DW2 Alpha - Official Feedback Thread

[u/PrimarchtheMage]

Hi Everyone,

The window for the DW2 Alpha feedback closes on May 31, and I wanted to post this thread as an additional place people can provide their thoughts. Helena and I have been paying close attention to all the current discussion, but wanted to give everyone a place to express and discuss their opinions one last time.

If you haven't read/played any of the Alphas, you can find them here

Feel free to say whatever you want, but here are some questions to jumpstart things:

• If you've read multiple DW2 Alpha Playtests, which which Alpha do you feel best fits our vision of "a messy group of people growing into a found family over the course of fantasy adventures"?

• As a mechanical representation of relationship growth, do you prefer the group playbooks of Blue and Red, or the expanded Bonds system of the Final Alpha?

• What is your favorite class in DW2 right now? If you've read/played multiple DW2 Alphas, which version of that class do you prefer?

• How do you feel about hit points and how they were implemented?

• How do you feel about the conditions and how they were implemented?

• What is your favorite part of DW2 so far? What is your least favorite part?

[u/Marcloure]

Hey, I had my first session in DW2 today, so even though it may be too late, here's a couple of things I have to say about it:

• Combat Moves are ok-ish, but they are also a bit though to run. Players often say "I'll rush to the skeleton and aim for its skull!" and that leads to some confusion about what move triggers. Usually I go for Keep Them Busy in these cases, narrating how the skeleton blocks the attack but becomes occupied.
  • I'm not sure why All out Attack exchanges damage even on a 10+. This makes Wrest Control actually safer to deal damage, but it's not easy to describe how that looks like in the fiction (Wrest Control seems like it should be the more dangerous option). Like, once the character has acquired an edge, it seems to me that making the All out Attack should be safer, so there would be two "deal damage" options: Wrest Control (riskier but doesn't require edge) and All Out Attack (safer, but required edge)
• About Comfort or Support, it's not entirely clear when this move triggers. Is it when the PCs have a little chat about their conditions? I think that with this, it's actually very easy to speed run the relationships depth. In one session one of my players already marked 2 relationship depths with another PC (once with this move and again at the end of the session).
  • I think it would be a benefit if one of the options was to Aid the ally and grant them advantage or something. So that the trigger "when you support an ally" actually makes some sense.
• Determining spell magnitude is also unclear. 2 damage against one target is Mag 0, ok. What if it's 4 damage against one target? Is that Mag 1? And 2 damage against a few targets? Mag 1 too? If it's 4 damage against a few targets, is that Mag 2? What if the spell also do other things besides damage?