Designer vs. Reality

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Continuing the story from episode 7, this is another playtest of Final Hour of a Storied Age rev 0.61 with Lance Allen of Wolves Den Publishing, Lenny Balsera the Lead System Designer for the Dresden Files RPG, and Dan Maruschak the game’s designer and host of the podcast.

0:00:00 Intro and banter
0:02:58 Chapter 5
0:19:12 Chapter 6
0:43:07 Chapter 7, first attempt
1:05:12 Chapter 7, after discussing some issues
1:23:55 Chapter 8
1:37:06 Chapter 9
1:50:26 Chapter 10
2:05:31 Chapter 11
2:25:25 Chapter 12
2:48:33 Discussing some ambiguous rules
2:56:43 Outro

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A playtest session of Final Hour of a Storied Age rev 0.61. The players are Lance Allen of Wolves Den Publishing, Lenny Balsera the Lead System Developer for the Dresden Files RPG, and Dan Maruschak the designer of the game.

0:00:00 Intro and banter
0:10:45 Start playing the game
1:28:37 Chapter 1
1:51:49 Chapter 2
2:13:35 Chapter 3
2:29:59 Chapter 4
2:45:37 Wrap-up

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A playtest session of Final Hour of a Storied Age rev 0.6. For some commentary on rule mistakes we made during the session, check out the companion blog post which summarizes this session in text form.

0:00:00 Intro
0:01:31 Start Seed Creation
0:48:58 Character Creation
1:01:35 Chapter 1
1:32:11 Chapter 2
1:43:43 Chapter 3
2:00:32 Chapter 4
2:06:59 Chapter 5
2:22:58 Post-game feedback

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A playtest session of ReCoil by Lance Allen. In ReCoil, you play spirits of the dead who must possess humans still living in the mortal coil in order to fight off the minions of Oblivion who are trying to unmake reality.

0:00:00 Intro
0:03:05 Character Creation Begins
0:09:07 Conviction
0:14:33 Breakpoints
0:22:00 Sync Trait
0:23:58 Talents
0:30:07 Skills
0:35:39 Finishing Touches
0:40:39 Gameplay Begins
0:50:32 Mission Briefing
0:55:43 Choose a Host
1:02:12 On a Paris Street
1:22:22 Begin Investigation
1:35:53 Confronting a Naughtwraith
1:55:30 The Police!
2:08:24 Host’s Office
2:14:54 Back to the Festival
2:28:12 Tracking a Second Naughtwraith
2:40:08 Deciding Whether To End the Session or Finish Story
2:46:23 Picking Up the Naughtwraith’s Trail
3:00:25 Pick Up the Trail Again
3:11:17 Aftermath
3:13:24 Post-game Feedback

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A playtest session of Final Hour of a Storied Age.

0:00:00 Show intro and player introductions
0:03:44 Game setup begins
0:10:33 Create star charts
0:12:04 Read completed seeds aloud
0:13:02 Determine protagonist, antagonist, and main plot
0:26:16 Begin drawing map
0:29:27 Detail plot segments
0:35:47 Identify supporting characters
0:43:55 Finalize map
0:47:58 Stat out characters
0:51:23 Distribute starting tokens
0:53:06 Chapter 1
1:06:15 Chapter 2
1:17:06 Chapter 3
1:29:53 Chapter 4
1:39:47 Chapter 5
1:51:12 Chapter 6
2:08:19 Playtest feedback
2:28:08 Jason relates words of wisdom from Luke Crane

Links: Jason’s podcast: Storyjammers, Ewen’s blog.

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The third playtest session of Final Hour of a Storied Age.

0:00:00 Intro
0:01:00 Session Begins
0:26:05 Begin Map Creation
0:34:28 Finalize Plot Outline
0:43:13 Chapter 1
0:53:21 Chapter 2
1:02:50 Chapter 3
1:14:28 Chapter 4
1:26:33 Chapter 5
1:37:37 Chapter 6
1:50:56 Chapter 7
1:56:39 Chapter 8
2:12:02 Chapter 9
2:24:03 Chapter 10
2:34:53 Outro

We mention two other AP podcasts: The Walking Eye and The Gutter Skypes.

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The second playtest session of Final Hour of a Storied Age: A Roleplaying Game of Epic Fantasy.

Podcast: Download

A playtest of Final Hour of a Storied Age: A Roleplaying Game of Epic Fantasy.

This podcast is about designing, developing, and playtesting RPGs. It will primarily feature Actual Play audio recordings of playtest sessions. I am a big believer in the idea of using Skype to play and playtest RPGs. If you are interested in participating in a playtest, please contact me at dan.maruschak@gmail.com (Releasing recordings of the sessions isn’t mandatory, so don’t let nervousness about doing it in public stop you from participating! I’ll only podcast the sessions if you agree.)