We began by distributing the pre-made characters based on people's interest in the “you should play this character if” section of the adventure. After looking over the new character sheets, there were a few comments like, “I have a Virtue and a Hubris now?” and “What is this spiral thing at the bottom about?”. These observations allowed the Storyteller to explain the new mechanics and several of the changes to the system. We've been adventuring in Theah almost weekly since the original game launched back in '99, and we were both excited and concerned with some of the immediate changes we saw.

The inclusion of both a Virtue and a Hubris was a welcome change. Even more welcome was the change to how Hubri generate Hero Points. Rewarding players for portraying their characters' weaknesses as opposed to having the Storyteller force the players to portray them is a wonderful change. The mechanical bonuses and penalties tied to the death spiral were also interesting, but the initial description of how “wounds” and “dramatic wounds” had changed was received with less enthusiasm. The party was willing, however, to suspend judgment until we had seen the mechanic in play. It was also noted that equipment was missing, but Players were informed that the type or size of weapons wielded by a hero no longer matter.

Now to jump into the first scene of the playtest, and jump we certainly did. Immediately after setting the stage, the adventure took off like the trailer of a Micheal Bay film. The building was exploding and our roller-coaster adventure had begun. Let me note here that the entire party was excited about the lore and set-up for the Sarmatian Commonwealth. This is a locale through which our group would be thrilled to adventure, and it provides a friendly introductory environment for new players with a more modern way of thinking as opposed to the potentially ruthless courts of Vodacce.

The adventure quickly threw the party into the midst of a burning ballroom and hinted fairly heavily that the only real option was to escape to the study on the far side of the room. The party used a variety of means to accomplish this goal. The prince grabbed a table to provide cover from the crossbows, the captain distracted the guards by screaming at them that the balcony's supports were burning through. Rolls were made, raises were kept and allocated to negate the smoke, fire, and incoming projectiles. We're raced through the burning ballroom and down the adjoining corridors.. and we're moving, we're moving, you enter the study and bar the door. We all accepted at this point that we were playing a module, and the cart was firmly on the rails.

In the barricaded study, we met Estera Sabat, which immediately turned our pair of Vodacce siblings into angry spurned guests. The prince saw Estera as an opportunity, however, and accepted her aid- after which she “saunters out a nearby door without a glance over her shoulder”. Damn it, we missed a door! “Azucena, I thought you were barring the doors!”

Now, it was time to dive through the window. At this point we had gained a few hero points, and we began to spend them. One was spent to find a length of rope to aid in our descent. The Fate Witch used the rope to perform a silk ribbon dance down the wall, chiefly because her athletics sucked and she was attempting to show off for the prince. Her brother used ambush to “Air Assassinate” a few poor schmucks below them. The other characters used variations of leaping, hiding, and swinging to make their decent. At this point, we discovered that the aid another mechanic was amazing. Providing a clean mechanical benefit to working as a team is a great idea and a vast improvement over the 1st edition rules.

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Enter the King's Guard and the Brute fight. We chose to ignore Captain Filip Kumiega and focused instead on the brutes. The prince stepped forward and gave a short speech, imploring the guards to toss down their weapons and give the new laws a chance to change the country's situation. The Fate witch stepped up next to him, placing her arm in his, and declared that several Vodacce houses stood behind the prince as well. The prince's guard and Vodacce swordsman intimidated the majority of the remaining guards. And the Captian? Well, he fled for the docks at full speed.

Following this Scene, we were presented with the task of telling a short scenario where our hero got into trouble and then allowed another player to describe how their hero came to the rescue. After this bout of narrative round-robin, the table put down their dice to discuss the base mechanics and our opinion on things thus far.

The first thing that came up was the round-robin player narrated story telling. The unanimous consensus was that none of us liked it. We get together to role play and participate in this collective storytelling. The story circle felt like a truncated recap that might precede a weekly television episode and a wasted opportunity to actually play out these scenarios in an organic manner that builds bonds and relationships between characters. It was oversimplified character building in broad strokes that lost the details and nuances that allow players to create the characters and friendships that can endure.

Other mechanics that we discussed were the lack of a Repartee system and that combat felt weird. One of the players said it felt like we were fighting a spreadsheet. Players always attacked first and essentially just described how awesome they were as they dispatched their raises worth of brutes. At no point did we feel threatened or even challenged. Most of the players were rolling 6 dice, so they would average 3 kept raises, guaranteeing at least 3 brutes every time they rolled. There was no threat of missing brutes, and the few brutes that were still standing failed to offer a threat that would warrant any concern. We also couldn't find any rules that would allow combating both the villain and brutes at the same time. They seem to be mutually exclusive combat systems.

