v0.5.0

This was the version used in the fifth playtest.

This was done as part of the Intro Week for SAGA (http://saga.org.nz/). The four players were all fairly new to RPGs; one had never played any RPG before. Players played with pregenerated characters, selecting from 10 available---one for every discipline except Projection.

The playtest involved diverting an enormous stampede of animals from a village, fighting a handful of bears that got through the diversion, finding the disturbance that had scared them, and then counseling a necromancer witch that was causing the disturbance in trying to resurrect her dead husband.

The players were a gingerbread-based golemancer (using much the same set of feats as from the example character creation section), a combat-based brewer (using alcohol, painkillers, and flaming phlegm), a vision-based diviner (with foresight, hindsight, and predictive evasion), and a ritualist (with weather, fire, and size-changing rituals).

Everything went well. The new players found the whole system, and their characters, very easy to understand. The entirely new player, using the diviner, was rather creative, and found a good use for hindsight, as well as several good uses for foresight, even in the short session. Hindsight was useful, but without being broken or hard to GM, and the player seemed to grasp the general time-model under use.

The weather rituals also saw a surprising amount of use: the Rite of the Storm to flood a river, to stop charging animals, and the the Rite of Clear Skies to remove the storm afterwards, and to remove fog and facilitate broom-flying later in the session.

The brewer did feel a little useless, but said that was mostly because they'd been built combat-oriented, and said a couple of sense-enhancing potions would have been good.

The death also had to be fudged at one point, or the brewer would have died, despite their very high (19, boosted to 20 by The Pure) shock threshold. They took a very strong hit from a bear (a 21 damage test), and dropped. With rolling 5 dice each turn, they failed the very next roll.

v0.4.0

This was the version used in the fourth playtest.

The playtest focussed on the investigation of a murder, involving following tracks, scaring off wolves that were eating the body, and interrogating the villagers.

The higher starting XP mentioned in the character creation section (240 XP) was used.

The characters were a Necromancer, herself a skeleton with a blazing skeleton for a snake familiar; a Pilot/Willer, focussing on the use of a large variety of tools and weapons, and summoning brooms, and a Willer, focussed on earth Willing, with a few Flying feats as well.

Things mostly went well, although it was very clear that the earth-based tree of Willing is incomplete. The higher starting XP definitely gave a higher power level, but didn't seem to break anything. Earth Willing and Flying both had too few feats to make full use of it, but the Necromancer still had to pass up many feats to fit within the budget.

v0.3.0

This was the version used in the third playtest.

The playtest centered on dealing with an Extraordinary Herb,
the Mangrave. This herb was a hive mind of mobile mangrove
trees, that carried a swamp with them. Animals that died in the
swamp were raised as Fossil undead.

The characters were a Brewer focussing on Might and Resilience potions,
a Ritualist focussed on the barrier circles and time manipulation,
a Projector focussed on Possession, and a Seer focussed on Scrying.

Most things worked very well, though it was concluded that the barrier
to entry for Projection could do with a little lowering.

The playtest also experimentally used the starting XP system later
introduced in 55f844c, which worked
very well.

v0.2.0

This was the version used in the second playtest.

The playtest had 3 players, a Sympathetic Magic user, an elemental Willer, and a Headologist.
It involved resurrecting a dead golemancer from the next village over.

v0.1.0

This was the version used in the first playtest.

The playtest was a Halloween special featuring a headless horseman.
It featured a Brewer dabbling in Willing, an apiarist Golemancer, a tool-Willer and Headologist, a Broomcrafter, and a Necromancer.