Play Test: Player's Perspective

Chris was one of our playtesters, so I thought I'd get him to share his thoughts on what he thought of the game. 

Hello fellow Pokefans, my name’s Chris, and like a certain Dickensian orphan of some renown; after a 12 hour playtest of Pokémon Journeys on Saturday, I find myself wanting more! You may have read about the brief playtest that my wife, Louise and I tried a week ago when we were visiting Jamie and his family; compared to that attempt, this was smoother and more exciting, which says a lot since it worked so well that weekend. 

For this playtest, we also had two friends from our D&D group, Otis and Dave, and my twelve year-old brother, Liam, who joined us just outside the second town of our test map. We started our ‘test-journey’ by creating our player characters, distributing 12 points over our four traits and then choosing a Profession that would guide our career in the world of Pokémon. I chose to be a Researcher which gave me an extra point to my Knowledge trait and two abilities that I could use once each day; which at the time were to identify a Pokémon’s level and identify its lowest Stat. Dave and Otis both chose to be Trainers which gave them a 10% boost to experience gained, a +1 to their capture rating (so it’s easier to catch Pokémon), and an extra move for each Pokémon they have (where my Pokémon can learn eight moves, theirs can learn nine but they can still only choose four moves for their ‘move set’). 

Once our player characters were sorted, we moved on to the most anticipated part of any Pokémon game: receiving our starter Pokémon! Excitement filled the air as we rolled our dice to see what cute critter we would each get; I missed out on a Charmander this time, instead getting Squirtle, a starter that I had never picked when playing the handheld games but was familiar with through my experience at battling it over the years. Otis received a Charmander, Dave got a Bulbasaur and then we each filled out our Pokémon’s character sheet with their base stats, level and experience, natures, known moves and lastly by rolling a d6 we found out if we had males or females. 

I chose to make my Squirtle a bit of a tank so that he could take a hit and stay standing but the beauty of Journey’s levelling system is that you can choose to make a fast Pokémon so that you usually move first or even a really attack-focused one so that you can end a battle before taking too many hits; it’s up to you rather than the unseen mechanics of the game.

The game worked so smoothly for what was effectively a second and more thorough playtest; we worked out some new ideas about player abilities, Pokémon attacks and damage, long-term player goals and small balancing tweaks but nothing caused us to have to stop or re-build the mechanics. Dynamic was my catchword for the evening, the game allowed us to use mechanics and tools that we were familiar with but in a way that was new and fun; the ability to shape how your Pokémon grow, the way that Loyalty and Natures combine to make you think and pay attention to how you train your companions, and the diverse ways that you interact with the world and work together to overcome challenges separates this from other mediums and means that no two adventures in this game will be the same. 

We all had so much fun and time really flew by as morning turned to afternoon, afternoon to evening and evening back to morning; we all agreed that we wanted to keep going, keep battling, keep catching and training, and most of all, keep Journeying with our Pokémon.

-Chris

Pokemon Journeys - Minor Playtest

Currently, the very first proper playtest for Pokemon Journeys is scheduled for this coming weekend, and I'm very excited about finding out what everyone thinks of the system, seeing what works and what doesn't.

My good friends Chris and Louise from Parental Guidance came by this weekend, and we decided to have  a small, informal playtest of the game, to give them a look at how it was all progressing, and also so I could see it in motion with my own eyes before the upcoming major playtest.

I built a small 20 card Travel Deck, drew a simple map on a blank D&D Battlemat, and then we made some test characters. Louise played as a Breeder, and started with Bulbasaur, whilst Chris chose to be a Researcher and started with Charmander. Each Pokemon began at lvl 5.

The map had 10 squares between the two towns, so it would take the pair a little over 2 days to get there.

Our first playthrough went very smoothly - probably too smoothly. A lot of Clear Run cards were drawn in succession, despite my thorough shuffling. I used my List of randomly generated Pokemon I made beforehand to select trainer Pokemon from when Trainer Battle cards were drawn, and Chris' Charmander destroyed the only Wild Pokemon they came across with some big damage rolls.

It was really good to see the excitement when a 2v2 Team Battle card was drawn, where they got to battle together against a pair of opponents. I think these cards are going to be a real hit with players. 

