Reading through the farfield rules cover to cover and just wanting to post my feedback on that experience as a fresh set of eyes who has never seen this system before.
#Farfield Rules (v0.0.4.4) Feedback
coral cave
What first prompted me to think to do this was reading through outcomes on page 17?
Not having page numbers to reference inside the document is a bit rough for feedback.
This is all very rough still so it may well be a polish thing too, but I find tables that are just black text on a white background can be a bit harder to read visually. Or really just any table that doesn't have visual distinction between rows, oft color.
Now reading burdens, it was not clear to me what aspects were. I had to scroll back up when curious was mentioned in the sidebar example, and I now assume these may be Curiosity/Environmentalism/Respect, but I am still uncertain.
Also, if I'm just wrong about something regarding the rules or otherwise confused, please don't clarify or otherwise help me yet. Hoping to go through the full book as a fresh reader without any prior or external understandings.
I deeply appreciate that death is an optional rule and I think that is really cool, highlighting early how this is more about cooperative storytelling than anything else.
somber flame
This isn't a clarification on your understanding but I will say that I'm not really looking for feedback on typography or layout-related stuff right now, this is a playtest document and is unlikely to reflect the final layout of the book
coral cave
good to know!
what would be the best stuff to keep an eye out as I give a first read?
somber flame
for the record I am aware that the layout and presentation factors are relevant in how people eventually read and understand the document, it's just outside the scope of the playtest for now since I anticipate that we'll have a professional layout artist produce the final product and a lot may end up changing. Everything in the current document is for the convenience of me as the writer/basic communication to playtesters only
if you're purely giving feedback on the text without play experience then the most useful thing to me would be summaries of your understanding of rules/confusion you experience, or questions that arise as you go
coral cave
alright, sounds good.
That was actually what I had tabbed back over to discord was partially to mention, in the character creation rules, the summary initially given was incredibly confusing before reading the expanded blurbs and explanations later on, which then led me to scroll back up and sort of get a clearer understanding.
specifically pg26 of the pdf where it talks about free skills, aspects, and edges with example characters below
not knowing what a skill was vs an aspect sort of left me going huh
it was when I got to pg 33 and saw "Gain a new aspect from one of your backgrounds" vs "gain an aspect from any background" that it became clear to me that backgrounds are probably some top level feature with stuff bundled together rather than something that players just sort of put together themselves. Without having yet seen what a background is though mechanically, even as an example, some of this has been more than a little confusing.
Just finished the character creation rules and I'll outline my understanding of the process.
There are pools of backgrounds of three types, Origin, Role, Discipline. When you make a character, you pick one background from each pool. From these backgrounds, there may be a single aspect, skill, or drive given by that background, or there may be a small number that you can select from, of that I am uncertain. It seems to imply the latter. You then can select any three edges from the edge table, one aspect from among the full list, and three skills from the full list. Each time a skill is duplicated you increase the rank by 1, to a maximum of 3, but this is sub optimal given that leveling a skill is much easier than learning a new one.
A major point of confusion atm is if different backgrounds count as "different sources" for the sake of skill rank increases, or if "backgrounds" is considered the same source.
Also, I think this is where I'd like to add that I love Lancer, and I love scifi, and I love STEM, so this entire concept as an RPG is something I really want to succeed and why I thought to try and pitch in a bit how I can. If I have a lot to say it is because I am trying to be helpful and thorough, not because I think Far-Field is bad.
and yeah, if there is any aspect of the feedback that you find more or less helpful as I'm reading through, feel free to mention as you did since I'd like this to be as productive a use of time for all involved as possible.
somber flame
Sure! No I totally welcome feedback in general, just want to be clear about scope
I appreciate you taking the time to go through this
coral cave
Supplies were mentioned in the briefing introduction and then soon after which was helpful for clarifying what the briefing does.
It may just be a thing that happens later since there aren't any images really at all in the doc, but an example map would help clarify a lot of the boots on the ground section/exploration. The description is good, I just don't really have an idea what these maps look like in practice. Sort of imagining a conspiracy theorist yarn board.
I see mention of encountering hazards and challenges, but I'm not 100% certain the difference. I think I recall challenges relating to skills and aspects, leading to the rolls and outcomes, but then IDk what hazards are if they aren't the same system.
So to outline my understanding of the mission structure
You are given a briefing. This is a general description of what you may encounter and the types of challenges you may face. The players do not yet see the map, but they use this information to determine the starting supplies they will take down with them, two supplies per PC.
After arriving, there is a map, with locations at specific points and then lines connecting them in a web representing travel paths. Players start at a given location, representing a landing zone, airlock, etc that they disembark from. This is the first location. At any location, including the first one, players can survey, each player limited to surveying once per location the action is taken at. However, you are able to survey other locations, and can survey the same target location from multiple vantage points. Thus after ensuring they aren't imminently going to die, a likely first step for a party to take is to survey the locations they are interested in immediately travelling to from the starting location.
Surveying primarily serves to reveal hazards and challenges, as well as offer context clues for solving the mission. It seems to be that you can survey any location from any location, regardless if they are connected for travel.
From there, you travel, possibly encountering some challenges or hazards, then you arrive at the location you were travelling to and encounter more challenges and hazards.
Hazards work like a special track that the GM creates, and as you resolve problems associated with it, you fill the track until the hazard is overcome. Challenges are just standard dice pool checks for various on location effects.
Once all challenges and hazards are cleared, the party can rest, usually just taking time, and during the rest repair and recover, removing marks on their various tracks such as aspects.
Each location has 3 pieces of information you can survey, the unique features, the hazard rating, and the likely specific hazards. A "Full Survey", one of the main win conditions, is to collect all of that information for every location on the map. Clearing a location's hazard grants this information, but it can be equally secured by getting good survey rolls.
So taking all this together, my read is that a map turns into a game of attrition. You want to survey locations that have disadvantageous hazards or really bad hazard ratings, while then planning out a route that takes you through the less problematic areas. Thus you have to split surveys between scoping out the path to travel and also towards completing the areas you want to avoid.
One point of confusion to me is who determines what information your survey yields. Do you simply state you are surveying a location, and then the GM decides what you learn of the 3, or can you explicitly say you are surveying for the hazard rating?
Travel is also slightly confusing to me. Since travel is along these sort of lines, and not the locations proper, are you able to learn about possible hazards for travel by surveying? Or are these like random events and just every time you move on the map you are taking a larger cumulative risk on your resources?
The other thing I'm realizing is that it mentions resting after you clear a location, so I am assuming you cannot revisit previously "cleared" areas in order to rest again. That this is more a mechanic that triggers when you overcome a location's hazard.
coral cave
Compendium seems clear, with the various roles and origines and such laid out. Feels slightly disjointed with skills being separate, so I need to flip back to a previous section of the book to select free skills after completing the first few parts of character creation.
coral cave
Prepping to run the game, I find myself searching regularly for some sort of reference or other quick view resource on hazards just to easily calculate the number of boxes in the track and severity and such. The rules are all in the same section, but I'm flipping back and forth between pages of them to sort this out.