Dungeon Crawl (alpha) Playtest: 3 Player

Back in Indiana for family health related stuff but was able to do some playtesting with my old buddies. Thanks for indulging me, Jason and Geoff. We critique our play session and talk design at the end of the video.
2 player playtest of scenario 2, Tomb of the Necromancer, coming this weekend!

[@rickartw8867]

Looking forward to this one being released. Interesting mechanics.

[@bluebotic2327]

Thanks! Me too, man, me too...

[@Luchiop]

Looks amazing!!!!

[@bluebotic2327]

Thanks Luchiop! It's getting there!

[@geoffgeorge]

Good game!

[@bluebotic2327]

Good playtester / level designer! Thanks Geoff!

[@allluckyseven]

I don't remember the rules for armor, but should Brutalus really take that 1 point of damage from the Feral Child, seeing that he has both a helmet and chainmail on? (~10:30) 25:30 - Wouldn't it be interesting if you could attack once with your ranged weapon as a melee (acting sort of like a club, short blunt or something), but doing so would destroy it? Either that or dropping the weapon that's in your hands, then picking up one that's stowed would allow you to change weapons on your turn... by sort of sacrificing one weapon. 27:09 - I also don't remember if I said this, but have you checked the tiles for Betrayal on House on the Hill? Their icons are pretty big and easy to see. Their tiles are a single space each, though, so they have plenty of room to make big icons. (As an aside, some of those tiles in Betrayal are quite versatile... Something like that could be cool for a future scenario.) 30:40 - You could have rules for sanity loss (apart from the automatic loss at 38:23), and so upon seeing the chopping block that would be too horrific and require a Sanity (Will? Knowledge?) roll. Maybe it's where the cultists prepare their meal ... with human flesh! Something similar (w/ San loss) could be done with the Sigil room. But overall I think the Sigil room is a good spot for weird shit to happen (randomly; i.e. rolling on a table to see what happens). The Thief almost killing the Wyrm and killing all the monsters in the inner sanctum single-handedly with one bomb seems a bit too much... Too easy! I mean, he died in the process, but he also rolled really bad. Maybe the area of effect of the bomb is just too big. The Shake spell could also kill the Old Wyrm immediately. As in, the Cleric enters the room, loses some Sanity upon seeing the Old Wyrm, then casts a spell and has a good chance of killing it right away, or maiming it so any other attack (that hits) kills it. Shouldn't the challenge scale up as you add more heroes to the board? It sounds like you need rules for team combat, as one character (or more) could get stuck in a corner space and not be able to move or attack. Although, if it's a spellcaster he could cast a spell, but he'd need line of sight to hit the monsters... But if it isn't, then he'd be screwed. Unless heroes can move freely through a space that's occupied by another hero. I seem to remember that they can swap places? I'm not sure how that would work, if it would be a good option mid-combat.

[@bluebotic2327]

I knew if you watched this video you'd catch that I forgot to use the Fighter's armor. Yeah, I don't think I used his armor buff once. Just forgot. I like your idea of sacrificing weapons to use once for bludgeoning. And you option for dropping for quick switch. I see if I have room to ad them, or at least make them optional/advanced rules. I need to look at the Betrayal tiles. I love that game BTW. Played it 3 times with a gaming group, had a blast. I like stat tests or DMG for room specific rules. Still deciding how much room rules to write. But I think it's an opportunity (those rules would live in the scenario rules, not the core rules). The bomb originally had a radius instead of LoS. With 2d6 damage at close range, and 1d6 damage at farther range. Up to like 4 spaces. Then I simplified it to LoS, but I can revisit. Yeah. the bomb is very powerful. Shake seems overpowered. If you get high debris role and high damage role. Geoff has used it twice to take out the old wyrm. But, it's pretty cool. And, he could have rolled poorly. I'll noodle. Team combat: I sort of have it worked out, but need to write a secrion on multi-hero games. The entire ruleset assumes true solo, but these playtests have been a good proof of concept for multi-hero and multi-player. I want to avoid scalable difficulty. I'd rather just write some hardcore scenario packs for expert play. And the player should choose number of heroes based on how hard they want the game to play. The 2X, 3X difficulty scale stuff bothers me.

[@allluckyseven]

@@bluebotic2327 You may consider having a playtest session which you just watch the other players playing the game, maybe trying not to tell them the rules of the game, just handing them the rulebook and taking notes of what happens, if they can be guided just by the rulebook, what questions arise, etc. That serves one purpose, but also you won't have to juggle as much stuff as you do while playing and teaching the game.

[@bluebotic2327]

@@allluckyseven I'd love to do something like that, but have tapped out my entire gaming friend pool (of two), only one of whom is in the ballpark of 'gamer', and he even said: 'yeah, this is fun, but I don't think I'd sit down and try to learn this from a rulebook.' I'm hoping once I finish the scenario books and fix the rulebook I can share the rule books with the world and get lots of feedback. And then maybe even a free print and play version for open beta.