Flattening out the distinction between Objectives and Threats is an interesting choice. I know that in both EtR and my own game, I've had the problem of "why bother spending your successes eliminating Threats when you can just do the Objective as fast as possible?" I think you've got a good framework for a solution with your multiple sub-Challenges and wide variety of challenge characteristics, but again, I'm not always seeing the mechanical incentive to complete the sub-Challenges first. I understand you're going for a much more narrative-forward experience so maybe it's not that important, but if so, the narrator needs to really put in the work to get the players invested in doing the thing. I also note that there don't seem to be any mechanical adverse consequences for players, unless I'm not reading the rules right. I do like the idea of abstract character traits as Stats; I can see it forcing the players to be creative with their verbs, and I think you've included enough for each character that they have a variety of options for how to proceed. I might suggest, rather than spending a whole turn replenishing Reserves, giving the option to spend a success one-for-one to get them back. The characters are a good motley crew with a lot of variety; absolutely love the idea of a talking goose as a PC.
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Hello there!
Thanks for the detailed feedback :)
Yes, we have had our fair share of feedback on the Reserve and if we'd had more time and playtest would have worked something else out. We tested things like "Every 1 or 6 is a point for your reserve" but that made it overflow and didn't feel great... Perhaps for a 1.1 we will work something else out? The Problem with spending successes on it is, that you trade in one sucess for 1/2 successes and especially we wanted to have it not too much of an mathematical hussle to be like. But the Reserve is working a tad better on paper than in reality.
The idea behind the secondary Objectives is, that they have a significant result for the story and the objectives, some will delete a goals armor (hard 1 or 2 i.e.) and thus make it much more achievable, some will be a trap and thus a great story revelation (look at the three piglets), which did work actually great in the playtests and brought a lot of laughter! I guess, you need a certain perspective for the game to work, if you just want to rush, an story-centred ruleset might jsut not be the thing - but yes, I get your fear for that :)
Again, thanks for your feedback and perhaps GSU will land on your table somewhere in the future too :)
Cheers
Marvin