Playtest Afterthought: New Years

My beautiful and talented girlfriend Gabby and I ran separate adventures of Hostargo for our friends this New Years.  Both of us had an overall good experience, but a also certain amount of trouble - not unexpected since Hostargo is in a very rough draft stage.

TL;DR version:

What went right:
* The basic dice system
* Creative use of abilities
* Human character classes

What went wrong:
* Roleplaying the "Awakened" (dogs with human intelligence)
* Magic explanations
* Balance of abilities

Plan to address issues:
* Move Awakened back to only being a single, "abnormal" class.
* Hammer out details on magic.
* Continue fleshing out character classes

Longer Explanation/Ramblings/Notes:

The core system worked as expected (it's been playtested quite a few times before).  Everyone was happy with the stats & skills system, and it didn't take long before people were rolling dice.  The most important thing I noticed this time around was that people enjoyed knowing what was going on with the dice and numbers - especially those couple players brand new to roleplaying.  I think it is easy to see what the numbers result in, and how they were affecting the GMs decisions.  The more I run it, the more I like having open rolls.

That said, a pretty consistent feedback has been that the challenge ratings we were calling for felt slightly arbitrary.  Not totally unexpected, as this seems to be the main weakness of open rolls.  The arbitrary numbers in other games, however, are just hidden behind a GM screen. To help with this issue I showed some of the players the GM guide's list of challenge ratings, where I have descriptions next to each number 0-7 (any higher is usually impossible for most characters).  This simple table made them go 'ooohh' as some of it started to click.  Note to self: add such a thing on a playtest player-aid.

There were mixed emotions on the stat spreads: 7-8-8 or 7-7-9.  One person said they didn't feel that the difference mattered as much, since the difference in dice sizes was more mathematically significant.  Another said that he really enjoyed the difference, and being able to be "smart" but potentially arrogantly so (flawed in the social department).   Unfortunately, my table rolled exceptionally high (which is bad in Hostargo), resulting in a lot of failed rolls, so I didn't get a great feel for how the spreads were working.  For now, I don't believe there's any changes required to this area.

I felt the character classes were working - for the most part.  There were great examples of using abilities for creative purposes: attacking birds with thorny vines, doppelganging as a gang member, setting up camera surveillance with drones, and force-pulling a shotgun right out of someone's hands.  But the biggest issue was the animancer, and all of the magics revolving around "soul magic" (awakened, inspector vision, manipulating objects).  Long story short, I really just need to buckle down on the fine details of how that stuff works.  And this playtest has given me lots of good ideas on how to do so.

Some people were having trouble roleplaying as the Awakened.  This is partially my fault, as I handed out characters to some people rather than letting them choose what was best for them.  But, it still brought to the forefront that while the Awakened are interesting, they are probably best left as a single 'weird' class.  I had instead split them up into four distinct classes, so we had nearly half of everyone playing as an Awakened.   This poses a multitude of issues, so I'm going to back-peddle on this idea.

Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, and the games ran smoothly for the most part, so I'm very happy with the results and am motivated to keep making progress.  Cheers!