Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tashtego" data-source="post: 6461511" data-attributes="member: 5373">Here is some feedback from sessions <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?367693-N-E-W-Playtest-Prison-Planet&p=6461499&viewfull=1#post6461499" target="_blank">2 (Block Wars)</a> and <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?367693-N-E-W-Playtest-Prison-Planet&p=6461505&viewfull=1#post6461505" target="_blank">3 (Outbreak)</a> of Prison Planet. See links for story notes.Playtest comments from Session 2 and 3 of Prison Planet:SystemSystem 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/ExploitsConfusion 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.)CountdownsI 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.CombatHow 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?)XPI 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."</blockquote>

Verification