Here's a copy of what I commented on your itch page (I unfortunately didn't know that one can also rate games this way):
First Impressions
Here's my personal(!) impression after reading through the First Draft:
Let me start with the positive:
The
artwork, which, together with the promise of GM-optional play,
convinced me to back this game in the first place, turned out really
nice, evocative and a pleasure to look at. As I'm writing this, the
GM-less rules aren't finished yet, so I unfortunately can't tell if
they're any good.
Unfortunately, there's also quite a number of things that bog me(!) about this first version of the rules:
First of all, the core resolution mechanic raises questions for me: It says that, when a player rolls a 15+ they either get to create an opening or overcome a challenge. The same applies when they rolled a 10+,
a partial success, except that there are some drawbacks. Here's what
irritates me: It seems to me that the option of overcoming an obstacle
is far more powerful than the other one - If you can straight up
overcome a challenge, why would you need to create an advantage first?
To me at least it would make more sense to limit the option of
overcoming a challenge to 15+ results or maybe make openings created by a 15+ roll more impactful.
Second of all, the term communities
comes up multiple times: It is mentioned how important they are to a
hero up to the point that a hero's home town should serve as one of
their motivations to go on adventures. That's all well and good but I'd
very much appreciate a paragraph of the text that introduces an actual mechanical benefit to them. Instead, like many others too, this topic is touched upon, but not further developed.
At
last, I'd really like to see an example of play included in the book -
Perhaps it could help to clarify some ambiguities (although I should
mention that an instructional video seems to be planned once the game is
finished).
To conclude:
I know that i criticized many things about this game and of course I am aware of the fact that it still in early developement the animal companion aspect should be revised, by the way,
but i hope you'll take this as constructive criticism and not as an
angry rant. This game is by no means awful and I don't want to prevent
anyone from buying it (seriously, give this a try once it's finished!),
it's just that, at it's current (very early) state of developement, I believe I can see some less well done design deciscions.
If you're the creator of this game and reading this:
After I've made the effort of typing all of this bulls***, I'd be really happy to see you answering to this comment and take apart my argumentation !
Again, I'd be happy to see you respond! ^^
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