I've updated my game since the last time I got feedback here (get the PDF from my downloads page or follow this link straight to the 0.6 PDF). Based on playtesting I made some big changes to the mechanics. I eliminated the "bidding" mechanic for chapter framing that nobody seemed to enjoy (including me) and replaced it with a die rolling system. The new chapter framing system feeds into a substantially revised dice mechanic within the chapters which hopefully eliminates some of the clunkiness in the old rules. The new stuff is in the "Create Plot Tracks" and "Record Adversity Dice" sections on pages 12 and 13 and in "Part III: Playing Out Chapters" on pages 21 to 29 (and the example from page 30 to 38). I'll appreciate any feedback about the game, but I'm most interested in focusing on these parts.

I haven't playtested these new/revised systems yet, but I'd like some feedback on whether the system itself is intrinsically confusing, and whether I've explained it well in the rules. Specifically, I'm interested in getting people's reaction to the "roll your Story Dice to determine your role within the chapter, spend the Story Dice based on the numbers showing in order to activate Traits, use the Traits to get Action Dice, roll the Action Dice to resolve an Exchange" sequence. It makes perfect sense to me, but I'm concerned that the different kinds of dice and the different ways you use and interpret them at different times may not make sense to anyone else.

Simon,

  Thanks for reading it.

39 pages of pretty dry text is hard work.

Would you say that the "dryness" comes from a lack of flavor text and artwork, or would you still not be connecting with the prose of the procedural rules even if that stuff was there?

I am finding the text confusing.  I think my confusion is coming from being told what to do, but not really having a good sense of why I'm doing that. 

Can you expand on that a bit or maybe give me some examples? Since I already understand why you have to do everything it's hard for me to notice problems like that in my own text.

Thanks.

  Dan.

I think what I need is more sense of your vision of the fantasy fiction your game creates.

Eventually I will probably have "why fantasy" and "what is Epic Fantasy" sections, but it doesn't sound like that will really address your concerns. Like I say on my download page, my vision is for fiction like that found in The Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, or The Sword of Truth.

What are the stories about? What do we discover through play?

The game is a genre emulation game. What you are supposed to get through play is a genre-appropriate story without the burden of pre-authorship and without conflict-driven duelling-agendas gameplay. It is supposed to deliver a collaborative story-creating experience in a lower pressure environment than many popular indie games, creating a subjective experience that's closer to the "I want to experience a story" feeling that many traditional gamers report enjoying. Other than that, I'm not sure what you're asking. Are you looking for a Narrativist "address of premise"? That's not what the game is shooting for. I'm assuming that "the story" isn't a valid answer to your "what do we discover" question, but I can't really think of other answers to give you. The same kind of things you discover when reading epic fantasy fiction?

I want to know what each rule contributes towards the exploration in the game.

I don't understand what you want. Each rule contributes to the system. My hope is that the system produces a creative scaffold around which a story accretes.

Is that helpful to you?

I don't want to be ungrateful, but no, not really. Your criticism is like a black box to me. I know that you don't like the game, but not much else.

Hi Dan,

Sorry my earlier response wasn't helpful to you. Let me try a different way.

One of the things I'm finding really hard about reading your game is the number of Capitalised Terms the game uses. It seems like every section is telling you to use the Story Dice to determine the Plausibility Index which gives you the Danger Value for your hero's Action Sequence or whatever. The result is that I feel like I need to understand the whole thing before I can understand any of its parts.

How much of that is essential to what the game system needs to do to say what you want to say about the genre?

Hi Dan,

Have you thought about whether it would be possible to achieve the same effects you want in play while pruning away some of the mechanics? Your design has a lot of different mechanics, which adds up to a lot to remember in play.

I think one of the things that's complicating play is the work of translating the fiction into mechanics and vise versa – like, figuring out how the story elements you want to introduce will be represented in the mechanics, and effect the mechanics have on the story.

I wonder if you can move some of this work from the players into the design, with "pre-packaged" story elements – the players choose from a list of options, like "Passing through a dangerous forest" "Crossing a mountain pass" "Confronting an adversary" and so on, and then the specific rules for each of those scenarios is presented in its own section. That would, I think, be fun in play, because it's a good prompt to imagination and genre emulation, and it also means that the players have to remember fewer rules, because they're presented when they need them.

within a chapter there's the central resolution mechanism (roll dice for each trait you narrate into the exchange, high die wins, roll less than N on any die and every trait you used exhausts) and the rules for what fiction to introduce (either a passive environment, active environment, or a character). Between chapters there are the die rolls to determine what jobs players do in a chapter and the plot tracking.

That, right there, seems like a really good overview. I haven't finished the text yet, but that's in part because I don't know what I'm making or what any of the parts do yet, and that makes it hard to follow.

But now you've written this overview, and I think that it would really help me to start from a distance and then get closer.

I did some major edits to the text and posted a PDF for rev0.61. As Simon suggested, I tried to cut way back on the Captialized Terms. I also did a major rewrite to the confusing "playing out a chapter" text, and added a flowchart to help explain it better. I'd appreciate feedback. (I'd especially appreciate feedback from anyone who found the earlier text confusing to see if I'm headed in a better direction now.)

Also, does the diagram on page 3 make sense or is it confusing?