Last night’s session went very well indeed, with a lot of the rules questions being ironed out and only a few clarifications needed (see below). The real talking point of the session was powered by some amazing playtester work on probabilities earlier in the week and a deep discussion on the implications of the smaller hand sizes on Mission design.
You see, they failed the mission.
And so, the playtest begins, and from the get-go, I can see the value of playtesting a game whose baseline assumptions are over ten years old. Duty & Honour was borne of the indie revolution of the mid-2000s and a lot of the core assumptions were … vague. In many ways, ideas like shared narrative and conflict resolution have moved into different modern places and this makes the admittedly wishy-washy way I handled it previously just too lose. There was also a little bit of ‘no author included’ going on; people who have played in one of my games see me run it and then do the same, but those that have not always find a new interpretation of the rules to bring to the table. So there was a lot to question as we went along.
Rather than write up a blow-by-blow of the action, I’ll just highlight some of the questions raised, especially around new mechanics.
This has been a long time coming, but after a couple of alpha test runs out in the open at Contingency 2020, the full Duty & Honour Revised Edition (Second Edition, Waterloo Edition … I haven’t decided) private playtest has started.
The 103rd Duke of Monmouth Rangers have been dragged from their ceremonial duties and sent to Lisbon in the wake of the retreat from A Coruna. Amongst their number, the drunken Exploring officer Major McAllister has gathered a half company of men together to forage deep into Portugal and return intelligence on the French.