Post by londonmatthews in Playtesting Feedback

Viewing post in Playtesting Feedback

POST APRIL FEEDBACK

- Restaurant generation table says "d6 roll" in header but has 8 results

- Resolution phase, subtract 1 fate or favor from everyone you haven't interacted with. Seems a little harsh? I like it in theory, but it is wiping whole characters off my SC map. As mentioned before though, I may have just started with far too many fully tracked characters given the huge royal family, so maybe I'm just equalizing to "normal" numbers of actual SCs lol. (I kept pondering over this and then realized, it's also an incentive for you to reach out to a wider spread of characters, which I rather like!) Can favor go negative from this rule? I'd think not... also for Antagonistic Characters, does -1 favor mean another 1 away from 0, or does it mean they draw closer to 0? There are a handful of favor interactions that have me wondering about this.

- Endeavors, Study section p. 88 - the list of study options shows training, practice, research, and spellwork, however only the first 3 have actual sections. Spellwork seems to have been moved into the action of Creation down just a bit further, but it still shows in this list.

- Can 0.3 have page numbers in the corners? would be helpful with future feedback :)

- Relationship transition table page 97?, concern/problem/rival -> platonic, romantic: the text for strong/critical success doesn't mention inverting the favor, but I'm assuming it should since all the cells below it that are also antagonistic > other have that text.

- what happens when an SC no longer qualifies for any relationship status of any kind? Is that the game's way of "downgrading" them to NPC? Because that's what my intuition says. Example, an acquaintance sits at 1/1, but at the end of the phase you didn't interact with them. Regardless of if you remove 1 fate or 1 favor, they will not satisfy 1/1 any longer. Is that a relationship transition scene, to "nothing"? I see the text about regression scenes being optional but not sure if this "counts."

- Layout thing, ignore until later ;) but I'm wondering if endeavors would be better off all just listed under their own header, and each have their own energy cost listed in the table. It makes the table bigger, but is less confusing trying to go through and remember that "shop" is under "exploration" especially when using PDF bookmarks. I don't think there's too many that having them all listed individually would be a problem? HOWEVER if there is rules text that relates to their "type" this might now work... hmmm unless they are classified like Shop (Exploration), Stroll (Exploration). Like the tagging system that some games like PF2 use. Then you can refer to rules objects that have that "Trait" or "Tag" while giving them the same level of priority in the layout :thinking:

- Character sheet things, also ignore until later :) Would be good to have a place for skill tallies on the sheet, i haven't used them yet but I could see a need for a spot for them. Would also be nice to have a place to list Stanzas. And some sort of place/way to formally capture SCs, but that's a tough ask. I recall having issues with the limitations of Connections in Astroprisma as well... there's just so much to track for meaningful SCs and even NPCs, that fitting that to a sheet is a tall order.

Thanks again for the game, still lots of runway for me to get another 4 months of play out and provide feedback :)

Meridian Inkwell229 days ago (1 edit)

Fixed the restaurant table (it started off at d6, then I came up with more stuff), Endeavors list, and the relationship transition table. Thanks so much!!

The thing with SCs is they're meant to be more important characters. Think of a TV show where there's a difference between the main character's friends they see in every episode vs side characters that only appear every once in a while. Side characters (NPCs in this case) also don't get much character development.

The rules for the Reconciliation Phase allow you to choose between losing Fate or Favor. So maybe Fate goes down because your MC meets this character less and less, or Favor goes down because the character's annoyed that your MC hasn't reached out to them lately. That's what I was going for. You don't necessarily have to "downgrade" them if you don't want to. If an SC drops off your list, it doesn't mean they don't exist anymore, just that you're on like an acquaintance level. They'd just drop to 0 Fate eventually which means you never really meet. But I also think that would be a great time for a Regression scene, which would likely be a meaningful scene that adds +1 Fate anyway! There's a lot of room to maneuver. My goal was to capture the nuance of different types of character relationships as best as I could. So whatever feels right for that particular relationship narrative-wise should be what you go with.

Also, my thinking is that -1 Favor is showing that it's 1 away from 0. They slightly dislike you or are irked by you, but it's pretty close to being neutral.

