I just finished what is probably my last playtest of the year. It had been a while, I've been bad about this lately. I went into this playtest with two specific questions, one of which I'll talk about today.
As mentioned previously, Illeria takes place in two worlds - the physical and spirit world. Characters have a body in each world (which I call their dopplegangers). Real world dopplegangers don't have powers on their own; however, if they become "linked," they gain the powers of their spirit world counterpart. I have Illeria laid out so that the real world is where game-winning events occur, and the spirit world is where characters become linked. Thus, the spirit world plays a supporting role.
How do characters become linked? The main way is that there are locations that spirit world dopplegangers can capture or stand near to become linked. I also have this limited resource in the game called "energy points," which the characters can spend to become linked. I've also considered a third method, which was one of the goals of the playtest: at the start of the turn, the spirit world doppleganger can begin to meditate, and they fall unconscious in the spirit world but become linked.
I have playtested the meditation rule twice now. I've noticed that when a character begins to meditate, it means they are not moving into a good position where they can become linked, so they kind of stay stuck meditating. I like this as a possible strategic trade-off. That said, meditation seems like it can also create a situation where the player abandons the spirit world, meditates with every character, and focuses on the real world. I'm actually okay with this, as long as it is like bunting in baseball or fake field goals in football - a surprise strategy that rarely happens. However, if ignoring the spirit world becomes too common, this would go against the spirit of Illeria. Worse, if both players decide to ignore the spirit world, well, then Illeria will just collapse into a one-world game.
Both playtests had a party of spellcasters battling against a party of animators (i.e. characters with animated creatures). I had been concerned about the impact that animated creatures could have on meditating. Basically, a character with animated creatures will have several creatures act during their action (e.g. the character and their two zombies, or their three mechanical beasts). Because of this, I worried that the animator could fall unconscious, but their creatures could fight on, effectively removing the penalty to being unconscious. This was a real problem the first game, and the animators dominated big time. In the second game, I weakened animated creatures, limiting how far they could safely go from their character; this seemed to help, and the spellcasters won a narrow victory.
As I'm writing this, I'm starting to realize what the problem might be: the penalty for meditating should be that the character is non-functional in the spirit world. So, maybe I should make it that if an animator meditates, then there is a chance that their creatures become non-functional. That seems like the most reasonable strategy, and one I could try next time. I think that this will make ignoring the spirit world as a minor strategy.
I'm going to be offline for the next week and a half, so I'm counting this as my post for next week. Merry Festivus, and see you all in 2021!
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