Underworld Playtest Log - 11/14/19

I had the opportunity to playtest the game with my old gamer group in Ohio yesterday and we all had a great time. The group played the following adventurers:

• Firebrand - Gunnar (ended game with 105 Gold Crowns)

• Peacekeeper - Dave (ended game with 70 Gold Crowns)

• Treasure Hunter - Megan (ended game with 115 Gold Crowns)

• Austringer - Bill (ended game with 160 Gold Crowns)

Both the Peacekeeper and the Austringer received Wounds during the game. The Austringer’s was cured by the Firebrand, the Peacekeeper returned to town with a Ruptured Organ.

Here are some of the changes coming out of this playtest.

• Treasure Rewards: The active player draws 1 treasure for each Adventurer, chooses one, and then passes the three to the left (clockwise). Basically, a drafting mechanic for choosing rewards allows players to get treasures that may be more useful to them (like the Antichthon Orb).

• Look at some of the terminology on the player cards regarding Ally. Perhaps change it to Hero or some other word.

• Treasure Card idea: Potent Spirits - Reduce X Stress or Remove a Wound

• Consider adding ‘Kickers’ to some Adventurer abilities:

  • Example: Reduce Stress by 2 to increase damage of this attack by 2.

• Firebrand - Zealous Strike: damage felt low compared to other abilities.

  • I checked the spreadsheet and it had been increased from 1 + weapon damage to 2 + weapon damage, so I just forgot to update the card to reflect this.

• Night Hatchet : This foe card needs updated with new targeting dice mechanic. Also need to change Erratic Strike from a d4 to a d6. (I don’t want d4 dice to be used in the game any longer).

• Spore Hunter idea: Consider making it immune to Bleed?

Playtest Log - 9/21/19

Our heroes against the Hellmouth and his minions!

We played a 4 player game on Saturday. This was the first time playing for two of the players. Our party composition was:

• Knight-Errant

• Peacekeeper

• Firebrand

• Austringer

We played the introductory Expedition and completed it in about 2.5 hours (lots of socializing/kid interruptions), but it felt like the pacing was fine.

Action Items

• An observation was made that it felt like rank 4 was very safe for the players. Many foes just can’t target rank 4 - including the big boss for this Expedition, the Night Hatchet. We talked about it at length for a bit - I think it comes down to the imperfect AI targeting rules still in place. A suggestion was made to use custom dice for targeting, which I really liked. I’m going to try something like this:

  • 3 or 4 different colored dice have different target distributions on them. Each foe’s attack shows one or more of these colored dice. When they take their action, you look at the foe position to still determine which ability they use. From there you look at which colored dice you roll to be the target for the ability. Some dice are more focused on the front ranks and others can hit the whole party. This should add some interesting randomness to the game, with spikiness coming from more “focused” colored dice. It also allows me to do multi-strike, like a foe’s attack has 1 Green Die and 1 Yellow Die for the targets.

• Take The Initiative was not as meaningful this session. We very rarely swapped numbers after the first round of combat. There was one moment where we realized we should have swapped, but it wasn’t disastrous to the experience.

• Critical damage - I’d like to try +1 DAMAGE/+1 STRESS on a critical hit instead of just +2 DAMAGE

• The Firebrand got 1 Wound during the game, but then promptly removed it with her healing ability.

• Everyone used their powers - both the Knight-Errant and the Firebrand were forced to use theirs fairly early in the expedition.

• Colony Changes

  • Dock

    • Focused it all around the Exchanging and Buying of Colony resources

  • Wagon

    • New Idea: Sell potions or add more provisions to the deck

    • Increases Relic value when sold by +5/+10/+20

Playtest Notes from 7/25/19

My friend Jason came over and we played a 2 player game of Underworld. He chose the Knight-Errant and the Firebrand and I played the Treasure Hunter and Austringer. We both completely forgot to use our Hero Powers for the game. This made this run through the game feel pretty grim. My Austringer ended up with a Madness (Sadistic) and Jason’s Firebrand was wounded during the game. Had we both remembered to use our powers, neither would have happened… so balance is probably just right.

Changelog/Action Items:

• Text that says “Foe heals +1” is confusing - perhaps shorten to Self Heals +1 or just simply Heals +1

• Change Worm Tongue name to Hellmouth. Rename primary attack from Hellmouth to Worm Tongue

• At the beginning of combat, all players can use 1 item (like a potion, or item ability) before combat rounds begin.

• When a hero gets a wound, that takes them out of the combat. They recover half their Health at the end of the combat and come back into play.

  • On a TPK, the players lose half their gained Colony Resources and the Expedition ends.

• Should probably considering disallowing Big Foes to be Stunned. It is too easy for the players to “stunlock” them rendering the fights much easier. Consider making Stuns reduce their Speed by 10 instead.

• Armor Decisions

  • The starting armor decisions are weak and need to be re-evaluated. +1 Protection is still the “correct” choice. Need to consider other options for the +Max Health choices. Some ideas:

    • Increase Max Health values

    • Stress “Armor”

    • Regenerate After Battle

    • Add Utility effects to +Health Armor decisions (I like this one the most)

Our heroes are locked in an epic struggle with the Hellmouth and friends…