Getting a Play-test Group Together

Morning all. I’m having a bout of not sleeping so thought I ramble a bit on here to relieve the tedium. So where is Hydra at? Well – had a meet up with the core RPG-ers a couple of nights ago and chatted about the framework. Also, showed off the draft character sheet and disclosed/discussed some stuff on the make up of Hydra. So far, so good, everyone very excited. Then, last night rolled up some of a character with a play-tester.

Was a bit difficult rolling up with someone I don’t know very well. However, he seems happy with what’s been done so far, although I’m sure I’ve mangled the lived experience/age/occupational years thing which is a bit tricky. I’ll have to check it over when I have more of a brain. Roleplayed a bit for his character development and he wants to meet up next week to finish off the character rolling. Have another play-tester lined up for next week. My original players want to roll up at the end of next month. It all goes well so far.

Have some more interested parties – and am going to have few slots left for the play-test, and developing game. All of which is GOOD NEWS! For a DM to have PC’s falling over to game is weird quite frankly, but good.

I have realised two things – need a proper character sheet pronto. Also, need to work very hard on the old campaign setting/scenario for play-testing. Also, need to develop props for the post play-testing phase.

Play-tester one found the roll up fine – made sense, wasn’t peturbed at the lack of numbers for the attributes/skills/traits and seemed to enjoy collaborating on the background development of the character. He’s rolling up a White Wizard/Wizard in the making which is straight into the deep end with magic which is pretty much only just finished. Have now got to properly flesh out the Wizard Ulris for the game as he’s going to be the Mentor Wizard for the play-testers character. Happens to fit in neatly with my NPC’s character development. Really enjoyed the bit of roleplaying in the character development with the play-tester, playing a cantakerous mentor Wizard. We also have some thinking to do about the origins of his character which emerged neatly as a consequence of his choice of character type.

There are some mechanical bits that are a bit fiddly, but I reckon once the occupational skills bit is done it’ll whistle through. Just was a bit awkard first time and with an audience as well chipping in somewhat unhelpfully. He wants to roll up a Wizard as well – which would be magic overkill, so that can’t really happen.

Think I will be down the club tomorrow night if but briefly to pick up some books from another role-player (hoorah! more source stuff).

Another GM suggested calling the game system Chimera rather than Hydra, which may well happen after the play-test revisions. I like that idea for a game system name :)

Another Round of Player Preferences and My Own

Finally I’ve stopped slacking – here are more of the player preferences for the game-world system, and mine as well tacked onto the end.

My fellow player provided me with a summary of his highlights/lowlights of past systems we’ve played, which proved useful.

Tunnels & Trolls: The saving throw in T&T (20 + 5Xlvl)= Target on 2d6+ attribute being tested). (This kind of roll is applied in CoC V in resistance rolls and characteristic testing so a version will be used in the fused game!).

No racial stereotyping. A non-humano-centric world. (Ok, so the world I’ve chosen isn’t as non-humano-centric as he would probably like, but its not as racially stereotyped as past campaign worlds – e.g. middle-earth).

D&D good feel for fantasy – too class bound. (Getting some inspiration from AD&D 2nd Edition for the world-setting, and from other AD&D materials for the world development so I think this ticks this box to some degree). And we’re not having a class based system but a more flexible HM-like skills-based occupational system.

RQ(III) – can’t remember too much about it now but the magic system was lousy as I recall – too complicated. Combat good but could be quite involved. (Fortunately I’ve gone with RQII rather than III, to up the mystery component. Our combat is largely CoC with some minor RQII twist for bits that CoC can’t handle so less involved than RQIII or II. I have drawn from RQII for the magic inspiration – RQIII magic was a pain.  RQII is pretty different though so hopefully this in conjunction with the fact that I’m also merging the RQII magic system into the AD&D type world-setting will change it up a lot. I considered using the HM system – but, he knows it too well – and I want that air of mystery and need for discovery. Also RQII and CoC are better in terms of compatability.)

HM (All editions) – beautiful character development – perfectly paced skill enhancement. Combat dragged the game down to a morass. Very powerful and flexible magic system. (Agree with all of the above and have therefore only taken minimally from HM. Not combat. Bits of CD that are compatible with CoC. Have used the CoC skill development which is HM like – not so well crafted but less to administrate which is a pragmatic concern for the GM. Besides – all players know HM too well!).

CoC like RQ but allowed guns. Hated sanity rules. Quick and fun combat. (Ok – so I dropped the Sanity stuff like a hot potato!).

So, loves: quick but sufficiently detailed combat, detailed character
development, rich gameworld, sense of adventure and wonder (like Tim).
hates: power gaming (min/maxing), mechanic heavy combat, arguing over
minutiae (especially in combat), no danger
wishes: to have that sense of tingling excitement when you  start an
adventure.

My own preferences/dislikes are:

a rich world, highly detailed, preferably in advance that affords short, medium and long-term story-telling opportunities, exploration and fantasy escapism

potentially far-reaching campaigns, but also with short and mid-term group-shared (if possible) goals

overall a developed capacity for inter and intra character group conflict/cololaboration i.e. dynamic social expression, where it affords good story-telling, drama, exciting combats (with less mechanical drudgery and mental effort), narrow-escapes and dramatic deaths.

mind-numbing tedium of calculations to the nth degree and endless debates about bloody rules

power-gaming for whatever reason that leads to campaign destruction

not being able to ‘wing it’ and go ‘off-piste’ at any time for any reason.

So there you go the round of preferences is over.

Hopefully it’s fairly obvious how the preferences have influenced the system choices, and weighting of various system-parts with each other.

As I mentioned in the previous blog post, I’ve got to the point of the second draft with attendant mutations. I’ve got a gaming framework sorted which I’ll publish seperately. For now I can say that I have a working title for the system – yeah it’s about fusion, but more specifically for this little beast its a Hydra (because it’s multiply headed so to speak and more than a hybrid).