But before that, do you know about The Pool? I ask because there are some similarities in places, and it might give you an alternate angle on such things. Also worth looking at, as the Pool is really tightly written, and crams a lot into a very few pages.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

No I haven't. I will now!

Cheers

First Age
http://www.wordplaygames.co.uk/

Also worth mentioning there's a couple of wordplay blogs

Graham's development blog
http://wordplay.ukrpgblogs.net/

My dev blog for my Timetravel theme which will be part of the final game.
http://infinitewar.ukrpgblogs.net/

and lets not forget the Wordplay forum over a the Tavern

http://www.gamingtavern.eu/tav/viewforum.php?f=48

Regards

;O)Newt
D101games -An Imaginary Company

I've just had a really, really quick cursory look at the wordplaygames site.

Please don't take this as me being picky or negative, these are just observations!

The front page makes me think you just sell dice. It just says "A six sided dice paradise". It reminds me of "Spatula City!" in the old film UHF. It's not until I've read down to halfway through the text that it become clear that you're selling an RPG.

Looking at the top Wordplay page, you're describing both the pool (as Matt points out) and Wushu. They're just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I think this probably means you need to sell Wordplay better/faster. At this point I'm at page 2 and just starting to get a grip on what you're selling, but can't see any reason I'd be interested in buying it. Yeah, I know it's free, but the time commitment to read it is what I mean by "buy". There are also some typos on this page. For example, I assume there's supposed to be a comma between "Body" and "Mind" in the first bullet point. Small thing.

On to the Characters page. This reads clearly and gives me a pretty good impression of how characters are created. It's a nice example and makes sense. Although it seems that you've pinched the Keyword mechanic 100 Words character creation method from HeroQuest. Not that this is a bad thing, just seems very familiar.

I haven't read the book, that's 100+ pages and a bit more of a time commitment than I can really squeeze in right now, but what I've read of it seems pretty easy to understand.

That's great Rich, many thanks. I'll look to apply as many points as possible from your observations.

I'm not familiar with either Pool or Wushu, but point taken. Sell faster and better, right.

First Age

I think the ideas are solid, and it blends bits of Heroquest, Burning Wheel and a few others into something else its own.

There're a few oddities that caught my eye though. In grand tradition I'll answer a question with lots more questions!

I think my biggest worry is that the text suffers from being fairly verbose. It circles around topics quite a bit before explaining them. This is not a huge problem at this stage, as a good solid edit can sort this kind of thing later on. But it feels over-written at the moment. Be more definite and direct in statements, it'll make picking up rules easier.

For creating a character, I was left unsure as to why normal traits and power traits were different. Similarly I was unsure why wealth and equipment got more coverage than other traits, do they need to be treated any differently? Aren't they just another kind of trait? They can be special cases, but is that important in this game?

From an organisational point of view, the mix of trait types (modern, fantasy, scifi) in the rules seemed jarring. It might be worth either making the main rules use just one type, and then specifying others in themes, or splitting the traits us with headings "traits for a modern day game" and so on. What have you mainly used it for so far? I get the feeling it's fantasy.

Some of the challenge text seemed to be ordered oddly, and the number of forward references drew attention to this. Have you asked one of your players to list the order in which things happen? It's a useful way of gauging if what you're writing is how they perceive things.

None challenges irked me a lot. The text made me feel that you didn't trust your own rules to resolve events. That you wanted to provide a backdoor for the Guide to subvert anything the players did that wasn't part of their plan. It stood out with the freeflowing feel of the rest of the rules.

I really liked that it was a friendly text. It felt like somebody you knew explaining things. There were plenty of examples too, which is always a great thing.

Is that helpful?

-Matt

Realms Publishing

Matt,

That's all good.

I really wanted a 'friendly voice' to the text and I'm glad that has come across in your reading. I will need to get the text edited to cut the verbosity, however I don't want the 'friendliness' excised as a consequence. That's a balance that I'm sure can be struck.

I'll look again at the Powers section. As they operate on a different 'Scale' and can have such an impact on play I may have given them undue prominence.

Trait types were mixed in an attempt to persuade someone reading it that Wordplay wasn't 'just' a fantasy game. However, you are right, the themes will achieve that better. I'll consider streamlining all traits and examples to link with the Epic Fantasy theme at the end of the text.

I'll work through the challenge section again with someone and get the order right.

The only real surprise in your reflections was your response to the 'No Roll' section. That's managed to invoke altogether the wrong reaction! I'll pay close attention to that section and either excise it, sidebar it and, whichever, reword it.

Thanks so much for taking the time to look at it, your comments were constructive and very helpful indeed.

Cheers

First Age

I don't want to be overly critical, just check that choices in design are intentional, rather than habits picked up from reading other RPGs.

To unpack the no-roll stuff some more. The no-roll section implies that only the Guide's opinion matters on what's important to the game. From an interaction point of view, this means force the group into "mother may I?" play, rather than the "grab lots of dice and change the world" feel I think you're going for.

Maybe there needs to be clarification on how the Guide creates and runs situations? I'm wondering if there's an assumption about how you prep games, that's not expressed in the text?

There's something else to consider: At the moment, the text is written so that the Guide decides when a challenge is called for, how difficult it is, and what the results of success and failure are. This means even without no-roll the Guide can just force his desired result at any point. Is that intentional?

