SUM1: I would strongly advise new players to read the rulebook (RB) while comparing it to the Quick Reference, to see how the latter consolidates the former. Then read the LTP and look back to the quick reference at each step.
The LTP’s specialized “General Setup” instructions to reduce the Loot Deck to a select set of 16 Loot cards with the “sun” icon come slightly too late, since the “Hero Setup” has already involved drawing starting Equipment. I would suggest swapping the order of these 2 subsections.
The instructions on the back of the “Learn to Play” quest cover card might also, ideally, contain a brief note about the revised Loot Deck, if it can be fit.
I have now gotten though most of the first 4 rounds of the Learn to Play, and I am providing the detailed feedback I have for now since I may not have as much time to learn/play until next weekend.
I think I am reaching the conclusion that the “Learn to Play” file would be better named as an “extended gameplay example with some expert commentary.” Its utility as a rules teaching device would be greatly improved if it were littered with explicit references (page numbers) to where relevant rules are covered in the rulebook. Without this, the commentary too frequently comes across as “this is how an expert would summarize it, having already internalized the rules" and not as “here is how you, the uninitiated, should be internalizing the rulebook.”
The page numbers will be essential, as the Rulebook’s TOC is not very skimmable and the Glossary often fails to serve as an effective intermediary. If I were not able to CTRL+F on a digital version of the rulebook, I would be moving much slower using the physical copy I printed.
While I wish it were faster going, I lay a lot of it on my own hangups, and I am beginning to understand how the game’s design will come together, and I am intrigued. I look forward to returning soon, and I will keep my eye out for any revised reference materials that might evolve in the interim.
“Peril Event. The jungle denizen on the peril track has 5 Time so there is nothing to do here.” (LTP 5).
This terse comment is quite opaque for the uninitiated. Having spent some time trying to puzzle it out, I think it conflates two things that are kept distinct in Rulebook v0.13: (a) the “review the peril track for new encounters” moment at the start of a Peril phase, which is always relevant in every quest, and (b) the ensuing check for “Peril Events,” which the Rulebook says applies only to Sagas.
If the Rulebook is correct and there are no Peril Events in the Learn to Play (since it is a Vignette, not a Saga), then (i) Every subsection in the LTP that is currently titled “Peril Events” has been mis-titled and might be better titled “Review Peril track”, but (ii) a nod to Peril Events might be maintained in the LTP text, since the uninitiated should be told to keep them in mind “in future games.”
Alternatively, perhaps the Rulebook (and the player aid cards, and the quick reference) are outdated, and an “encounter arising from the peril track” is now regarded as one type of “Peril Event.” In that case these references must be aligned to match the LTP.
“move left to right along the peril track” removing tokens (LTP 5’s explanation of “Time Passes,” bottom-right)
The inset on LTP5 shows the first “Threat” card of the Vignette to the left of the Jungle Denizen Card. But the setup inset on LTP 4 does not include the Threat card in the Peril track. The reader should thus be told on LTP 5 to “remove a token from the active threat card if it has any, and then proceed left to right across the peril track…”
LTP 5’s explanation of “Exploration Tokens” makes a note about Barriers, even though they have been removed from the Learn to Play. I think a tutorial ought to include such considerations, but ideally they might be flagged for attention “in future games,” either by using such a phrase in prose, or perhaps using a special font/color/format.
In addition, LTP’s explanation of Exploration Tokens ends with a note about discarding them. Left unclear: are discarded Exploration Tokens returned to the draw pile, or removed from the game (and if removed, for what duration - this Quest? The whole Vignette?)
LTP 6, top-right, is the place to explain to the uninitiated how “party damage” works – a phrase that appears nowhere in the rulebook, or Glossary, though the Glossary entry for “Party” defines it as “damage distributed evenly amongst hero and companions.” The uninitiated who track this information down are left with a puzzle – why is no damage assigned to the Urchin in the LTP example?
(I think it’s because they’re a Malediction, which LTP 2 explained as “a special quest given card that cannot be targeted or lost” – i.e., an exception to the rule about how party damage impacts companions. If that’s right, this is also the place to explain to the uninitiated how Keyword priority is intended to work: from the LTP I infer that in “Malediction / Companion” the former nullifies the latter.)
LTP 8, top-left, introduces the reader to a “Peril Choice” (which in this instance offers no choice). This is now the third critical game phase/concept the uninitiated have encountered of the form “Peril X”, coming after Peril Events and the Peril Track. The Event/Track are (as seen above) so closely related in the order of gameplay that they might even be confused for each other, which arguably warrants associating them via the “Peril” prefix (though they still ought to be distinguished). By contrast a Peril Choice seems to be a completely unrelated interrupt, occurring at a completely unrelated phase of gameplay. I am not certain that the “Peril” prefix is used to its best effect here.
