Rules changes ahoy!

Our brave heroes fighting the warlock, his minions and what's left of his brick dragon

Oh hai, internetz. Despite the abysmal lack of updates on this here blog, Brickworlds is still alive. The alpha rules have been delivered to the donors in time, and the game has even attracted some interest from the fine folks at the French RPG Federation, (yes, we do have an RPG Federation).

We had another session with my 9-year old alpha tester. Highlights were zombie and skeleton pirates, an evil undead warlock on a dragon and some very creative building. This time there were two characters - Rizzo the Cowardly Explorer and Reverence the Smily Child Comedian which helped with testing the conflict resolution system. In the end, Reverence even called his father and brother (who happens to be Jax the Smily Army Captain from our first session) for reinforcements, so we had an epic finale featuring seven minifigs and a brick boss.

While a lot of fun was had by all, the rules kind of got in the way of the story. I thought kids loved rolling dice, but there's a limit I reached during the last fight - I could see Sean's eyes glaze over when I asked for yet another roll. He was much more interested in narrating how his pet snake was sneaking behind the warlord to poison him.

Technically speaking, I realised health points and Tunnels & Trolls style rolls have a tendency to drag out fights. Too many bleeding rolls! Also, having to summarize how many dice are rolled every time ("one for you, one because you're a stormtrooper, one for your blaster...") makes it hard for a child  to roll by himself.

I had some suggestions from FFJdR's Thomas Laborey and I might drop the dice altogether. Or just keep one for the group (this would also make the game more accessible, as you wouldn't have to buy a Lego boardgame). We'll see when I have some quiet game design time.

(I could ask for your thoughts on the dice vs diceless question, but nobody ever comments on my posts, so I wont ;)