Playtest at HexCon ’22

Last weekend, I flew to Trondheim to attend HexCon for the first time. HexCon ’22 also marked the last date in the “Loop ‘n’ Loot Demo Tour accross Norway” after Arcon, MidgardCon and RegnCon.

First time in Trondheim, I spent some time with my Guild Ball sparring partner talking about many things including my work-in-progress miniature game, quickly visited Nidaros Cathedral, had 2 pizza diners (Hevd is an awesome place to eat, Grano is completely overrated), visited downtown city and, of course, attended the convention.

The convention itself was pretty nice, although a bit small on the role-playing game side (I counted 3 GMs over the week-end, each of us with several slots). For my game, it’s not a disadvantage: it helps gathering people who have no clue what they have signed for and players who did not get a seat in another game happening at the same time slot as Loop ‘n’ Loot. It also gave me the opportunity to test OG, a caveman RPG with limited use of words. It was fun!

(Once again, I forgot to take any picture of the convention… If you happen to have some, hook me up!)

HexCon was the occasion to have 3 playtests with the latest iteration of the rules, with 10 players who had never tried it before. All in all, it went well and I believe everyone had a good time. A new record was set, with a player suggesting to put something on fire in the first room in the dungeon :p.

The playtests allowed me to validate some design decisions I took during the month of October. The biggest change was the new NPC cards (that you see in the October wrap-up linked article), consequences of many, many, many iterations with one simple goal: make it simple and usable. It is now in a satisfying place.

There is a good chance the name for the GM/Referee changes for “Croupier”, which makes sense given the poker inspiration.

One of the feedback I got from the playtests is the use of Attributes. Your Attributes value = Number of cards you can draw for a test. In combat, I simply say “you use everything you have at hand, therefore you draw the sum of your Attributes”. In a way, that makes sense. In a way it doesn’t (why a character with 0 in Heart would suddenly be able to charm an enemy in combat?). Therefore, my newest task on my to-do is to investigate that specific Attribute/Draw/Combat matter:

  • Is it better to draw the sum of your Attributes in combat (ex: 5 cards) and use these cards for your Action+Reaction?
  • Is it better to draw cards related to the relevant Attribute when you declare an Action or Reaction? Ex: “I attack with my hand weapon! = Draw your Clubs value for this Action”, “I dodge away from the lightning bolt = Draw your Spades value for this Reaction”.

I don’t know yet. But if you have an opinion, you are more than welcome to share it on the Loop ‘n’ Loot community Discord server :).

Playtest at RegnCon ’22

The previous weekend, I was in Bergen to present Loop ‘n’ Loot at RegnCon XXX (literally the convention of rain, which is accurate given it always rains in Bergen). It was the occasion to see familiar faces, meet new ones and play some games!

I had three pools over the weekend, so 15 hours of play with 15 different players and I used the opportunity to test the latest version of the rules as well as see how the Maze of the 4 Queens is resilient over multiple runs.

Among the positive evolutions of the game, let’s note:

  • 2 out of 3 groups died. Several times. Which is by design. The group who did not die had maybe a bit more luck with the randomness and almost always got the better initiative in combat, in addition to playing it safe. The various adjustments have paid off so far.
  • The combat seemed to be capped at 2 or 3 turns before one side got obliterated, which is – once again – as per design. So, cool!
  • I’m genuinely happy with the randomness and the emergent stories that the Maze creates. A group ended the playtest in a very satisfying way as they looted all the amphoras in a cellar and started a new vintage wine trade company. 
  • More players got to test the freeform magic system and they seemed to like it.
  • The new Attributes and draw mechanics. I remove the fixed hand size to have it depend on the Attributes (putting emphasis on “my character is more sneaky than you”), giving extra cards given tools, environment, time… On paper, it works. Sometimes it felt a bit underwhelming to draw only 2 cards to solve a test. In a way, the new drawing mechanic feels quite similar to the narrative dice from the Genesys system and, as a GM, I need to put more emphasis on how the players intend to revolve an action to give them the adequate hand size.

