Finland, Finland, Finland!
by justin on Dec.22, 2008, under News
Thank goodness for the Finns. One of the cool things about the playtest group I’ve assembled so far for Tokyo Rain is that it is comprised of players from around the globe. I’ve got playtesters from Italy, Autralia, Brazil, Tokyo (natch!), and many others. And I’ve got Finns.
Most people don’t know this, but Finland has an amazingly robust role-playing game scene. In fact, you can get a national grant to design role-playing games. So it will come as no surprise that the Finnish group of Petri Leinonen, Mikko Merilainen, and Petteri Autero just dropped some amazing playtest notes on me.
Much of what they had to say will find its way in the next version of the Playtest Doc (which should be available right after the holidays). They also had this reassuring comment: “The game was great fun to play and ponder about. It was different from typical games in so many ways that it was really refreshing.”
December 22nd, 2008 on 5:39 pm
Hi Justin, what a nice post! Being one of the (in?)famous Finnish playtesters, let me say you’re on to a good thing here. Keep up the quality work, we’ll be glad to playtest again when the new doc comes out.
December 26th, 2008 on 10:19 am
I’m glad to hear that my fellow Finns did this good job at playtesting. I wish I could persuade my group (or my wife) to give it a try.
I don’t know if it’s appropriate to ask, but how did the game run with more than two people?
December 27th, 2008 on 10:56 am
Well, we for the playtest we actually just did runs of one versus ones. But the great thing about it is that it’s actually quite fun to watch, so even the third person who was “out” wasn’t bored.
December 29th, 2008 on 12:35 am
Okay, I thought so, too that the game was meant as a one o’ one game. It’s good to hear about the entertainment value for the audience. Maybe this could be even classified as a “spectator” RPG?
Thanks!
December 29th, 2008 on 7:54 am
Ultimately, I will have full rules for more than two people. Given the way the primary text is sorting out, it will probably be in the supplement, tentatively titled “Intel”, which will be released sometime next year.
That being said, there is an easy way to incorporate a third player, basically trading off Prey characters in a given challenge. So, for one challenge, one player plays one of Holtzer’s henchmen; in the next, the other player plays Kanezaki.
December 29th, 2008 on 12:12 pm
Okay, sounds pretty good. Thanks for the answers!