So, I sat down to play Beast Hunters last night. Overall, not a successful game, unfortunately. This was largely a matter of preferences, rather than the game failing to deliver.
We both made up hunters, and had a good time with that. The allocation of traits and resources as you make up your life story worked well and made interesting characters. We also elected to be from the same tribe, and that led to some nice touches (one hunter was the chief's granddaughter, the other from a line who were once tribal chiefs but now impoverished).
Once play began, however, it didn't go so well. Our challenges quickly got bogged down in less than stellar narration and rather too much dice rolling. The dice rolling in particular was a problem for the other player (who doesn't like things to be too complex or involve much arithmetic). The lack of interesting narration was because of two things - on the one hand, we'd had a long tiring day. On the other, the setting didn't really spark the interest of my partner.
Contributing to this was the fact that you have to go through quite a few conflict turns to win. Our first conflicts revolved around a family argument and a vision quest, with the hunter beset by spirits. Both of these were fine at first, but we began running out of ideas long before the conflict was over. I don't think this was just our lack of inspiration either - my preference would be for conflicts to be significantly accelerated. If I were to play again, I might halve the advantage cost of strikes, just to move things along faster.
We found that each conflict began with a fairly boring turn or two of both sides activating traits, then a few maneuvers, then a low level strike, a few more maneuvers, another strike, etc. Actually finishing the conflict off turned out to take a lot longer than I expected, and felt rather drawn out to me. This was particularly the case with the conflict that was rather further from the combat metaphor - the vision quest.
The idea here was that the hunter needed to get guidance to track down the beast they were to hunt, while hostile spirits and the environment tried to confuse her. However, after a few rounds, both of us found that we had no more material to keep the conflict interesting.
As challenger, it also broke me out of the swing of things a bit to have to make a numerical offer in response to each maneuver. My natural inclination was to just roll the dice and see if it worked, instead.
There's also a lot to keep track of, so the first go was quite difficult in that sense. Particularly in a conflict, you need to make sure you know several different numbers that can change each action.
In the end, we decided to stop before completing the adventure, as it just wasn't working out.
So. Overall? None of that should be taken as criticism of the game, itself. This was mainly a case of 'not the right game for us, then'. I'd been keen to try it, even though my partner had expressed some reservations about the game, and it was for my benefit we played it. And, it turned out to not be her sort of thing. I also didn't enjoy it as much as expected, mainly due to the issue of conflict length mentioned above.
Showing posts with label beast_hunters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beast_hunters. Show all posts
07 May 2007
11 April 2007
Beast Hunters Update
I got the physical book version of Beast Hunters in the mail today, and thought I would mention that it is a beautiful book. The art and layout - which looked good in pdf - look fantastic in print.
17 March 2007
Beast Hunters by Christian and Lisa Griffen
I just pre-ordered this game, and got a pdf download to read while waiting for the printed version to be finished and mailed out.
It's got a few really interesting things going on, mainly that it's a two-player roleplaying game. The intention is that you take turns playing your hunter characters while the other player creates challenges for you. There are rules in there for play with more people, too, but it reads like it wouldn't work so well as with two.
The setting is a post-apocalyptic fantasy world. The big crash left a lot of dangerous magical creatures around, and the player characters are Beast Hunters for a tribal nation - responsible for defending their people from these nasties. The setting details are evocative without being restrictive, throwing you a bunch of peoples and describing various areas. All are given some cool stuff but left open to each game filling in the rest.
Character generation is well done. You build up the character as you invent different stages/areas of their lives - parents, tribe, enemies and finally your beast hunter training. At each stage you give yourself some traits and resources related to that part of your life. You give each a description and category (physical, mental or social) as you go, then allocate numbers to each at the end.
When you begin a session, you set up an adventure. The hunter player (in discussion with the challenger) determines: the goal of the adventure ("slay such and such a beast" or "make peace with an enemy tribe", etc). Then pick the adversity pool and limit. The challenger spends this pool in challenges to make things tough for the hunter, and the limit is how much they can spend at one time. So the hunter decides how long and hard an adventure they want, basically.
Play begins and ends with a salute, and this is explained as a nigh-mandatory feature, likened to a salute or bow at the beginning of a martial arts bout. The idea is that in-game the players should be working hard to challenge each other, just like sparring.
Then you begin roleplaying freely. This continues until the challenger decides that you have reached a point where the obstacle ahead is interesting enough to go into a full challenge, rather than be played through by negotiation. Their limited budget also affects this decision, of course. Hunters can also ask for a challenge if they want one.
Going into a challenge, there is an initial negotiation phase after the stakes are worked out but before the dice come out.
The dice based conflict resolution system is pretty cool. To start with, the challenger buys stats for the challenge (traits, resources, and damage boxes/hit points). The conflict system involves taking turns, each side picking a maneuver every round. The maneuvers look to offer some interesting tactical options - taking a turn to activate a trait for advantage later versus denying use of a resource to the opponent versus causing damage versus maneuver for advantage versus cause a special side effect to the main stakes. Plenty to do, and it should all give a lot of stuff to make cool narration from - especially taking into account the different fields of conflict. It also looks like it will give a cool build-up of maneuvers and activating traits leading into a climactic flurry of action as the conflict goes on. Awesome.
Character development occurs in two ways.
Firstly, you get reward points for beating challenges that can be spent to build up your normal stats.
Secondly, and more cool, is the reward for beating beasts when you go hunting them. When you first beat a particular type of beast, the Beast Hunter elders give the hunter a magical tattoo using the beast's blood. This gives the beast hunter a special ability or extra always-on bonus, setting them apart from normal people and more as a Buffy-like superhero/defender. The tougher the beast, the more powerful the tattoo.
