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As was promised last month, this month's column will be about the joys of play-testing your own numbers system... Or at least the "joy" that play-testing my system brought me and my two guinea pigs... I mean, players. Unfortunately, due to schedule and health problems, we only managed to get together to game once between last month's column and this month's deadline, thus I shall be drawing all of my material from that one chaotic night.
It starts something like this... It's the Thursday night before Easter and I'm sitting on the couch minding my own business. Chris Reid, my husband, co-creator and play-tester, is talking with our friend Steve (last name withheld to protect the innocent) on-line.
*Steve: Hey, is AJ running her game on Saturday?
*Chris looks at me: Hey AJ, are you running your game this weekend?
*Me: Uhhhh.... sure.
*Chris: Sucker! She said yes!
Well, I guess I brought it upon myself. We had been discussing this possibility for a couple of months, actually. The guys had already decided what they were playing. Steve was going to play a thief from what I like to call "The uber-race". Highly intelligent, some bonus stat points and lots of bonus skill points... Of course, they're mad as hatters, but that's nothing new for PCs (player characters, not personal computers... if you didn't know that, you're probably in the wrong column) in our games. After all, the last game we played was Call of Cthulhu (during which I was known to say "Oh yes! Another sanity check... fail! fail! Woohoo, I'm almost down to 50!", but I digress).
Chris, on the other hand, had to be difficult. No simple bard, fighter or ranger would work for him. Oh no. He had to play a member of the magically elite race. A technomancer no less. The problem with that? I didn't have a single spell done for any of the magical schools, let alone technomancy. Any other magical school would have been simple to make spells for, of course. Life mages? Load 'em up on the healing spells. Combat mages? A few fireballs and lightning bolts oughta keep him happy. Pyromancers? Ohhhh yes! Burnination! Er.. Not that I'm obsessed with fire or anything. Technomancers I had to think about, though.
Of course, writing is writing. Just like with my CT articles, when I'm faced with a deadline I get hit with inspiration. I spent Friday and early Saturday working on technomancer spells so as to be ready to GM on Saturday night. Ah, the things I do for my players (nevermind that this is only the second time I've GM'd for these guys in 2 years, and the first time was a one night stand). By 5pm Saturday, I was sure my game was ready for play!
Boy, was I wrong.
If I had to give only one piece of advice to the creator of a game about to be play-tested, it would be this: Print up your rules with large margins for notes, and bring a notebook. No matter how close to done you think it is, you'll be jotting notes all night about things that need to be changed, added or removed. I sure was!
Character creation went smoothly, after I slashed the bonus skill points for the uber-race in half. Of course, later on in the night I realized that I had to double everyone's skill points anyway... But I'm getting ahead of myself. Characters were made, dinner was munched, we had out of character conversations, I tried to get the game started, more out of character conversations... Well, that's pretty much the whole night. To save all three of us from some embarrassment, I'm not even going to get into our out of character conversations. I am not going there!
Once we got the silliness out of our system, it was time to get down to play. Chris's mage was seeking to learn a very powerful spell. His mentor said "No, not until you show more maturity", so in a stunning display of maturity he said "Nuts to you, I'll find a mentor who will teach me" and thusly he went to speak with another master mage who disliked his mentor. She agreed to teach him the spell if he went to the city where the pyromancer school was based and acquired a copy of the Pyronomicon (Ok, maybe there was still some silliness floating around). Our power-hungry mage friend decides this is a good trade, so they set off to get the book.
First, though, roguish sorts that they are, the two characters decide to rob a house to get some funds for their trip. This is a good chance to test out some skills, as I have them make some stealth checks while they steal the pouch off of a sleeping man's nightstand, and then have to jump out the window as he wakes up. This is when I realize that I need to make rules for stat checks.
Our two "heroes" get off with the loot and head out of town. So far, so good. Then Chris says "Well, we should have an encounter along the road so we can test the combat system." Ah, I was afraid of that. The reason that I don't GM often is that I hate coming up with encounters. However, Chris has a point. The combat system needs to be tested. So I let the guys talk while I make up "Bob the Brigand", who is going to foolishly attack two people (one of whom is armed) in the middle of the day. I give him the Dirt Poor curse to give him a good reason to do something so stupid, and I give him the extra hit points bonus, because I'm a mean GM. Bob puts all of his skill points (which isn't very many, causing me to realize that I need to give people more skill points) into combat and charges the characters!
8 rounds later, both characters are dead and Bob still had 3/4 of his hit points left. In the course of this combat, we discovered that the dodge rules needed work, as well as the critical hits rules, and oops, I didn't have any rules for fumbling or "open ending" (open end being the Rolemaster term for rolling a 96-100, allowing you to roll again and add that to your total). As well, I had made Chris's one combat spell a bit too hard to cast. Of course, I didn't have any spell failure rules, either. Add that to the list of changes to make.
Since flaws in the rules had caused the characters' death and we were here to test the game, the characters were brought back to life. I made some corrections on my print-out, explained the rule revisions and had the guys double their base skill points. Then, just like restoring from a previous save, they were ready to fight Bob again. This time he went down, though the poor thief almost didn't make it again. Thank goodness for the healing spells!
And that was the end of our gaming session for the night. I think we all learned something from it. The biggest lesson I learned was the importance of play-testing. Had we not gotten around to playing the game that night, I never would have realized some of the serious flaws in my game. Thankfully, most of them are easily fixed and when next we meet up, the game will be more playable.
For initial play-testing, I recommend that you find a couple of good friends who are also experienced gamers, so that when you come across a problem, they can help you figure out how to fix it. Despite the hard time I've given them in this article, Chris and Steve were wonderful play-testers and really helped to straighten things out.
Tune in next month for more fun with play-testing and whatever other craziness crosses my mind (perhaps magic systems... hmmm).
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