We "teleported" back to the first town and tried it again. This time, the journey was far more arduous. Louise came across a wild Bouffalant that pasted her Bulbasaur before charging off, meaning they had to backtrack to the starting town to heal up. Upon trying again, a wild Pinsir attacked Louise, and Bulbasaur bit the dust again, forcing them to scurry back a second time. I was having the players roll to randomly determine wild encounters, and it was just unlucky that Louise rolled the two most powerful Pokemon I had generated.

Chris also blew another wild encouter when his Charmander destroyed an Azurill. As well as downing an opposing trainer's Pokemon in a single hit, Charmander quickly earned the nickname 'Killer'.

We got to test out the different weather cards, and that system worked well. Dry Weather (Fire Types may re-roll their damage rolls) feature predominantly, and Chris made plenty of use with it with Charmander. It wasn't until after the game had finished that he realised he could also have used Dry Weather to reroll Charmander's big damage rolls to make them lower, thus not completely devouring the wild encounters he'd had. Chris thought this was a great mechanic.

With the deck empty and all the wild encounters having either been too powerful or eaten by Charmander, we finished the playtest with their starters having just reached lvl 8, and we decided to give each of the players an extra lvl 5 Pokemon (Chris got Rattata, Louise got Spearow) and have a friendly match against each other.

Chris managed to pull the win after his Rattata went down to Bulbasaur, and finished off both of Louise's Pokemon with his increasingly scary killer Charmander.

We had a long discussion after the game about what worked, what didn't, what we liked and what we thought needed changing. Both Chris and Louise loved the game, and actually thought it was almost perfect as it was, with only minor changes needed. Even though Louise got done in twice by two powerful wilds, it turned out that they actually enjoyed that, Chris saying that it added a real feeling of adventure and danger to the game; "sometimes you run through to the next town without a hitch, and sometimes you get beat and scurry back to your mum's house with your tail between your legs. That's just how it goes sometimes." They pointed out that Louise could have chosen to run from those powerful encounters, but she took them on and paid the price.

I was wrapped to hear that the game was not only playable, but enjoyable in it's first draft. For me as the GM, it was easy to run, as I only had to get involved to play the role of wild and trainer encounters, or dish out items that had been found. All of this came from my list that I'd made beforehand, so there was very little looking up stats or the like for me.

The battling system worked really really well. Rolling to see who sends out first really added a great element, and the rest played out very naturally from there.

There were really only 2 issues that cropped up during the game, and a few things that caused discussion on what should happen. They were:

- Money. In Pokemon Journeys, battles against Trainers do not grant money in the way the games do. Instead, the player makes a wager before the battle. If they win, they get that much money. If they lose, they lose it. In theory we loved this system, but in practice it led to a quick money shortage for the players, especially with items like Pokeballs and Potions still costing the in-game equivalent. We resolved this problem by granting the player double their wager if they won, but still losing their wager if they lost, which the three of us thought balanced things out much better.

- Damage. I've said it before, but the damage values we were using from Pokemon Tabletop Adventures was mostly a mess. I'll be working this week on a new damage system, converting Power ratings from the in-game moves into dice, that I'll talk about in another post, which I hope will make things a lot more balanced.

- When a wild Pokemon beat Louise, we discussed whether another player could jump in and try to continue battling it and capture it. In the end, we decided against this, as it meant the defeated player could do all the work and get it to a capturable state, for someone else to just jump in and steal. We resolved that if a player's Pokemon are defeated by a wild one, it runs away.

- We decided to alter the Capture Rates of the Pokemon to a d10 system instead of a d100 system, by simply dividing the CR's by 10.

- We discussed whether a player could borrow Pokeballs from other players if they ran out trying to capture a wild Pokemon. We didn't resolve whether they could borrow one from another player and that's it, or if they just couldn't altogether, but we did resolve that item swapping was something the group could do when they made camp, but not during the journey.

- We decided that the players in the group taking turns to draw a card from the Travel Deck each turn was the best way to go, rather than the group as a whole drawing a card and deciding on who gets it.

- We came up with a great system where, when it's a player's turn to draw a card, they can choose to either resolve it themselves, or pass it on to another group member. This way, if say Louise has 4 captured Pokemon and has found 3 items, and Chris has been unlucky and only drawn weather or Clear Run cards, if Louise draws another Wild Encounter she can choose to pass that to Chris instead.

That's about all from our little test run. I'll be sure to give you all a more detailed look at our major playtest this coming weekend.

Until then!

- Jamie