Post by londonmatthews in Playtesting Feedback

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I have been churning through my world and character generation, there are so many people to account for when you're royalty and have 7 other half-siblings!

I know as time goes on things will probably get organized differently, it did feel at moments like some of the things I needed were across the page count at the other end of the book, but I know these things will come with time so I'm not worried about it. But little things like Fate and Favor appearing in two different places (rules and starting fate/favor for SCs/NPCs) and then again later, the relationship section which has relationship statuses that depend on Fate and Favor. Made for a bit of cross-referencing.

At some point I'd picture all of the "cast" generation and management things in one place, or as close to one place as possible.

It also felt like some of the PC generation stuff got "interrupted" by NPC/SC stuff. namely you do the main things, then read about SCs for a bit, then go quite a bit later into the Prologue tables. I found the prologue tables provided me with a few NPCs/SCs inherently anyway, so I'd bump that up in the org.

Like I said though, I've been crushing through all the character generation and i have to say, the results are BREATHTAKING. Rolling surnames to find out that such and such is related to such and such family because I got a duplicate, building out essentially a geneology chart... these are things that might feel like tedium or busywork but I have been blown away by how much FUN I've had building out this giant spreadsheet of people, even with all the work that it took to amass it.

Things really took off when I started rolling for character adjectives for each of them, some were not what I'd expect (which makes for great RP challenge) and some were EXACTLY what I already had in mind. AKA the antagonistic former betrothed of my PC is... you guessed it... Jealous! Love it.

I also appreciate how you arranged the ancestry table to have more of your "standards" at 1-10, so you could just roll a d10 instead of a d20 for characters. I was most of the way through everything when I started to go back and assign ancestries to everyone, and the Orcs and Goblins (and even Dwarves, sad to say) didn't really fit the vibe I had landed on so far, so I just effectively ended up with d10 rerolling 7-9 (sorry Dwarf fans). Wound up with quite a few beastfolk and elves tbh!

Figure I'll share the public copy of the google character sheet here as well for anyone else that stops by here and isn't on the discord. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1x5ZPU5Dd3FZca7BuJGnFDxaRo2v2Tu9apiLfrfRI...

Really looking forward to my first actual playing of this game to see what it brings out of me!

Meridian Inkwell149 days ago

Hey! Thank you so much for this thought-out, detailed feedback. I really love that you’re enjoying character/SC creation, which is one of my favorite parts of the game, too.

I’m definitely taking your thoughts on the section order into consideration. The current order is by no means final and I have myself encountered the same difficulties while playtesting. Before the layout is made, I’m just trying to write all the rules and tables and have it be complete content-wise. My next priority will be arranging things in an order that makes sense.

I think you’re right about it “making sense” for NPC/SC stuff to be after the prologue, though. I think I’ll have it be more “if needed, create at least 2 SCs” post-prologue instead of what it is now. I’ll change the order for the next release, which is coming soon! I’m just finishing up the last set of major arcana summer tables. 🥳

Thank you again for playing and taking the time to give your feedback!! It’s much-appreciated and really helps my motivation! 🔥

londonmatthews148 days ago (1 edit)

(Play report section moved to Korin Van Golding Play Report thread)

MORE FEEDBACK (with the disclaimer that I know you're finishing filling out content an much of this level of editorial pass will come later :) )

> I think I’ll have it be more “if needed, create at least 2 SCs” post-prologue instead of what it is now.

100% this, even though there's so much freeform about the game, which is great, I would love a "you may create as many or as few SCs as you're comfortable with, but a solid 2-3 at the start of the game is recommended."

And, in other places where the rules are very open to player decision, the words in the book are most important to the newest players and those least familiar. The more familiar you are with the game the less you need to refer to passages anyway, so I encourage frequent "the recommended number of XYZ to start is... the recommended number of SC Specialities is..." etc.

One other small item is I had some confusion around how/when relationship statuses change. To the best of my figuring, if a relationship status requires, say, 2/2, then 1/3 or 3/1 wouldn't trigger it. they both have to be satisfied. Then when it comes to antagonistic, if it requires 2/-2, then none of 2/-1, 3/-1, 1/-2, etc would trigger, because the favor is counting in the other direction. I'm 90% sure I have it right, but that section might do with some examples later on.

I'll keep you posted as I keep playing :)

Meridian Inkwell148 days ago

I read your play report out loud on stream and everyone loves where this is going. Definitely keep us posted! I have no idea how you're going to get your half-sister out of this mess, but I hope you manage.

Yeah, I definitely can relate to that feeling of WHAT HAPPENS NEXT! It's where writing little bullet points of what happens can be really helpful.

I had that text in the "Ballad flow" section, but I've added it to the SC section as well, and moved the SC section to be after the Prologue. I think this helps the rules flow better, so thank you so much again for the feedback!

You're 100% correct in your interpretation of the relationship progression rules! Both Fate and Favor have to match to trigger the change. I have added this more explicitly in the explanation for that section so that it's more clear, as it's a very important part of the game.

londonmatthews148 days ago

LOL I saw the 0.2 release and was like, I should go log into twitch and see if this work was done on a stream because it was lickity-split and lo and behold, there's the work session from today!

Swung by the local metaphysical shop today and bought my first ever tarot deck :P

Meridian Inkwell147 days ago

I think I’ve done the vast majority of work on Ballads on stream, haha. 🤓 Hope you got a cool deck!

londonmatthews147 days ago

I'm so-so on it. Some of the cards I really like, some just have distracting proportion and face detail issues :/

I had one that I wanted but I pivoted at the last moment, and because I was dutiful and supported a local store rather than amazon, I'd feel bad returning it.

And not in a financial place to suddenly become a tarot deck collector! I can tell from the subreddits that people go WILD if left unchecked lol.

Meridian Inkwell147 days ago

Too true… There’s so many cool ones on Kickstarter, too. 🫠

itch.io

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