Additionally, the roll-all keep-all system was determined to be a hidden roll-keep system. You can assume that most of your rolls will allow you to keep a number of raises equal to half the dice pool. This makes for a very predicable outcome that eliminates the feeling of threat and challenge that builds suspense in a story. There was an odd psychological side effect to this system. Players were excited to see mediocre rolls of 5's and less excited to see rolls of 8's & 9's. Pairs of 5's seemed more economical and less wasteful than having to pair 9's for 18's.

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We also discussed some of the advantages that were present on the pre-made character sheets and the new applications of Hero Points. Advantages felt like “powers”. You spend a Hero Point to activate a character's super move. Compared to the Drama Dice of 1st Edition, Hero Points lost the ability to change the scene or allow something dramatic to happened, trading creativity under pressure for a surefire, specific success. All of these advantages would have been viable for any character in 1st Edition with a little creativity and a Drama Die. Leadership, Come Hither, and Psst Over Here, were all abilities that we felt any character with a little creativity and a roll should have been able to use under the Drama Die system but were now “powers” your character must purchase. Finally, we all felt that the advantage Lucky was drastically overpowered when compared to most of the other advantages. We could see little reason why every Player would not want to pick up an advantage that lets you re-roll as many dice as you want. It prevents the Storyteller from purchasing Danger Dice for 1's and improves your already great odds at success.

We decided at this point that we would continue on and see this through. We found ourselves in Vodacce where several character secrets came to light, and some players began to question the promise made on the Kickstarter page:

“Fans of the 1st Edition should know that Théah is still largely as they remember it. We still have Vodacce Fate Witches and Montaigne Porte Magic, Avalon is still the Glamour Isles, but some of the other Nations have undergone very subtle changes. Eisen, Vestenmennavenjar and Ussura are just a little different than they were before. Don’t worry, you’ll still recognize them,”

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Our Fate Witch had defied her noble father by arranging her own marriage, and her brother had apparently abandoned his birthright to back his sister's play. More fantastic still, she was fully educated and capable of speaking, reading, and writing every language of the civilized world. Nowhere could the group find evidence that she had kept any of this a secret, and yet the adventure's solution to the heroes' woes was to return to Vodacce to seek aid. This suggests that the Fate Witch's conduct, leading up to this adventure warranted less concern than seeking out allies in Castille, where one of the other heroes is an acting privateer. None of us remember this Vodacce.

Despite these misgivings, we jumped into the social scene. The Vodacce masquerade ball came across as window dressing, erected for the sake of checking off skills for risks as opposed to the normal back and forth banter and whispered scheming that normally dominates our game play. Knowing what consequences existed ahead of time eliminated so much of the subtlety and caution that makes an intrigue game so engaging.

The sudden appearance of the Sarmation executioner set off a few more alarms. We've been here at a party for hours actively looking for possible foils to our plan, and there is no mention of a woman whom the Prince would recognize immediately? Was she hiding behind the tapestry or under the buffet table? Furthermore, it was determined that our hot headed Vodacce Swordsman would have put an end to the villain's speech as soon as she called his sister a whore, but we read the boxed text anyway.

Which leads us to the Duel. We made it through two rounds of the duel in 30 minutes. During that time, four people at the table were relegated to role of cheerleaders. At the point that they ran out of Hero Points, they were left to simply spectate. By this point, the hero had suffered 4 Wounds, and the villain had suffered 5. We had yet to even see the Dramatic Wounds mechanics come into play, but no one at the table was having fun. There was no telling just how long that combat would last, and we felt that determining the victor rested solely on the character who managed to roll more raises at the top of each round. The special duelist abilities offered some variation, but their severe moderation prevented them from truly enlivening the combat, removing any sense of unpredictability or suspense. Slowly but surely the realization sank in that our swashbuckling adventure had turned into a tense game of checkers. In light of these observations and with the understanding that the duel was the last scene of the adventure, we decided to bring the playtest to a close.

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As a party, we enjoyed the changes to Hubri and Virtues, and the introduction of the Sarmation Commonwealth promises wonderful potential. Unfortunately, we were discouraged by many of the core mechanics the game now espouses, and felt that the system was overly simplified. One player summed it up well, “It feels like someone replaced our Lego's with Duplo's.”

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The wonderful thing about gaming, however, is that our adventures will continue. Our books still sit on the shelf, the bindings weak and well worn but no less usable. We're excited to see the Sarmatian Commonwealth pop-up in our own campaign, and who knows, rumors have been spreading that a New World lies just beyond the 7th Sea. We're excited for the record-breaking support that has been shown on Kickstarter for this brand, and we're stoked that so many people love the world of Theah. We hope to see this brand grow and prosper- even as we quietly hope that Vodacce gets to keep her teeth. Adventure well, may the wind be ever at your back, and may your stories last a lifetime.