Joe's group did chargen last night...

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  • Joe's group did chargen last night...

    And we had several observations (all of which Joe took down dutifully). To put this in perspective, our group had five players, plus Joe. Joe has played Dardunah in the past, none of us have otherwise. I'm what I refer to as a Dardunah groupie - I've heard of it through friends like Joe, Eric and Scott who've played it before, but I've never partaken myself. Our group had a mix of very experienced tabletop gamers, and one person that has only been gaming for a year or two and only has experience with two systems.

    First - the advantages probably need a look-over. Three of the players at the table recognized a lot of them immediately as World of Darkness (WoD) merits, in most cases even having the same name and basic description. Normally I wouldn't think that was that big of a deal, but three of our five players all said the same thing at the same time. So clearly someone should look these over and rename them and change up the descriptions some. :)

    The list I'd change:

    Absent Minded
    Dark Fate
    Dark Secret
    Driving Goal
    Intolerance
    Overconfident
    Short Fuse
    Twisted Upbringing
    Ward


    Most of these even share the same name with WoD, so please look into this. :)

    Other thoughts:

    Abiilities were very, very difficult to understand. It took us more time then anything else to figure them out. Skills, Characteristics, Talents, they weren't that hard to figure out. Abilities however had their own math for raising them up above your linked characteristic, and that was tremendously confusing to us. It took us a long time to find in the book where the description was, and it took three of us (including Joe) several read throughs outloud to understand it.

    Characteristics weren't clear - you say point for point, but you may want to clarify that if your base template has you at four, you can spend five points to get to 9, as long as it's within your maximum cap. An example could do wonders here.

    Layout wise the character sheet could use a great deal of work. The background is very, very very very (I cannot emphasize this enough) difficult to read against. I would ditch the brown and go with something lighter. If you're going to be writing on it with pencil you can barely read your writing.

    The character sheet could also use some reworking in how it's laid out. It's comprehensive, but the skills section is on the third page, and your martial arts are on the second page. You do skills before martial arts. You should lay out the character sheet according to how you fill it out, this caused a lot of confusion for us.

    The book really, really needs a table that describes what you pay Characteristic points for, and what you pay Ability points for. This caused us a lot of difficulty and confusion as well, trying to figure out what went where. A table describing each would be great.

    In each table where you have an animal ability, skill or other ability/skill that's linked to a characteristic, you should put it's linked characteristic next to it. It's done for some items, but not for all and it requires the chargenning player to dig through the descriptions to find out what the linked characteristic is.

    Some of the writing is just .. dense. Dense in the sense that it's a bit overly wordy, and very sparse in other places. It's pretty clear that someone that's played RPGs for years made it - some things that the author thought was very important (From an experience perspective) gets a ton of detail and other things that bother new players but don't bother an older player are pretty sparse. Don't take this the wrong way Scott, please, but it could use a run through by a professional editor by trade or two. It needs to loosen up some of the writing, and fill out some of the gaps. There are parts (like the abilities) where our entire session ground to a halt while we tried to figure out what's going on. :)

    Now, after I've trashed the game this entire post, the good news. EVERY SINGLE player that walked away from my dining room table last night loved the idea of the game, the world, the background setting and were captivated by Joe's tales of what he had done in the past and what the game would be like. It says a lot that for all the frustration we had that we were all looking forward to playing. So take that as a compliment.

    We haven't gotten to equipment or combat yet, so look for more feedback on that. :)

    -Matt
    -(PS Eric: I made my ninja chinchilla!)

  • RE: Joe's group did chargen last night...

    Excellent feedback! Thank you so much!

    One of the things that concerned me with the general theme of the comments below, was that it seemed like you guys often had trouble "finding" the data concerning how to figure something out, which perplexes me.. I wish I had been there to actually see what you guys were struggling with, and at what point during the process. The way characters are meant to be done, is that once you ascertain the Power Level, and the Character Points and Ability Points you have at your disposal, you follow the step-by-step process, completeing each step before moving on to the next. The paragraphs at the beginning of each step should tell you exactly what you need to know (at least in theory). You shouldn't have to 'go looking' for anything basic. The descriptions of what Characteristics and Abilities and such are beforehand are merely an explanatory introduction of what you are about to do in the later steps, and not intended to actually be a PART of the calculations for what you're writing on the Character Sheet, with the exception of the Point System Chart, which tells you what points you have to spend. I'm wondering if you guys started trying to fill stuff out BEFORE you started following the laid out Steps, or if you tried doing the Steps out of order.

