SimpleDnD v3 Feedback (9/28/2021)

 Players:

Owen as Ranger

Enrique as Rogue


    I would say that the players went through the map decently well, even if they didn’t really go towards the route I was intending they use. The players were able to kill the slimes just fine and reach the checkpoint alright, which is good. Players praised the layout of the map, as there were many open options of where to go and what to do. (They only went through one path though.) The flow of the map was a lot slower than I was expecting, since the timer already ran out shortly after the players reached the checkpoint and were about to face a boss. Although, the players didn’t get any items which would’ve probably made them lose immediately. The good thing about the game was that I was able to make people laugh with the sprites I used, which is always an external goal of mine when it comes to anything in life.
    When the Ranger joined the Rogue that was attacking the slime in front of the door with the lockpicks, I thought they were going to go the hard route, but after they got the lockpicks they just went ahead to the center of the map. Technically that is the right way to go, but the players would get nuked by the bosses. And that is exactly what happened to the Rogue. With only a weapon, the Blue Eyes White Dragon basically nuked him since he had no defenses and it had high stats. And yet again, I was unable to test my bosses. I made their stats assuming that the characters would’ve gotten items, but since they didn’t, it would be real hard. (Although it seems like they were too strong anyways.) Players mentioned that the stats of the slimes made the pacing incredibly slow, which is something I wasn’t expecting. I thought just increasing the stats from being all 1 to all 3 would have been a decent upgrade, but I suppose it was just too strong. 1 seemed awfully weak already. It took several turns for the slimes to be defeated which probably made the game very bloated. The players and I ended up rolling similar amounts (that keeps happening when I DM but not when I playtest other people’s games).
    I think that I could have DMed the game a lot better. This was my first time messing around with the Fog of War, and I think I just didn’t reveal enough of the area for the players to go where I wanted them to. I also didn’t reveal my notes correctly in the beginning (I didn’t know you had to assign players to view them, I thought they were just able to view it by default), which was not great since I put all my information in there. By the time I got that all fixed up, the players were well into the middle of the game. One of the improvements I really need to make on the map is what to reveal. Instead of hiding the entire map, I would just hide stuff that’s behind doors. Also, I probably should have taken out the slime that was guarding over the lockpick room. Maybe it was the players choosing characters that just happened to be in a perfect spot to strike both of them, but it was kind of a timewaster.Honestly, I think that if I had another chance at a playtest, I would actually get a successfully complete playthrough for once. My style of DnD map making seems to be to make really small maps with more than one way to go, but have enemies that just happen to be decently long challenges.

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