On Williams Game this session we have been playtesting the new Spy and Thief
Varients.

So I thought I would give my impressions on the skills.

Background.

My Character has Rank 8 in both Skills although she is primarily a Spy.

Conversion.

The lack of defined Spy base chances caused some issues to begin with. Some
of the skills have a number of potential stats that could apply to them
however picking one that seemed ok worked fine. All of the subskills were
interesting and it was reasonably hard to reduce it to the appropriate
number. I suspect this would be easier starting a character from scratch.

Theif was simpler but it is apparent that 1 skill plus 1 per rank does not
really work for theif. While it was fine at the higher ranks it would make
the skill virtually useless at low ranks (sub 3 or 4). Also base chances
were not included for the effects of the default skills which are required.

Playing.

Most of the skills came in handy at some point in the game, teamwork stands
out as one that does not really work well as a game skill and may need to be
thought out a little more or removed.

I certainly felt that even though the skills I chose where as similar as
possible to the original skills that the new skills gave a greater array of
options and let to more inventive uses of the skills themselves.

The skills area knowledge and Spy/Thief Master I do think should not be
options that are only available by gaining a rank. I think if you have a
character that has learned an area as part of a game or has set up a Spy
ring etc these should be added to the number of abilities by a GM.

All in all I think the new skills add some more options for the characters
and work very well.

Spy 9/10
Thief 7/10

Mandos
/s


-- to unsubscribe notify mailto:dq-request@dq.sf.org.nz --

From my p.o.v of the playtest, Thief didn't work - the old thief was
preferable. The different flavours from having different skills didn't come
across, we had to check what we could or couldn't do (we just assumed we
could do everything) and being a low-ranked thief really sucked. Its unusual
that the old skill is better than the new one. Oh, and climbing walls and
cliffs should be a single skill. Thief 2/10.

Spy is great for spy/courtiers - lots of extra value. It's not much good for
dark spies. As long as dark spies (i.e. Spy/Thief, Spy/Assassin) get to
trade in all their ep for extra Thief/Assassin, no problem. 7/10

Note to players, now that Spy is a roleplaying skill, not a numbers skill,
people who are doing a lot of Spy stuff by roleplaying but don't have the
skill should learn the skill. e.g. in the playtest, an unranked spy used
more of the spy special abilities more successfully than anyone else and got
away with it.


Andrew

-----Original Message-----
From: Mandos Mitchinson [mailto:mandos@iconz.net] 
Sent: Wednesday, 26 February 2003 1:37 p.m.
To: dq@dq.sf.org.nz
Subject: [dq] Spy and Thief Playtest



On Williams Game this session we have been playtesting the new Spy and Thief
Varients.

So I thought I would give my impressions on the skills.

Background.

My Character has Rank 8 in both Skills although she is primarily a Spy.

Conversion.

The lack of defined Spy base chances caused some issues to begin with. Some
of the skills have a number of potential stats that could apply to them
however picking one that seemed ok worked fine. All of the subskills were
interesting and it was reasonably hard to reduce it to the appropriate
number. I suspect this would be easier starting a character from scratch.

Theif was simpler but it is apparent that 1 skill plus 1 per rank does not
really work for theif. While it was fine at the higher ranks it would make
the skill virtually useless at low ranks (sub 3 or 4). Also base chances
were not included for the effects of the default skills which are required.

Playing.

Most of the skills came in handy at some point in the game, teamwork stands
out as one that does not really work well as a game skill and may need to be
thought out a little more or removed.

I certainly felt that even though the skills I chose where as similar as
possible to the original skills that the new skills gave a greater array of
options and let to more inventive uses of the skills themselves.

The skills area knowledge and Spy/Thief Master I do think should not be
options that are only available by gaining a rank. I think if you have a
character that has learned an area as part of a game or has set up a Spy
ring etc these should be added to the number of abilities by a GM.

All in all I think the new skills add some more options for the characters
and work very well.

Spy 9/10
Thief 7/10

Mandos
/s


-- to unsubscribe notify mailto:dq-request@dq.sf.org.nz --

Mandos Mitchinson wrote:

>...teamwork stands
>out as one that does not really work well as a game skill and may need to be
>thought out a little more or removed.
>
One simple way that Teamwork might be made to work in a party is by 
allowing the "supporting" Thief to increase the primary Thief's BC.  For 
example, Primary wants to pick guarded merchant's pocket.  Plan from PCs 
to GM is simple as "I'll pick the pocket and he'll distract the guard" 
-- supporting thief distracts guard and adds some bonus to the primary's 
Pick Pockets BC -- or more likely negates the negative modifier that the 
primary would get from the Merchant being guarded.

Simple for the players and GM, gets both players involved, and offers 
the option of bad things happening to the supporting thief too -- does 
the guard realise he's being distracted? React badly to being bumped 
into? etc.

Cheers,
Martin

-- 

 _/_/  Peace Software International     Email: martin.dickson@peace.com
_/     Martin Dickson                   Phone: +64-9-373-0400
       Senior Analyst                   Fax  : +64-9-373-0401


-- to unsubscribe notify mailto:dq-request@dq.sf.org.nz --

> >...teamwork stands
> >out as one that does not really work well as a game skill and
> may need to be
> >thought out a little more or removed.
> >
> One simple way that Teamwork might be made to work in a party is by
> allowing the "supporting" Thief to increase the primary Thief's BC.  For
> example, Primary wants to pick guarded merchant's pocket.  Plan from PCs
> to GM is simple as "I'll pick the pocket and he'll distract the guard"
> -- supporting thief distracts guard and adds some bonus to the primary's
> Pick Pockets BC -- or more likely negates the negative modifier that the
> primary would get from the Merchant being guarded.
>
> Simple for the players and GM, gets both players involved, and offers
> the option of bad things happening to the supporting thief too -- does
> the guard realise he's being distracted? React badly to being bumped
> into? etc.

I will be re-writing thief over the coming days and I like this idea, it
looks nice and simple.

Mandos
/s


-- to unsubscribe notify mailto:dq-request@dq.sf.org.nz --