Ultrablamtacular!

So that updated character sheet I made recently? Well, I had done the last one in Corel Draw – an ancient version. I’m not sure which one. 10? 11? 9? Dunno, can’t remember. Doesn’t matter. Point is, I don’t have it available to use any more. I haven’t seen the install CDs for years.

So I needed something else. I decided to try Inkscape.

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Ultrablam passed a big milestone yesterday – two, actually. Read more…

So, last Friday (Yes. A week ago. I’m behind on blogging.), I had the opportunity to run a test game with most of my usual suspects.

It was a great playtest! My feeling was that the rules were smoother and more manageable than ever, and most players commented that this was the first time it felt like a game. I agreed. And when rules questions came up, I was able to:

1. Answer them  (and)
2. Read them the answer from the rulebook

This was a huge step, because it meant that the rulebook now covered many questions that were previously unanswered! Also, it meant that I could find the rules, which I think speaks well of the reorganization I did following the last read-through. Here are some points which were tested in play and seemed to hold up well:

• The new character generation. Strength / Weakness pairs are gone, replaced by Strength / Burden / Detail triplets. And Jona (who also invented the “your friends choose your Weakness” mechanic, which lives on as the “your friends choose your Burden” mechanic, also suggested a dynamite way for players to be rewarded for invoking their own Burdens. Haven’t tried it yet, but the symmetry is too beautiful to ignore.
• Attempts – this was the first play in which players really seemed to understand how to make attempts, and took control of arguing for their Points to apply.
• Trust – Everyone jumped heartily on the Trust bandwagon. It worked so well that I was worried that I needed to put a throttle on Trust. Until a player failed a pretty easy roll – 4 dice in the Pool. She lost all of her Confidence and cost the others what they had Trusted her with. All of a sudden, there was more sense of risk associated with Trust. They kept doing it, but they feared that they could be burned. Which is exactly the point.
• Complications – At least two Complications were taken during play, and at least one was Shed. This was the first time those rules had been exercised, and from the GM’s chair, it worked wonderfully.
• Facts – Extra successes outside of combat give the player who rolled them the right to narrate facts. That happened at least twice during the game and they both used their opportunity to good effect – and moved the game along.
• Combat – My dungeon-crawling heart was warmed by the very first battle to be fought with the current combat rules – they were fighting rats! And the new Danger is potential Damage mechanic seemed to work – the rats shouldn’t have been killing these PCs, and they didn’t. Also, a fight of 3 PCs vs 9 rats went pretty swiftly, and I think everyone stayed interested.

All in all, it was a wonderful, rewarding, momentum-building event for Ultrablamtacular.

It just didn’t get blogged about right away.

So, the biggest thing to come out of the recent read-through was this:

Staking Your Name (SYN for short) was, in a word, broken. I was reading through the section on SYN and thinking, “Ugh! Even I don’t want to adjudicate this rule, and I wrote the thing!” So, I got rid of it. I tried to identify what I had been going for in the old rules, and how I could accomplish those goals with less complexity. I think I succeeded. The old rules suffered on a couple of points:

• The mechanic was practically the opposite of all the rest of the rules in Ultrablam. A bigger Pool made things worse instead of better.
• It was really complex – and by that, I mean that nothing you thought you knew about the ruleset was the same when SYN.

This last point violated what we in the software biz know as “the principle of least surprise,” which is a rule by which user interface design is guided. For example, if you’re writing a personal finance program and you have an icon with a printer on it, when the user click it, something about printing should happen. The software should not stab your user in the leg. That would be a surprise, violating the principle. SYN was a stab in the leg at best.

Now it’s gone, replaced by a mechanic that I think both accomplishes the goals I had with the last one AND makes sense within the context of the rest of the rules. So if you’ve ever been subject to playtest on the old SYN, thank your lucky stars that it’s gone. Good riddance.

OK.  So, I’m a cliché. I do a lot of work on this game at a Starbucks. Yes, yes, I’m a deluded john to a disease-ridden corporate whore. Whatever. I wrote a good chunk of Ultrablamtacular at this place and I’ve done a lot of editing there, too. It’s right near my workplace, but the reason I end up working here is that it is close to where my son takes Kung Fu, and I have time to work while waiting for him. Plus wifi, so, score. I call it The Worst Starbucks In The World (TM) and tonight’s blog is from its parking lot.

I took Lenny (my netbook) there to get the rest of the simple notes I made on my recently completed read-through into the electronic manuscript. But they just shouted “Five minutes til close!” and started booting us out. So, I’ve lost the chance for outlet power, but the wifi still seems to be working, and I’m here, in my car, FINISHING THIS DAMNED EDIT.

Do you want to know why? Google “August 5-8 2010″ and see if anything jumps out at you.

It’s been a long time coming, but there’s finally some movement on the playtesting front. I’m building the packet for playtesters, and that means trying out everything with my group beforehand. Lots of things have changed since the last round of playtests – even the character sheet is undergoing some serious work!

Last time, we got as far as the  setting introduction, trying out the new directed preparation template, (if you want to see it for yourself, check out the Ashes setting on the wiki), and making characters with the new rules balancing Experience and Confidence at the time play starts.

It all went well, as far as I could tell. I got a lot of input on how the character sheet should work now, so I’m laying that out again. I sat down to figure out exactly what I needed for playtesters, and created the initial playtest application form, which I’ll make available as soon as the rest of the materials are ready. I’m working on those materials – the playtest instructions, the sample adventure, character suggestions, and the post-playtest report form – as fast as I can.

So. I know it’s been quiet on the blog side. I’ll try to provide more information starting again now.

The more they change, actually. Wise sayings to the contrary notwithstanding. The particular changes I’m thinking of came from Jona’s thorough and insightful readthrough. They’re all in the text now. Said text is different, and better, for them.  Now it goes to Zach for more reading. I hope he leaves it in better shape than he finds it, too.

Well, it’s been approximately forever, or more like twelve days. But the first of my trusty editors has delivered her notes. And the news is good.

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The read-through was finished today. That is all.

So last time, I got back on the horse. This time, I rode that pony!

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