THIS was the first playtest with all the printed finished parts, the new character sheets and the zine-style Adventure Guide. After lots of little playtests and working on the art for years, it was exciting to see it all come together. Set-up went pretty quickly, with the new pre-made characters. Player 1 (skip-the-rules mom) chose Bekwenna, human knight, Player 2 (the bookworm) chose Xochi, human wizard, Player 3 (the lego kid) chose Trynn, the human scout. No elves, faeries or gnomes this time around! I tried to point out that faeries can fly, gnomes are great at puzzles and elves are great at magic, but no takers. On to the adventure…
Session 1: Set-up & Go (45 minutes)
The game took about 15 minutes to set-up, walk everyone through their character sheets, get all the parts and pieces out, put on some spooky dungeon music and then we started. I read the set-up and dropped them into the first Adventure Square. They chose a direction and on the second square found the Leaf Notes, after dealing with a very grumpy monster. They’d found their first Major Magic Item, one of the key Treasure Cards to unlocking the final challenge.
I had shuffled and reshuffled the Adventure Squares at random and was a little surprised that they landed on something so momentous so early in the game. It made me think that maybe the Storyteller should stack the deck; keep it mostly random, but make sure the big events are spaced out so the adventure doesn’t move too quickly. At any rate, the party was off to a great start.
They moved through 6 cards in the first session and we wrapped in 30 minutes. Each Adventure Square took an average of 4 minutes, from choosing a new direction, hearing the description, choosing an action and solving the puzzle and/or battling the monster. Although the story set-up at the beginning was a little long, the gameplay moved quickly. I snapped a picture of the map and stacked all the parts.
Session 2: Keep Exploring (30 minutes)
This was the state of the map after 60 minutes. The adventure was about 75% done. The party has recovered 2 out of 3 major magic items and has managed not to get clobbered by any monsters, although there were a couple of fierce battles. Finally we got to test out how battles worked and didn’t work and what needed to be changed. This led to a major re-write of battles, spells and how difficult to make encounters. Luckily the rules were still a print-out at this stage!
Session 3: The Big Finish (30 Minutes)
In the final 30-minute session the players discovered the last Major Magic Item and unlocked the final challenge. The explored 20 out of the 32 squares and encountered most of the interesting characters and puzzles along the way. The total elapsed time was 1 hour, 45 minutes (15 minutes of set-up time, 90 minutes of playing time).
Big Takeaways from the First Playtest
Shorten the intro - kids in general, and and instruction-skipping moms, are not interested in a long story intro, they just want to play.
Stack the deck - A totally random shuffle of the Adventure Cards may make the game too short, too easy or too hard right away. In the next playtest, consider spacing out the Special Squares and Major Magic Items.
Draw a Treasure Card every time - It will speed up the action and make the game more consistent if the players always get a treasure card.
Design some quick start guides - There was a lot of information about spells, and how to battle, that the players needed to have with them at all times. A couple of “quick start” guides that they can easily reference will speed up the game.
Make things a little harder - I realized a lot of the challenges were too easy. As we played I pencilled in some on-the-fly tweaks to the Adventure Guide to make sure the rolls didn’t always go the players way.
Player Feedback
The playtesters (ok, actually my captive family) were happy to play with the finished cards after watching me drawing artwork for the past 9 months. I’d usually hand the square around before placing it on the table so everyone could get a good look before we jumped into the action. The Adventure Squares, Treasure Cards and Character Sheets gave the game the feeling and excitement I hoped for, bringing the story to life and making it easy to see and feel what was going on. There were a lot of notes taken, lessons learned and tweaks to make but the game held together and we’re off to a great start!
