[Trollbabe] Keep on Rockin' in the Troll World
angelfromanotherpin:
I just want to say that I find it hilarious that each of your Trollbabes specializes in the magic of the species they've never interacted with. In my experience, most players see the two-choice species-specific Magic specialization as the indicator of which of the two peoples they are more familiar with.
Paul T:
While keeping in mind that I really enjoyed this game, I did experience some frustration on the mechanics level (again, not enough to ruin the game for me, but I did go home scratching my head about it afterwards).
I think Dave experienced some of that, too. We both had Trollbabes with extreme Numbers (2 and 8). This meant that we were pretty effective in a conflict suited to our strengths. However, when a conflict came up that was NOT suited to our strengths, things looked very grim, and I felt completely unsure about how to handle that.
For instance, my Trollbabe had great Fighting odds, right? Her number was an 8. But her Social and Magic were pretty awful--and Dave's Social roll was a 1 in 10.
However, I did not see my character as a violent Trollbabe at all. And the scenario (essentially, the best outcome would be to reunite two lovers and create peace between two villages) is not one that seems like it could or should be solved with a fight.
Having gone all the way to Incapacitated in my very first conflict, I found myself in situations were I constantly faced potential Social or Magic conflicts.
Having no real recourse to rerolls (or more than one, or two at most, being Incapacitated or Injured), it was tempting to just avoid conflict altogether. Win 2 out 3 when your odds are 20% per roll? Pretty unlikely. For Dave, Social conflicts were 10%--almost inconceivable to see a victory, unless you're only rolling once.
What it led to is that we always tried to bring a second conflict mode into every conflict. James let us do so, and things came off well in the end, even though they felt awkward mechanically.
I'm left wondering whether that feeling of helplessness was due to some misunderstanding of the mechanics on my part, misguided play, the consequence of having extreme Trollbabe Numbers, or something else altogether.
It's worth noting, I think, that it never became a social issue among the players. To me, it felt like we (all three) were all enjoying the game. Conversely, we (again, all three) were all concerned about how we could get anything other than a total death spiral as a conclusion to the story. James, as the GM, particularly had a worried look on his face when it seemed like his role was to push a Social conflict onto a Trollbabe with such a low chance of success.
James_Nostack:
Quote from: angelfromanotherpin on March 07, 2009, 06:28:18 AM
I just want to say that I find it hilarious that each of your Trollbabes specializes in the magic of the species they've never interacted with. In my experience, most players see the two-choice species-specific Magic specialization as the indicator of which of the two peoples they are more familiar with.
I'm not kidding about using Post-It notes to remind me which Trollbabe was which. During the first session, I made Dave point to his (human) ears and made Paul mime little horns, to remind me. At the start of the second session, I nearly insisted on swapping the Trollbabe's magic-types to avoid losing my mind.
Paul, the good news is that a Trollbabe can shift her Number between adventures, so you're not completely screwed. But I think you guys were in for some hard times. I understand why Ron made social rolls to be the smaller of the two ranges: if it's the larger, you end up with these super-competent trollbabes and there's a strong incentive to pick an extreme Number. But if it's the smaller of the two ranges, then there's more incentive to pick a Number between 4-6, which means that you still fail pretty often but at least have a fighting chance in every Conflict.
I actually have a lot to say about Trollbabe, but I'll save some of it for a little bit later.
Paul T:
James,
Looking forward to hearing more.
Just for the record, I'm totally down with "Social range is the smaller of the two". That makes sense to me on every level, from a designer's standpoint.
Paul T:
One more note:
James,
You know what you described in Judd's Dogs thread? I totally felt that, too, and it took the wind out of the game a bit.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page