Fueled by Blood! Playtest Report 3/23/24

Last Saturday I ran Fueled by Blood!'s 4th public playtest, and things have continued to move smoothly. There were some notable changes, but I think that I've about nailed the direction that this game needs to move in and I know that, in combat at least, I've almost got Strikers down exactly how I want them.

I've managed to get a full group of 3 playtesters again, with all 3 being new to the game this time around. 2 of the testers were experienced in playing, running, and designing tactical TTRPGs, with the final tester being closer to an average TTRPG player.

If you're unfamiliar, Fueled by Blood! is a character action TTRPG about cybernetic super soldiers who fight eldritch monstrosities---you can think of it as Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance + Doom (2016) + Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. It's about combos and knowledge checks, over the top abilities, and larger than life characters.

Before I go over the results of this test, here are the rules, pre-gens, and mission that we used for the test. If you're interested in joining a playtest, or just discussing this game's design, you can join me over on Fueled by Blood!'s Discord server.

PLAYTEST BREAKDOWN

CHANGES

As mentioned, there were some notable changes based on the last test, in addition to those from the previous post about embracing being diceless and the narrative outside of combat. Here they are for a bit of context.

1. Attribute buffs were removed.  The idea of choosing between buffs at the start of your turn isn't bad, but the choice being "better buff vs. more actions" is because the actions have a clear and set value to all players that buffs don't. That resulted in the highest attribute being chosen basically every time, so that choice at the start of each turn was just pointless.
2. Actions per turn were standardized. Because you would otherwise pick the highest attribute every time, and that there is no longer a core resolution mechanic, I decided to just give every Striker the exact same number of actions per turn (4), which has made balancing the game a fair bit easier.
3. The game was made more punishing. Hostiles were given a greater number of attacks with slightly higher damage, Countering and Dodging was made more difficult and changed so that you take damage on a partial success as well as a failure.

GOALS

While I'm always testing the game to make sure that it upholds its design strategies, I had a few extra goals for this test:

1. To determine if leaning into narrative mechanics was the right move.
2. To assess how well Cutscenes and Exploration modes functioned.
3. To determine if the new hostiles were more interesting.
4. To see if bosses warranted their own unique mechanics.
5. To test Cyber Systems.

LESSONS LEARNED

Now, with those changes and goals in mind, here's what I learned from this playtest.

THE GOOD

First up, cutscenes worked great. The testers really liked them and felt like they had actual narrative impact even when they couldn't handle every problem that was presented to them. There were some issues, like needing better definitions for narrative permissions and that cutscenes could have been better tied into exploration mode, but cutscenes have majorly outperformed challenges in terms of enjoyment and upholding the design strategies in their first test than challenges did in any of their tests. 

It seems that the narrative focus was the right move, as players really did alternate between setting up mechanical and narrative edges, and handling threats with narrative or mechanical consequences. This system also meant that this playtest was the first with a really cohesive story rather than just a series of loosely connected combats, and I think that bodes well for future campaign tests.

Similarly, exploration mode was well received. Due to the tests being shorter (~2.5 hrs each) and me needing to teach more complex systems (namely combat), exploration mode wasn't played around with too much, though the 30 minutes or so of it were enjoyed and seemed very promising. In the future, I plan to run a more open and possibly longer test to really play around with it.

The real star of this show, however, seemed to be the boss mechanics. While non-bosses were still too weak to be very interesting (something that I'll get into soon), the boss was very fun. Due to issues with time zones and other events, I had 1 tester leave before the boss fight, but the 2 that were there for the fight greatly enjoyed the boss. I was told directly by a tester that, when the fight began, he though "Oh, we're fucked!," but over the course of the battle he learned and mastered the boss, ending with the feeling that he was in charge, not the boss. 

That feeling means that the boss has perfectly mapped onto the goal for this system's combat, which is to emulate the cycle of mastery in each fight. The first round is dedicated to learning the new information, the second to testing it, and the third to dominating with it. Just as with every other enemy, part of this cycle was learning the boss's attack ranges and restrictions (when they can't use a move), but bosses have a unique Guard Meter (regenerating health pool) and Break mechanic to further this goal. Breaking a boss involves guessing what triggers a boss's automated out of turn actions, with a  correct guess reducing the boss's maximum guard, pushing players to pay attention and better learn how the boss acts.

Part of the boss feeling good, however, was that Strikers also just felt good to play as. While I got the outline of Strikers down well in the 2nd playtest, the refining they got and lessons I learned from the 3rd meant that now every Striker felt cool and like they had something powerful and fun to do in and out of combat. The narrative permissions of Cyber Systems especially were successful, though their passive buffs and Focus in its entirety were not.

THE BAD

To explain the above statements, Focus was not used a single time throughout that entire playtest. Not a single tester spent a single point of that resource, and the testers really just picked 1 buff and stuck with it for the entirety of the playtest. That's bad, it means that Focus felt uninteresting and that the buffs weren't impactful or important enough to really choose between. It also means that they didn't, for a new player at least, fulfill the goal of "having the right tool for the job."

Currently, the solution that I and a couple of testers (both from this test and prior ones) have worked out is to rework Focus so that it does not automatically regenerate, but is instead gained when you do a couple of skillful actions (mainly defeating non-minions), and to make Cyber Systems instant effects rather than buffs---that'll make them closer to Prosthetic Tools from Sekiro than Styles from DMC. The idea is that these changes should both make those mechanics more interesting, and to partially force players to engage with them (i.e. you don't gain the resource or benefits unless you do specific things to gain them).

I also learned that there are still some severe issues with the difficulty of combat in that it is generally far to easy. Non-bosses die much to quickly and deal way too little damage, I think that bosses could use a slight HP and damage buff, Director turns were slow and awkward, and the clean up phase of combat---where you have killed everything but the weakest enemies and need to go around cleaning up the remaining minions---is slow and boring.

The design of hostiles was, otherwise, a decent successes however. At the moment, the idea is to simply buff hostiles all around (except for minions, who will now function more like Doom (2016) zombies), to add waves to combat, to rework the Director turn entirely, and to turn the cleanup phase of combat from a fight into a cool cutscene that's there to let the Strikers show off how bad ass they are in a low stakes situation.

THE UGLY

My last takeaway from this playtest was that it is so extremely easy to fuck up hostile and encounter design. While I was already operating with templates for hostiles, I think encounter templates or guides are also needed. I realized during the boss fight that I had over used a handful of hostile templates (skirmishers, high movement low damage) and gave hostiles far to many attacks with the same range and restriction types so that, by the end of the session, the testers could just assume that every attack was Close range with a target restriction.

That means I presented the testers with very similar "problems" (enemy designs) for 2.5 hours, and that the problems I used weren't complementary---them being used together didn't make them harder. While typically my solution might be to add hard rules, I think with hostile and encounter design I'll need lighter rules and a lot of guidelines instead, that way the problems you can create and the ways you present them aren't limited but you are guarantied some amount of success with each and every one you make.

I think that the ratio of lessons in each category from this test shows that the game is progressing in the right direction. While I know that there's never going to be a point where I run a test and say "Everything went perfectly, and there were no hiccups or failures!" I am certain that the game will continue to move in the right direction, as I slowly whittle away at the bad and ugly parts that rear their heads.