SimpleDnDMap V1 Feedback

09/14/2022

I had my roommate Pablo playtest my game and they played the Mage only because they wanted the magic ability with the most health. Some of the feedback they mentioned was that they like the whole layout of how I had things arranged and set. I will talk about that later in this post. I think the thing that went right is being able to actually do a small playtest of the game and actually being able to write things down as he went through the game. The thing that went wrong with this playtest was Pablo not being able to understand the rules at first so I did have to explain it to him because at first when I saw this in class I was unsure of how to start but it became a little more clear.

 I think the way I will improve my map is by cleaning it up and actually having a start point and an endpoint. I kind of just drew random shapes on the grid and put them there without actually having a purpose of why I actually wanted to put them there. On the next map assignment I will definitely come up with a plan and attack better of how I actually want my map to play out.

The whole path was not obvious to the playtester. He didn’t know where to go so I need to be sure to fix that on the next map we create. There were no circulation elements put in place for this map. I do believe all mechanics were taught to the player in an appropriate way after I was able to explain the rule sheet to them and how to exactly start. Going back to the part when I mentioned how my playtester liked the layout. After looking back at the layout of my map I know I could have done a lot better with the cleanliness of it. I pretty much just drew random shapes on the map which sort of look like some made up states.

Looking back at my map, I will be sure to add clear pathways so the player will know where to actually go instead of just wandering around on the map confused. When it came to my bosses which consisted of a caster and wereboar, the caster has 3 defense,5 health and 4 magic and the wereboar had a total of 7 health, 2 magic, and 3 defense. In my opinion I think I need to make some tweaks to their stats to make them fair enough for players to have a chance against them.

My roommate did ask lots of questions about the stats of the characters and how to actually keep track of how much remaining health a player has. One of the things my roommate noted was that there could be less walls and barriers in the middle. I’m going to use his feedback because I actually think it's a good idea to make it a bit more open to allow more player interaction with the enemy. I do however need to add interactable around the map to make the gameplay more enjoyable for the player. I will be sure to attend the next playtest to actually take a peek at what other students' maps look like and play, that way maybe I can use some of their ideas and thoughts to hopefully improve my map.

After the playtest and looking back on it. One of the main things I will focus on is adding interactables and being sure to clean up the map with a clear direct path that the player should follow.