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.

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. Thank you for your patience!

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...

Big thanks to all those who tried out Alter Arms as part of the MAGFest Indie Tabletop Showcase! Players had epic battles against mystic knights, vampire lords, technopathic bikers, and demonic stock brokers, and did so in awesome setpieces they came up with. One team had a member's giant robot combine with their shapeshifting alien ally to form a sword, which was used by their ally in an even bigger giant robot to attack their opponent as they fought in the middle of a weapon testing facility; Another group had a  combat robot use their battle computer to find an enemy's weak points and destroyed them in a missile barrage; A magical girl took control of an armored car through use of spells so she could bash a pursuer with her flaming mace, while her partner shifted from their beastial form to their cyborg form to take out their opponent; An extraterrestrial peacekeeper summoned their transforming robot starship to knock down a door (and conv...

New Alter Arms players. I just got back from PAX Unplugged, a major tabletop gaming expo in Philadelphia where I had some great playtests. I am grinding away on the blind playtest rules, which is good because more and more people are asking for copies to play with their friends. Minor musings: The rules can be grasped by young children, as a group of playtesters quickly and eagerly leapt into the game. I was also able to test out character creation, which I've been able to streamline to about 5-10 minutes. A BLOCKBUSTER! playtester holds up the character sheet for their actor, Bick Thudgun, star of such films as Time Spiders , You're a Monster! , and The Green Desk Lamp Knows All (as the Lamp). Also, I played some large playtests of my other game, BLOCKBUSTER! which I have been working on as a side project. I'm likely going to be publishing that before I publish Alter Arms just because it will likely take less time since the rules are so streamlined An...

After thorough testing, the Alter Arms system is almost complete. The next step is going to be to get blind feedback from playtesters interested in using the playtest rules to make their own characters and run their own adventures. This means sending out copies of the rules for players to review. I have been gathering emails from interested players, but if anyone would like to take part in this playtest, feel free to contact me by commenting on this post, or notifying me via @AlterArms on Twitter. In addition, I am going to look into running games on Roll20, and will update on that in time.

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...

(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...

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!

Just an update: You can follow on twitter  @AlterArms for more frequent updates Some production art I doodled when I was playtesting a friend’s cyberpunk rpg tonight #tokusatsu #magicalgirl #art #tabletopgames #RPGs pic.twitter.com/CD7M03cuMm — Alter Arms (@AlterArms) March 15, 2018

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...

I had the opportunity to playtest Alter Arms at the Music and Gaming Festival (MAGFest) earlier this year, and wanted to post about how the experience went. FEEDBACK I tested the game once on Thursday with three players, twice on Friday with six in the morning and six in the afternoon, twice on Saturday with six in the morning and six in the afternoon, and once on Sunday with two players, for a total of six sessions. Each session ran about an hour and a half, with games with more players running into two hours. After each session, I recorded a freeform survey of the group to gather their opinions. POSITIVES Almost all of the feedback was positive. Players said they enjoyed how the system enabled them to create their characters how they saw fit, which I had intended in my efforts to emulate the source material. I designed the three vector stats to allow players broad avenues to describe how their actions were success or failures, depen...