I Have Powers - January 31st, 2008

( On Sumday... )

S7S Beta Playtest Update

We are halfway through the beta playtest period at this point; it'll end on February 29th.

Since getting back from Dreamation, I've been working this week on boiling down and "awesomifying" the setting material of S7S. My experiences demoing at the con convinced me to pare back a lot of the useless and expansive details -- they're not really necessary. Better to focus on tone and character and adventure concepts rather than population numbers, GNP, and details that aren't focused on instant explosions of ideas.

In other words, show, don't tell.

Chapters 1 (the World), 3 (The Mystical & The Faithful), and 4 (Skyhips & Skysailing) all run about 15 to 20 pages, and that feels right. They'll get tightened up a bit, no doubt.

But Chapter 2 (Cloud-Islands of the 7 Skies) was 46 pages.

Some of the beta playtesters found it rather dry and too long, so that's why I'm focusing on it first. Trying to eliminate unnecessary text, and rein in the ridiculous amount of passive voice in the setting material, to get it away from "why am I reading an atlas?" and more towards "cool, I wanna do that!"

I'm aiming for 30 to 35 pages for the text of Chapter 2. That'll give each major Island 4 or 5 pages of details, with some extra space for other stuff.

Ruleswise, I'm pretty sure I've got the groundwork for the gamma draft of the rules. In some ways, S7S's underlying PDQ# system will drift a bit farther from vanilla PDQ, yet in other ways it'll drift back. I'm planning on hacking off a lot of the confusing cruft that's accumulated, ripping out problematic mechanics and replacing with more efficient ones, and rewiring some bits to work closer to my original intent (though in a smaller space).

However, I'm not touching the rules stuff until all of the betas have turned in their playtest reports. I'm just letting the new ideas bubble in the back of my head. With luck and elbow grease, the new ideas will address any playtester problems and holes that come up at the end of the month.

Then, rewriting like a fiend and gamma playtesting here at home.

That is, as they say, tha Plan (tm).

Tags: asmp, conventions, evilhat, game design, gaming, s7s