Every third Sunday my group plays a game we know we won't normally get a chance to try or play for a full length campaign. This started within the last 3. So far we have played Esoterrorists and Dragon Age (we also did a GURPS alt. History One-Shot). This week was Shadows of Esteren. Here are my initial thoughts.

We ran one session, from 12-6. The first couple of hours was character creation. sometimes we do pre-gens sometimes we don't for weird sunday, and this has a unique character creation system so it seemed like a good idea to spend time on it.

Making characters was simple but involved enough that it felt meaningful. There are a number of cool elements to it, but basically you set your attributes (called Ways) by allocating the following numbers to them: 5,4,3,2,1 (so put five in one, two in another, etc). The Ways are: Combativeness, Creativity, Empathy, Reason and Conviction. These add to your skills (called Domains), and in all there are about sixteen domains or so. Each domain is ranked 0-5 and you add this number to your relevant Way when using it. This modifier is added to a d10 roll against a target number (I believe 11 is the standard TN, and a ten is a crit, giving you plus five typically).

Domains are quite general. For example: Close Combat, Science, Performance and Occultism. So to fight you use your Close Combat Skill and roll against the target's defense. Each domain is further divided into disciplines which are like specializations. In practice it seemed to work pretty smoothly.

There are advantages and disatdvantages as well. You can even get more domain ranks by starting as an older character and rolling randomly to see what setbacks you get (for example I started a couple of increments higher and ended up poor). I took Strong for an advantage which gave me some nice bonuses to Close Combat, Feats (physical skills) and Shooting and Throwing.

Personality is important in character creation and has mechanical implications. You need to take two traits (which are somewhat shaped by your Ways). In addition you have ratings in Consciousness (Way of Reason plus Way of Conviction)and Instinct (Way of Combativeness plus way of Creativity). This establishes your orientation (you may be more instinctual for example) and any difference between these numbers can negatively effect your sanity by giving you trauma points.

Everyone has base ratings in different combat attitudes. When you fight you announce which attitude you are adopting (Standard, Offensive, Defensive, Quick, or Movement) and this shifts your attack, defense and speed ratings. In practice this worked very well.

I may be missing or forgetting some key elements (not to mention getting something wrong as I only made one character). But I liked the system. It did take a bit of time to make a character and the text is a little unclear in places (I think because it was translated from French). I was not the person running the game so my knowledge mostly came through the character creation process and the events in the adventure.

The setting seems pretty cool to me. Definitely has a Ravenloft feel, but much more gritty. Skimming through the setting portion of the book, it looked very detailed and the layout is gorgeous.

From what I understand they are still releasing core books, so the GM had to make his own monsters and do some guess work on how they operated. In our adventure we basically ran into some demonic forces (a bit like Evil Dead) passing through some farmsteads. We happened upon a mutilated farmer and it turned out one of the local children was possessed by a demon and the source of the carnage (which we put a stop to). We also ran into some bandits and spent time in a nearby settlement.

The mechanics work very well for a role play heavy game. What I like is the book says explicitly to favor immersion over dice rolls. So if you walk into a house and say specifically "I look under the bed" (and there is something under the bed) you don't need to make a roll for it. It is a nice balance and is actually what I do in my own games, so I felt like I was on the same page as the designers.

Combat was a lot of fun, but we only had two, so I can't say how well it holds up over time. I love the d10 mechanic. It basically puts more weight on skills and talent over luck. But because 1 is a crit failure and 10 a crit, you get this odd thing where it is very consistent most of the time with huge spikes in failure or success 20 percent of the time. Personally I liked this, but one of our players found it frustrating and another had some concerns about high number of crits and fumbles.

Damage works well. You have five conditions: good, okay, bad, critical and agony. The first two have five steps, the second two have four and agony has one. On top of this you have Stamina for stuff like disease.

Characters also have Survival points, which can give you an edge. However we didn't end up using any in our adventure.

My conlusion is this looks like a solid game. I love the Domains and Disciplines approach. Felt combat worked just right. Enjoyed the immersive focus of the game. Some people might not like the d10 but in my opinion it is excellent. I think some might also object to how Domains work, because you can use them without having ranks. So if I have a Combativeness of five, I still get a plus five on my d10 to roll attack with an axe  even if I have no ranks in Close Combat.

