I had a great set of demos at KatsuCon this past weekend with some awesome players! Highlights include the Alter Arms player who played a hero with a Stage Magician gimmick, allowing them to tie up opponents with escapology chains and use balloons to gather intel. There was also the Skrap Packs player who combined their metal gauntlet with a potato peeler to make a clawed glove they named “Can I Borrow a Peeling.” Players are liking the assets mechanic, since it allows them to better collaborate on actions. I need to consider how to scale difficulty as a result. There were some instances where players weren’t able to make an impact on the opponents—at least not as much as they would like—without using assets. Assets are a mechanic where characters change the battlefield in some way (causing debris to rain down from a building that was struck, a smoke bomb thrown into the field to provide cover, or cars knocked over to provide cover). During combat, instead of interacting with o...

  A photo of a Skrap Packs playtest by one of the players  Thank you to all the playtesters at PAX Unplugged 2021, Games on Demand for a very busy weekend! It's always great to have a game, but I also got some great feedback: ALTER ARMS Alter Arms playtesters at PAX Unplugged 2021 During Alter Arms, players pointed out that not all of the character archetypes were as beneficial for players as others.  For the sake of clarity, I'm going to explain the character archetype move rules in a way that doesn't require full knowledge of the system. Character archetypes are subclasses for characters that give them access to moves that mechanically reflect the functionality of different members of a team you typically find in team henshin-hero shows like Super Sentai, Sailor Moon, etc. They are important because they give characters access to unique actions that can: A) Allow them to lower their own or another character's drama ( in this system, instead of characters losing  hi...

Two players from a demo of Alter Arms at KatsuCon I had a great time at KatsuCon this past Saturday in their tabletop room where I was able to run multiple demos of Alter Arms for eager players! "I never thought that being an edgy super hero (WHO COULD TRANSFORM!) would be so cool! This was an amazing experience." -JD (@rise_medica on Instagram: https://t.co/XGNd6slH15 ). Thanks to all of the players from @Katsucon this weekend! #KatsuCon #tokusatsu #ttrpg pic.twitter.com/2iN8tsqXB1 — Alter Arms (@AlterArms) February 18, 2019 I had one return player who played a demo last year, who also expressed enjoyment at how the game is turning out. One takeaway I found was that the Defender archetype needed to be tempered to make it so that it didn't make it too easy for players to earn experience compared to the others. Archetypes are classes that characters have that represent their role on the team, kind of like how sentai teams have "the support...

During the first week of November, I was lucky enough to attend Metatopia , a gathering of tabletop gaming professionals from around the country and beyond, who come together to talk about the industry and gather feedback on their games. I want to give a brief overview of how my games were received, and what I thought of the games I played. MY GAMES Alter Arms is a tabletop roleplaying game (RPG) that I am designing themed around Japanese super heroes . Players are able to take on different forms with a variety of powers in order to solve problems and defeat enemies. It got the most exposure at the convention, with one hi-test (where only other developers played with the intention of dissecting mechanics) and one lo-test (where casual players and other developers can try out games). Both went well, with the hi-test giving me feedback on how mechanics can be abused and some of the character Powers need clarification in their rules.  One mechanic that was noticed to have...

I'm currently working to finalize the rules for peer review from volunteers, and hope to get this done within the next month. My next major playtest is going to be at Metatopia in Morristown, NJ, 11/1-11/4, where I'll be showing off the updated version to fellow game designers. What's Changed? Mechanics-wise, a major change that has occured with the game is in regards to the Gimmicks (formally Trappings. This was changed to be more thematically appropriate as tokusatsu characters usually have gimmicks that act as their powers and forms). Before, they were used as a simple framing device for the action a character can take, bestowing a small numerical bonus to skill checks, but they've changed to become a much more versatile aspect of character expression. Now, Gimmicks are the "theming" of a character; like if they have fire powers, are psychic, have tentacles, or super-speed; they determine what unique actions a character can take. They are expr...

Me running Alter Arms for playtesters during Break My game at Labyrinth Games & Puzzles. (Photo Courtesy of Labyrinth) This past weekend I visited Labyrinth Games & Puzzles in Washington, D.C. for a couple of playtests as a part of Break My Game , an organization that sets up public playtests for tabletop game developers. I had two playtests with three people each. The first had two adult males and one teenage male while the second had two adult males and one adult female. Each session took about two hours for the players to complete the scenarios. WHAT’S NEW? UPDATED CHARACTER SHEETS For this session, I updated the character sheets to match the suggestions proposed during my last playtest at JohnCon. I moved the Arms Name labelS to the top of the sheet in order to hopefully make clear that each column at the top of the sheet represents details about a character when they're in that Form(A). UPDATED ARCHETYPES Between JohnCon and this playtest, I was a...

The first playtest group from JohnCon. (Photo by Duffy Austin) This past weekend I visited JohnCon , the annual gaming convention held at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md. hosted by the university's science fiction and fantasy club. Alongside the other developers there as a part of Break My Game , I was able to get one full playtest in along with two partial playtests and feedback from a number of helpful individuals. The first group was made up of two college students and a board game designer with Break My Game. that session lasted about two hours. The other sessions had two high school students each, but unfortunately had to cut our sessions short. WHAT'S NEW? EXPERIENCE FOR ARCHETYPES Experience can now be gained from lowering allies' Drama. The intent here is to encourage players to use their archetypes to keep other players from Crashing. Originally, lowering Drama was the only way to Advance characters. I included the experience system - reward...

My playtesters during BFG Con. I was able to get in one playtest at the Big Frederick Gaming Convention this past weekend with some lovely volunteers and wanted to go over the session and feedback I received. I had two players - a father and son - who had prior experience in role playing games and were familiar with the tokusatsu genre who took part in a two-hour playtest session. This gave me the opportunity to take things a bit slower for each player, and gain more focused feedback. WHAT'S NEW? For this playtest, I incorporated new features including unique benefits for Finishers, the consequences for Crashing, and what I'm calling Trappings that are tied to different forms. FINISHERS As before, Finishers are all-or-nothing attacks where players can max-out their Drama so that they at the brink of Crashing, but gain access to the next-highest dice-type (a characters in form 1 who normally uses a d6 would have access to a d8). For this session, I tied spec...

This weekend I'll be running playtests at the Big Fredrick Gaming Convention. Hope to see you there!

This past weekend I was lucky enough to run some playtests of Alter Arms at Katsucon, an annual anime convention in the Washington, D.C. area. There, I got some great feedback that I wanted to write about in order to review the game’s current status. WHAT’S NEW? I had three sessions of about six players each with most players being in their early 20s, but most having only a peripheral knowledge of the subject matter based on exposure to Power Rangers and Sailor Moon. Most players were experienced with other tabletop role playing games, and those with little to no experience said that they felt they were able to grasp the system pretty well. Compared to last time, I had pregenerated characters with names and motives written on the character sheets in order to give players material to work with when acting them out. I also increased the difficulty of the encounters, and also increased the characters’ levels to match the challenge. The enemies the players fought were tougher overal...