Neon Knights: taking a different approach

I have my first in-person playtest of Neon Knights coming up, so I've been getting ready for that over the last few days.  Meanwhile, my play-by-post playtests have led me to become increasingly unhappy with my modified approaches.  So for the in-person test I'm planning to start out with the current system, then switch to baseline Fate Accelerated midway through and see which feels better for everyone.  That means writing two copies of each pre-gen character, one for each version, and that led to an interesting observation.  The stats didn't convert cleanly from one to the other; e.g. just because someone was high in Prowess in my modified format didn't necessarily mean that Forceful made sense as their best stat in baseline FAE (and never mind trying to figure out what Diligence or Empathy maps onto).  And it occurred to me that the two different versions are looking at the characters' actions in different ways.  Baseline FAE approaches essentially describe the action itself - I swing my sword in a Forceful way, or in a Quick way, etc.  But my current modified approaches in NK feel more like they are describing the thought process behind the action - I swing my sword with Courage when I am focused on plunging into a dangerous situation, or I swing my sword with Diligence when I slow down and study my opponent before striking.  Prowess is kind of an outlier here, throwing "thought process" out the window and being all about physical capability.

And as much as I don't love the current system of deciding that my attack this round is based on Courage+Prowess or whatever, I do still like the flavor behind it.  To me, it's a large part of what makes the Knights actually feel like knights and not just action heroes with colorful gear.  So I'm thinking about ways to preserve that flavor if I do end up getting rid of my modified approaches.  Idea #1 right now is to put a "Knights' Code" in the flavor text of the game.  Idea #2, which will have more mechanical impact on the game, is to add a "Cardinal Virtue" Aspect, so my character really leans into Courage while yours really leans into Empathy, and these things affect die rolls and roleplay complications the same way as any other Aspect.  Most likely I'll do both of these things.  Or maybe I'll think of something else.

Anyway, that's it for now, and hopefully I have something cool to say about the test session in a couple of days.

Update: in-person test didn't pan out; too many designers at the meetup and not enough time for everyone's game to hit the table.  I might try again next month if scheduling works out, or I might try to put something else together.  But I will say that the more I think just about the stuff from this post, the more I'm feeling like I should make these changes.

Apparently deadlines are helpful for me?

One of the items I picked up for Free RPG Day this year was 9th Level Games' Level 1 anthology.  Apparently this is something they've been doing for a few years now, where they provide a prompt and then people submit mini-RPGs that somehow fit that prompt, and the best 15-20 of them get published in this book.  So I held that in the back of my mind as something that might be fun to do.  And then I finally got around to checking their website and saw that the deadline for this year is in just a few weeks.

Had a bit of panic, then suddenly thought of an idea that I liked, and with the pressure to get it done quickly, I have the first draft completed after only a couple days of work.  Granted, the 1000-word limit means that I don't have to make it as thorough as, say, a Fate-based game that I intend to charge actual money for and thus must have enough content to feel like I'm justified in charging actual money.  But even so, I can't think of the last time I have written this much this quickly.  I'm going to go ahead and attribute this to having an inflexible deadline.

So what's the game, you ask?  Hopefully you'll find out on Free RPG Day 2024.  But if not then I'll post it online myself in a less fancy and prestigious format.

New title reveal

Just a minor update here, following up from the previous post.  After much beating my head against the wall and also doing the relatively smart thing of seeing what relevant others think, I have my new title for the game that used to be DGE:

Dwarven Engineers: A Game of Preposterous Prototypes and Implausible Explanations

It's still the same game, but hopefully this title does better for setting expectations.  Now to update the tags on the blog and then write a new game synopsis for the next competition I'm submitting it to.

DGE: Here we go again...

I ran another playtest of DGE today with a different group.  Went well overall, people enjoyed the core gameplay, but there was one comment in particular that filled me with dread - consider changing the name.

