CROM - First Playtest

I finally got a chance to run a non-solo game of CROM. Thanks to my buddy Derek I was able to get a quick game in with the intention of giving the stock CROM rules, as published by Paul over at Matakishi's Tea House, a good play before continuing to modify the rules with additional house rules.

The set-up was really simple. A woodland on the edge of a river. In the woods, a bestial warrior and his six warriors (in two minion groups) vs. a 12 Dice hero and a 10 Dice hero. The heroes managed to divide and conquer the minions pretty easily and unfortunately didn't take all that much damage in the process. By the time the villain, who has 10 Dice made it into combat with the heroes, he wasn't much of a match for them.

One observation that was made early in reading the rules was that minions seem to have the potential to really beat the crap out of heroes. Successfully maneuvered minions can force a hero to spend all of his allocated Combat dice on defense and end up left with none for attacking OR even worse leave him so short on dice that he ends up without any Combat dice left for even a defense roll, meaning in any combat he will automatically take at least 2 Dice of damage.

We decided to play test a combat engagement after the game to test this and in our dice off, a 12 Dice hero was dispatched in one turn by a group of three minions. Further testing may be needed to see if this is as easy to do as the test would indicate. I am also going to go over the rules and Paul's first play test scenario again to make sure that I'm not missing anything on how Minions operate.

Still have a lot of love for this system so far.

Take care,

-Eli