So the interest in Level Up has been fantastic. Thousands of surveys returned, comprising a LOT of data. Thank you! I wanted to share a little on how that's affecting the game.
This data is really useful. It tell us what's tracking well, and what is not well-liked in our playtest packages. That's exactly what the process is supposed to do - it's working as intended.
The final book will look quite different from the playtest packages. Not in a major 'substantive' way (the basic structure is still the same) but in the details. There will be fewer total cultures, and many of the non-legacy cultures (we decided early on we needed to preserve the legacy cultures like wood elf, mountain dwarf, etc.) have been tweaked to make them general cultures. This is in part an issue of categorisation but it's important.
There's also been some rejigging, renaming, and combining on the culture front. The Ruined Dwarf culture, for example, is now the general Ruined culture. Anybody can come from a culture ravaged by disaster or war. The Carnival Tieflings ended up as a general Circusfolk culture. The Steam Tieflings are now a general 'rennaisance/industrial' culture. You were not fond of our human cultures, and we listened -- Profiteer is gone, but we now have a new Trading Company background. Pioneer has been slightly tweaked and is now the Settler. And we have a couple of other generic cultures such as the Wildling (remote villages in the depths of forest or other wilderness), and Godbound (theocracies both big and small). The cultures are now listed separately from the heritages, in alphabetical order, to emphasize that any heritage can take any culture.
Heritages are also getting a thorough scrubbing. Generally, it's tweaks (one has had some more substantial tweaks though).
As a whole, you loved the Backgrounds, and the Inspiration/Destinies playtest. They don't need much work, and will largely come through unscathed, with some minor tweaks.
One area we're focusing on is advantage/expertise dice etc. As you know, you soundly rejected our 'minor advantage' proposal. That's fine; that's why we asked you. However, you did like the expertise dice. We'll be using that information going forward.
This playtest process is so useful. It's this process which is going to make sure our game is really good!
This data is really useful. It tell us what's tracking well, and what is not well-liked in our playtest packages. That's exactly what the process is supposed to do - it's working as intended.
The final book will look quite different from the playtest packages. Not in a major 'substantive' way (the basic structure is still the same) but in the details. There will be fewer total cultures, and many of the non-legacy cultures (we decided early on we needed to preserve the legacy cultures like wood elf, mountain dwarf, etc.) have been tweaked to make them general cultures. This is in part an issue of categorisation but it's important.
There's also been some rejigging, renaming, and combining on the culture front. The Ruined Dwarf culture, for example, is now the general Ruined culture. Anybody can come from a culture ravaged by disaster or war. The Carnival Tieflings ended up as a general Circusfolk culture. The Steam Tieflings are now a general 'rennaisance/industrial' culture. You were not fond of our human cultures, and we listened -- Profiteer is gone, but we now have a new Trading Company background. Pioneer has been slightly tweaked and is now the Settler. And we have a couple of other generic cultures such as the Wildling (remote villages in the depths of forest or other wilderness), and Godbound (theocracies both big and small). The cultures are now listed separately from the heritages, in alphabetical order, to emphasize that any heritage can take any culture.
Heritages are also getting a thorough scrubbing. Generally, it's tweaks (one has had some more substantial tweaks though).
As a whole, you loved the Backgrounds, and the Inspiration/Destinies playtest. They don't need much work, and will largely come through unscathed, with some minor tweaks.
One area we're focusing on is advantage/expertise dice etc. As you know, you soundly rejected our 'minor advantage' proposal. That's fine; that's why we asked you. However, you did like the expertise dice. We'll be using that information going forward.
This playtest process is so useful. It's this process which is going to make sure our game is really good!
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