, and deliberately more swingy and unpredictable. Things can be dangerous even when you're experienced.