LTP 8, the right column works through the commentator’s thought process on whether or not to enter combat.
For the uninitiated, it is simply not clear how the commentator determines that the Hero should, after all, Enter the Fray. The Encounter doesn’t say they should, but the LTP commentary suggests that since we can’t Parley with the spider, we are forced to Enter the Fray for an unspecified reason. Turning to the Glossary for aid doesn’t help on its own, since the entry or “Enter the Fray” doesn’t specify how it is that one is caused to Enter the Fray. CTRL+Fing on the Rulebook doesn’t help, as the section on “Spawning Denizens” on RB 30 says only: “3. Reveal the denizen (turn face up) and Parley, unless you have been instructed to enter the fray.” The next RB section on Parley only explains when you may Parley and what that means – it contains no rule stating that if you cannot Parley, then you must engage in combat (even if the Encounter doesn’t say so).
“Neither the encounter nor the spiderwing denizen have a Bolster command so we only need to draw and match the loot icon.” (LTP9, top-left).
Far too quick for the uninitiated as is, but would become incredibly useful if the reader were told that this is a terse summary of interpreting and applying the instructions on RB32-33 (for how to Bolster Enemy, Match on Loot deck draw, and Call Compeers).
“Unless stated otherwise, all gear confers a “bonus result” for defence rolls.” (LTP 9, bottom-right)
The relevant keyword that might allow the player to track down the source of this ruling is “armour,” not “gear,” though the Glossary will fail as a go-between as it contains only an entry for the stat, ARM. CTRL+F allows me to say that this rule seems to be stated in a single sentence on RB 35. I suggest that the Glossary entry for ARM should be revised to note this important effect. I suggest that the LTP should be revised to explain that what we are going here is skimming the Hero Tableau looking for ARM mods on any cards.
“The Spiderwing has a base attack of 3 and is in the “ready state”. The enemy will activate the highest power available. As it has a single loot card ie. Equip(1), we activate its Proboscis attack for 4HP (Base 3 ATK +1ATK).” (LTP 9-10).
Regarding the first sentence: The uninitiated have not previously been told that the Spiderwing is ready. The Rulebook does not explain that denizens spawn ready. The only example of something being “ready” that the LTP has covered so far is the Hero, who got a special token in setup (though the Rulebook did not cover that). The Glossary offers minimal aid, since it defines “ready” only as a card state, which doesn’t cover the one known case of the Hero’s ready token.
Regarding the final sentence, the reasoning is opaque until the reader comes to understand that we are now thinking through the rules for “Equipped abilities” on RB 28-29. (Again, page numbers are critical, since the LTP covers rules in a different sequence than RB).
Both of these are good points. I suspect it extends to the main RB too – ie. general set up first, followed by hero and quest.
Sat down to do another round working through the LTP, again didn’t get through it (I expect this, it’s on me, I struggle to learn most games). But my key bit of progress this time around was realizing that I think the Quick Reference is (for me) going to be the key to indexing the LTP’s summaries to specific rules. Trying to tie back directly to the rulebook is too difficult while learning (for me). But the Quick Reference does a pretty solid job sketching out the rules-based decision tree that’s driving the LTP’s commentary through each phase of gameplay. I suspect the player aid cards could also work, but for now I find those a little unwieldy.
I would strongly advise new players to read the RB while comparing it to the quick reference, to see how the latter consolidates the former. Then read the LTP and look back to the quick reference at each step. (The LTP’s section subtitles might fruitfully integrate the language and the color coding from the quick ref… heck, now that I think about it, the rulebook might also integrate the color coding… though if overdone things could become a little garish, especially since the palette doesn’t have the same meaning when it is used on cards.)
„MITTLER ZWISCHEN REGELBUCH UND SPIELREGEL MUSS DAS KURZANLEITUNG SEIN!“
(Any Metropolis fans out there?)
I did consider embedding the relevant player aid poker card the first time it might be referenced in the LTP. But the LTP was already pretty long, and I was worried it might make things too long. But perhaps it helps to reinforce the use of the player aids and give a summarised version of the rules in situ.
I think you could get nearly all the benefits of the embedding, without using the space, by using the titles and colored banners of the Player Aids or the Quick Reference (a.k.a. ‘cheat sheet’ in filename) as the titles of specific subsections in the Learn to Play document. So the subsections currently titled “Peril Events” in LTP become, instead “Peril Phase” with the brown banner/background. A note at the top of the document can explain that mapping to the player once and leave lookup to them. (Again, the same might be done in the Rulebook).
