Fueled by Blood! Playtest Report 5/9/24

I took a longer break than usual between this playtest and the last, just needed to pause the development and reorient myself towards its goals---and it was completely worth it. Due to some futzing with the system and last minute changes I made, this version of Fueled by Blood! is the best version so far, and this playtest was the first time I was able to sit back (at least for the last fight) and enjoy Directing the game instead of stressing about systems and mechanics during play.

I had a return player this time, 1 of the tactical TTRPG players/designers from the 3/23/24 playtest, alongside 2 new players. 1 of the new players was a self-described optimizer and enjoys crunchier, tactical games, while the other has played/designed primarily D20 games and has little experience with Fueled by Blood!'s touchstones (which proved a good test for seeing how unfamiliar but experienced TTRPG gamers might react to the system).

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 the mission that we used for this playtest. If you're interested in joining a playtest, or just discussing this game's design, you can join Fueled by Blood!'s Discord server.

PLAYTEST BREAKDOWN

CHANGES

Before we delve into what I took away from this session, I want to go over some of the changes that I made to FbB!'s core systems.

1. Another Focus Rework.  Focus has been a pain point in this game's design for the past 4 playtests now. It was initially used to power special passives that were like Dante's Styles in DMC, then shifted to powering gear effects similar to Sekiro's prosthetic tools, but in both iterations the characters were too complex and those abilities were almost never used. For this playtest, I've dropped those Focus spends and decided to rework Focus as a resource. Now, it's effectively a pool of held actions that refreshes at combat start---meaning that players once again have (highly limited) access to out of turn actions that do not have triggers.
2. Starting Abilities Were Simplified.  As mentioned, I removed Focus spends from the starting characters, but more than that I also simplified their starting abilities, lowering their overall complexity, and plan to do so again. Though the individual abilities don't seem that complex, in play it seems that they can prove daunting to track and know when to use---especially considering how versatile any given Striker's toolkit is. Simpler starting abilities lead to the players having more fun and being a bit less confused.
   
3. Hostile Changes. I realized part of what slowed down combat in the previous test was that I needed it to last at least 1 complete round just to make hostiles feel like they were an actual threat. After playing a Lancer inspired game (developed by the above mentioned designer from the 3/23/24 playtest) I settled on having the Director activate 1 hostile at the end of each turn +1 at the end of the round, so hostiles don't need to be tough (barring bosses), just scary. That led to a handful of other changes for hostiles (lowering HP, raising damage, and making sure I removed Slow actions) which sped up combat. 
4. Reads Were Simplified and Adjusted. In order to speed up reads and better challenge Strikers, reads have been reduced to 1 question (what's the attack's Trigger type?). Counter and Dodge no longer have a cost, but also no longer refund a cost and a successful read only halves damage unless you spend 1 Tempo (previously Interrupts) to ignore the attack. That may seem like just a balance change, but it means that hostiles can pose an actual threat to Strikers even if they know all of their Triggers by heart because the game now punishes you for over spending resources and not respecting your enemies.
5. Exploration Mode was Reworked. Specifically, secrets were swapped out for filled clocks. The rules for them unfortunately didn't make it into the Introduction chapter, but they are in the session's prep. They are extremely simple and were designed to further speed up exploration mode in prep and play.

GOALS

To give some context, here were this playtest's goals:

1. To see if simplifying hostiles but having them activate more often changed the inherent difficulty of the Director role.
2. To check how the above changes affected the overall speed of combat.
3. To determine if Strikers used more of their toolkit and abilities, given that they were simpler overall.
4. To test if combat was deadlier and if Strikers could be put in more danger given the re-introduction of triggerless actions.
5. To tell if the changes to exploration made it faster and easier to prep and play. 

LESSONS LEARNED

THE GOOD

Starting off with what worked, Strikers did use almost their entire toolkits (Jet Heats were not used, but I'll get into why later), and specifically noted that Combos felt satisfying to pull off. The addition of a Combo rank tracker (and keywording given by the mechanics enthusiast from 3/9/24) to the character sheet also made it much easier to learn how Combos function and to track them during play by letting players use the tracker as a sort of physical memory while they reran the Combo in their head to make sure it was all correct, letting them shine.

In the previous post, I mentioned shifting to a complexity based paradigm for ability design and slots. That design proved rather successful here, as the simpler starting abilities made it easier for players to learn the game without removing the space for more complex abilities that could be learned and mastered later on. Though some changes to progression need to be made, I'll be keeping that model.

Similarly, I'll be keeping the reworked version of Focus, which created several highlights for this session. As mentioned, it functioned like a pool of held actions, with a cap determined by 1 of the 3 attributes (Skill). It auto-refreshed at the start of a combat, but you could also spend 1 action on your turn to regain 1 Focus. That meant that, with preparation and coordination, the players could pull off crazy team combos without needing dedicated ally combo moves and actions almost purely through spending Focus. It also allowed me to reintroduce the concept of attacking and moving a hostile in the middle of their attack to push them out of range, adding back a bit of lost interactivity.

It's a huge power boost to Strikers that greatly enhances their flexibility and defensive options, but it comes at the cost of being their most limited resource. Requiring that Strikers spend actions to regain Focus managed to keep it perfectly in check, since you basically always want all 4 of your on turn actions unless you are going a Control heavy build. Running out of it caused the players to get hit hard, but, if they were willing to risk it, they could also spend it all to absolutely demolish anything that came their way with insane and sudden combos.

That risk only existed, however, because of the changes to hostiles. 1 activation per turn (+1 at round's end) meant that the hostiles could act and die quickly, thus speeding up combat, and that they had enough actions to actually push through Striker defenses to hurt them---mostly due to the changes to defend actions which caused them to no longer refund resources. Hostiles were overall easier to run while being far more dangerous and engaging to fight, as the lack of Slow actions reduced the mental load on Directing while additional activations increased their DPR. While they may need more individually complex actions, I think their overall structure is set.

