Writing my Odd Game

Playtest Report - Pt.1

"I'm okay with phaged Scraps." - Ariel, right before phaging Scraps.

THE CHARACTERS

ELON. Imoral Droid hunter. Smart one of the bunch. Chose a mental damage rifle, which reverse engineered his personality into a cold bastard.

ARIEL. Human item collector. Shot caller of the bunch. Wears a wig. Got confortable quickly with the setting. Immediately disliked the Vigil.

ED. Lil guy energy. Player decided early to hard commit to a robotic and limited speech because of a Mind of 4, which was a bold move.

BLOB. Obsessed about digging. Rolled a fat 12 for Body and a Drill Leg at D20 shape. Made his whole motivation to repair his leg to pursue his love.

BULLSEYE RECOVERING

Invited by Boberson, they learned Bullseye was recently attacked but survived. Bodies being dismantled for Scrap raised question on phage prohibition, which Bobersob explained didn't apply to ones that were just lying there dead, you see.

Boberson gave them the goal of finding out the secret of the two burrows, and give them salvation, offering many scraps in return.

Players turned to find UNIT MODEL 3305X2, which immediately tried to gauge if they were also religious. UM3305 made his opinions on Boberson inept leadership clear, and tried to find sympathy, which he found in some. Ariel made clear they were mercs for hire, so Scraps or nothing.

They found Readie, the scientist of the encampment, working for Boberson reading found holy scriptures. He successfully stayed out of it all by being rude and desinterested.

The PCs discover through UM3305 that the path to Burrow #1 is harsher to go, and decide to go to #2.

Arriving at the burrow, Blob quickly got the door open. The satchel from the entrance caused a ruckus for fear of being a trap. Blob finds a metal bar - what will become the most important piece of equipment in the whole session.

Players go down the good staircase, and find the mangled droid and the windlass. Blob approaches the droid to phage it, and get a jumpscare. The random body part rolled actually was the loud scrambler siren, which is hilariously coincidental. Blob takes some damage, but successfully ends the poor droid.

Ed gets impatient and moves up and to room 3. Ariel and Elon climb down the cable and find the cube.

Ed tries to use the windlass and stops it before the droid reaches them, dropping them down again.

Elon realizes shooting the dangling dimmed droid from the cube would mean losing all the scrap, but alas, they have a mental damage rifle! They shoot it to death without resistance, they pull it all the way up, and phage their metal ass without a second thought.

They successfully pendulate the cable into the cube. Ariel loses balance, spends a body part to retry, fails again, but Elon saves them on the brink of falling.

The cube is brought up and into place, they sucessfully deduct its point to a new location, and before they leave, Blob throws the metal bar into the satchel, realizes it doesnt explore, and Ed shoots it with a rifle - the best solution, apparently - to try and grab whatever is inside. They shoot a scrap to bits, but recover the other.

The players successfully map the secret path between 1 and 2, avoiding the harsh path, and started exploring Burrow #1.

END OF SESSION.

CHARACTER CREATION

For a four player table, it took more time and steps than an usual than a regular Odd game.

The immediate thing it was clear is three body parts to start is too many, but rolling just two could easily be underwhelming. So roll 3 keep 2 felt fun, but slow.

A table of professions like Mausritter could make this process much easier, but lose a lot of character in the process; the players were really happy with the overall process and creation, albeit morose.

The D6 mod table didnt work well; determining a dice for the bonus was confusing, and remembering the number for the mod also was confusing and slow.

A 0 mod item was also unnecessarily terrible. With players rolling 2D6 only, it seems pretty ok for all Parts to have at least a +1; maybe starting them all at +1 flat solves all of this in char creation, and leave the table for the random parts.

BODY PARTS

Great all around. Some players had more difficulty than others to find uses, but the difference between not rolling and the part allowing a reroll was very clear. I tried to be very open to any suggestion on applicability; let them roll and use it.

We had a multijointed leg use, a mobile ear use, a kinetic cannon well used. Ariel didn't use their echo locator (albeit they could have) nor their pressured storage. Ed was really baffled by the wingsuit, which is indeed wild, but they undervalued it imo.

SCRAP

Huge hit. Scraps and Body Parts really are the gold here. They immediately understood the cost of traveling and scraps and healing as the one and same, with a good anxiety as a result. The more game systems go back to these two mechanics, the better.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The game had a less serious group of players than my usual, which made things more Beers and Pretzels than I was wishing, but there are clear takeaways: