ACME Test...

[alexandraerin]

...went pretty well. There were some connection issues that may stem from my current set-up that will have to be addressed one way or the other.

At one point my east-west aphasia did lead to a momentary confusion about how many zombies were still undead and kicking, but all in all the test went better than I expected in that area. I know how I made the mistake and can watch out for it in the future. It was also in the more complex of the two battles that I staged.

(I had four planned, but with the connection issues things took about twice as long as they should have.)

The ACME rules seemed to work well. There was some distance-fudging and some judgment calls involved, but that was expected. Nobody pulled out a power that made me go, "Wait, how can this be applied?" I rarely had to think before answering when somebody asked who they could reach.

One thing I had planned on doing but forgot about (and that moofable, who observed the session to give me a neophyte's perspective on the proceedings, noted to me that this would helpful) was giving a textual update of the combatants and their positions after each round and after major changes/upheavals. That I think would speed things up for the players and help prevent errors on my part.

Those are procedural things that can be easily fixed/improved. I think the rules are playable and ready. I have some concerns that it might be too easy to target blasts with the narrow/wide rule, but it's not something I think needs immediate adjustment. It'll take repeated play to really determine that, and the best way to do that would be to "go live" with the rules and play them repeatedly....actually, I have been thinking about this since the test ended, see below.

The connection was really bad by the time we gave up (and right before a big climax: giant zombie bear versus kynn's spirit bear) so I didn't get to have a whole big breakdown session at the end or anything, but I think the playtesters enjoyed it. I'm sure they'd agree that getting a text summary of the battlefield would help.

For running actual games the connection thing might be an issue... I could solve it by making the games text only instead of voice, or by taking a computer downstairs where I can plug it in directly to the router. I'll take a look at both solutions. Now that I know the rules are playable I'm getting eager to start.

Playtesters: If you have any comments, questions about why something went a certain way, or other feedback, feel free to drop it here.

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Update on close blasts: after some time reflecting on how well gamingdragon was able to use Howl of Fury as a minion cleanser, I've decided that the "narrow blast" mechanic does give players too much of a "shotgun scalpel" without giving enough up. Catching three enemies in a Close Blast 3 isn't a bad deal most of the time.

So to fix that, and more closely emulate how blasts get dropped on the map in regular play, it's going to work like this: you can pick one adjacent character (or "empty square") and say it's the origin square. Anyone else who's adjacent is safe. After that, it'll be resolved using the threat rules and common sense about who's where. There wasn't a time in the game that a blast was used where I didn't have a good enough sense of who was where to know if the Wizard was inside the tent pissing out or the other way around, as it were. In most situations where it wouldn't be possible to figure out who would or would not be hit (because everyone's all bunched up), it wouldn't be possible to drop a Blast 3 and not hit allies anyway.

Basically I overthought things. Blast doesn't need a lot of special handling, and the handling I used made it more powerful than it was meant to be.