Though exploration was just changed, I think I can say the same about it. The swap from secrets to clocks was the right move. In practice, it made exploration feel a bit more like a slower, simpler cutscene. That sounds bad, but it allows exploration to be a good, low tension break from the rest of the game where you're not so worried about what combat is up next. It also considerably reduced the amount of "mother may I?" style phrasing in exploration mode by making the acquisition of benefits a bit more rigid in play, all while also making exploration segments far easier to prep because they have just a bit more mechanical structure to build off of.

THE BAD

While the game saw an overall massive improvement, with it going from 1 hour overtime and tiring to play in the last session to 20 minutes under time and far more enjoyable, there are still some targeted adjustments that need to be made. The biggest issues currently are (as always) combat related. As noted earlier, no one used their Jet Heat. While there was 1 player that got the opportunity to but (didn't due to the self-damage that it would have done), the remaining 2 players just never built up enough Heat to do so.

To me, that means combat went by just a little too fast---like 1 or 2 turns too fast. Given 1 additional turn each, those players would have built up enough Heat to Jet Heat, and I imagine would have done so just for the cool factor of it.  I think slowing combat by just a bit at the beginning of campaigns by adding a couple more hostiles to standard encounters and health to bosses would make it so that Strikers can use their full kit each fight, especially given that they will gain abilities (which will speed up combat) that give new ways to gain Heat (which will allow them to keep up with that increased pace).

On that same note of abilities, I've also found that, despite them being simplified, the starting abilities are still somewhat complex in play. I was told by 1 of the testers that they felt they could handle 1-2, possibly 3, more simple actions before the game began to push them, while I planned for them to gain about 5 more throughout any given campaign. I think that part of the issue was tags, which introduce tracking and are a bit more complex than any immediate effects, but another issue may just be the pressure to use everything you have like you would in a character action game. It's something I'll have to keep in mind in the future, and will require me to lower the overall number of abilities gained in favor of adding small amounts of complexity to existing abilities in the form of upgrades, adding levels of optional complexity to keep things somewhat simple.

In contrast to Striker abilities, however, I think that hostiles could actually use slightly more complex actions, especially as part of their sequences. The most engaging moments to me were when hostiles performed huge, 5 zone AoEs, or dealt some damage and then caused everyone to teleport to zones of their choosing, or added new tags to zones. These were fun ways to change up the fight and show just how dangerous these otherworldly monstrosities are. Pure damage, even if that damage is high, just doesn't cut it. It's threatening in the least interesting way because it doesn't ask the players any questions about their positioning or usage of their abilities, it just asks if they have enough health and defenses or not---it turns hostiles into stat sticks and not problems.

THE UGLY

Finally, there are a few ugly lessons from this session. They are simple, but I think should be internalized and are applicable to basically every game that I've ever played.

If you want your players to track something, give them somewhere to track it. That sounds obvious, but it's clearly overlooked in a lot of TTRPGs despite it making games flow far better and causing them to be a bit easier to learn. Even something as simple as your number of actions should have a tracker, because trackers don't just exist to tell the current amount of something that you have, they also serve as resource bookmarks. With Combos, for example, I don't think that any of the players were ticking off every rank in their Combo as they built it up, but they were marking what rank they were at when they ended an action or needed to review everything they've done so far. A tracker allows the player to offset the mental load of tracking onto a physical/digital space (even if only temporarily), making it easier for them to enjoy the game.

A player's approach is just as impactful as the game's rules. While it's something I've noticed before, especially with optimizers vs. non-optimizers, I'm mentioning it now because I've encountered it in an interesting way this session. Writing vs. remembering the answers to reads. Players noted that relying purely on memory made the game a little more stressful and hard, making it feel more like a fighting/action game, while I've found from previous test that writing the answers makes the game a little more tactical or like a puzzle.

These differences in play are important because, even though they're simple, they highlight how different ways of approaching the same rules can evoke different emotions in even the same players. I don't think that's something you can control purely through rules---I remember taking a relaxed approach to the video game Layers of Fear with my friends, running directly at anything supernatural while making jokes, making the game far less frightening---and instead you have to gear your players towards the best approach with, well, the vibes of the game. For a TTRPG specifically, that's the art, player advice, flavor text, and the game's introduction. Sometimes the players will just approach it wrong on purpose (like I did with Layers of Fear, or by using meme-builds that won't ever actually work, etc.). Those are valid ways of playing games, but players should at least be aware that it's not how you anticipated them playing the game and that it may impact their enjoyment of it.

No game is for everyone, and someone can like a game but not want to play it. I noted this lesson here because, while it's commonly understood, you still have to confront it every now and then. I had to do so in this session with the D20 player/designer. They enjoyed the session, but they disliked some core ideas I have for the game and similarly don't have much interest in any of the game's touchstones. 

I want Fueled by Blood! to be stressful in the same way that Sekiro or MGR:R on Very Hard can be. I want it to be specifically for people who love character action games. However, that means, even if a player overall liked the game, they might not want to return to it because they don't want that kind of gameplay. That's a dangerous position for TTRPGs specifically because these are huge time commitments that require groups of players cooperating for the best experience, and it's a balance that you have to strike---how targeted vs. how accessible your game is---at least when making a game as a product. Too targeted, and interested players have a hard time forming groups. Too accessible, and the game begins to lack the powerful hooks that make it stand out over its competition.

All in all, we truly are reaching a point where I'm happy with Fueled by Blood! and could release the rules as is. There's more to be done, but I think it's all fluff and polish from here, because the core mechanics have proven solid in this test at the very least.