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DESIGN
DIARY
 In
this column, I cover issues that come up during the process
of writing Arcana
Unearthed: A Variant Player's Handbook. Some are
specific design issues, while others are somewhat more esoteric.
I hope you find them all informative and interesting, answering
a lot of the questions you have about the book, the kinds
of things designers think about, and about the whole publishing
process. This Design Diary will be updated sometimes every
week, sometimes every other week. -- Monte
Playtesting
DATE:
June 5, 2003
Playtesting
is extremely important to me. When we developed 3rd Edition,
we did more playtesting than perhaps any other RPG product,
ever.
Good
designers know what they're doing. They don't always need
playtesters to tell them what to do and what not to do
on every single rule. But designers can be gripped by
hubris sometimes as well, and feel that, because they
know what they're doing, they don't need to show anything
to playtesters, ever. Or, they feel that showing it to
just a few playtesters that they know well is good enough.
But this is a mistake.
The
best thing that playtesters provide is a sounding board.
When a designer wants to know how people will feel about
his new material, the playtesters' reaction will tell
him. The more playtesters you have, the more accurate
this "read" will be.
Because of this, I sent out Arcana
Unearthed to as many playtesters as I thought
I could reasonably handle (any more and I couldn't have
processed all the feedback). We had around 100 playtesters
at the start, and that's a lot of feedback to digest.
They were an incredible help to the design process, and
the game wouldn't be as good without them. (When you see
a copy of the book, take a glance at the names -- they
deserve the attention.)
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The
DM ponders his next move.
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Playtesters
(from left) Michele, Jesse, Bruce, and Sue
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The
Blue Knight stands alone amid his fallen chorrim
before (from left) Taeln the faen (obscured), Tu-Methus
the giant, Melgar the mage blade, Maedi the spryte,
and Daijan the verrik.
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But
playtests are, in the end, "playing the game."
They're not just work. They're fun. My own playtest campaign
took place in the Diamond Throne setting, where Jesse
Decker (a human mage blade), Michele Carter (a quickling
faen unfettered/hawk totem warrior), Bruce Cordell (a
giantish champion of life), Chris Perkins (a verrik mind
witch), and Sue Cook (a spryte magister) took on all kinds
of threats -- some of which you'll learn more about when
you read the Fiery Dragon adventure Plague of Dreams
and some of the free adventure material I'm going to be
putting up on the site in August and beyond.
We
had a good time. Sue thought it would be fun to share
some of the funny stuff that came out of the campaign.
In no particular order:
-
Sue
believed that sprytes needed a spell to shrink/enlarge
things so they could share them with normal-sized characters.
Reasonable. But the group wondered what one would call
these spells? Players threw out such oh-so-helpful ideas
as "embiggen," "tinify," "giantification,"
and "resmallate." (The resulting spell is
actually called appropriate size.)
-
At
character creation, Bruce's giant character spent his
starting money on the real essentials: armor and a sword.
That's it. We all hoped he had at least a loincloth,
too, because for the first session everyone was trying
not to picture the giant running around without
pants.
-
"She's
carpoozled!" "Is she double-carpoozled?"
"No, just carpoozled." This exchange occurred
when confusion arose over the use of the word "stunned,"
and Jesse decided we needed to make up new words for
combat actions, rather than using real words.
-
If
Bruce had his way, here's how the giant racial levels
would work:
1st level: +2 Int (bigger brain)
2nd level: +20 speed (bigger stride)
3rd level: natural armor (bigger skin)
-
We
discovered that faen can shoot firebursts between their
giant ally's legs! (Good thing he did buy pants after
all!) When Chris learned that Sue was doing that, he
said to Bruce: "Whoo! Gettin' a little hot south
of the equator?"
Of
course, a lot of the funny things were just good quotes:
-
Melgar,
Jesse's mage blade, truthfully taunts a verrik attacker
in brigandine armor: "I'm gonna kill you... And
sell your armor!"
-
Tu-Methus,
giant champion of life and master of the obvious: "There's
something unnatural about these undead." (He meant
because they faded away into the water.)
