(I hope this is the right place to put this. Apologies in advance if I should be sticking it in a thread somewhere)So, we had our first attempt of the playtest rules last night at the
London Indie RPG Meetup (actually, a group of us tried to play the pre-playtest release way back in March, but I failed to fill in a report on how that went because reasons).
Our game was a bit of a failure, but a big part of that was two players who were unfamiliar with AW turning up late and me trying to run it for the first time with a large group.
Stronghold setup was quite straightforward. Because of the level of ambient noise, I ended up having the players take turns picking from the lists rather than attempt to achieve consensus on each item. I think I'd do that if it was quieter as well as I prefer that to taking votes, etc. The armory choices, and to a lesser extent, the fortifications, were a little uninteresting; could those be changed to slightly fewer choices which open up questions or otherwise have more flavour? While I get the mechanical difference between choosing shields rather than bows, it's a little flat. Even the first two sections would be strengthened by questions at the end of each option, in my view. We ended up going for a Helm's Deep-style fortress, deep in the hills where a small band of outlaws and rebels were eking out an existence to avoid the various warring factions.
People setup was fine, and more flavourful than Stronghold. Combining the playbook with the rules page would be helpful, but I'm sure you have that in hand. In keeping with the idea of our stronghold, we went for a mishmash of people with diverse ethnic backgrounds. We went for "clan" size, which sort of worked for what we had in mind but would probably have presented challenges if we'd got as far as trying the mass combat rules. A list of names for peoples (as opposed to people) would be really handy both for set up and when establishing new threats later on.
Playbooks. The experienced AW players had no problem with these, the ones who had never played AW before struggled, but I think that was largely my fault and the disruption of them arriving late.
Households. I wasn't entirely sure what to do with these. Were we meant to be creating one household together and slotting everyone in accordingly, should each player have their own household, or a bit of both? As it was, we started off with everyone creating their own households, realised that lead to a bit of a mess, and rationalised it down to two: a sort of soldier's barracks which four of the PCs were part of, and a peasant beauty who was part of her family's household. No-one wanted to be in charge of either a household or the stronghold, which presented some challenges.
Fundamentally, the lack of Hx or Oaths was a real issue for me. We ended up creating a default relationship map anyway, but I really think it should be done at this stage.Season moves. Is this enough to get the game started? I'm going to go for no. Most of them have a mechanical effect but very little narrative drive (he exception to this is Travel, Soldiering and to a lesser extent At the Hearth - the latter will probably have more resonance after a couple of sessions once characters have become established). I'd like all the ones which give you some kind of benefit to have a "but" attached. I really like the way the Farmstead move on The Man playbook in Sagas of the Icelanders works - it drives need and thus story. More dice rolling in Season moves would be awesome as the various results clash together.
Play. Getting started was a little slow. We'd only managed to establish one really strong hook during the season move phase, with news of a neighbouring warlord mounting a war party to attack the stronghold. Getting the players to set up their own dynamics and relationships was hard, and when I suggested more antagonism to help with the drama that lead to more "well, I'll just be a jerk/sleaze to X then" rather than anything that we could really use. When we finally got everyone out of the keep and exploring the wilderness, things started to get more interesting. I got everyone to make Undertake Great Labour rolls and badness ensued in the form of an enemy scouting party. Things were just getting going when we decided we'd run out of time and that was that.
No mass combat, sorry. We did try the Single Combat move and liked it - especially the "spend blind" rule, although it might be an idea to have cards or something similar to do that with (I'm a bit fan of putting moves on cards generally, but that's off topic really). Next time I playtest it, I'll come better prepared with some cards to make this quicker and more dramatic.
General. Amongst the people who had read the "first look" documents, there was some remorse for the loss of rank and genealogy. In general, it seems that the game is de-emphasising PvP, which is a reasonable choice, but status is such a strong driver for conflict - even amongst people on the same "side" - that I think it should be made more prominent somehow. Both those sections really set an inspiring tone which the new background documents don't. Similarly, the talk of the "Empire of the Eagle" as opposed to the Roman Empire did a really good job of setting the game "one step beyond" historical cosplay.
The playbooks in the first look docs were certainly more colourful, but that seems to have been replaced by the mantles, which we haven't seen yet. I can certainly see the benefit of uncovering destiny over time as the fiction develops rather than jabbing it in there from the get go. As it stands though, I think the setup doesn't provide enough kickers to get everyone running out of the door. A bit more preparation on my part might have helped however, so I'll see how my second playtest works.
Thanks. Hope I don't sound unduly negative. I did have several players ask us to carry on the story into another session, which suggests the players were getting a lot out of it.