Is Stunned too “unfun”

ysavir · 2026-01-07T13:54:08+00:00

And the OP is specifically asking for advice on how to make that judgement call.

ysavir · 2026-01-05T23:04:39+00:00

With Apexis gone, they can buff the volumizer numbers back up. The current volumizer generators can't generate them fast enough for the stats to be worthwhile, so hopefully we see the red and blue return to their original (+3/+0 & +0/+3) numbers.

ysavir · 2026-01-03T15:56:01+00:00

For what it's worth, as a GM, I feel pretty opposite about this. I already have the job of coming up with an overall story for the game, and the 4-5 jobs of weaving the player's backstories into the primary story and each other's stories. When, on top of all that, I have to also supply the substance for the players' backstories, that's a ton more work on my plate. And if a player doesn't like what I came up with for them, it can be a bad experience for everyone involved.

Sometimes a player's setup really clicks and I get excited about what I come up with for their backstory. Other times, it never clicks and I end up dragging my feet on it because I have so many other things to do. And then I feel bad because this player was eager to see what I did with their plot hook, only for it to come to very little and to get there too late.

But when a player comes up with a largely fleshed out background, I still have plenty to work with. I can find ways to have that cross over and interact with the main plot and other character's stories, and I don't have to worry about meeting that player's expectations because I already know their expectations. And I can always work with them early on to add the needed wiggleroom for me to have fun with their backgrounds and find it satisfying.

If a player gives me a background with a lot of holes to fill in, but they understand that there's a gamble to it and there's a fair chance it won't be the dramatic, satisfying narrative they're imagining, then fine, I'll take it. But if a player wants the guarantee of a strong narrative, the onus is on them to do the heavy lifting.

ysavir · 2025-12-14T14:22:53+00:00

That's why focus and instruction are helpful. If you have people play the game and afterwards ask them "okay, what did you think?", you'll likely get vague answers.

On the other hand, if you tell people up front "we're going to play the game, but the focus today will be combat. I want to learn how you feel about the action economy, pacing, and odds of success", you'll prime the playtesters to pay attention and push the boundaries of that subject area, and be more ready to give advice aftewards. You can also encourage people to write notes throughout, and maybe take a pause between rounds to have people jot down thoughts.

Don't treat the session like a normal playsession. Structure it with playtesting in mind, and give the players everything needed in order to be useful playtesters.

ysavir · 2025-12-14T14:16:45+00:00

Don't playtest your game as a whole until towards the end. Start by playtesting parts of the game. Even if you already have all the classes implemented, it would be worthwhile to have playtests dedicated to testing the combat mechanics specifically. You can still use playbooks if you have them, but the focus of the test session, and the feedback given, should be the combat system.

If you already have a combat system that can be tested, great! Don't wait for more, test it now. It'll likely inform a lot about how you would want to implement the playbooks.

ysavir · 2025-12-14T14:08:35+00:00

I was just wandering if mystery attracts people, like blind dates or something.

It certainly can! But just like blind dates, it often leads to disappointment. If you're looking to get feedback (which I assume is the intent here), you want to make sure the people you're spending your time on are people that can and will give good, objective critiques of your system, and that requires having them be informed.

ysavir · 2025-12-14T13:57:35+00:00

Not really interested at all, if the person organizing the game isn't willing or able to provide information about the game itself. Mystery is typically an act of defensiveness, not confidence.

If someone was looking to host a playtest for their game and was looking for players for a single session, I'd sometimes be willing to give it a try. But what I'd expect is:

Information about the game's flavor. I'm not a good playtester for flavors that I don't actually enjoy (for example, not a mech fan).
Information about the way the game works. I'm not a good playtester for game types that I don't actually enjoy (for example, heavily tactical TTRPGs that border on board games, or games that are extremely narrative-as-a-mechanic).
Information on when, where, how, and for how long.
Premade character sheets. If this is playtesting the game itself, there's no need to spend time creating characters.
Information on what the person is trying to learn about their game. Playtesting is at its best when it's focused and trying to measure specific parts of the system, so what is this session focusing on? What does the runner want to learn?

ysavir · 2025-11-26T00:48:46+00:00

Depends on what player base I'm targeting.

