Heroes of Tersia - looking for playtesters

A few clarification questions on the rules:

It is unclear what "the board" is. I assume that there is a virtual board with 4 virtual locations on it. But I could be mis-interpretting that.

The rules do not clearly state how to make an attack. I finally found it on the reference card: base attack is 2d6. This is something that should be clearer in the body of the rules or just write it onto the Hero cards.

It is not clear whether or not the target gets to retaliate if it dies.

It is not clear what happens with Boss monsters. I assume that they are shuffled together with the normal monsters to form a deck. I assume that once a Boss is on the board, no more monsters are drawn until the Boss is defeated, and after that monsters can be drawn again as normal.

The above assumption could lead to the situation where a Boss is the last monster on the board and is finally defeated. The Boss is replaced with a new random monster, but all the other locations remain empty, so for the rest of the game there is only 1 location with a monster. I doubt that this was the intent, so it is likely that I am mis-interpretting something.

It is unclear at which point Shayd comes onto the board. Is it when all of the Bosses are defeated? When the monster deck runs out? Some other trigger?

When one Hero kills another Hero, can they take 1 treasure card or all treasure cards from the dead Hero? (The grammar of the sentence is unclear.)

It is unclear whether "deal damage to all enemies on the board" cards affect other Heroes or not.

I am not sure how to interpret "Deathblow" monsters. Does that trigger when a Hero kills the monster, or when the Monster kills a Hero?

The rules imply that there could be multiple monsters on the same square, but it is unclear how this situation could occur.

If one Hero attacks another Hero and there is also a Monster in the same square, does the Monster retaliate?

Regards,
kos

I've watched your gameplay video, and that clarifies a number of the questions and comments from other forum members. I second the recommendation you spend more time on clarifying your rules sheet so that those who pick up the rules aren't left in the dark on a number of your procedures. Additionally, you can reference your video and direct players to visit a specific link to watch a "how to play" tutorial.

That being said, it was only near the end of the video that Shayd was even mentioned, and that defeating it would mean the end of the game.

A couple other things to mention:

- I like the concept of collecting sets. This certainly gives players something to look forward to. The only trouble is that this is completely random as to whether anyone will collect pieces to any given set, leading to a lot of imbalance and "luck of the draw" scenarios. Having two or three helmets in your own loot pile is great on the surface, but when you can only wear one at a time that's a bummer.

Have you thought of low-, mid-, and high-value treasures instead of a single deck? That way, treasures may be graded and diversified based on the type of creature being defeated. Weaker-powered items could be in the low-value treasure deck, while tough monsters will reward players with those special leg guards from the video, or the "capper" to a set the player has been building.

- Are there any characters who can steal equipment from other opponents beyond the rogue/thief? If not, then the stealing ability needs to be addressed as a potential imbalanced mechanic. The other classes may have other abilities of their own that only their class can do, but I didn't see that in the video.

- Is there any kind of "doomsday clock" or timer in this game? Will Shayd eventually defeat all the players, or is it just waiting there to be defeated? I mention this because there seems to be no reason for players to be in a rush to defeat monsters, perhaps tempting them to pass their turn with the hopes that a weaker monster will be drawn by an opponent for them to defeat later.

///

I like where you're going with this game, and it seems to me that there are a lot of directions you can take it. It kind of reminds me of my early days of D&D and "monty haul" campaigns where the objective was to see how many different types of treasures our DM would give us.

Have fun with your prototype. :)

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MontyHaul

n/a

I looked at the rules and watched the video play through.

Here are some things I noticed:

- The rules don't mention the mechanisms of attacking other heroes. How does that work?

- What stops me becoming more powerful than one other player and getting myself and other players to gang up on that player?

- It seems unfair that a player can fight a monster, do most of the damage, suffer getting hit and then another player coming in and easily finishing off the monster and getting a huge reward for doing very little.

- Is a player that gets killed eliminated from the game?

- Seems thematically little weird that a legging would have
an attack value.

I think to really give more feedback on your game, you need to identify who your audience is, what game experience are you trying to achieve, the game length and what makes your game unique from other games out there.

--DarkDream

Mikey,

Yep, writing rules so that a bunch of complete strangers can actually understand what you meant is hard. Give the rules to 4 people and you'll get 5 different (mis)interpretations.

Keeping the rules as short as possible is desirable, with few special cases. If there are clarifications and corner cases put those at the end, so that you can keep the main body simple to read.

Keep going. This is just a normal part of the "playtesting" saga -- getting your playtesters to understand how they are meant to play without you explaining it to them verbally.

Regards,
kos