    Here's some responses on some of the various comments...:

    Advantages similarity to WoD: I'm assuming you actually meant Drawbacks (those are the items you listed),..not Advantages.... I've actually never heard of World of Darkness, but I'll surely look into it.. To be honest,..if it came out within the last 10 years, then my stuff was created first (I have the copyright info to prove it,...tee hee). BUT,..that being said,..I certainly don't want to seem like a ripoff,..so I'll certainly check to see how the wording varies.. There's only so many ways of naming some of these items you listed, however,..so some of the names may need to remain the same.

    Abiilities were very, very difficult to understand: Are you speaking of Animal Abilities here? Yes, they are indeed calculated differently from the way Skills, Talents, and Advantages are, by design. I probably need to put an example here. But I'm not sure where the confusion lay. Here's what it says in Step #5
    Unlike Skills, Talents, and Advantages, they directly relate to the type of animal the character will be and often have very different initial costs (see Animal Abilities below). Once purchased, however, they(Animal Abilities) generally have a starting value equal to their Characteristic Link and can be increased beyond the base at the cost of two points for every one-point increase.
    I'm actually not sure how to state that in a more simple way. It references the table to the right, and states that in it you will find the cost for each, and the value you get for that cost (the characteristc it's linked to), and then it tells you what it costs to increase it. Please help me to understand what was confusing about that, or how you'd recommend it be changed.

    Characteristics weren't clear: I agree,..this is one of the cases where, though it DID state what you needed to do,..it rambled on a tad bit, and may have overshadowed the salient details. Here's the specific sentence that describes what you need to do with the Character point you were allotted according to your Power Level.
    If, after purchasing the Animal Template, you still have excess Character Points, you may now spend them, point for point, to increase your base Characteristics as desired within the ranges allowed on the Animal Template you have chosen.
    This is the appropriate place to put a simple example.

    The Character Sheet: You'll be happy to know that I am in the process of redesigning the Character Sheet, and will be addressing all the very real issues you mentioned. It will be akin, in look and feel, to the Animal Templates.

    The book really, really needs a table that describes what you pay Characteristic points for, and what you pay Ability points for. It actually already has that. It's called the Point System chart, and its located on page 72 of the Basic Compendium in the Character Creation Chapter, right where it should be, at the very beginning. It explains exaclty how many Characteristic Points and Ability Points you get when you begin the game at whatever Power Level the GM chooses, and the descriptions of the table below it describes exactly what these things are, and what you use them to pay for, in detail.

    In each table where you have an animal ability, skill or other ability/skill that's linked to a characteristic, you should put it's linked characteristic next to it. It's done for some items, but not for all and it requires the chargenning player to dig through the descriptions to find out what the linked characteristic is. I looked back at every table I made for these things, thinking I must have screwed up some how,..but in every single case I HAVE placed the Characteristic Link beside them (or at least to the right of them), in ALL the tables.. Am I missing something..? Where were they ommitted?

    It could use a run through by a professional editor by trade or two. It needs to loosen up some of the writing, and fill out some of the gaps. I absolutely agree,..and, in fact,..am looking into getting that dealt with right now,..and am talking to an editor...

    These were ALL great pieces of input! And I absolutely want to get together with you guys and get better clarification concerning not only where in the rules you guys got choked up, but what VERBIAGE caused it too,..so that I can look into making some fixes where appropriate...

    Scottie ^^

  • At Last, the feedback truly begins

    This was great stuff. I've been down in the game so long that I can't even see things liek this very easily. It's nice to get someone who can look at it from the stepped back persepective and really see what makes it good and bad for people who haven't been playing the system for 10 years.

    Speaking of the system, BetaFu is completely right about those drawbacks being from white wolf's storyteller system's "world of darkness" property. Sadly, they do pre-date us and we probably should change the names up to avoid gay-ery. But that should be a snap and then we'll be all copyright infringement free and ready to roll.