-Matt

Realms Publishing

Matt

No-roll was meant to do "oh stuff the dice can we just look at some Trait values and fly with it!". It wasn't meant to be a Guide only thing, rather a group preference and was meant to provide a diceless option to a game that glories in big buckets of dice.

Maybe I'm confusing things by including the option at all? I'll recast it first and then peer at the result suspiciously.

There may be unthought assumptions in the way the challenge section is written. I'll either properly think the unthought or unwrite the written, or even both at the same time.

The game is decidedly old school in terms of Guide control, but I'm not especially intending to stick two fingers up at anything more progressive. I had intended that the responsibility for describing Outcomes be a shared, round the table, experience. It usually is. That clearly hasn't come across at all. Something else to look at!

Ta muchly,

First Age
http://www.rpgfurnace.com

So yeah, it's probably just that the way it's written currently differs from what you do in real play... The key thing is the negotiation over what matters and why we're rolling, that probably goes on normally at table, but isn't in the text.

For example, it's likely that in real play things go:

Guide: Ok, you're outside the castle, there's a guard.
Player: I want to attack the guard!
Guide: OK, that'll need a challenge roll!
Player: If I win, I want to ...
Guide: Cool, but if you lose...

which is:

Guide states scene > Player states change to scene > Guide requests roll for change to happen > player states win result > guide states lose result > roll dice

Whereas my impression from reading was:

Guide states scene until he decides there's a challenge > guide says what challenge is and what win and lose are > roll dice or ignore dice.

I could be talking arse though! ;)

-Matt

Realms Publishing

Graham, I held off in telling you in the feedback that I've given previously but I think you need to be much more upfront about the options of who has narrative rights, perhaps as a big highlight box/section early on in the Challenges section.

At the moment its abit confused.

Regards

;O)Newt
D101games -An Imaginary Company

In combination with Newt's 'breakout box thingumy' I'll devote some proper consideration to explaining how scenes are stated.

Good stuff this!

First Age
http://www.rpgfurnace.com

It's good. It's explained in a friendly way.

Do you find the text approachable?

Yes.

Does the text convey how to play the game clearly?

Yes.

Do the chapter summaries summarise effectively?

Yes.

Did the game allow you to create the character you wanted?

Didn't try, but I think it would.

What sort of challenges do you prefer (None, Single, Multi)?

Not sure.

Wordplay delights in using many six sided dice. Did you enjoy the building a hand of dice rules?

Yes, but I don't think it should be your major selling point. A selling point, sure, but not the major one.

Have you enjoyed reading/playing Wordplay?

Yes.

How would you 'pigeon hole' the game?

Competent, fun-looking, traditional fantasy game. (This is not damning with faint praise. I like it.)

Graham, I share Matt's worry about the verbosity. You have a friendly writing style, but I'm dying to go through the text with a red marker and delete half the words.

(Sometimes, I do a trick where I take a sentence someone has written, delete half the words and post the result. I won't do this now, but try it. It generally makes the text punchier and clearer.)

Also, I share his concern about the traits. Things like "SQL Server administration" and "Administrative assistant" are a bit jarring. I'd prefer you stuck with fantasy traits throughout.

I think you're doing this to show the versatility of Wordplay. My (limited) experience is that versatility isn't a selling point: on the contrary, a strongly defined setting is a selling point.

How would you feel about picking a strong setting and using that throughout the text? Settings do tend to sell games: people go "Oh, I want to play in that world". I'd use a fantasy setting. I liked the First Age of Middle Earth one you did.

I'm not totally sold on the "six-sided dice paradise" tagline, either. Again, I'm not sure it's a selling point. It's fun, but not so great that I'd elevate it to be the major thing about the game.

For the summaries: I'd consider doing similar to Dead of Night, so that all you have to do to play the game is read the summaries, and if you want to read more, you can.

Nice work. I like it a lot.

Why aren't you releasing it at Dragonmeet? If it's all written by October, you could do that fairly easily. You'd sell lots at Dragonmeet.

Graham

Thanks very much for your positive feedback.

Sigh. I know you are right. It seems to be very much my way. I have some more elements to add and then I'll go through it and try and halve the words. I hope the half that are left are still friendly and informative!

I'm honestly scared to give the text up to 'sub-editing' - only to find that any voice I might have had has been obliterated. I could be being paranoid here...

I'll do this and stay with the Epic Fantasy setting that you suggest.

I'll consider demoting it.

I'll have a go at this - but not sure if I can manage it.

:))

With these changes, and the amount of time I have to October I wonder if I'll get there. The October release is the core game and one theme: Epic Fantasy. I had conceived that this would be a free PDF, and may be a simple POD book.

The March 09 release will be the core game and six themes of which Epic Fantasy will be only one. The book will have a cover and internal art by one artist.

Thanks again Graham!

First Age
http://www.wordplaygames.co.uk

The trick is to brief the editor to retain the voice! It shouldn't be a problem. The advantage (or disadvantage some might say) of self publishing is you have final approval anyway...

Here's a question. If you were to sum up the experience of playing the game in one sentence, what would it be. What gets you enthused about it?

It can be a really useful exercise to make a copy of the text and then rigourously going through expunging everything that doesn't feed into that concept. Then compare the two drafts.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

I agree with Matt.

By the way, Graham, you know you should be ignoring half the feedback we're giving, right? Take what we say on board, but don't be a slave to every thing we suggest.

Ideally, half of what we say should cause you to shake your head and say "Yeah, that's rubbish".

Graham

It's much better than half! Thanks all.

First Age
http://www.rpgfurnace.com