Among the things that I mixed feelings:

  • The new iteration of Soul Traits was not part of the playtest but I’m still thinking about it and what it could be. It seems like the playtesters enjoy absorbing souls a lot, and getting monster traits. I’m afraid the next iteration of the soul mechanics removes that excitement. But it’s a problem of a future playtest to determine.
  • I made small equipment cards to facilitate the playtest while giving or switching equipment pieces. It was not greatly efficient. I would need to create color-coded equipment pieces to find what I need more quickly. Or find a different system.
  • My brilliant idea of a character sheet pamphlet is looking less and less attractive, especially with all these tiny pieces of paper for representing equipment and flipping the character sheet back and forth. Maybe a boring single-sided sheet will have to be the way to go.

All in all, I can safely say that everyone liked to play Loot ‘n’ Loot. They enjoyed the game mechanics with the cards, they liked adventuring in the Maze of the 4 Queens, they appreciated my NPCs and how I roleplayed them…

Speaking of roleplay, a 1-hour improv’ course was available for those who wanted to know more about that kind of acting. I signed up for it and it was quite fun; it was not really targeted at role-players but I think I got one or two extra tips I could use.

It was a fun convention, with free ice-cream, free pop-corn, free fruits and free cakes! I met new people, got to spread a bit of love around my game and I hope to have something physical to show at RegnCon XXXI.

Playtest at Midgard Con ‘22

The previous weekend, I was demo-ing the latest iteration of Loop ‘n’ Loot at Midgard Con. A nice convention in the middle of a viking-ish village in Borre (Norway). The weather was really not with us and it rained for 3 days straight, which provoked two collateral effects:

  • Everyone was packed in the main Gildehallen
  • With close doors, the fire pit burnt smoke like crazy (tearing eyes, coughing and bad smell on the clothes)

If we forget about the smoke, it’s really a nice convention with a lot of ambiance! I heard some people used the occasion to play their grand finale D&D campaign there to enjoy the viking mood around them. There was even a LARP fight tournament! The organizer Karl Thomas is super nice and managed to make us at home (quite litterally as he lended us his cabin so we could spend the night!). In other words, Norwegians gamers, save the date for 2023!

I felt the convention was more oriented towards board games than roleplaying games and I had a bit of a hard time filling my table past the first one. But, heh, I could use the time to play some board games (Vikings, Welcome to the Dungeon, Jorvik). Some of them were played in a tournament structure and my fiancée managed to finish third at Vikings, securing some nice loot at the end :).

I also secured two spots to play RPG as a player. One was a homebrew OSR dungeon crawling that ended in a lot of mushrooms and the other one was the first playtest for Murder in Yonderville, a low-prep humorous murder investigation. It was actually so easy to play I ended up being a GM for it for about 2 hours and it was fun to play. As a GM, based on the card I drew, I had to create an investigation in a mining dwarf over a hellgate, as the tavern wench was killed by the shop keeper (hired by the Inn keeper). SIC. It is a fun improv’ exercise for the GM. I believe a kickstater will happen before the end of the year and you can follow the progress over their Facebook page.

In the end, I had one playtest for Loop ‘n’ Loot with the lastest version of the rules. It was fun, as usual, both from my point of view and from the players’ who seemed to enjoyed their smoky evening. Among the hurdle I noticed:

  • The use of the attributes tied to the best possible combination is often forgotten (even by yours truly) as players just put the best combination they have in hand. The Referee has to be carefully about it all the time, which is mental load I want to remove. I have since worked on a solution (an elegant one, in my humble opinion, that also solidifies other mechanics).
  • The mechanics “I attack under Clubs, you have to defend under Clubs” is also often forgotten (even by your truly). It’s something that has been bugging me since the beginning as I felt it make sense but is not fun and somewhat circonvoluted. But my previous fix is also fixing that one! Two birds, one stone.
  • The PC still have a hard time to die. What can I say, I’m too nice! But as Alice says, No More Mr Nice Guy! I’m nerfing pretty hard the Ration item, the Medecine Kit item and the Rest mechanic!
  • On the positive side, the new character creation is not breaking nor hindering the gameplay. The revised Trait are indeed better to manage in combat.