    It's worth mentioning at this point that this game used to be run using the HERO system at first, and then went into a modified STORYTELLER system version that was a mixture of their dice pool ideas and Arron D'Orive's inventions from his house-rules. So here and there I'm sure folks will find bits of each in some form or another even though a massive amount of work has been done over the last couple of years to design our own proprietary system, since it was decided not to liscense some other D20 or whatever system.
    "Daggra" means "Enemy" in Tibetan.
    "Chora" means "Thief" in Sanskrit.

  • OK, I apologize - it was early this morning and I think I made some mistakes!

    I was talking about talents - talents were very confusing. That's the one where the math computation is vastly different - I've asked Caleb to clarify it for you (he's the one that first noticed it).

    I think what we maybe did was not follow the book. The PDF was very very frustrating to deal with (not your fault, I know! But it was huge enough that it made scrolling through it slow and tedious) so we just ended up bouncing around from chapter to chapter.

    We're going to be playing on Monday nights, two nights a month at my place. You're welcome to come by and watch us play - I bet it'll give you great feedback for folks not familiar with the system. (We have a good mix of new-ish players and experienced players and veteran players).

    It's awesome to see most of the stuff I mentioned is already handled! I apologize for the confusion I caused with my post. :)

    -Matt

  • Grr. I'm a dumbass. Caleb informs me it's SKILLS. That's the one where buying additional points past your characteristic level was really confusing.

    I hope he clarifies (Caleb) what our confusion was.

    If you want to come over some time and watch us play just let us know!

  • I have to admit that I was thoroughly confused by chargen, and I don't think I made it much past ... um ... my name. Heh.

    I can't, however, say that it was any fault of the system itself. In my case, it was more a factor of the PDF being difficult to navigate, especially on the incredibly old and very slow iBook I use. Combine that with the fact that others (with better computers) were ahead of me, and explanations for stuff I was nowhere near were flying around, and you've got a recipe for disaster.

    I intend to correct that problem by printing the PDF out this weekend while I'm at work all by my lonesome with those big, lovely printers that print in duplex mode. Yummy.

    Anyway, once I've got it in a format where the navigation speed is limited only by my laziness quotient and not the speed with which my stone-ages iBook can scroll through a big, graphics-laden PDF, I think I'll be all right.

    I also started working on a new character sheet--something I tend to do with just about every single game I've ever played--but I'll wait to see how the current redesign turns out, first.

    Anyway, as Matt mentioned, for all my confusion last night, I really like the concept and think it'll be great fun to play, once we get there.

  • RE: Joe's group did chargen last night...

    Let me reply to your questions, instead of piece meal:



    Originally posted by Scott Jones
    Excellent feedback! Thank you so much!
    (snip)

    I think you're right - I think we didn't follow the chapters straight through, we bounced around.

    Here's some responses on some of the various comments...:

    Advantages similarity to WoD: I'm assuming you actually meant Drawbacks (those are the items you listed),..not Advantages.... I've actually never heard of World of Darkness, but I'll surely look into it.. To be honest,..if it came out within the last 10 years, then my stuff was created first (I have the copyright info to prove it,...tee hee). BUT,..that being said,..I certainly don't want to seem like a ripoff,..so I'll certainly check to see how the wording varies.. There's only so many ways of naming some of these items you listed, however,..so some of the names may need to remain the same.

    I'm glad to see Eric mention we were right and I wasn't smoking crack. Granted, some of those (as my wife pointed out this morning) are going to be hard to rename - there's only so many ways to say 'dark secret' or 'ward'.


    Abiilities were very, very difficult to understand: Are you speaking of Animal Abilities here? Yes, they are indeed calculated differently from the way Skills, Talents, and Advantages are, by design. I probably need to put an example here. But I'm not sure where the confusion lay. Here's what it says in Step #5

    I think we meant skills. We were talking about skills, and raising them above your characteristic limit. It devolved into Joe trying to read through the 'raising skill's section on page 102 over and over again to get to where we could all understand it. However, reading through it now it seems like was straight forward, so perhaps we were just tired. I can't say I have any complaints with that paragraph now that i've reread it.

    Characteristics weren't clear: I agree,..this is one of the cases where, though it DID state what you needed to do,..it rambled on a tad bit, and may have overshadowed the salient details. Here's the specific sentence that describes what you need to do with the Character point you were allotted according to your Power Level.
    If, after purchasing the Animal Template, you still have excess Character Points, you may now spend them, point for point, to increase your base Characteristics as desired within the ranges allowed on the Animal Template you have chosen.
    This is the appropriate place to put a simple example.