-
Chris's
witch Daijan noted (truthfully), "You don't want
to get into a staring contest with a mind witch."
-
"I
got it to hook itself to me. Kill it, Vardash!"
said Melgar, after an inept move left him attached to
a dream hunter (a new monster). Yeah, he meant
to do that...
-
Vardash,
an NPC ally greenbond doesn't want to take plants into
the dungeon. "How would we pot them? In chorrim
helms?" (Chorrim are massive militaristic humanoids
that the party had just defeated.)
-
Bruce
loved his new burst boots (a new magic item from
The Diamond Throne
that allows you to add an extra move action onto your
actions for a round five times each day), but he couldn't
manage to SAY it. Most of the time it came out "berts
boots," prompting us to ask, "Does Ernie know
you've got Bert's boots?"
-
After
rolling low initiative compared to the rest of the party,
Melgar and Daijan were out of the action for a while.
The verrik said, "So, Melgar, we never get a chance
to talk. Do you have any sisters?" Melgar replies,
"No, and they're all ugly."
-
In
an adventure where the PCs had recovered an important
and ancient lost key (that, of course, their foes were
also after), Maedi the spryte magister casts lesser
creation to make a decoy key, describing that it's
metal just like the original. "Can you create metal
things with the lesser version of that spell?"
asks the DM. Checking the rest of the spell description
("organic matter only"), she continues, "...except
it's really made out of potato...."
DESIGN
DIARY PAST ENTRIES
*
High Magic -- May
29, 2003
"I
referred to the Diamond Throne as a high-magic setting.
I should clarify..."
*
The Diamond Throne -- May
23, 2003
"So
it's about time I start talking about the Diamond Throne.
The Diamond Throne is a campaign setting for
Arcana Unearthed -- the default setting, like
Greyhawk for D&D, I suppose...."
*
Death's Door -- May
8 , 2003
" I
like the D&D death's door rules. I like that at
0 hp, you're still up and can take a limited action,
but then you exhaust yourself...."
*
Hero Points -- May
1, 2003
"A
roleplaying campaign can be like putting up wallpaper...."
*
Truenames -- April
18, 2003
"Truenames
are common in many fantasy settings. I think I first
became aware of the concept in Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea
trilogy..."
*
Go, Go, Go! -- April
10, 2003
"Short
entry this time. I hate spells with 1 minute/level durations...."
*
Ceremony -- April
3, 2003
"I
think I've already mentioned that one of the goals I
set for myself with Arcana Unearthed was to make
things a little less generic...."
*
Things That Rules Take Away -- March
21, 2003
"There
are aspects of fantasy roleplaying that rules, inadvertently,
can actually take away...."
*
Still Talking Classes -- March 13,
2003
"I've
saved some of the best classes for last. Let's talk
about the runethane, the mage blade, and the witch...."
*
More Classes -- February 27, 2003
"This
time, I want to tell you about some of the other classes:
akashics, magisters, and greenbonds...."
*
Build a Better Fighter -- February
23, 2003
"The
title this week is facetious. It really should be 'build
a different fighter'...."
*
The Magic Balancing Act -- February
13, 2003
"In
Arcana Unearthed I'm introducing a new method
of magic item pricing. First, I streamlined the item
creation feats..."
*
More Magic -- January 23, 2003
"This
week, I thought I'd talk more about the new magic system
in Arcana Unearthed."
*
Magic -- January 17, 2003
"As
a designer, magic in Arcana Unearthed posed a
huge challenge. I knew that I wanted to ditch the Vancian
system...."
*
Design Decisions, Part Two -- December
24, 2002
"Here's
a bit more discussion of some of the general issues
I faced as I began designing Arcana Unearthed...."
*
Design Decisions, Part One -- December
19, 2002
"Before jumping into another big area of Arcana
Unearthed's design, like classes or the magic system,
I thought I'd discuss some of the general issues I faced
as a designer starting the book...."
*
Arcana Unearthed Races -- December
5, 2002
"I
started with the races. While I knew that the game needed
humans as a basis, I wanted all the other races to be
new. I didn't want to just create dwarf and elf analogs
with different names...."
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