There's a section for how to be a good hunter player, how to be a good challenger and how to set up adventures. The advice here all looks solid. There's also some special rules for beast hunts and a big section on the various nasty beasts that are out there. They're all interesting - not quite traditional monsters, and they have various tricky special powers for hunters to deal with.
How the game plays is a little difficult for me to imagine from just reading the text, so I'm not exactly sure how my impressions from reading it will map to actual play. Quite possibly the things that are most striking in the text will not be the same as the most striking parts of play. I have a feeling the conflict resolution stuff will be really awesome once you internalize all the options, for example. It just feels like there's more there than you can pick up from a single reading. There's a long example of play at the end, which covers three different challenges and shows a few different ways to play them out.
Lastly, the art, layout and general feel of the book is great. The text is sprinkled with the tribal-style beast tattoos and primitivist style pictures of the world of the beast hunters. The titles are in a matching style font, but the text is clean, bold and very readable in the pdf.
It's got a few really interesting things going on, mainly that it's a two-player roleplaying game. The intention is that you take turns playing your hunter characters while the other player creates challenges for you. There are rules in there for play with more people, too, but it reads like it wouldn't work so well as with two.
The setting is a post-apocalyptic fantasy world. The big crash left a lot of dangerous magical creatures around, and the player characters are Beast Hunters for a tribal nation - responsible for defending their people from these nasties. The setting details are evocative without being restrictive, throwing you a bunch of peoples and describing various areas. All are given some cool stuff but left open to each game filling in the rest.
Character generation is well done. You build up the character as you invent different stages/areas of their lives - parents, tribe, enemies and finally your beast hunter training. At each stage you give yourself some traits and resources related to that part of your life. You give each a description and category (physical, mental or social) as you go, then allocate numbers to each at the end.
When you begin a session, you set up an adventure. The hunter player (in discussion with the challenger) determines: the goal of the adventure ("slay such and such a beast" or "make peace with an enemy tribe", etc). Then pick the adversity pool and limit. The challenger spends this pool in challenges to make things tough for the hunter, and the limit is how much they can spend at one time. So the hunter decides how long and hard an adventure they want, basically.
Play begins and ends with a salute, and this is explained as a nigh-mandatory feature, likened to a salute or bow at the beginning of a martial arts bout. The idea is that in-game the players should be working hard to challenge each other, just like sparring.
Then you begin roleplaying freely. This continues until the challenger decides that you have reached a point where the obstacle ahead is interesting enough to go into a full challenge, rather than be played through by negotiation. Their limited budget also affects this decision, of course. Hunters can also ask for a challenge if they want one.
Going into a challenge, there is an initial negotiation phase after the stakes are worked out but before the dice come out.
- Solution: The challenger describes the situation, and specifies the domain (mental, physical or social). The hunter then describes their plan to deal with the situation. The challenger can then give in (if the plan was really cool), elaborate the situation, or go directly to dice-based conflict resolution.
- Elaboration: The challenger asks questions about the plans, points out flaws and asks how the hunter will deal with them. The hunter explains and specifies a trait they are using (this is an advantage later in conflict resolution). The challenger again can give, move to the next stage, or go direct to conflict resolution.
- Complication: The challenger throws unexpected complication(s) into the mix, messing up the hunter's plan. The hunter reacts and explains how they will deal with the new situation. The challenger then decides whether to give or move to conflict resolution.
The dice based conflict resolution system is pretty cool. To start with, the challenger buys stats for the challenge (traits, resources, and damage boxes/hit points). The conflict system involves taking turns, each side picking a maneuver every round. The maneuvers look to offer some interesting tactical options - taking a turn to activate a trait for advantage later versus denying use of a resource to the opponent versus causing damage versus maneuver for advantage versus cause a special side effect to the main stakes. Plenty to do, and it should all give a lot of stuff to make cool narration from - especially taking into account the different fields of conflict. It also looks like it will give a cool build-up of maneuvers and activating traits leading into a climactic flurry of action as the conflict goes on. Awesome.
Character development occurs in two ways.
Firstly, you get reward points for beating challenges that can be spent to build up your normal stats.
Secondly, and more cool, is the reward for beating beasts when you go hunting them. When you first beat a particular type of beast, the Beast Hunter elders give the hunter a magical tattoo using the beast's blood. This gives the beast hunter a special ability or extra always-on bonus, setting them apart from normal people and more as a Buffy-like superhero/defender. The tougher the beast, the more powerful the tattoo.
There's a section for how to be a good hunter player, how to be a good challenger and how to set up adventures. The advice here all looks solid. There's also some special rules for beast hunts and a big section on the various nasty beasts that are out there. They're all interesting - not quite traditional monsters, and they have various tricky special powers for hunters to deal with.
How the game plays is a little difficult for me to imagine from just reading the text, so I'm not exactly sure how my impressions from reading it will map to actual play. Quite possibly the things that are most striking in the text will not be the same as the most striking parts of play. I have a feeling the conflict resolution stuff will be really awesome once you internalize all the options, for example. It just feels like there's more there than you can pick up from a single reading. There's a long example of play at the end, which covers three different challenges and shows a few different ways to play them out.
Lastly, the art, layout and general feel of the book is great. The text is sprinkled with the tribal-style beast tattoos and primitivist style pictures of the world of the beast hunters. The titles are in a matching style font, but the text is clean, bold and very readable in the pdf.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
