June playtest summary

A good month for Vivid, with two big steps forward.

1. At the start of the month I ran several playtests in UKGE using my small, go-to dungeon adventure, One Last Tribute (available here as a one-page). They all went well. Then again I ran a game to my core group, including my wife Dassi, my partner in comics Aviv, and her partner in life Ev, all pictured below.

Also pictured, my computer screen. Don't doxx me please.

The important thing is, all of these games ran smoothly. I might get rid of arenas (a concept about which I've talked at length in the Balin's Tomb article) because they might be more confusing than helping, but beyond that - the game basically runs as intended!

...as long as I'm the GM, at least. The most important playtest is the one I'm not even participating in, and we haven't done that one yet. In the meantime, anyway, I'm happy.

2. The same core group as above met again yesterday, and we began the process of creating the Vivid world. Currently the game's front page has a general "go around and get magic items" theme, but obviously the setting needs more than that. We sat down and played played Microscope, which again proves itself to be an excellent tool. 

You can see the result here, although you probably don't know Hebrew; you can try to push it through Google Translate, but AI development hasn't yet reached the stage where it can read our handwriting, except for Aviv's, which is immaculate. 

You might notice One Breath Left on the right there, on a pile of some other indies I'm mid-reading/playing. 

Over the next few days I'll translate this infodump into some core world principles and gameplay concepts, into lands and troubles and weird animals and the like. My next goal is to have a few art pieces commissioned, to give Vivid an aesthetic, which I think is a crucial backbone - both for the reader, and for me as a designer. 

Next time, I think - the latest rules.