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What We Learned at Gen Con
🕑 Added 2024-08-22 13:07:36 +0000 UTCInquire with the engineer about the possibility of going to 105% on the reactor.
Hey everyone! It’s Djordi again, emerging from my post Gen Con and post COVID recovery to communicate with you fine human beings now that I feel like a human being again.
I wanted to share with y’all a bit about our experience at Gen Con, some of the learnings we took away from Gen Con, and how those learnings will affect the development of Draw Steel.
Beyond some Djordice™ adventures and taking in the whole Gen Con experience, we had one primary goal for MCDM at Gen Con. Running Draw Steel in person for players!
Which went GREAT! We had a mix of ticketed events where players knew they were going to play Draw Steel as well as some First Exposure Hall events where players didn’t know what they were getting into.
And we had MANY LEARNINGS and are in the process of applying those learnings to update Draw Steel to be a better game.
We have always known that Draw Steel was going to be it’s OWN GAME rather than a “patch” to existing d20 heritage games out there. Our core pillars are TACTICAL, HEROIC, CINEMATIC, FANTASY. It’s intentional that TACTICAL is the first pillar in the list. We think the grid is important and essential and are leveraging lessons from a broad pool of tactically oriented games. And that means that Draw Steel is going to take a bit of effort to learn, just like any whole new game.
But in testing the game and running the game for a large swath of players at Gen Con, we noticed some things that are going to guide our next iterations, even acknowledging that there is effort to learn a new game. Without a digital tool, there are aspects of the game that were harder to remember or that were glossed over in actual play. We think that The Codex will be a fantastic tool to make the game easier to prepare and play, but the game needs to work even without The Codex being available.
TL;DR - the players had a great time playing and the Directors had a great time running, but the process of running the game was more taxing than ideal.
So we need to analyze what worked well and what could work better to see where we can make the best tweaks to make Draw Steel the best possible experience. Or rather the best possible experience without reinventing the wheel. The bones of the game are good and it would be easy to overreact to some of these playtest experiences.
A useful methodology I’ve used in the past and that applies here is viewing the experiences through the lens of survivorship bias.
The classic example of this is data from where allied bombers during WW2 were hit. The diagram above shows bullet holes and damage in red. Initial instinctive reaction to this data was to reinforce the areas that were damaged to help the plane survive, but thinking through the problem it’s actually the areas with no red marks that are the vulnerable areas. Because no planes ever returned with damage to those areas. The areas in red are the areas where a bomber could be struck and return to base.
Similarly, with RPGs that are well designed the Director and players can get a “good enough” play experience if the core mechanics are solid and intuitive. We believe that Draw Steel has that with our core power roll and test systems. Even if some rules are forgotten, the game will still work if the core resolution mechanics are there as a fallback.
So, running with the metaphor, what we want to do as we iterate on the game is to get more of the game to be the durable “red marked” sections that can deal with less than perfect real world situations and then focus on refining the rules for the special case scenarios that are the equivalent of the bomber not returning home. The guiding principle we use is the previous work MCDM did with Flee Mortals which was refined to really make it easier for DMs to feel like they were tactical geniuses without actually having to be tactical geniuses.
“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face” - Mike Tyson
Actually running the game without the benefit of digital tools, and in an environment with a bit of chaos like Gen Con, exposed some of the elements that are likely to be forgotten or misused. I designed the pool of demons we used and even I forgot to best use their abilities in every encounter! And there were definitely some turns that took longer because I had many options on the battlefield that were incrementally different than the other. Effects that lasted on the battlefield were more difficult to track than we anticipated, even with a nice laminated map with some wet erase markers.
Back in olden-times, when I was working on video games, specifically working on video games in the 20th Century, I walked in on the Lead Designer of our game testing the latest build. He was playing through the campaign mode of the game while he was reading a magazine and using his non primary hand to play the entire game with the mouse and not using keyboard shortcuts. He explained that, as the most experienced person with the game, he had to intentionally handicap himself to try and capture the state of a brand new player to the game. And an element like the core campaign needed to be easy to understand and play.