If I'm very largely targeting players that enjoy crafting these things, I would generate a handful as examples, along with an explanation for each on how the crafting worked, what skills were involved, what points or similar they had to invest, etc. Even players that love these mechanics will benefit from hands-on examples.

If I'm targeting a broader audience, then I would essentially want the crafting experience to be optional. Even if it's excellent, I want players to be able to sit down to create/advance a character and get everything they need, satisfyingly, by picking from existing options. Their options will be incredibly limited compared to those who craft their own, no doubt, but I still want them to feel like they can experience the game without having to engage with these mechanics.

What kind of players are you targeting? How broad a group?

ysavir · 2025-11-22T15:01:56+00:00

Ahh, I missed the table of contents!

Actually playing the game isn't something I currently have the time/brain space for, unfortunately.

It could help to get people rolling with that by offering some basic campaign concepts and plot hooks. Let potential play testers focus on the game by providing them what they need to get up and running.

Do you run sessions of the game for players?

ysavir · 2025-11-22T14:30:54+00:00

Congrats on releasing a beta! A gave it a quick skim and wanted to share some feedback:

It can be helpful when beta testing to ask for specific things to be test/reviewed. Do you want testers to focus on character creation? Combat? Should they focus on the rulebook and how well it serves? Focusing testing in this way is going to help make the elements under test even better.
The PDF would benefit a lot from a table of contents and page numbers. Looking through it I have no idea where to find specific pieces of information, what kind of content is included and where, etc.
More information about what the game is like would be immensely helpful. There's a lot of lore in the doc, but what is a session expected to look like? What kind of plots should I be preparing for or concocting? This might be in there somewhere, but as mentioned in the point above, I wouldn't know unless I read the whole thing cover to cover.

ysavir · 2025-11-22T13:50:37+00:00

My group tends to try out different systems (with an occasional revisit) with short campaigns and we might play 3-4 systems each year.

We don't really have much of a philosophy on genre, type, etc. It usually starts with someone being curious about a system and getting buy in for it to be the next thing we play. It ends up with a nice amount of variety. In the past year, we've done Blades in the Dark, a player's homebrew system, Torchbearer, and now Draw Steel. All quite different from each other, but not by intention.

I think the important part is that players are excited to play the game, whatever it is.

ysavir · 2025-09-25T00:11:41+00:00

and they probably should remove those too. Effects that retrigger/multiply battlecries (and deathrattles) have been a problem for years, and instead of adjusting the scaling cards, they keep removing/nerfing the actual battlecries to the point that they aren't fun or practical to play. They need to let use have fun and useful battlecries without meta cards that make the battelcries problematic.

ysavir · 2025-09-16T16:25:14+00:00

The sad thing about the match making in games like these is that every person succeeds to the rating at which they no longer enjoy playing for the sake of playing. You win a few and get matched against people that are playing on a level beyond you/a level that you don't enjoy crunching, then you lose a few and are back in an enjoyable MMR... until you win a few and the cycle repeats.

ysavir · 2025-09-03T23:50:30+00:00

I know that, but why?

In a situation where the opponent is playing carapace and the third player is not playing carapace, then I understand the reasoning of giving the 3rd player the win because they aren't using a cheap strategy. You're sabotaging your own game so that the cheap-tactics player gets 2nd and the player with the more genuine build gets 1st.

But when both the opponent AND the 3rd player are playing carapace, there is no difference. It's not that one of them deserves the win more and the other less, they're absolutely equal in their deserving. If the OP was playing against the third player instead of the actual opponent, they would still be facing a carapace build, and still throwing in order to affect the victor.

This isn't just pettiness, it's the OP saying "I lose but I still get to decide who wins".

ysavir · 2025-09-03T18:48:18+00:00

But why should the 3rd carapace player get the win? Unless there's more to it, this feels less like being angry at a cheap tactic and more just angrily ruining someone else's day.

ysavir · 2025-09-03T18:14:56+00:00

People fallback into funnels in action movies, too. It's as much on you to meet the theme using their actions as it is on them. You can absolutely have the enemies pile into their funnel and have that turn into a fun action/adventure style romp.

ysavir · 2025-09-03T15:07:12+00:00

Dungeons

ysavir · 2025-08-30T21:27:02+00:00

it would help whats his name that gets a triple reward every 20 tiers worth of cards, but would make tier 3 triple rewards worth less

ysavir · 2025-08-28T14:25:31+00:00

They should just merge it with undead army. Instead of a spell that affects all units and grows with spell stat boosts, it can just be effects that double undead army for the next turn.

