Fine-Tuning the War of Ashes RPG

We’re at the late fine-tuning phase on the War of Ashes RPG for Evil Hat Productions. Open playtest is great for for identifying issues, but it’s slow. When you’re at the point of making small incremental changes to refine a solution, internal playtest is faster and easier. So poor Edmund was wrangled into being game-master for the dev team: Creative Director Sean Nittner, Editor Karen Twelves, and Sean’s lovely daughters, plus me. I had a couple of packs of ZombieSmith’s Atronian miniatures (the models shown above, except mine aren’t painted yet.) Mara  wanted to play a “good” Kuld so Edmund got a guldul rider mini for her (concept sketch shown below.) The Kuld smelled of mac and cheese, by the way, so that’s what we called her. I played the Vidaar champion Vala the Loud; I used the Froth rules when fighting a Kuld horde but attracted the attention of the gods.

Let’s just say that the marking event that flavoured the whole episode was a rain of ylark — large oxen-like cattle beast like the one showed here, sans armour… Sean’s Elvorix travelling preacher Semela Aeditus ix Atronia co Brambletown got herself elected as mayor of Brambletown, while Karen’s militant atheist Jaarl warrior Lele was trying to convince Brambletown to use the stones from the temple to build a wall around the town. But too late: the Kuld hordes (not Mac, the dangerous ones) were on our doorstep! Fortunately, Mac and the Elvorix alchemist Ficca Bibulus had fortified our meagre defences with a wall of ice. Will this suffice? Tune in next time to learn more…

This gave us a chance to test a number of changes. We’re very happy with the zones rules written by Mike Olson, so these remain unchanged; and we’ve  considerably streamlined the Froth rules, for the better. In fact, now we want to make Froth usable for more actions! Manoeuvres seem to work well, but I have some work to do to give magic more oompf. So it was an enjoyable and productive afternoon!

Credits:  Art © ZombieSmith 2014, used with permission.