Other than that, it was fun to roleplay zealous skeletons, to look at players destroy loot out of fear for a goddess judment and fight cleverly against a group of (nasty but nerfed) zombies… The highest point of the playtest was when the players managed to pay a Necrologist with a fire nymph’s crown to soul-bind a ghost into a rubber chicken! None of that is scripted in the Maze of 4 Queens but everything is possible with creative players!

I’ll be in Bergen this very weekend to playtest my game at RegnCon! I will my latest iteration of the rules, including the new Attributes system. If you are in the city of rain and plan to go to the convention, come and say hi!

September 2022 Wrap-Up

September Wrap-Up time!

I finally got an opportunity to playtest the latest iteration of “Maze of the 4 Queens” and the August changes with a live group in Oslo. The session was fun, but a bit clunky as the game was in an in-between stage, especially with the new WIP Traits.

Something was feeling off after the session, and it gave me a lot of headaches both trying to figure out what that “something” was and how to fix it.

  1. Players don’t die fast enough. It is still an issue. And it has potential fixes already. The amount of HP will have to get a second pass. But I think it also has to do with the pace of the game and how it is presented to players. Which reminds me of the latest article from Spriggan’s Den. Designing an adventure for Loot ‘n’ Loot is different from making an OSR module, in the sense that character preservation is not as important. Living YOLO and experimenting is key: shorter dungeons, clearer objectives, telegraphed traps & loot.
  2. The Referee has still too much to manage on their end with NPCs. Too many traits, too many weapons. And then, it falls back on the PCs who have too much loot to go through. The excitement of surviving a tough fight hits the ground pretty fast 4 Souls and 20 pieces of gear have to be sorted. But cutting content is not just enough to solve the issue. Or rather, it’s not enough if it’s not done mindfully. In order to do so, I had to go back to the root of my game, the pillars: Simplicity, Synergy, Fun. Willing to create too many synergies removed the simplicity of my game, on many different aspects: weapons, NPC, Traits.

Therefore, I took a lot of time pondering on the necessity of each element of the game:

  • Too many weapons, I removed everything that was not “common gear “and decided to limit the game to 26 basic gear.
  • Too many traits, especially on Humanoid characters who also have gear. A character should have max 4-5 abilities that have an effect in combat (Traits+Gear). The rest of the Traits, if any, should be for social/exploration. As of today, I classified Traits into “mostly combat” (126) and “exclusively non combat” (39), after a lot of merging and cutting.
  • Upgrading Traits over multiple runs is a mechanic I removed completely. Now, at Death, a PC loses everything but Souls; they have the option to destroy some Souls to carry any piece of gear or Trait to their next incarnation.
  • Gear and Traits now both occupy Character Slots (previously Equipment Slots) as Slots are mechanically cousins. Getting Horns prevents you from having a Helmet, right? Then it makes sense the Trait Horns and the Equipment Helmet should be put on a Head slot. So reworking the Traits also implied finding Slots for them.
  • Speaking of slots, I removed the 8 slots for inventory. Now, they are only Character Slots and if a PC wants to carry more loot, they should grab a Satchel.
  • The character creation has been revamped to enhance the randomness of starting gear.
  • All these changes created collateral damage on other parts of the game, namely the Character Sheet.

Everything will be playtesting this very weekend at MidgardCon!

Let’s conclude with another small tease with a sneak peak at some of the new Traits.

Arcon 38 & first open playtests

Arcon 38 is behind us now. It was the first time Loop ‘n’ Loot went public for open play sessions with people who knew nothing about my game.

I can safely say that the game was well received and all of the players seemed to like it :). Some liked the freshness of the system, some the gonzo-ism of the dungeon, some liked it so much they came for extra sessions :). To all the people who dared to come to play: a huge THANK YOU! (you’re awesome).
If you have tested the game this weekend, and if it’s ok with you, send me a PM with your real first and last names so I can add you in the “thank you” of the core rule book.

If you have not done it yet, feel free to join the discussion around Loop ‘n’ Loot in Discord!