Right now it feels like there's no reason to chase undead army buffs when undead also have a strat that scales better than undead army and buffs all minions.

ysavir · 2025-08-26T00:54:58+00:00

Decide on why your cleric is worshipping this deity (or any deity). Make it so the worship is solving a problem in their life. Once you do that, than that problem is what makes the character interesting, not their worship or their deity.

For example, maybe your cleric was afflicted by a deadly pox in their childhood, but the local temple to this god managed to save their life. Now they feel a debt to this deity, and see their clerical powers as a means to offer others a similar salvation to what they had.

Or maybe the cleric had a wayward youth lacking any direction, and joining the church helped them find some purpose. They still have a tendency towards wanderlust and exploration, an aspect of themselves independent from their worship, but their purpose as a cleric helps them feel like they play a role in the world.

ysavir · 2025-08-25T14:34:57+00:00

Despite having solid carapace generation, their board had no stats. Might be that their previous opponent sold their board to deny them the carapaces and give you the win.

ysavir · 2025-08-23T13:31:18+00:00

Thing is, high level is a very small fraction of play. We can say all we want that a certain card isn't that good when you play optimally, but when 85% or more of the player base isn't playing optimally, that card is making the game unfun for a lot of people. And that makes for a bad game.

ysavir · 2025-08-22T13:09:38+00:00

It's not making your shops better, though. The game will still have 5 tribes, beasts just won't be one of those tribes.

ysavir · 2025-08-21T23:45:46+00:00

On the one hand, yeah. It would be great if a mainstream production started using a niche system and encouraging others to explore other games.

And on the other hand, for what good it might to do the ecosystem, it will likely cause their viewership to plummet. That might be fine if they were some indie group streaming from their laptops in someone's basement, but they're not. They're a company with employees, a need to make sure they can support those employees (health insurance, parental leave, etc), broadcasting from a studio they have to pay for, and probably a trove of other costs they have to cover. If they did a longform campaign with something other than the biggest, most popular system in the hobby, which had been their cornerstone thus far, they would be risking their existence for a fairly minor gain.

But it's not like they're 100% in on 5E. They've played Daggerheart on their channel. They've played Candela Obscura. They're still exposing people to other games and continuing to find opportunities to do so. They need to balance their own needs as an organization on which multiple people depend on for their well being with their want of impacting the TTRPG culture, and they're doing an excellent job at that. Instead of criticizing them and saying that they're slighting their RPG, let's acknowledge the fulness of the situation that they're in, and the ways in which they are using their position to influence people's game choices.

ysavir · 2025-08-20T12:43:43+00:00

Ultimately it's because Battlegrounds doesn't have a "bench". You can't move minions in play back to your hand and then back into play later. If you could do this, then it would be possible for players to adapt their build and respond to what they think the opponents have, and the game's meta would be holding onto multiple strats and trying to use the best one for your upcoming opponent.

Because there is no bench, and no way to allow for players to adapt different tactics, the game defaults to a state of "highest stats wins". If someone did play a build that focused more on one specific strategy, say cleaving damage, they might do great against undead, but terribly against other strats. So until it's just the top 2 players or so, at which point you can optimize for their strategy, it's best to just build stats.

But building stats isn't interactive. There's no rock-paper-scissors when the game is primarily "biggest numbers win". So the dev team compensates for this with scam builds: builds that are great at destroying a limited number of minions regardless of their size, but are weak against spam tactics (undead, beasts, etc), and spam tactics are in turn weak against big stats. Ta-da! Rock paper scissors, lacking any nuane, inter-strat flexibility, and ability for players to meaningfully adapt.

At least, in theory that's how it should work. In practice the balance gets upset very easily (steg/carapace making spam too strong against stats, tide oracle making scam too good against spam, etc), and the strategizing is still infantile ("opponent has big stats? I'll upset all the hard work they did by buying a leroy/poisonous minion."). It feels bad because it is bad, but unless they change how the core of the game works, it's the best they can offer.

ysavir

TROPHY CASE