Quirkworthy

Yesterday was another 14 hours at my desk on DS, and today looks like being busy too. Still, the end is very much in sight. The last week’s not been much different. Hopefully that should explain why I’ve not been posting as much as I’d hoped to, but even a good reason doesn’t tell you anything interesting. So, I thought I’d just drop a small morsel in your laps to show you the kind of detail tweak I’ve been making, and the improvements such subtleties can make.

Today, we’re all about wizards.

These magic-manipulators have power crystals to help boost the potency of their spells. That’s been in for a fair while. However, it seemed that there was more to be had from this idea. So, power crystals have been rather expanded.

Now wizards can create additional crystals whenever they have a quiet moment. They also have two new uses:

1) Allow you to cast a currently recharging spell.

2) Allow you to cast a spell that’s too high a level for you.

A wizard can still only use one crystal per spell, so if you use it to cast a recharging one its number of dice cannot also be boosted. Similarly, if you’re using the crystal to even allow you to cast a higher level spell, you cannot boost its dice too.

In the Adventurer’s Companion, all spells have a level. A wizard can freely cast a spell of his level or below, but higher levels are restricted. This change allows him to use a high level spell he has found, though only every now and again. That limitation adds another element of tactics and resource management to using magic

Overall, these changes to the use of power crystals allow a wizard to manipulate his available spells far more fluidly, which is both more interesting and more potent in play.

I’m sorry to have to be the one to break the news, but we’re all dead. Along with some other brave Heroes I’ve been down in the depths, fighting against the Necromancer’s horde. There were zombies and skeletons, revenants and trolls. Oh my! Not to put too fine a point on it – we were slaughtered. The upshot is that he gets to summon the largest army the world has ever seen and you’re all dead.

Sorry.

It’s not entirely my fault. Honest. The Wizard kept forgetting his spells, and mumbling the few he could remember didn’t help their effectiveness any: Burn performed more like Fizzle. The Elf was using the joke arrows with the suckers on the end, which was very witty. Didn’t reduce the bad guys though. The Barbarian was on form in terms of fighting, and even had the measure of the doors. However, his timing was all over the place and he kept being a turn late to help here, a turn early to be in position there. The Dwarf, meanwhile, had no luck at all, and despite the best magical armour ever made, was the first to die.

Of course, it’s not all down to our ineptitude. The Necromancer himself was on especially cunning form. In one particularly deft move he shuffled round a bunch of zombies into a conga line. And, while we were laughing at him and making jokes at his expense, all the time getting ready to pounce. Curse him for fighting well! How dare he have a genuinely cunning plan!

The things I have to put up with!

Yesterday’s Dungeon Saga playtest day went well, with lots of happy faces and people having fun – which is what it’s about.

We’d divided the group into those who had played before and those who were new to it. The new group found hardly any things to change, which was good. They did have the desired reactions to the various scenarios they played though, noting the ramping of difficulty and the varying designed balance of different missions. Of course, as any designer will tell you, you can carry on tweaking and finessing almost indefinitely if you’re allowed to. Luckily this will be put to bed reasonably soon.

The veteran group were playing the expansion scenarios, and having been less tested there were more issues here to contend with. Mostly these were small balancing issues of timing and exact numbers in specific rooms. Some scenarios worked fine from the off, where others needed more help. Again, as expected. Lots of useful feedback though, and well worth the test day in itself.

One of the most enjoyable moments came when I happened to be watching a play through of the final scenario in the Tyrant of Halpi pack. This is the showdown between the Heroes and the Tyrant (a Dragon). In previous scenarios the Dragon has turned up briefly, but never stayed to fight it out to the last. Now it will.

Dragons aren’t to be messed with lightly, and this went right down to the wire. Finally, with the Dragon on a single wound, 3 Heroes dead, and the Halfling Thief wounded and surrounded by incoming Thralls, a lucky cast with a throwing knife killed the beast. With that, the Dragon’s Thralls collapsed, and the lone Hero was left alone in an ancient tomb filled with blood and gold…

I’ve got a bunch of helpful comments to reply to on the latest threads. However, today I’ve been busy getting stuff ready for tomorrow’s DS playtest day. For that, we’re going to be splitting the group so that we can play both the core adventures and the expansions at the same time.

If it works like I hope it will, there’s going to be a great deal going on at once. I’m sure I’ll get very confused, dealing with queries across 5 campaigns simultaneously. Still, it’s the deep end where things happen, so might as well get chucked in there 🙂

Individual playtesters wil have a much more straightforward time as they’ll be focussing on a specific campaign. After all, that’s the gamer experience we’re testing. I have a rather unusual viewpoint.

I don’t know whether anything happened about the idea of streaming a live feed. I did pass the idea on, and we all agreed it was a fun thought. I just don’t know whether we have the people who know how to do this on hand or not.

We’ll all find out tomorrow 🙂

Another brief note on some small changes to DS core rules.

The wizard was sometimes a little underwhelming at the start of the campaign, so these give him a bit more to do. Once you’re part way through the series of adventures he quickly gets more to think about than the other Heroes, so you’ve got to be careful about where he starts. Complex at the start makes him an impossible tangle at the end – especially if you’ve got one player looking after all 4 Heroes. This variability in play options is one of the challenges here – how to be sufficiently interesting when you only have one of the Heroes, but not overwhelming when you have all 4.

Anyway, the changes:

Firstly, if the Wizard is not in an enemy front arc he can use an action to create a new power 1 energy crystal. This is a toned-down version of what he can do in the Downtime section of the Adventurer’s Companion. Power crystals are always useful, so filling an otherwise quiet moment is a helpful option.

Secondly, the Flamebolt spell is now long range. It’s not the most powerful spell (though it’s better against Goblins and other stuff that’s easier to kill than zombies), and that’s exactly how it should be. It’s petty magic and can therefore be used every turn. It can, however, be boosted with power crystals, so every now and again it can be quite pokey. It’s intended as a backup, not the main magical event. Still, bumping it to long range makes it a little more useful without making it overpowered.

Lastly, the wizard gets an extra power 2 energy crystal in each of the Core adventures.

Added up, I think this nudges the wizard to where he needs to be at the start of the campaign, without causing lots of problems later.

A few people have commented that they’re not fond of the idea of refighting an adventure if they fail the first time out (as the Heroes). As I replied in the comments on the DS Beta thread, I think refights fit the backstory perfectly, aren’t an issue in other games, and are a nice, simple, easy to explain process.

Personally, I think that each adventure is a new puzzle, and one I want to unravel and solve. Losing means that I’ve not solved it yet, so I want to have another go. My gamer instinct doesn’t want to leave it unfinished. This is how I’ve always approached scenarios in games, and it feels entirely natural.

As I said though, not everyone feels the same way. After some discussion, we’ve got a couple of options to add to the rules. These are all for campaign play and don’t make any difference to one-off games.

Firstly, if the Heroes lose a scenario, instead of playing again they can simply take an extra 1 hour loss from their campaign total and move on to the next adventure. This effectively assumes that they played it again and won, but without actually doing so.

Secondly, there is an entirely different way to play the campaign. Instead of using a campaign clock, simply play each of the adventures once, in order, and tot up who won the most games. That side wins the campaign as a whole. You can’t get a draw as there are an odd number of adventures, so this will always result in a winner. Actually, both methods do.