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| Tournament of Daolu cover by Jackie Musto |
The session went well. I think we had some interesting developments and as always one of the benefits of play testing is seeing developments you didn't anticipate, this expands the possibilities in the module. For example, one of the players met Sunan and tried to teach him a martial arts technique. There was another moment where they changed the future by winning a tournament that Sunan was supposed to win.
I also found some minor organizational issues I had overlooked. This scenario is set during the Era of the Demon Emperor when the Hen-Shi Empire on the verge of being conquered. I realized I only include the name of the current emperor in the middle of a paragraph deep in the book, so I made a point of making that information easier to find.
One of the biggest changes resulting from the playtest was to a major NPC in the book. I play tested the scenario this Saturday then again on Sunday, and that gave me a chance to try out two different personalities back-to-back. I also tightened his motives a bit by the second playtest. The difference was night and day. The NPC worked out much better on Sunday's session so I revised his entry. I'll get another chance to try out the NPC tonight at another playtest.
Some other tweaks were the physical descriptions and abilities of important objects of power, cleaning up important stat blocks, adjustments to encounter tables and finding places in the book that don't match what I had in mind.
Overall the playtests worked well. Both felt successful to me, the second one much more so, and in part due to the tweaks to the NPC.
The Tournament of Daolu is a setting supplement with a quirky time travel scenario that can come up if the players involve themselves in it. However that is only a small part of what the book is. It is essentially a guide to the city of Daolu in the present and during the time of the Demon Emperor. So the two playtests in question dealt with the latter. On Monday I was able to playtest more of the former, for a group who in a campaign in present day Daolu (present day being the Era of the Glorious Emperor). I was able to test out more of the tournament fighters and some of the major locations. I've also been seeing how well the content from the appendices works. The appendices mainly contain tools meant to help the GM in a pinch.
One of the biggest changes resulting from the playtest was to a major NPC in the book. I play tested the scenario this Saturday then again on Sunday, and that gave me a chance to try out two different personalities back-to-back. I also tightened his motives a bit by the second playtest. The difference was night and day. The NPC worked out much better on Sunday's session so I revised his entry. I'll get another chance to try out the NPC tonight at another playtest.
Some other tweaks were the physical descriptions and abilities of important objects of power, cleaning up important stat blocks, adjustments to encounter tables and finding places in the book that don't match what I had in mind.
Overall the playtests worked well. Both felt successful to me, the second one much more so, and in part due to the tweaks to the NPC.
The Tournament of Daolu is a setting supplement with a quirky time travel scenario that can come up if the players involve themselves in it. However that is only a small part of what the book is. It is essentially a guide to the city of Daolu in the present and during the time of the Demon Emperor. So the two playtests in question dealt with the latter. On Monday I was able to playtest more of the former, for a group who in a campaign in present day Daolu (present day being the Era of the Glorious Emperor). I was able to test out more of the tournament fighters and some of the major locations. I've also been seeing how well the content from the appendices works. The appendices mainly contain tools meant to help the GM in a pinch.
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