Fueled by Blood! Playtest Report 2/4/24

As of  2/4/24, I ran Fueled by Blood!'s first semi-public playtest, and it went pretty damn well all things considered. I've got three good quotes to sum up the session, and at the bottom of this post I've placed screen shots of responses from the playtest feedback form.

    "I flip out the door, ax kick the helicopter back in the right direction, and then double jump back inside."
    "I'm gonna fuck him up, my Combo Meter's full."
    "OH, that one's a Quick Action, you tricky bastard."

PLAYTEST BREAKDOWN

GOALS

Fueled by Blood! is a Character Action TTRPG, and in this playtest I was overall looking to see if the mechanics held up the design strategies:

OVERALL

1. The game should move like a Fast Paced Shooter or hack and slash game: absurdly fast.
2. There should be a fostered friendly competition between the two roles which the rules mediate.
3. Prep should be fast, fun, and a part of play.

STRIKER

1. Strikers are powerful, competent, and cool cybernetic super soldiers—but they are not immortal.
2. Strikers play like hack and slash or character action video game characters.
3. Player skill determines most of a Striker’s power.

DIRECTOR

1. The Director is the man behind the curtain, and should feel like a mastermind as they reveal monsters and challenges to the Strikers.
2. The Director is empowered to be creative in prep and in play.
3. The Director wants to see the Strikers face and overcome their monsters and challenges.

I was especially looking at the Overall and Striker segments, since those would be the parts playtesters would have the most interaction with, and to see how well the core three systems I've devised function: Striker Checks, Challenges, and Bloody Challenges. Here are the rules I used for this playtest, and here is the one shot and pre-gens.

WHAT I LEARNED

So, rather than recapping every moment like a session report, I want to highlight where the system worked and where it broke down. I'll be using the playtest feedback report a tester filled to highlight my points.

As can been, this system on its own functioned fairly well. I'm glad that Intent and Method were received very well and are being noted as important, because I thought they would just be skipped or ignored most times. I expected taking consequences to be something that wouldn't be greatly enjoyed, so I'm happy with its place here, but work can be done on RL and expertise. 

I think that the issue with Risk and RL was my Directing and not the game's design, since I frequently forgot to state them despite the game rules stating to do so---which means that step should be tweaked to be made easier if possible. 

Expertise, on the other hand, is a design issue I believe and---though I enjoy having to get creative to make something work as player---I do think that it slows down the game considerably. Below you'll see that this tester thought that Challenges ran pretty slow, and I think that the way fields of expertise function is a major reason as to why.

Here we can see a very mixed bag that I think was due to a couple of balancing and design issues rather than systems being flawed (like expertise). While things generally ran smoothly and were enjoyed, the pace overall was slow. The player here actually severely underestimates the number of ticks they got each turn (1-2, not 4). 

That  issue is caused by the design of expertise. The underlying math of Challenges assumes 4-6 successes a turn, or 6-8 for skilled players, with the idea that they will always be using their highest ranking expertise. Expertise, however, functions like skills in other games and so when the player had none that were obviously relevant they settled for using none instead of trying to finding a way to use one of their expertise creatively. While that could be construed as a player skill issue, and it was overcome not too long into the session, it definitely is a hiccup.

While Risk Points and Interrupts are marked negatively here, the reason why can be found in the next segment.

Though Bloody Challenges were rated positively overall (and there were 2 during the session, so the tester had more time with this system than the standard challenges) the remarks were overwhelmingly negative. I don't think that's necessarily bad, two inspirations for Fueled by Blood! are Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, so I expect some enjoyable frustration from combat; but I think that a lot of this frustration came from the game feeling unfair rather than difficult.

The way that Interrupts (specifically Counter/Dodge) function is that you have to guess the attack's attribute (power, reflex, skill), and action type (quick, normal, slow). The game rules themselves have a couple of ways of telling conveying that information to Strikers---attributes are tied directly to range, and action type determines when the action can be taken---but the game relied on me as the Director to convey which attack was used. This tester got tripped up by that once due to a poor description of mine, so I think the resolution for that is to simply tell the Director to state the attack's/action's name out loud when they use it, that way the Strikers can connect the information to a name.

As he very emphatically noted, getting countered and dodge as a player felt bad. Both testers seemed happy when they did it to their enemies, but a bit frustrated when it happened to them. That's fairly common in this genre of game---everyone hates the Fury in DMC 5---but I think this issue came from 2 sources: that these weren't really knowledge checks for me, and that the effects of Counter were especially unfun for Strikers. I could easily change both and speed up the game by having hostiles always get a partial success when they Dodge or Counter.

Quickly returning to Risk Points, I think those were rated low because they could be spent by me as the Director on hostile Interrupts. Being that my limit was the number of RP I had, I could---and did---negate entire turns. Balancing Interrupts and then making it so that only 1 RP can be spent per turn would make them much more enjoyable and fair for both roles.

The Combo Meter issue should have been obvious to me---characters that use fewer but heavier attacks would clearly stack it slower---but I failed to notice it. It's a simple fix, however. I'll have the Combo Meter increase each time you deal damage, apply tag, or Dodge/Counter successfully. That means any relatively decent player can stack up in one turn or just over that, and it rewards all interactions with hostiles.

Finally, we've found the most worrying ratings to me. There are no strongly agrees here, and these are the emotions and ideas that the game should be evoking. While I can see that we're heading in the right direction, and I think that some of the balance changes might push a couple of these up a notch (specifically cool combos and being powerful), not feeling like a Hack and Slash character and seeing Challenges as slow are both big issues.

The tester did not give a short form response for this segment, unfortunately, so I have to make assumptions based on the session and their prior responses. I think that a large part of these issues stem mostly from the poor balance of a couple key elements which made the Strikers feel dramatically weaker than what they actually were at a couple of key moments, and too many large decision points at the beginning of turns. These issues affected this tester more heavily than the other, who greatly enjoyed the Interrupt system and it seemed felt a bit more powerful, due to the pre-gen that this tester used.

Fixing Interrupts and removing expertise should make Strikers feel more powerful, and should speed up play---as should getting into the habit of asking for the Intent and Method more often, which sped things up dramatically. I don't know what to do for the Hack and Slash response, however. We'll just have to wait and look at any responses given on the next playtest.