Playtest #2: Adventures Under the Laughing Moon

It did not go as smoothly as we expected. Our second round of play testing Adventures Under the Laughing Moon - Role-playing Game (Volume 1) had a lot of stop-and-start moments as we got used to the game, learned the rules, and became fluent with the game's systems. Here is a snapshot of the issues we ran into:

The game isn't clear how weapon skills are purchased, and there are broad and narrow categories of weapons. The game mentions buying "Swords" but it isn't said if this is the broad "Swords" category covering any sword-like weapon (including daggers), or the specific sword subcategories (which would exclude daggers). Furthermore, there isn't a description of what you buy, percentage points (which most skills are), or d20 points (which we later figured out was the right choice, since in combat, you add the base level of a weapon to your roll).

There aren't any pre-gen characters in the book either, which would help us get a feel for characters are designed, what an average starting character looks like, and other "am I doing this right?" sort of questions. It took a while to design characters, and for a group, pre-gens and a starting adventure would help greatly.

The game has a lot of "roll under and roll over" swaps where low is good (ability rolls and skill checks), and high is good (to-hits and damage). I normally don't mind roll-under for skill checks with damage being roll-high, but I do mind of weapon to-hits (which are basically skill checks) changing the paradigm.

We couldn't find the unskilled skill use rule.

High amounts of actions per turn and winning initiative rules the roost in combat. Most of our combats ended in the first turn with a flurry of blows landing, especially from dual-wielders. I don't know if we were playing this completely correct, but this is our experience. High weapon skills also are indispensable, even at the expense of not knowing much else character-wise.

Landing a blow is a bit tedious, with hit locations, tracking damage per location, and then rinse repeat for the next successful hit. The game slowed down during wounding for us, and we found ourselves missing a more aggregated hit point and straightforward armor system. This is a lot like Runequest/Legend's damage system, but we had less slowdown problems with the latter.

There isn't a charisma-type ability score, as all social interactions are handled through skills. We are used to having some type of social ability score to cover any basic interaction, and we are at a loss at how to deal with non-skilled social situations. Also, bluff is a 3 skill point (per 5%) skill, and persuasion is a 1 skill point (per 5%) skill that feel like they do the same thing. Similarly, all of the stealth skills (3 points per specific skill of a collection of about 8 sub-skills) had to be raised separately, with hide in shadows and move silently being separate skills one had to raise independently. To us, it is just "stealth."

Advancement ran counter to the use of Bandu (fate points), where using fate points during a game took away from the skill points earned at the end of the adventure. Nobody used Bandu during our game, because they wanted skill points.

The game still did hold our attention though, and it is fighting off our attempts to begin the Dragon Age play test. What interested us? It's a different world, not D&D, and there is a lot of new stuff to explore. The characters we designed were interesting. The little story suggestions given as sample adventures were very interesting, and we are enjoying turning those into missions and adventures. Magic use can get you into trouble, and the world story behind that (with mage hunters) is interesting.

We wanted more on the world! Yes, I know, read the books, but some world info (and possibly a list of the novels) would have given us some needed background.

The world is a darker, gritter world. Heroism is the exception and not the rule, and this allows players to take on heroic roles without feeling they are sidelined by more powerful forces and NPCs. Players don't know what to expect, compared to D&D, where things tend to be pulled from the same Monster Manual edition after edition. It is also a more interpersonal world, which I loved in our Monster Manual free D&D 5 playtest of Faerun - where there were no monsters, just the races of the world. This was a fun throwback to that game, which is still a classic experience in my mind.

Take away the funny shaped monsters, and you are left with the worst monsters of all - us.

So this is still holding our interest despite the rough spots, and I look forward to trying some more in it soon. All in all, an interesting game with a focus on combat and interaction, and it is a fun and interesting experience.