More Bestiary Playtesting: Bugbear, Unicorn, Scitalis

Last week I posted in detail about the playtest of the basilisk for A Bestiary of Enchanted England. The same weekend, my trusty former college gaming buddies and I also tried out three other creatures from the Bestiary: the bugbear, unicorn, and scitalis. I’m not planning to post about those creatures in the same detail because it that basilisk post took a couple of hours to write. I do think it’s worthwhile to tell you about the outcomes because it gives insight into how a game designer uses playtest feedback.

The Bugbear: Mood is Key

We posted an early version of the Bugbear as a Halloween challenge for the Bestiary Kickstarter. Designer Mark Lawford interpreted the folklore to create a creature rather different from what appears in Dungeons & Dragons. Our bugbear is a psychological thriller. It’s all about being scary. In fact, part of the theme of the monster is that it’s a paper tiger: it flees as soon as it encounters resistance.

We used one of the plot hooks Mark created: a playwright was holed up in his room, afraid to come out because he was tormented each night by bugbears. We had four player characters and I knew a single bugbear would be no match for them. I used two.

I was pleased with how easy it was to create the sense of dread by narrating the creepy sounds of the bugbears’ invisible approach. They’re getting closer … you there’s a scratching at the window … someone or something is trying the doorknob. Great stuff, and exactly what we’re looking for in a bugbear experience.

The playtest draft of the bugbear has two powers that both cause fear. One of them uses Fate’s Create an Advantage mechanic to create an Aspect representing the fear. The other is a mental attack. The idea was for it to first use the former power, then the latter. Simple enough.

It didn’t play smoothly. The Create an Advantage power was meant allow for a Will defense. That looks good on paper but it raises a lot of practical questions when there are several PCs in the scene. How do you roll the Defense? I used Teamwork, but a less experienced Fate GM might try rolling Defense individually and be left stuggling with how to handle a Create an Advantage action that worked against some PCs and not others. In our case, the PCs blocked the Create an Advantage action without much trouble. The bugbear was trying to create a situational Aspect to represent its spookiness, but all it ended up doing was wasting its turn.

It already has an Aspect that represents its spookiness: Terrifying … Until Confronted. It would have been more effective for the GM to simply pay a Fate Point to Invoke that instead of spending an Exchange trying to set it up for free. So that’s what we’re recommending now. The spell that sets up an Aspect (“Gnawing Fear”) has been removed, and roleplaying notes updated to say just to Invoke Terrifying … Until Confronted. This results in a tighter design. It also plays more smoothly, requiring no extra dice roll as prelude to the mental attack. That helps the GM preserve the mood.

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The Unicorn: Suprisingly Terrifying

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

If you haven’t read the Bestiary manuscript, you might expect the unicorn to be a gentle beast surrounded by flower and rainbows. That’s very far from how unicorns were portrayed in sixteenth century literature. They’re a symbol of ferocity.

I felt that I had to shatter my players’ preconceptions of what unicorns are like in Magonomia. I read them this bit straight from the text:

Unicorns love getting angry and killing people …

—Timothy Ferguson, A Bestiary of Enchanted England

I sent my players’ wizards on a mission to recapture a unicorn that had “escaped” (it later seemed more likely it had been set loose) from the estate of Henry Percy, the Wizard Earl of Northumberland. They had the sense to ask Earl Percy for some help: horses, skilled huntsmen, and a pack of hounds.

After a skill challenge assisted by several spells, they managed to find the unicorn and set an ambush. It took these mostly nonviolent wizards some doing but they pulled it off. Hardened adventurers would likely have an easier time.

Springing the ambush was another matter. It went sideways, and sorcerer Christopher Hill got gored a little bit. Four wizards who weren’t combat optimized managed to fight the unicorn to a standstill. They probably could have worn it down eventually, but I didn’t have it stick around to get captured. I had it Concede the Conflict and escape into the woods. If we had wanted to spend all afternoon on the unicorn hunt, the PC wizards could have regrouped and tried again. We decided to move on.

Mechanically, the unicorn performed very satisfactorily. It’s deadly to a single character if the character isn’t combat optimized. A group can stand up to it and it can stand up to a group. Once it escapes, it takes teamwork and resourcefulness to track it down.

I passed the unicorn along to editing with no changes. Of course, I might hear a different story from external playtesters, so the unicorn’s statistics aren’t final yet.

The Scitalis: Beware the Disco Ball Crocodile

The scitalis is a creature from medieval bestiaries that’s less familiar than most. It’s a large serpent (which, in the 16th century, was a synonym for “reptile” not necessarily “snake”) covered in shimmering, iridescent scales. I’ll admit I made the mistake of calling it a “disco ball crocodile” out loud, but my players didn’t keep snickering very long. This turned out to be the deadliest creature we’ve playtested so far.

I knew this was going to be a stiff fight, so I gave the player-wizards a straightforward mission: slay the “dragon” that’s been eating livestock and occasional travelers. They armed themselves with boar spears (Weapon: 3) but the only PC who’s Good (+3) at Fighting was absent that day.