I get the reasoning for it - Dwarven Guild of Engineers sounds, at least to some players, like it should be a medium or heavy strategy game, and it very much is not that (my synopsis for the group also wasn't clear enough about what the game would actually be, which didn't do me any favors).  It's one thing if it's just me breaking this out when my friends come over, but if I want to reach a wider audience, which I do, then it needs to be as easy as possible for them to know what they are getting into right from the start.  So now I'm in the same position I was with The Grand Expedition/Explorers of Legend give or take a year ago.  Even more so actually, since I actually like this title instead of just "meh, I guess it'll work" and then getting used to it.

So I need a new title now.  And a new elevator pitch for the game.

And maybe also to just lose the Goblin deck already, because I think after hearing enough different people tell me they didn't think it added much to the gameplay it's time for me to really take that into consideration.  Even with as many iterations as that deck has gone through.

Let's see how long it takes me to figure this one out...

Again with the dancing

I played Under a Violet Moon again today, with one of the same players I mentioned previously who does Medieval dance as a hobby.  We tried out the group move mechanic that I had added based on his feedback last time, and he declared it successful - much better than before at capturing the feel of a dance, while maintaining the strategy elements from before.  The way it works is simple enough - there's a separate set of basic move cards, not exactly the same as the ones the players get but similar, and after both of the players have moved then everyone on the board moves according to the group card.  Because it's a dance that presumably all of the villagers know, the group cards are shuffled and then set out at the start of the game, so you can see the whole thing in order and try to work that into your strategy.  It did add a layer of complexity without overdoing it, which was nice.  And while it wasn't part of the original plan, in our game today I stumbled on the idea of only using some of the cards rather than the whole set, which would add some variation from one game to the next.  I'm happy with it.

Board Game Workshop contest outcome and next steps

Continuing a trend that has been pretty consistent so far, Under a Violet Moon did not make it past the first round in the competition where I had entered it.  Judging was based entirely on a 2-minute video.  I've had a little time now to digest the feedback that I got, and here are the main takeaways:

• Most of the reviewers really liked the theme and the core gameplay.  A few people specifically said they liked the way it brought social deduction to a one-on-one format, which was exactly my design goal with this game so it's nice to see that it worked out.  There were a couple comments about gameplay elements being unclear, but that was a problem with my presentation rather than the game itself.
• A couple people suggested that it might be too easy to figure out who the faeries are.  I'm not entirely sure yet from my limited testing, but it feels like this is probably right.
  
• A couple comments also about the game maybe being a little too simple in a way that would limit replay value.  I haven't played it enough myself to assess that one.
• One person commented on the need to rely on the faerie player to give honest and accurate information every turn, which could be a stumbling block (not even maliciously, but just with the need to be paying attention to a lot of different positions on the board at the same time).

So where to next?  Well, as I mentioned in a previous post, I've been working on adding a "crowd movement" phase based on previous feedback (I was holding off until after this competition so I could incorporate the new feedback as well), and if I get it right then I think that might add the right level of complexity to address the "too simple" complaint.

Replayability and balance?  I'll just have to do a bunch more playtesting.  Keeping score will show me if one side really does have it easier than the other, and I guess if I start getting tired of watching people play my game then that will tell me about replay value.  Although the suggestion to find ways to vary it up from one play to the next wasn't a bad idea either way.

Relying completely on the faerie player - in a different previous post I discussed a suggestion I had received about letting the villager player capture whoever they want, with the risk of false positives to go with that.  That certainly would mitigate this specific problem.  I'm still not 100% sure myself if I like it, but I do think it's worth testing it out and then decide after that.  Maybe with a rule that this can only be done after the first time the faeries capture a villager (which, in my mind, helps stick to the theme where the villagers don't realize they've been infiltrated until the faeries actually start causing trouble for them).

Neon Knights - revised draft available

I finally put in revisions for some (but not all) of the feedback I've gotten.  Took considerably longer than I expected, which is probably a surprise to no one who has done this kind of thing before.  I know I said something in a recent post about working on new adversaries and magic items, but those need to be polished up more so only one of those actually made it into the current revision.

https://www.scribd.com/document/621295097/Neon-Knights-Playtest-Doc