Initial Goblinquest feedback

First off, hello to all the new readers of this blog; thaaaasands of 'em! And thank you to those of you who've mentioned Gobinquest on your own blogs, LAF, TMP, Google+, Facebook... I've had emails and even an invitation to be involved in a podcast. It's a giddy existence, this game-writing lark...

I've had some really useful feedback from a couple of folk already (thanks Erny and Bart), which led to some interesting discussion on LAF about the wisdom (or otherwise) of player-character death in a game that is meant, at least in part, to be a way of geek-parents to introduce their offspring into gaming at a young age. I'm going to have to ponder that one quite carefully. On the one hand, it's been really useful for my lad to learn to treat the two imposters of triumph and disaster just the same, on the other I don't really want to cause any 'Platoon moments', as it was put by Erny:

"Nooooo! I don't want my character to die!"

So, a quandary. On suggestion (thanks, Scurv!) was that defeated knights would be captured and have to be rescued. Another (quick thinking, Erny!) was that on successful completion of the quest, "dead" knights could be taken off to the healers and brought back to health and further questing.

I've got a longer list of mechanics questions to consider (although fixed movement distances to speed up the game has been mentioned by everyone who has given feedback, so that looks like a given), especially around character progression (I'm giving it some proper thought, Bart), but that's going to take longer, and this weekend I shall be mainly hitting people with swords at Leeds Armoury for this year's SWASH

Thanks for all your feedback so far, and I look forward to hearing from anyone else who gives it a go.

Happy geeking,
Rab