According to folklore, the scitalis’s shimmering scales literally stun onlookers. I thought this would be weak sauce, but it was very effective. The way the power is written, the moment you look at the scitalis, you have to make a Will Defense or be entranced. This is a high stakes dice roll. If you fail, all you can do is try again each Exchange to break its hold over you. Meanwhile it has the Aspect Can’t Refuse an Opportunity to Feed.

This creature is kind of the opposite of a basilisk. It doesn’t sound so bad … entrances people who look at it, how quaint … but it’s big, it’s strong, and it can take a beating at least as well as it can dish it out. At first, I thought it would be easy pickings for a couple of arquebusiers, but I no longer think so. If they can see it well enough to shoot at it, they can see it well enough to get entranced. Taking down this serpent will require as much guile as strength.

In the end, our four not-combat-optimized wizards killed the scitalis in slow, gritty, desperate hand-to-and combat, but they carry some scars, both figuratively and literally. The fun of the Scitalis is getting past/around its entrancement ability. I ended up toning down the Scitalis’s Fighting skill slightly because the playtest version died a little too hard.

More Playtesting Ahead

Our last playtest binge focused on combat because that’s where small design mistakes have a big impact on the play experience, like our die-hard scitalis. But the great thing about A Bestiary of Enchanted England is that you can have great stories centered on many of these creatures without ever drawing a sword. There’s more playtesting ahead, and we’re eager for some help! Stop by our Discord server if you’d like to get involved.

Bestiary Playtest Report: Basilisk

Last weekend we spent several hours on in-house playtesting of creatures from our upcoming book, A Bestiary of Enchanted England. I want to go into detail about the playtest of the basilisk because it was the most interesting. The basilisk is not entirely what it appears to be, and the way the players handled it is an example of Magonomia at its best.

In case you missed the Kickstarter, the retail release is on track for Summer 2023.

---

The Playtesters and Characters

The playtesters are my longtime gaming group who have been playing together since college. We tried out short missions centered on creatures from the Bestiary, using four of the sample characters from the Magonomia® core rulebook: Ghida the alchemist, Gemini the astrologer, Christopher the sorcerer, and Aonghas the witch. One player couldn’t make it, so Deborah the theurgist stayed home. (You can view these sample characters on the Magonomia wiki.)

The wizards meeting a mysterious stranger. Illustration by Jeff Koch, ©2020 Shewstone Publishing LLC.

The Basilisk

Every gamer has an idea of what a basilisk is. It’s the lizard creature you don’t want to look at. It turns out there are many versions of the basilisk in folklore and they’re all a little different than the one from Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). For A Bestiary of Enchanted England, author Timothy Ferguson went to classical and medieval sources.

Illustration by Steven Bachan. My playtesters said it was kind of cute. Then it set London on fire.

On the surface, the basilisk is terrifying. It can kill you by looking at you. Contrary to how it’s portrayed in D&D, your character doesn’t have to look at it. The particular version of the basilisk we used kills you in an interesting way: by setting you on fire. Spontaneous human combustion! It’s so toxic, it can also kill you if you touch it. Indeed, according to classical bestiary author Pliny the Elder, even if you touch it with a long spear, its venom will run up the spear and kill you.

It also has the Aspect, Small Lizard Chicken. I was using the cockatrice variant—the Bestiary manuscript has a lot of variations of the basilisk. It’s the size of a chicken. The basilisk is a proverbial glass cannon. All you have to do is figure out how to attack it without touching it and without it looking at you.

My players are quite experienced with Magonomia. They probably have more experience playing Magonomia than anyone else in the United States. They’re also planners. I knew if I gave them time to plan, they’d spend a lot of time on it but they’d come up with something good.

So I didn’t give them time to plan. I just told them “you’re at your local pub in London. Outside, you hear screams and a panicked crowd runs past shouting ‘run for your lives! A cockatrice is on the loose!’” It’s a playtest, I’m not aiming for a deep plot here.

I did brief them that as wizards, their characters would know about the poison traveling up the spear to kill its wielder, and that the basilisk’s deadly gaze only requires one-way contact. That spooked the players a little.

Laying Ambush

A group of four Magonomia wizards are quite powerful when they work together. Spells in Magonomia are meant to be used creatively, and this group has lots of experience with that.

Ghida climbed onto a rooftop and lay low, peering over the roof’s peak to watch for the cockatrice’s approach. She was the one who saw it setting scenery and livestock on fire as rampaged down the street. She began applying her potion Balm of Protection from Fire to her face. Normally that potion takes a minute to thoroughly apply to the whole body, but it can be applied hastily to protect only one body part. Ghida’s player chose her face because it was most likely to be exposed to the basilisk’s attack.