Giving that Endeavors list a lot of thought. I think once the text is in Layout, it might be nice to put them all together and like...indent them or color code them to distinguish the different types. You're right that there's not THAT many. It should work!

Again, thank you so much for the feedback and fun play reports!! It's giving me a lot to think about and iterate on.

londonmatthews228 days ago

I've definitely come around on any concerns about the -1 fate or -1 favor at the end of the phase, I think I genuinely just had too many named NPCs to get to, and so for many of them their starting fate/favor was immediately dropped to nothing which left me with... probably the proper amount of SCs lol. And yet I still have 14 somehow... I'm curious how many SCs other playtesters have found they have in the rotation :P

> Also, my thinking is that -1 Favor is showing that it's 1 away from 0. They slightly dislike you or are irked by you, but it's pretty close to being neutral.

That level of mild dislike makes total sense, I guess I was meaning to ask what it means to "subtract" 1 favor when favor is already negative. Sometimes it seems to mean their dislike of you goes up (which would be going from say -2 favor to -3 favor) but sometimes "subtracting" favor seems to be meant more to "return to a baseline of 0", as in, they don't think about you as much any more since you haven't interacted. This would be going from -2 favor to -1 favor, in such a case.

It's made me wonder if sometimes the rules should say "-1 favor (as in, subtract 1 favor)" and sometimes they should say "move favor to 1 point closer to 0", because those really can be two different things when it comes to antagonistic SCs (it's the same for platonic/romantic, as they're both in the positives). Depending on the scene/situation you might want the results of a given scene to do one or the other...

I hope that makes sense :D

Meridian Inkwell228 days ago

Subtracting Favor should always be going down, though. If they’re already at -1 Favor and like you less, it’ll be -2. Whereas Fate going down towards 0 shows that they’re not really thinking about you and you have less chances to meet, if that makes sense! That’s why Favor can be negative, but Fate cannot. Often, having lower Fate is more devastating because a lot of prompts throw you with the SCs that have higher Fate. That’s why for Reconciliation, it’s up to the player whether they want to subtract 1 from Fate or Favor for a relationship that’s fading.

londonmatthews227 days ago

I see I see... I am taking this and integrating it into my understanding. I think I finally figured out what's got my mind stuck on this.

A platonic relationship with an SC, left unattended, will eventually trend to 0/0. However, an antagonistic relationship with an SC, left unattended, will eventually trend to 0/-1, 0/-2, 0/-3, 0/-4... and something about that disparity, that the antagonistics keep liking you less and less while the platonics just fade into the background, is triggering me lol. (presumably you're not leaving the romantic SCs unattended lmao)

Or, could it be that platonic SCs are supposed to continue going down in favor, across the "0" line and into negative territory? That would change a lot... and goes into a different line of thinking I had at one point, that maybe Platonic and Antagonistic could exist on the same table, and just let the favor positivity/negativity determine whether they're antagonistic or not, rather than opting into a relationship transition? That would take some of the agency out of they players' hands though, if a platonic went sour on them and they wanted instead to have a chance to salvage that relationship. Fate is a lot easier to raise intentionally than Favor is...

You've entertained me on this topic far too much already lol feel free to ignore my ramblings.

Meridian Inkwell227 days ago

Oh no, Platonic, Antagonistic, and Romantic are all on separate tables for that reason. A Platonic relationship will eventually hit the negatives for Favor because once they’re to 0 Fate, you have to start subtracting from Favor. At that point either you use an Endeavor or two to salvage the relationship, or use a Transition to show the friendship going sour. Regression scenes are optional, which lets you decide which of those you’d prefer. Endeavors can help a lot because you can write them a letter and then visit, which can add quite a bit of Favor!

londonmatthews227 days ago

Omg the skies have parted and now I can seeeee!!! <3

This answers so many of my weird one-off questions around fate/favor. And also reinforces that I had waaaaay too many SCs, but I think I've sidegraded most of the unimportant ones off to NPC land by now. The rest I will weather the storms of fate and see who decides to hate me for being ignored ;)

itch.io

Viewing post in Playtesting Feedback