1.)Are you the Dm with the Playtester listed for "There Is No Honor" or do you play with your own group?
2.) There are six playtesters listed, does that mean six characters played the adventure?
3.) Do playtest characters die-and new ones take their place or do you just avoid the death of playtest characters?
4.) What are the alignments are the playtested characters on the cover of 139?
thanks
bump
Creative Director
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I did indeed serve as the DM for the playtest for "There Is No Honor," although James Sutter's running it as well (although by the time I was finished writing it, it was too late for his group to get in on the playtest credit action, or even for their concerns to advise the adventure's construction, alas!).
I did playtest the adventrue with six players (althoguh it was more like five for most sessions, since it's tough to get six people with six different schedules to always be able to show up at the same time). I wasn't really playtesting for encounter difficulty, though; more to find out, "What's fun in this adventure and what's not?" or "Is this Vault section too obscure?" or "What parts of Sasserine are the most intriguing, and thus should be detailed more?"
There were no deaths during the playtest (althoguh the first foray into the Lotus Dragon guildhall did result in a near TPK; the group fled just in time but was forced to stand a character in the dungeon—that character got thrown in jail and managed to win Cruncher's aid in a daring escape thanks to several really astounding and lucky Diplomacy checks).
If anyone had died, I would have had them make up new characters unless they obviously died because an encounter was TOO tough, in which case I would have done a "it was all a bad dream" trick or "you didn't actually die, you just got knocked out" tick.
As you might infer, my "playtest" of "There Is No Honor" is also doubling as a regular campaign. As the campaign goes on, these players won't be playtesting the adventures since the pace at which we publish will quickly outpace the pace at which we play and finish the adventures. Playtesting for future adventures remains something that the adventure authors get to do... or not. Becasue to be honest, the development stage of adventure design (which occurs between writing and editing) is actually a much more efficient way to ensure the adventure's challenges are appropriate. An adventure that can take 6 weeks to properly playtest can be developed in ony one or two, and with the breakneck pace of magazine publishing being the reality that it is... well, actual playtesting is a luxury.
The four characters on the cover of #139 aren't playtest characters. They're part of the iconic characters we use to illustrate the adventures. By using iconic characters we can give the magazine a personality of its own, and at the same time it's easier for us to give a new artist the concept sketches for these iconic characters and say "This illo shows these three heroes attacking a dragon" than it is to say "This illo shows a wizard, a barbarian, and a cleric fighting a dragon" since we then have to describe what they look like, what they're wearing, what they CAN'T wear, and so on. Again, another trick used to save time and effort so that it remains possible to put the magazine out each month like clockwork.
So in any case, the iconics don't really have alignments, much less names. They're just the Iconic Monk (who's lawful something), the Iconic Barbarian (who's Chaotic something), the Iconic Druid (who's neutral something), and the iconic wizard (who has a quasit familar so she's something not-good).
If anyone had died, I would have had them make up new characters unless they obviously died because an encounter was TOO tough, in which case I would have done a "it was all a bad dream"
Oh, thank the gods, I'm not really a ghoul! ;-)
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Creative Director
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Oh, thank the gods, I'm not really a ghoul! ;-)
If anyone had died, I would have had them make up new characters unless they obviously died because an encounter was TOO tough, in which case I would have done a "it was all a bad dream"
No... you are. Nothing to be done about that.
Althoguh you'll stop being a ghoul for the duration of your visit to the Seattle region next week, so no fair using ghoul-urge to justifiy attempting to clobber or bite anyone here.
Once you go back to Hawaii, it's back to being a ghoul.
Sorry pal. But it's in the rules. Somewhere toward the back.
Thanks JJ that was really cool insight on how things are done. really enjoyed that! Between you and Unlce I can't stay off these boards; perhaps I'll go and hound on Eric mona!
Oh, thank the gods, I'm not really a ghoul! ;-)
If anyone had died, I would have had them make up new characters unless they obviously died because an encounter was TOO tough, in which case I would have done a "it was all a bad dream"
Nic, honestly, I would have thought you'd turn into a hopping vampire or a headless ghost or a stiff-corpse ghost or something like that. Going ghoulish on us!? ;)