Aonghas wanted to draw the cockatrice into a side alley, but he didn’t have a spell that could be useful. This isn’t unusual in Magonomia. Each wizard starts with a repertoire of 11 spells and each spell has a fairly specific purpose. Lacking a spell for the task at hand, he fell back on his wits, as any good Magonomia wizard will do. He grabbed a roast chicken from the window of an abandoned poultry shop and tossed it in the alley near its entrance.

Christopher grabbed a crate of apples that had been overturned in the street. He emptied it out and turned it upside down, then used Levitation to raise it into the air as a makeshift trap, to drop on the cockatrice when it went to the roast chicken.

Gemini tried to climb up onto the roof alongside Ghida, but failed the Athletics Overcome action and accepted failure. Gemini just isn’t that good at physical tasks. They stayed put, out of harm’s way but also out of position

Springing the Trap

Our versions of the example characters have been on several harrowing adventures in their playtest careers. They’ve passed a few Breakthroughs and therefore have added extra spells to their repertoires. Ghida had acquired Pyrotechnics, which produces amazing magical fireworks, much like Gandalf used in the Fellowship of the Rings movie. She readied that potion, thinking to temporarily blind the cockatrice when it got close.

Aonghas realized Christopher would need to see the cockatrice in order to spring his levitating crate trap. Aonghas also realized that if the cockatrice needed to see its victim, invisibility might help. He quickly applied the Fern-Seed Potion (a spell of invisibility) to Christopher, then ducked for cover around the corner.

Most of Gemini’s spells take a long time to cast. That’s one of the occupational hazards of being an astrologer. They fell back on a decidedly less erudite approach: they pried up a cobble-stone with their cane and hid around the corner, ready to hurl the stone at the cockatrice after Ghida blinded it with her fireworks.

The cockatrice didn’t cooperate. Aonghas failed his Deception roll to lure it down the alley. It wasn’t especially interested in eating the roast chicken. It glared at it and burst it into flames instead! Ghida changed her plan a bit and set off her fireworks behind the creature. It startled and rushed forward—under Christopher’s trap! Christopher needed to cancel his Levitation spell with split-second timing to drop the crate onto a moving target. His player suggested Academics could be an appropriate skill for that task. We narrated a quick and anachronistic vignette of Christopher imagining engineering diagrams in his mind’s eye. He made the first high-stakes combat geometry dice roll of our gaming careers. Success! The cockatrice was trapped.

Although there was plenty of suspense at the gaming table, when you read the account of the battle, the players made it look easy. Such is the power of wizards using their spells together as a team.

Combusting Aonghas

Since this was a playtest, we also wanted to explore what would happen if the cockatrice escaped the trap and had a chance to use its gaze attack.

Startled by Ghida’s fireworks, the cockatrice flapped frantically into the alley, too fast for Christopher to react. For a heart-stopping moment it was flying right toward Christoper at eye level. Christopher stood perfectly still and his invisibility saved him: the cockatrice looked right through him without any effect.

Aonghas wasn’t so lucky. The cockatrice had moved far enough down the alley to have line of sight around the corner where he was hiding. Its head swiveled toward him … he tried to duck out of sight in time … with a sinister cluck it rolled its Legendary (+8) gaze attack vs. Aonghas’s Average (+1) Stealth. Fwoosh! Aonghas burst into flames, losing all his physical stress boxes and taking a Moderate Consequence.

To the game master, these seem like disappointingly minor burns. Aonghas’s player considered his character lucky to be alive.

We closed the curtain at that point because I know how deadly player characters get when they’re fighting for their lives.

Modifications Due to This Playtest

This was actually the second playtest of the basilisk. In the first one, its gaze attack really under-performed, leading me to increase it to Legendary (+8). I briefly considered increasing it again because a Moderate Consequence seemed like a pretty mild outcome from getting blasted by one of the deadliest monsters in European folklore.

This is where playability needs to be considered. The important question is not how badly is Aonghas impaired after the first hit, it’s how likely is he to survive a second. I’d give him less than even odds. A player who knows Fate would see the wisdom of using the Concede rule to chicken out (pun intended).

No one is likely to complain about their character surviving their first hit from a basilisk’s gaze. They might complain if they think it was underwhelming. Feeling lucky to be alive is a lot more fun than being carried off on a stretcher—or in a dustpan. I conclude the numbers are about right.

The only change I ended up making was to edit the text to clarify that the basilisk needs to see its target to attack, not the other way round.

Although the basilisk is very dangerous, a group of wizards has the tools to deal with it. It’s designed to be scary and to require ingenuity to defeat. This version worked exactly as intended.

Joining the Playtest

If this sounds like a fun way to spend your Saturday afternoon with friends, the playtest for A Bestiary of Enchanted England is accepting new players through the end of February. Playtesters don’t have to write out the turn-by-turn details like I did here. We just want your conclusions and recommendations. You can sign up by emailing me (andrew at shewstone dot com) or by joining our Discord server . We also have a playtesters email list where you can sign up to get notified of future playtests in advance.

If you’ve read all the way to the end, thank you. I hope you enjoyed our example of wizards using their spells to improvise.