    The Character Sheet: You'll be happy to know that I am in the process of redesigning the Character Sheet, and will be addressing all the very real issues you mentioned. It will be akin, in look and feel, to the Animal Templates.


    YAY! I like the character sheet in general, and it's hard to choose if I'd rather have it laid out in a way that's easiest to use during play (meaning stuff like martial arts you're going to use a lot is going to be up front, and stuff you don't use that often will be in the back) or the order in which you make the character. Maybe an easy medium and a worksheet or something? Just an idea.

    The book really, really needs a table that describes what you pay Characteristic points for, and what you pay Ability points for. It actually already has that. It's called the Point System chart, and its located on page 72 of the Basic Compendium in the Character Creation Chapter, right where it should be, at the very beginning. It explains exaclty how many Characteristic Points and Ability Points you get when you begin the game at whatever Power Level the GM chooses, and the descriptions of the table below it describes exactly what these things are, and what you use them to pay for, in detail.

    I must be missing this - we tried to find this last night and couldn't, and I was just staring at the PDF and I can't find it. The character creation section (at least reading it all the way up to step 1) doesn't have a table I can find? Maybe I'm not looking in the right place. The PDF I have has Character Creation start at pg 26, with an elegant looking cat illustration in a gold hooded robe/outfit. It spends four pages describing basic steps (which btw is great!) and then jumps right into 'character creation, one step at a time.' By 31 it's jumped into professions and I can't see any table?


    In each table where you have an animal ability, skill or other ability/skill that's linked to a characteristic, you should put it's linked characteristic next to it. It's done for some items, but not for all and it requires the chargenning player to dig through the descriptions to find out what the linked characteristic is. I looked back at every table I made for these things, thinking I must have screwed up some how,..but in every single case I HAVE placed the Characteristic Link beside them (or at least to the right of them), in ALL the tables.. Am I missing something..? Where were they ommitted?

    Let me get the list - Caleb and Faith were mentioning this last night, and so was Kristin and Joe. I wasn't noticing it myself, so I don't have the list handy at my fingertips.

    It could use a run through by a professional editor by trade or two. It needs to loosen up some of the writing, and fill out some of the gaps. I absolutely agree,..and, in fact,..am looking into getting that dealt with right now,..and am talking to an editor...

    Thank you for the prompt feedback!

    I apologize again for the confusion I caused with using the wrong names for things.

    You're welcome to hang with us if you want for a game or several. In fact, it might be a good idea for the first time we go through combat. It's up to you. I have a comfy couch and plenty of drinking beverages. The offer is open. :)

  • It sounds like maybe there's an issue with the PDF version you guys have. I most definitely need to get you guys the recent updated one, because even the page-numbering you mentioned for the Character Creation chapter seems WAY off!

    Worry not,..I shall see to this right away! So sorry about the confusion!

    Speaking of Joe's playtest group, I would REALLY like to attend your next get-together so I can see where the sticking points are...since I agree that it would really help me alot.

    And I think that you guys are right,...trying to do this while navigating through the PDF HAS to uber suck! I can't WAIT till I can get Joe's copy of the hardcover rule-books to you guys. They're starting to print those this very night!

    Scottie ^^

  • I have to say that only having the pdf's is the biggest reason I have not tried to get a group together yet to give this a bit more testing. While nice as a reference, I have ALWYAS preferred a hard copy of any book for actual use. Looking forward to seeing the real deal soon. Glad to see all these issues being addressed as it will make my job easier when I finally get around to it.
    ~Travis

  • By the way,..to clarify the issues surrounding the concerns about the similarity of the Drawbacks to some of the Flaws of White Wolf. Their names and descriptions actually weren't taken from them, though they may have been inspired by the concept,...a quick look at our list compared to theirs WILL find many similarities, but also a greater deal of differences. The stuff Aaron wrote (as to the basic rules long ago) that was loosely based on the old Storyteller system, didn't include any Drawbacks, that was a convention that I added later myself, without actually ever playing any of the White Wolf products (except Ars Magica, which I have little memory of, concerning something specific like their disadvantages system). The similarity of the Drawbacks in Dardunah is actually coincidental, believe it or not. I will be looking at them, to make sure there's nothing verbatim in the descriptions, but I doubt there will be since all the descriptions were pulled out of my assistant's head (Joe Kentspeth), without the aid of looking at ANY other game reference, as we chatted about what they were meant to be here in my office. I'm honestly not too concerned.

