L&L Playtest Session 0 - Group 3 Report

Playtest Group 3 has been doing preliminary playtesting of character generation and combat rules over the past few weeks and months, but this session marked the beginning of a new phase of playing and testing. We will be playtesting in a "real play" environment, providing an opportunity to not only exercise the Laurels & Loot rule system, but also the Forgotten Academy dungeon crawl adventure that is being developed in parallel with the rules.

The intent is to play the game as if this were a well-established and complete rule system with a published adventure. In addition to combat encounters and dungeon exploration, situations requiring "social interaction" will be played out - just as in any typical RPG experience.

The players were informed that there may be an occasional "do-over" called in the event something in either the rules or the adventure proves to be terribly out of balance. Things that are only slightly off-balance may simply be noted and repaired for the next playtest group, but severe imbalances will be corrected and retested.

One of the three group members could not be present, so focus was on getting the other two characters cleaned up and ready to go, along with discussion about how the playtest will run. This group had created characters some time ago; these had been used for Level 1 "arena combat" testing of the combat encounter mechanics. They had then been "advanced" to Level 3 characters in preparation for further testing (which we never actually go to). However, as there have been modifications to character generation since these characters were created, they needed to be overhauled and reset to Level 1. One of the two players "corrected" their existing character; the other opted to create a new one. (The missing player will have to do one or the other as well before next session.)

While characters were being regenerated, several issues with the current rules were identified for correction:

Damage values are inconsistent for some weapons that can be both ranged and hand-held.

The character generation rule for assigning a starting value for Stamina Points needs to be updated.

The starting equipment associated with prior employment needs to be cleaned up. (This was a known issue; I'm still deciding how much of the original table needs to be scrapped entirely.)

In addition, a couple of items were identified as being necessary prior to our next session. Most notable of these is the preparation of the Common Items table, which will form the basis for the available equipment list at the Base Camp Quartermaster's Store in the Forgotten Academy Adventure.

Next session is scheduled for 06-Dec-2023 (the usual 2-week data is the evening before US Thanksgiving; players have family plans for that date.)