So, we took those lessons from our experiences playing and James has proposed some tweaks based on our experiences, including:
Streamlining the captain vs squad benefits and mechanics so they don’t slow down the game
Reducing Villain Point choices to the big ticket items to reduce choice paralysis when the Director takes their turn
Re-evaluate conditions for best use and making them easier to remember
This is all part of understanding that the Director is playing a marathon and not a sprint and has to be able to run the game and stay interested in running the game for a long period of time. You don’t want to be running the reactor at 105% for extended periods of time.
If you haven’t looked over the latest playtest packet, you have until August 27th at noon Pacific US time to get us feedback on the survey.
Comments
Josh Rodell
This was my conclusion to running the packet too. The Cool Things I could do as a Director were all definitely cool, but I had no hope of holding them all in my head.
gm_naahz
The MCDM staff is way too weighted towards people who get their game design experience from computer games. Its not because that means you can only think in terms of code, it is a risk because you as people are players who CAN ENJOY the game theory when it is designed to run as code. You need to balance this with more people who think that simplicity is a boon and that not everything in a TTRPG needs to have a mechanical rule for it. Often you don't need to improve the rules for the airplane bombers engines to make the game not fail when they are shot up. You need to realize that the game is most fun when it just flies forward and that designing engine rules doesn't add any value when you can imagine it flying without a combustion engine to do so... because you know magic.
BasCB
Yeah, right. What an amazing piece of art popping off the page to start this off, love it too.
PrayTellCaesar
Insightful post but also LOOK at that dwarf art 😱
zebwinkler
I’d be Down, What’s your timezone?
Paul L.
Great insights! Thanks for sharing this Djordi.
Oakwoody
This tracks my feedback which was "this game will be great when the VTT becomes available".
Eugene Cheney
Oh my god! The hourglass on the dwarf’s staff! I love it!
Dave the Effable
I want the Djordice ™️ Man I wish I had a group willing to play the game 🥲
Jake Walsh
I played a combat test today with my friends and we were all super interested and impressed by the system, but it’s HARD, man. I’m sure that’ll be rectified and changed in time
Delport Breckland
I respect the need to streamline VP options, but hope that one day a 'big book of villain actions' becomes an option. Not having everything up-front makes sense. But when I'm writing my own encounters, I would find the full list very helpful
Brennen Hilgendorf
Very excited to see what comes next. Also, you have convinced me to convert to using Djordice for our table!
Eric Gershik
Based on past experience with previous surveys, definitely.
Tim
I do think the monster rules need to be simpler. I love that there are a lot of fun options for each band of monsters, but it does feel like they could be condensed a little.
Robin Baggett
Haven't read the post yet but WOW THAT ART! I am genuinely blown away by the art direction at MCDM.
Valentino Konjik
That is exactly my main feedback in the current play package. Demon traits and managing the minions is overwhelming when you don't use online tools. Looking forward to the outcome!
Kuroshi
I love how quick you all are to take on feedback! I feel like the demons were an extreme example in the packet that highlighted these issues. There were many traits (which don't apply to all demons) and villain powers. It was a lot to keep track of and I forgot more running them than the goblins (which are the only other faction I've run so far). But with that being said, I still love the demons and I'm excited to see how they turn out after you drill down on them. The fantasy of these demons is awesome and I have faith that we'll get something with just as awesome with less of the headache.
Jacob Montague
I definitely felt like I was at 105% brain power while running the one encounter I ran. It was fun! But I probably would get worn out/burnt out. Or maybe I'd just get better at the game and familiar with the abilities, and it wouldn't take so much brain power.
Trey McLemore
Great post! I have to be careful as a director because my eyes are often bigger than my stomach. You can easily get caught up in all the features you can add to a scenario, custom abilities, unique terrain, dynamic objects, waves of enemies, phases to bosses, etc. but then you get the encounter to the table and you forget half the cool things you planned. Balancing complexity and ease of use is a critical point in running a game at the table. I play online and in person and I try not to let the ease of certain online tools atrophy my skills to resolve things with paper and pencil at the table. Looking forward to updated squads and VP options!
Jake VanderHeide
I love the amount of playtesting that goes into MCDM 's products. Polish polish polish!
Jake Walsh
will there be a stream/patreon post about the results of the DS patreon survey?
