I find it useful to do a little writing after a playtest, so here's something that I've whipped up.
While playing (or, more properly, going through character creation), I made a few notes on my Kindle. Unfortunately, these don't save in the PDF, but I'm going to recount them for you.
- The opposed roll rules need to be fixed to indicate that any number of characters can participate (3)
- There is currently no way to apply buffs to allies using anything in the Talents section, making support characters too reliant on Gear for their ability to do things (9)
- Helpers are underpowered versus other Talents. There should also be a distinction for pets, maybe? This is something I'm really not 100% sold on right now. I remember similar rules for Open Legend being a little bit arduous. Maybe allow players to make two less powerful characters? (10)
- Quick Reaction should say "One additional Reaction" so it is compatible with Augmentations that add Reactions (11)
- The Sniper weapon quality needs a re-write to function as intended (17)
- Contemplated allowing Mobility Enhanced armor to allow disengage as a Reaction, at least at its second tier. Would like more feedback, as this exists for Augmentations and I'm not sure I want to duplicate the functionality, but it would also make Mobility Enhanced more intuitive for people not yet familiar with combat. (19)
- Rebalance specialization improvement XP costs, they are too cheap for what they are (28)
- Fix some stupid headings that should be Fake Heading 4, not Heading 4.
For reference's sake, you can find the playtest draft here.
Now let's break down the players' choices.
We actually had two players play primarily social-focused characters (yay!), one of whom is an enchanter who relied on stealth and illusion to back up not insignificant skill as a con artist.
The other is a historian seeking to infiltrate the world's cults, who does so by impersonation and academic pursuits. He's a little more combat capable, but mostly focuses on running away.
Then we have two combat-focused players; one is a sapient hunting hound that hits for massive damage, the other is a swordsman-cultist who uses a sword that does significant damage on any hit, but really picks up on high Margin rolls. And lights people on fire. That's an important note.
Generally, almost everyone put a few XP into Attributes, but Talents were also popular, though I suspect that they may be a fairly expensive investment compared to other things right now.
I want to do a little more analysis before I move on further, but the Always Prepared, Socialite, and Quick Healer talents were incredibly popular. Weapon Specialization was purchased, but seems to be a sub-optimal investment, so I may be removing it or greatly decreasing its cost (some of this will balance out when Specializations get more expensive, but it's basically a single IAAT at +15 for 36 XP, which is less than it would cost to get a new Specialization to that point.
All-in-all, about half of the talents in the playtest document were chosen, but I don't think that the ones that weren't chosen are necessarily deficient yet. Some of them don't fit the setting, and others just don't fit the sorts of characters the players wanted to make.
Generally, my thoughts on the system are as follows:
My players didn't do any significant engaging with the game rules (though some had read my setting stuff) until they showed up, and the Session 0 character creation process took around three hours when combined with eating and shooting the breeze. The main reason for this was that people were shifting their ideas around a lot and weren't yet committed to the character they wanted to play (one of my players got through character creation in about 25 minutes with minimal input, but he'd already made up his mind on what he wanted to do).
Although it will probably lengthen character creation, I've added some new talents that are intended to give more variety to characters, (current documents are available in .pdf and .odt formats for your convenience).
My current goals for Hammercalled are to go through and do an editing pass over the rulebook, in addition to finishing up some of the changes (Helper is going to take a while).
The rules need to be made a little simpler in some ways with regards to the process, but I'm not sure what the best way to do this is. I've uploaded a video on d.tube that covers the character creation process, which should help some.
If you've made your own character, feel free to drop us a line using this Google Forms Survey, we'd love to hear about your Hammercalled experience.