Last weekend we playtested the game at a gdr convention in my area. I was the MC and i had the time to collect some thought when we headed home. I'll keep it simple, but we can discuss about it further in case:
WHAT WE LIKED A LOT
- The stronghold creation. It reminded us the Covenant creation from Ars Magica (a game i always liked for various reasons) and it was a good starting point to dive into the narration because all the players were involved in some way with the stronghold and the people.
- The experience system. A lot of options and a built in system to prevent abuses (i had some in the past in AW, Dark Ages felt a lot more "safe" against powerplayers)
- The Join Single Combat move. You can win a duel by taking damage. Brilliant. (there is BUT sadly, some MC could ruin the players game by spending 2 in "position" every time. Players will be more careful because Harm is really deadly in DA)
- The Aid move. Streamlined, no rolls required, beautifully simple.
- How the harm is handled and the lack of an "healer" playbook. When you can heal, the harm is almost meaningless and the healer mandatory (that's why i disliked the Angel in AW). When you don't have the option to heal, you can "fear" for you character and you tend to resort to violence only when you can't do anything else to avoid it. A lot more pathos at the table, i love it. Please never ever bring an "healer" playbook in the game. (ok you can heal using the enchantments, but there are sacrifices involved. So it's good)
WHAT WE DIDN'T LIKE
- Weird. Too many contact the other world rolls, too many "weird" people. My players all had +1 or +2 in weird and they kept contacting the other world, after a while it felt like it was the norm to speak with entities.
- The lack of Act under fire or something similar. I think the game could have a move to handle stressful and risky situation, like sneaking behind someone or breaking undetected inside an enemy camp. Leap into action feels wrong when doing something cautious but potentially deadly. This imho was MAJOR, because if there is an archetype i love in medieval settings, is the rogue.
- The lack of 2 archetypes i feel they are needed: the rogue and the spymaster. The outranger just isn't what i expected him to be and i didn't like the "step out of earthly life" move on him (while i like it on the wizard), so i feel the need of an assassin/trapper/sneaky playbook. The spymaster instead would be someone more like Varys from A song of ice and fire, an educated person who can speak his way out of the most dire situation and can collect knowledge to leverage people. Those two playbooks would be really good to have more "social" oriented campaign in a medieval setting, something i would love to play.
- The setting in the real world. It was somewhat limiting, but i understand the reasoning behind this choice.
- The absence of a move to fight something different from a single enemy or a war company. When you fight 3 vs 5, is that a join single combat? It's not a 1v1 and the fiction most of the time doesn't allow for "duels". We didn't understand how to handle these situations.