Last Voyage Design Blog #3: Initial Playtesting
6/20/20262 min read
Hi everyone,
Apologies for the lack of updates on my blog recently. However, I’ve been working hard on the manuscript and playtesting! In the two games I’ve run of The Last Voyage of the Charon, I’ve received some valuable feedback that I’m incorporating into the adventure for the next game. Overall, I have a solid base to work from, but there’s quite a bit to get through in a typical 3-4 hour session, so I’m working on cutting extraneous detail and getting the players into the action as quickly as possible.
If you're interested, there are a couple of pictures on the Ozymandias Games' Facebook page. Although I didn't take any pictures from the first playtest, I'm super grateful to everyone who tried it out and all their amazing roleplay! One thing that the two vastly different playtests had in common was that they both got into their respective characters a lot, which is something I always love to see.
Some highlights from my playtests:
The android character from my first playtest not only became a beloved character at the table but also sacrificed its life so that the others could escape at the end of the session.
The android from my second playtest was attempting to go full Judas and bring back a sample of the parasitic alien and dosing the crew’s water with it to see what would happen.
A chain-smoking medical officer removing the helmet of her environmental suit after a spacewalk to reveal a billowing cloud of cigarette smoke.
The first playtest discovered that one of the survivors is not who they say they are and that you probably shouldn’t inject something just because a science officer tells you to.
Most of the second crew interrogated the poor, traumatized survivor of the Charon (come on, guys, he had been through a lot!)
Although both games were quite fun, there is still a lot of work to do, but there are several more playtests I will run throughout the year! I will be at EggCon in Lake Geneva from July 17th-19th and Gamehole Con in Madison on Saturday, October 17th and 18th through the Savage Alliance. In the meantime, I’ll try to improve the adventure and make it as fun and scary as I can!
In other news, I'm slowly adding entries to my Creepy Cryptids series of monster character sheets for Savage Worlds. You can check them out in the Downloads section of the website. I'll have more soon!
- Tanner