Ran the playtest last night. In a word: AWESOME!

[Keldryn]

I DMed the playtest packet last night for a group of four players. Overall, everyone had a great time.

Despite the fact that it was a new ruleset, the game was very fast-paced and ran smoothly. We played for about 3 hours, and the players were able to (Caves of Chaos spoilers):

[sblock]

• scout out the bottom of the ravine to see what their options were. They used the clusters of trees for cover and took advantage of the poor daylight vision of the goblin and orc sentries. Looking at the Bestiary after the fact, it doesn't mention any daylight sensitivity -- I just assumed it was still there.
• fight the ogre in his cave, which took about 10 or 15 minutes
• enter the goblin lair and use their slaying of the ogre to their advantage. My wife's fighter rolled a natural 20 on her Intimidate check, leading to the goblin chief doing a riff on a sketch from Monty Python's Meaning of Life ("oh you are so big and mighty, please don't hurt us! You are so very, very big.")
• fight 5 separate battles in the hobgoblin lair; the goblins told the party about the hobgoblins stealing from them, so the party asked to search their storeroom for secret doors. They found it and went in the back way.

[/sblock]

There were a few pauses to look things up, and I wasn't quite as well prepared as I'd have liked, so I imagine that this version will run even faster after a few sessions.

I resisted the temptation to tweak the rules in the packet until I'd actually run at least one session of it.

Surprisingly, I think the game played better without AoOs. Players just moved where they wanted to go and did their action, instead of moving their miniature and then holding on to it like a chess piece until checking every square to see if they got attacked. This sped up combat quite a bit.

I love the advantage and disadvantage mechanics. Meaningful effects without fiddly modifiers.

I like the monster design philosophy so far. Run-of-the-mill critters are build much like they are in AD&D, but the exceptional ones, such as the hobgoblin warchief, have a couple of 4e-inspired abilities in addition to being tougher. My brain can handle that.

I didn't think I'd like so much at-will magic as DM, but it was all good. The wizard can detect magic at will, so I don't have to keep notes as to which items that they pick up are magical for when they cast the spell at a later time. The wizard's magic missile spell was always useful, although the player found it to get a little dull after a while, as it was her only real option if she wanted to stay out of melee range. It definitely wasn't overpowered.

I don't have time to write a more detailed playtest report at the moment, but I wanted to touch on the highlights. There were of course a few things that didn't feel quite right (heavy armor needs to be better, sleep didn't seem that useful), but they were minor in the grand scheme of things. The core of the game seems solid and flexible and allows for a much faster game than I'm used to with 3e or 4e. And for me, that means more fun. The game feels a lot like Basic/Expert D&D but with more options.

I can't wait to run the next session!

 

[Aehrlon]

Heheh, watch you don't violate that NDA (wink). Actually, I don't think play-testers are not supposed to talk about the play-test, just not copy and disseminate materials to people not signed up for the playtest. I DMed a 3 hour session on Friday. It was fun & my players liked a lot of what you described. The ability scores play a much more important role in the game than they have in a long time. There is definitely a "retro-ish" feel to things that I know others have mentioned. The PDFs put out are decent but as this is one of their first goes at it, it's a little rough in parts. And there are certain thing not there that I would very much like to see as at least options in the finished game... Like flanking and opportunity attacks.

Critical hits are weaksauce. Only doing max damage?!? You can do that, or very close to it without a critical. It needs to be beefed-up, like add 1 additional die to the total.

the Auto hit Magic Missile which can hit every round can arguably make a Wizard a better damage dealer (at least reliably) at lower levels. No other class shown so far gets Automatic hits for guaranteed damage... well, the Fighter still did some damage even when he missed do to a special ability, I can't say how much.