After editing the audio from the recent playtests, I’ve got a few more issues to add to my issue list:

  • How do Supporting Characters work after they’re done with their subplot?
  • How should finishing plot segments interact with spending bonus points?
  • It’s easy for the spotlight player to forget to explicitly spend their story dice to bring in their traits. Is it because everyone starts talking about the spotlight character during the initial “present adversity”?
  • There’s a strong tendency to roll from “narrate the results of an exchange” into the “present adversity” step, even if you’re not the one who’s supposed to present adversity
  • It’s easy to forget to bump a trait’s die size when winning an exchange
  • People want to jump to wrapping up the chapter before narrating the final exchange
  • Figure out who narrates on ties — consider the “third party” solution we tried in the playtest
  • Figure out how to stop the spotlight player from starting the chapter with aggressive scene framing
  • Figure out how to guide people away from “find the conflict” style play
  • Figure out how to guide people away from “we freeform roleplay for a while, then we decide to use the mechanics” style play
  • Describe “who talks when” explicitly as design exercise to improve communication of procedures (praxis thread)
  • The “how to group words” explanation is clunky
  • Write a “strategy guide” for how to play adversity?

Old issues still on the list:

  • The similarities and differences between the way the alignment track works for PCs and NPCs is potentially confusing
  • The “world creation” example needs character created from “fact about the world” style seeds
  • Distribute the world creation example through part 1 rather than all at the end
  • The 3-stage/segment 3-segment/plot relationship needs clarity earlier in the rules
  • Talk about some of the asymmetries and reasons behind them explicitly rather than trusting everyone to pick up the subtleties
  • Clarify the that only adversity player gets extra spotlight dice for winning chapter — lots of people seem confused by that
  • Rewrite the Dark Mirror example to eliminate LOTR semi-references
  • Add summary tables along with the rules in addition to quick-reference chart at the end
  • Bring active/passive explanations from glossary into main rules text
  • Analyze the probabilities (d20 may not be as scary as some initially thought)
  • Consider using colored dice rather than die sizes to differentiate story/action dice