Storied Age: Current Issues

Jul 02

I resolved a bunch of issues in 0.62, but introduced one new one, and a few are still open.

Open issues as of 0.62:

Will supporting character players get bored if they can’t get spotlight after finishing their subplots?
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
The “how to group words” explanation is clunky
Write a “strategy guide” for how to play adversity?
Talk about some of the asymmetries and reasons behind them explicitly rather than trusting everyone to pick up the subtleties
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
Add summary tables along with the rules in addition to quick-reference chart at the end
Analyze the probabilities, especially for different numbers of players
Consider using colored dice rather than die sizes to differentiate story/action dice

Resolved in 0.62:

How do Supporting Characters work after they’re done with their subplot?
How should finishing plot segments interact with spending bonus points?
Figure out who narrates on ties — consider the “third party” solution we tried in the playtest
Describe “who talks when” explicitly as design exercise to improve communication of procedures (praxis thread)
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
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
Bring active/passive explanations from glossary into main rules text

danmaruschak.com