So this weekend was planned for a final, or near final, testing session for Desecration. However, due to several conflicting schedules we had to scrub that. So James Arrington, editor for most of my Fantasy Sagas game line and the writer of Prophecy, got together to have a bit of brainstorming over Romp. And since Romp was on the table, we thought that we could throw some dice and try it out in a real time test. You could effectively call it an alpha test as the results were essentially the same.
I have been really looking forward to getting James’s input on Romp for a while. We have had a few discussion, light ones, about it conceptually. However, now that it is a full fledged system, there really hadn’t been as much talk through the process as there was for Fantasy or Modern Sagas. That is more due to the nature of the project, which while being ambitious, is still relatively small. The current draft is still under 50 pages and as of this moment may shrink even further as we trim off the fat. Having James give some input keeps me grounded and looking at different perspectives. Sometimes he offers things that I had already though of, or hadn’t, but in either case some of it winds up having to get nixed overall because of some other design choice that takes precedence, while other suggestions make nifty improvements to the overal scope. Still, you get good ideas in these sort of round tables and you also get to see how closely you are hitting the mark.
Secondly, I really needed to test the game in action with another person, someone who didn’t know much if anything about it. This was a big help as it helps me to isolate certain issues with the rules. You see, the biggest problem I find in game design is not the rules, but how easily they flow together so that you can remember them. After all, whats the good of having a rule you cant remember. So a few rules got changed, simply because they were changed at the table. How recoil is handled is a big one. Originally it was a sort of scaling increase. In a typical 3-round burst you have your first round go clean, then the second has a 2-point penalty, the 3rd has a 3 point penalty from that. So in effect a 10 point attack result winds up being a 3-round burst of 10, 8, 5. Seems easy enough doesn’t it? Well, in practice it was completely forgotten (I didn’t realize how badly we missed it until I was rewriting some of that particular chapter afterwards. In play we simply modified by a point so that the 10-round burst was reflected as 10, 9, 8.
The truth is, from a design and realism point of view the 10, 8, 5 seems more accurate. However, the 10, 9, 8 worked very well at the table. It was easy to use and did the job. So, I am keeping the 10, 8, 5 in a file somewhere and changing it to the 10, 9, 8 for the beta version instead. That way I can revisit both options during more testing but still design the game with a simpler mechanic in hand.
Ultimately that is what Romp sets out to be. It is a simple and effective emulator, while Modern and Fantasy were more simulation, romp will ultimately favor fast and fun over realism. Ultimately E-RPG can handle it (Romp’s A-RPG system is the same system just hacked into about 1/5 of the rules).
Some other changes were also made for balance reasons. James created a pretty decent assault rifleman for testing and we turned that into a squad of four clones. I also create a squad of 4 clones, which grew during battle with 4 more replacements. Unfortunately, James being new, still managed to decimate the intire opposing forces in 2 rounds. Being as he was using a starting character with a very basic load out I was shocked at how easily he could do that. Now, I was able to kill off 2 of his team, but that was just too easy for the party. It greatly showed the wrong part of the game play. As it stood, whoever had initiative would basically win the fight. I wanted it more about maneuvering, and fire superiority. So we tweaked some more basics and poof.
So now that there was an actually hands on and some issues got iron
ed out I can commence with the rewrite of the first book. This will help out with the other alpha testing I have been setting up as well (still could use some more volunteers for the testing btw). So, as I wonder off to begin the laborious process of re-writes I will leave you with a small battle map sample (still a work in progress btw) of a roadblock from a series one Romp module. In this action the PC’s must defend the roadblock from a impending attack and hold the position until reinforcements (in the form of a tank battalion) show up.