    Scottie ^^

  • Originally posted by Sigerith
    I have to say that only having the pdf's is the biggest reason I have not tried to get a group together yet to give this a bit more testing.


    Hey dude! if you'd like, you can pop by the house and I'll give you a much better version to work with as far as the PDF goes... I'm actually not sure what went weird with Joe's copy, but I know I can give you all something better now... So,..give me a call,..let me know,..and come on by and I'll burn you a copy,..and another to give to Athena, if you're gonna see her soon....

    Scottie ^^

  • I have looked back in my own library of game references that were at my disposal when the Dardunah Drawbacks were created (at that time, merely a list of names with numeric minuses written beside them), and all I have are my copies of 1992 Ars Magica core rules, and the 1993 copy of Mage, the Ascension.. That was pretty much the extent of my White Wolf inspirational source,..and having now had the chance to peruse their own lists (there was actually NO system of Flaws in Mage, and the list in Ars Magica was called "Virtues and Flaws"), I'm finding that they are REALLY different from mine,..and in fact, are very interwoven with the fictional world of Ars Magica, with the exception of some of the genericly obvious ones, such as blind, deaf, etc...... This was what I used to inspire the list I created for Dardunah's Drawbacks. The actual descriptions, like I mentioned, were written more recently by Joe Kenstspeth here in my office using no gaming reference whatsoever...

    And just to let you know,..I'm actually TOTALLY unfamiliar with the "WoD" books,..so if there's concern that Dardunah's Drawbacks are a tad bit too close to them,..I really WOULD like to look at them for the sake of my own caution and curiosity. If someone can get their hands on them or has them already, and can let me borrow them long enough to compare and contrast,..I'd be really appreciative. I'd certainly like to lay these concerns to rest...

    Scottie ^^

  • I'm sure Lori--Matt's wife--would be willing to let you take a look at hers. She should have a full set.

    At least, I don't think I kept any when she moved to her own place, and if I did ... well, they're in a box in a shed.

    So, Matt, you think Lori'd have any problems with letting Scottie borrow the WoD books for a bit?

  • RE: Joe's group did chargen last night...

    Originally posted by Scott Jones
    The book really, really needs a table that describes what you pay Characteristic points for, and what you pay Ability points for. It actually already has that. It's called the Point System chart, and its located on page 72 of the Basic Compendium in the Character Creation Chapter, right where it should be, at the very beginning. It explains exaclty how many Characteristic Points and Ability Points you get when you begin the game at whatever Power Level the GM chooses, and the descriptions of the table below it describes exactly what these things are, and what you use them to pay for, in detail.


    I just realized where some of the confusion may have come from concerning this earlier post of mine, where I was describing the table that already existed describing Character and Ability Points. Apparently I had a dislexic moment,..because what I MEANT to say was that the table already exists on page 27 of the Basic Compendium (NOT 72)... Page 27 contains the table,..right up front after the first page of the Character Creation section... This small table is then immediately followed by paragraphs describing each section of the Table (Characteristic Points, Max characteristic, Ability Points, etc.) in full detail... Please excuse my poor attempt at telling you the correct page, earlier. But the table IS there, even in the copies of the PDFs you guys have, right there in the Character Creation section, before the Steps of the process begin. I KNOW you guys have it, because that's where Joe got the totals of the points you guys could spend.

    I have just given Joe a slightly updated version of the PDFs, though, which should be faster, and more convenient, to navigate. They're lower res, smaller files, and have active content in the Table of Contents that will let you click directly to a particular section (which will work in most cases, though I've found a few glitches...)

    Scottie ^^

  • RE: Joe's group did chargen last night...

    O.K. for the sake of "cleanup" on the forum, consider this matter resolved by the recently changed Character Creation chapter, available for download on this site.

    I shall now lock this Thread, so no more posting on it is possible. If there are further issues concerning this particular item, feel free to start a new Thread.

    Scottie ^^