Vagari 1.1: Dipping our toes in playtesting

The first round of playtests has arrived! And, as expected, a good amount of changes have come. Before discussing them, allow me to share a bit about the birth of the Vagari RPG.

The idea of creating Vagari came very naturally. After playing a lot of Old-School Essentials and other retroclones, conversations with friends always led to the same conclusion: "wow, this is great. It's so good to play an RPG with such explicit procedures! What a wonderfully streamlined game! But... ugh..."

In summary, I think this "ugh" is a big amalgamation of my dissatisfaction with certain legacy mechanics, such as: "why on earth do I have an attribute value AND attribute modifiers?", "listing equipment and counting weights is cool... until it's not", "why are we calculating THAC0 in the 21st century?" (sorry, guys. I really don't like tacos 🙁). Does this mean that Vagari is actually an NSR game and not a retroclone? Probably. All I know for sure is that it is the merging of my desire to play something in the B/X D&D line in a more polished way and something with a bit more roleplay incentive. Despite the ups and downs of the tests, I can say that I had a great time overall playing Vagari!

Playtests are truly magical. Before getting hands-on, there were things I didn't like and wanted to remove from the game, and things I liked a lot and was confident would be kept. Ah, the naivety! As we all know by now, RPG players are experts at pulling the rug out from under the GMs feet. And that's why playtests are so important: playtests are nothing more than attempts to make sure your house of cards survives the sneaky breath of your colleague sitting next to you.

Attributes and Desires

The "Desires" and "Attribute Descriptors" worked wonderfully well. I was on the fence about Desires, wondering if this kind of approach would make sense in OSR-style games. Turns out that, yeah, it does! These two things together — Desires and Attribute Descriptors — plus the tables for "adventure generation" and "weird things" carried the first few hours of gameplay without any difficulty. The game gained a lot in dramatic weight and player involvement, in addition to the expected effect of better delineating characters than in B/X, when they were just numbers. Character are still quite fragile, but at least now we know that the wizard Rakau has Physique 7 for being thin and has Charisma 13 due to his loyalty potential. All of this helped add a bit more color to the characters without the need to write the infamous 3 pages long backstories.

On the other hand, central mechanics needed adjustments right at the start. We could barely stack a few cards, and the castle was already falling: the attribute generation with 3d6, despite its vintage appeal, doesn't seem to have suited the rest of the system (sorry, Mausritter, you were right!). It all started when a playtester had the great luck of rolling a 17  for Dexterity. After over a year of an OSE open table, I can count on one hand the characters that had more than 16 in any attribute. Surely the dice gods had a message to convey to me, and thankfully it came in early. Apparently, when you have 17 dexterity and a +2 bonus in stealth for being a Rogue in a roll-under game, you become practically invisible. Not only that: if your defense is based on Dex and your armor grants defense bonuses, the same happens with your roll to avoid attacks. Oops.

The solution for now involves restructuring the attribute generator (instead of 3d6, we're now with 2d6+3. 3 points above the mouse). We are also rethinking the role of armor mechanics in the game: in this next version, I would still like to test armor granting defense bonuses, so we will take a hybrid approach between some options I am considering. Armor still helps with the defense checks (with reduced effectiveness), and shields and helmets can be destroyed to completely deny 1 hit from enemies. Both approaches have some problems, in my view, but again: I would like to test this in practice before drawing too assertive conclusions.

Backgrounds

A very interesting feedback from one of the players was about the Backgrounds mechanics: another staple in games of this style, it seemed like a no-brainer to add it to Valari too. Interestingly, the Backgrounds worked in the opposite direction of the initial intention. Instead of helping to delineate the character, these rigidly established professions (like "miner," "carpenter," etc.) hindered more than helped in the idealization of each character. Therefore, we will now playtest a more comprehensive model, with "categories" of professions instead of typical medieval professions (something similar to the "types of professions" in Shadow of the Demon Lord). The expected effect now is that this kind of approach aligns with Desires and Attribute Descriptors and helps "move the story forward," being a springboard for players' ideas (thanks, Miguel!).

In this sense, it seems to me that Vagari is moving towards being a game halfway between "you are simple peasants who decided to arm yourselves" and the modern "you are a big hero project since level 1." There is a bit more attention and "care" (so to speak) in this character creating model than the usual OSR approach. That said, I am fascinated by the idea of the "funnel adventure" popularized by Dungeon Crawl Classics and would love to incorporate this style of play into Vagari. I am saving the idea of level zero characters for some kind of supplement or adventure. Perhaps in this case, it makes more sense to return to simpler and more limiting backgrounds.

There are still a lot of things to be tested in depth. Among these, I would highlight the "Gear bubbles", a solution that I consider ingenious, taken from the criminally underrated The Vanilla Game. The concept still seems a bit alien to some players, but I think we'll get there eventually.

I feel that now the mechanics of Vagari are starting to look a bit less like a house of cards and a bit more like a poorly assembled Jenga tower. Let's see how high the building goes over the next few sessions.

TL;DR

PLAYTEST YOUR GAME. After playtesting a lot, PLAYTEST YOUR GAME AGAIN. And when you're finally tired of playtesting your damn game, GIVE YOUR GAME TO OTHER PEOPLE SO THEY CAN PLAYTEST SOME MORE.

List of Changes

Character creation

• Attributes now are generated by rolling 2d6+3 instead of 3d6.

Equipment

• There’s no “medium armor” anymore;
• “Heavy armor” now gives +2 def and -2 penalty in stealth and casting;
• Shields and Helmets now work in the same way: you can destroy them to ignore an enemy hit, but, Helmets now cost 15gps instead of 10 and has a -2 penalty instead of -1.

Classes

• Rogue’s “Sneak attack” ability now requires a successful attack roll instead of giving an autohit. Also, it now can be performed using ranged weapons.
• Cleric’s “Divine Intervention” had a massive buff: it’s chance of success is now equal to their current level. Also the “divine abandonment” condition is a lot harsher: It now reads as follows: “divine abandonment: you cannot cast divine spells until you rest in a settlement for at least 1 day OR until you make an offering of 100gp times your level on an altar dedicated to your deity.”

General

• “Surprise” rules were included: “surprised creatures can’t act in the first round of combat. PCs are always surprised if they don’t have either a Torch or a Lantern.
• “Rations” are now called “Supply”, to better include the full range of items related to food, water and the like;
• Some grammar corrections.

Departing Words

That's all, folks. If you made it this far, I thank you immensely for your interest!
A Google Forms has been created for you to provide feedback on the game. By all means, be realistic in your comments, but please try to maintain civility and be polite (⚠️"Fragile: handle with care"⚠️).

Felipe