One other thing that stands out, they did a good job putting all the attributes (or Ways) to work. Some of them were admitedly a bit of a stretch, but the designers made an effort at least to explain them. For example Speed is Combativeness+Empathy and Defense is Reason + Empathy. They explain this by describing Defense as being more about how careful you are and how well you analyze situations. Personally it did feel a bit weird that my super strong, but dimwitted fighter (Empathy 2, Reason 1) had very bad Defense...but they did manage to make all the attributes matter.

Will be reading on the setting sections this week so hopefully will have time to report on it.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;588397But because 1 is a crit failure and 10 a crit, you get this odd thing where it is very consistent most of the time with huge spikes in failure or success 20 percent of the time. Personally I liked this, but one of our players found it frustrating and another had some concerns about high number of crits and fumbles.

You are in luck. That's not quite how it works. If you roll a 10, then you roll again. If you roll a 10 on the second roll, its a criticial success. The same with critical failure but with 1s. So the chance of each is only 1%.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;588397Characters also have Survival points, which can give you an edge. However we didn't end up using any in our adventure.

And spending them gives you insanity points

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;588397My conlusion is this looks like a solid game. I love the Domains and Disciplines approach. Felt combat worked just right. Enjoyed the immersive focus of the game. Some people might not like the d10 but in my opinion it is excellent. I think some might also object to how Domains work, because you can use them without having ranks. So if I have a Combativeness of five, I still get a plus five on my d10 to roll attack with an axe  even if I have no ranks in Close Combat.

I agree with you assessment that the game is rock solid, especially if you want a gritty fantasy game, heavy on the immersion but light on the mechanics.

In terms of Domains, that's true but note that Ways amd Domains only go up to 5 and Disciplines go up another 10. As such, base competence is easy to acheive but highly skilled characters are rewarded.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;588397Will be reading on the setting sections this week so hopefully will have time to report on it.

The setting material is cool. But it is all in first person, so you never quite get a complete picture of the setting. I liked this as it allows the GM to make their own twists which can highlight the horror element, but GMs that feel the need to have everything explained and handed to them will struggle.

Finally, the Prologue PDF is about to be released to KS pledgers and it includes 3 adventures with a few monsters included. Physical copies of the PDF are also being put up on KS seperately soon.

The most common complaint that will be made of Esteren is the lack of monsters in the core book. Personally, I didn't have an issue with this given that the primary antagonists are other humans. Also, the system is very simple and other than SFX, which you need to create pretty like I did when creating monsters in AD&D, its easy to create stats. To give an example, the stat block of a monster in Prologue is:

Spoiler

Attack: 14. Defense: 8. Speed​​: 2. Damage: 6. Health Points: 30/20/10/5

Spoiler

(4 in number): Attack: 8. Defense: 12. Speed: 8. Damage: 2. Health Points: 10

Quote from: Skywalker;588412You are in luck. That's not quite how it works. If you roll a 10, then you roll again. If you roll a 10 on the second roll, its a criticial success. The same with critical failure but with 1s. So the chance of each is only 1%.

: 10

My friends are in luck. I was rather enjoying the 20% chance of crit or fumble:)

Thanks for the clarification.

Quote from: Skywalker;588412And spending them gives you insanity points

We never actually used them in play, so it never came up, but this was something I found interesting when the GM explained it. At first I thought it was a bit silly, but then I realized it was a somewhat plausible explanation for this kind of resource. He basically described it as an adrenaline surge. So it explains both the bonus and the insanity points.

This is definitely a game I hope to play again. Feel like i just scratched the surface.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;588419My friends are in luck. I was rather enjoying the 20% chance of crit or fumble:)

There is an optional rule to allow a 10 to be an auto success, but a critical (i.e. +5 to the result) only arises on a 10x2 result.

The things with Esteren is that the dice range is very inelastic and skill is generally the most important factor. That's a feature IMO.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;588420This is definitely a game I hope to play again. Feel like i just scratched the surface.

Yeah, if you spend Survivial Points it likely means you were in a life threatening situation that would leave some impact on you.

One interesting aspect of the sanity system is that the GM keeps it all behind the scenes away from the players. This means that the players will never really know what is real and what is generated by their PC's mental condition.  If a player wants to find out how nuts his PC is, he needs to have the PC visit a psychiatrist

Quote from: Skywalker;588423The things with Esteren is that the dice range is very inelastic and skill is generally the most important factor. That's a feature IMO.

i agree. I really like the d10.