Pool time with Vigilance

Tonight I had the good fortune to run through some core dice pool tests with a fellow designer for my alternate fall of the Bronze Age game, Vigilance, and it was amazing.

> Vigilance RPG

I feel as though the game mechanics are taking a while to mature due to the lack of consistent critical testing and after tonight’s run through I am more confident about trying a face-to-face and an online playtest group.

Tonight we ran through the 7th of 12 chapters and the 7th is the Debate between Laws. As it was a playtest focused mostly on the mechanics, I quickly filled in details about the province (formerly called precinct in earlier versions) and the story circumstances of the conflict filled themselves in as the combat developed. This was the first use of chapter 7 and we cut right to the battle between the PC Law and the NPC Law. This game only has the players roll the dice, but there are a few escalation features as well–most notably Chaos. The more Chaos the more d10s and things get worse.

Since we had two versions of the dice pool to test we opted to run through the same fight with the A/B pool use. Things started out more or less the same and then it happened when the second option seemed to really make the player be more engaged and as a result I was more invested with each choice the player made. The Chaos definitely escalated more in the second case and the complication stacked resulting in bitter victory for the PC Law, winning the Debate and losing the respect of his province in the process for doing what he was made to do.