This is the official production blog for Alter Arms, a tokusatsu-themed tabletop role playing game by Duffy Austin
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AwesomeCon 2019
I Ran Alter Arms at AwesomeCon this past weekend and had players had some good positive feedback to round out the rules.
I'm currently at the stage where I'm finalizing the rule-set for blind playtests and hope to send them out to people who have signed up sometime in the early Summer.
MAGFest 2022 was a great experience! I learned more about encounter balance for both Alter Arms and Skrap Packs, and met a number of wonderful people with some great stories to tell through the games and feedback to provide. With Alter Arms , the main feedback I got was in terms of learning the system and encounter balance: Coming into the game with characters with at least one advancement can be fun when multiple special abilities are applied to actions, but it can be overwhelming for new players learning the new system. The different kinds of actions a character can take, the bonuses they can create for themselves and their allies, and managing the pressure their characters are under can be a lot to take in all at once. What I've found by comparing the MAGFest 2022 playtests to other playtests is that the game is easiest taught in steps: at PAX Unplugged I brought characters in before they had any transformations or special abilities. They were left to solve problems with just
(Photo by Duffy Austin) This past Saturday I was lucky enough to run some playtests at Awesome Con in Washington, D.C. in the dedicated tabletop room, and wanted to go over how the playtests went and the feedback I received. There were two playtests in the afternoon, each with two players. The first participants were a young man and an older gentleman, and the second group was an adult man and woman. everyone had prior experience with RPGs and were familiar with tokusatsu on a basic level. I recruited them by walking up to them as they were looking around and asking if they were interested in testing out my game. Each session took about two hours. WHAT'S NEW? Not much difference between this playtest and the last at the Big Frederick Gaming Convention , other than adding more detailed explanations of the rules associated with Powers. WHAT HAPPENED? Saw-Tooth, one of the pregenerated player characters for this playtest. They're a werebeaver (Art by Duffy Au
PAX Unplugged and MAGFest were both delightful experiences where I got some great feedback from folks about the status of both of my games. For Alter Arms , I had some minor updates for special abilities, and have introduced tokens into physical play to keep track of turns. For Skrap Packs , I’ve updated some cards and included mechanics for restricting inventory. This has encouraged players to be more considerate of the items their characters keep, use and combine. My current upcoming goal is to work on additional theme cards for Skrap Packs—this time based on medieval fantasy adventures—and setup Skrap Packs for sale on Itch.io by the end of the year. The current plan is to demo both games during KatsuCon 2023 on both Friday and Saturday.
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