The play group of me, Shane, Kat (with Shanna), Pong and Shell met up for our first DW Play Test session today after Willow's birthday party. Sadly, Vek, our Barbarian, could not make it due to a bad case of food poisoning.
As luck would have it, Jordan found time to head out of his home, and actually rolled up a Knight to join our adventures in Legend.
Firstly, we set up camp at the Old Folks Corner under a HDB block near the Windy Place at Block 58 Market, Bedok South. Shell drove us to the area from my condo, and I unloaded the Lego base board and all my other GM Accessories on the marble table. While the rest were talking, I filed up the loose pages of my adventure (15 pages long) and sorted out the relevant maps of Legend, Ellesland and Albion.
Now onto the stellar cast:
Shell was Terrowin Comwellis and playing a modified custom brew as a "Sword Saint", something we worked out as being an offensive psychic warrior with ZERO armor factor, but with a Ki Resource system, a butt-load of defense and unique combat stances at the later levels. Think of it as a hybrid between a Barbarian, a Mystic and a Knight. He joined the party after being found blocking the entrance to one of their quest areas.
Shane was the Latino assassin Epifanio De Los Santos. He is experienced, has been through some tough scraps in life and is a "Watch first, Kill You with my silent Bolt" pragmatic sort-of guy. Epifanio also speaks with a peculiar Spanish accent that goes flat at times. Epifanio has a three-round Crossbow reload action which looks like he his revving up his proverbial love-gun.
Kat was "Insert-Long-Random-Slew-of-Letters-as-a-name", a faceless Mystic who joined the party after being spared from a difficult social encounter with some townsfolk. He views the world as very pure; most NPCs to him have blank slates as minds.
Pong was Augustus FItzgerald, a Sorcerer voyeur who watched Kat's awkward social encounter unfold before deciding that his precious spell points were too valuable to be used. He is known to have an above average IQ which fails to register under any sort of pressure. Uses a modified carrot to cast his vege-spells.
Finally, Jordan was Kigawa of Haven, a "Dark" Knight from Haven. The "Dark" part I believe is solely down to his Lego Character wearing black-colored plate armor, and his idea of having fun with Mother Clay in the carriage away from the pouring rain. His character founded the party, and the party repays him by playing cruel practical jokes on him. He is extremely generous with his Florins, and a demoralise-r of Fetid Dogs.
The party's meeting up in Igham was hilarious, with funny role-playing and awkward scenes of makeshift wrestling moves and one-sided Florin trading. Common sense took over, and they soon adventured in the name of Butler Co. and dispatched five very angry (and wet) dogs with relative ease, except for Terrowin, who went unconscious after they initially grouped up on the unarmored warrior.
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| Look! You cannot see Maiden's Vale as it is too small. Whee, what a map. |
The party continued on to Maiden's Vale for a quest and instead found their completion foiled by Maxim Le Clos, a cruel and selfish man who took control of his cousin's - Sir Olvar's village after he went out of town searching for the White Lady, to put an end to a curse that has befallen the Vale.
They ended up at the Inn, and the owner gave them some background on the current state of the village, and pleaded with the party to go search for Sir Olvar in the forest and bring him back safely.
It was already 3 am by that time, and we ended our play-testing at that juncture.
Overall, I felt that the 4grid Combat is the start of a good thing. We realized that a lot of the technicalities can be solved in many situations with the GM just deciding if the action could be done with a quick yes/no. The rules are there just an a guide, and the GM will have the final say as he knows all the factors (clear/hidden) involved in the specific context.
I will also need a wider array of figurines (Animals, I'm looking at you!) and props to add better visuals to some of our future scenes. There is this Bricklink Lego Store on the Internet, which stocks a fantastic inventory of mini-figures and boxed sets, at a better price than Singapore.
The Attribute Success System (AsS) was a runaway success. An intuitive system, it allowed my players to do what they wanted and I can easily tack a Difficulty Value to determine the outcome. This makes me want to add an additional attribute, namely Body (Constitution), to provide for more accurate Success Rolls involving poison saves, system shock, and endurance checks rather than the average value of Strength and Looks currently on the Test Server.
We realized that at the earlier levels, the lack of armor on a low-leveled Sword Saint makes for a prone one as packs of mobs who converge on him is bad news. Me and Shell will still work on it, and I have faith that our scaling and the future abilities of the Saint will help the class out.
I will continue tuning the "Sword Saint", with Critical Hit as a unique focal point of this combat class. At the end of the day, I do not want it to be a near-clone of the Barbarian, and would prefer it to have its own flavor being the 11th Character Class of our DW System.
All in all, a fun session at the void deck. Maybe not so with one of the HDB families who threw a water pack in our vicinity to warn us of the excessive noise we were making. I admit I was a bit loud but it is the weekend for god's sake. Whatever, you jealous denizens of high-rise brick housing.
I am a tad rusty with the running of some scenes, but I will improve with time. From a personal point of view, I will slowly refrain from the campy clue-giving and hand-holding once we have most of the system in order.
Back to work, and more tweaks in the pipeline. C'yall on the flip side.
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