Personally, I think I will always prefer the ‘cheat sheet’ to the ‘player aid’ cards. I don’t think I will ever memorize which 2 rules-bits are on opposite sides of the same card, and I don’t like flipping multiple cards over looking for the right one.
At this stage it’s difficult as the rulebook formatting in Google docs is lost when it gets typeset for print. Not to mention all the time I’ve spent on figures as these would typically be redone to meet the typeset design.
Yeah – too many player aids is possibly worse than none at all 
I like the idea of seeing how much I could get onto 2 (or at worse 4 pages); combining the rules and icons.
Took another stab at the LTP tonight – possibly my 4th? That’s on me, I’m a slow learner. Iterating through the LTP has been the best way for me to get my arms around it all. I stalled out near the end of the map stack and had to walk away, but I am finally starting to feel like I understand the systems well enough to see how they will click together and how they’ll form the backdrop for thematic/story/narrative stuff.
Unbeknownst to me, I had been hunted through the jungle for days by a giant serpent that finally attacked just as I approached the throne room – clearly trying to protect its master. My hero was not in great shape and I was expecting to come out even worse. Out of desperation – and with a frown from the urchin – I had no choice but to call for the aid of an unknown god. I consulted my fate by casting a magic coin that I had dug out of the belly of an arachnid that I fought along the way. The omen was favorable, and filled by some dark power I was able to strike down the serpent with a single blow before it was even able to nip at me. The maboon king raged and rallied his companions for battle, eager to avenge his pet…
In my experiences with the LTP, I have noticed that it seems to be relatively rare that the Memories I acquire by completing Encounters and fighting Denizens enable me to place Mastery cubes on items. Most of the attainable memory icons are shades of green and yellow, but only 4 of the 16 “starter” loot cards (with the sun icon) have corresponding icons. You might consider tweaking something here (swapping or adding icons on the LTP Encounter Cards ?) to raise the probability that players get full exposure to the Mastery system in their playthroughs.
I believe this positioning of the LTP’s first 4 Map Tiles is allowable by the rules of map tile placement, but will lead to a “soft lock” when the next tile is drawn, since there will be no valid placement for that tile. At time of writing RBv0.13 contains one rule for how to handle “illegal” map tile placements (leading to a “Backtrack” event) but I don’t believe it will cover this case. <<EDIT: I am wrong. Yellow doors are allowed to connect to red doors (color does not matter), so there will be no soft lock when the next tile is drawn.>>
edit: I have not encountered a “Backtrack” event myself, this is the closest I have gotten – but I do not think this would trigger a Backtrack as written since no placement could be made to work on the next tile. I am no game designer, but stepping back, I as a player do not really want to deal with fixing this by expanding the application of the “if no legal placement, then Backtrack” rule. Moreover, I do not think I would be happy to encounter the current rule that if legal map tile placement cannot be done on a Hero-adjacent tile, the player is stuck facing a Backtrack – I think I would always ignore that rule and house-rule that I can just rejigger past tile placements to try to make the next one legal. There just doesn’t seem to be enough gameplay-relevant strategy involved in map tile placement to justify penalizing players for hitting a dead end; it comes across in my experience as a limitation on the design of the map tiles/rules, not a deep error on my part. Maybe future Quests will feel different.
That’s great! The Ziggurat is supposed to feel like a rich, solo RPG that evokes an epic and unique narrative. I wanted it to feed the nostalgia of playing old school D&D back when I was a teenager.
I wonder if you caught the On Death action. That Bolster(1) on the dead body is supposed to represent the discovery of additional loot when the creature is defeated.
This is totally legal placement and weird and wonderful map placement is 100% encouraged!
However, I’m not sure that I understand what you mean by a soft-lock. You can only draw tiles with the Scout Action and you draw as many tiles as you have unconnected doorways.
(Note, in the tutorial your draw and reveal is always limited to a single tile.)
For example, you would not be able to Scout from the Temple Ruins in this scenario as there are no unconnected doors.
Being unable to place a tile is rare, but happens often enough to require a ruling.
In practical terms this may happen if you are at a location where all unconnected doors are secret doors. In this instance you may be unlucky enough to draw a new map tile that has no secret doors and so cannot be connected.
In this instance you would place the map tile, in any orientation, at the nearest legal unconnected doorway. And then roll a Backtrack event – the theme being you tarried too long looking for the secret door.
Memory spheres are related to specific thematic elements; wandering through the jungle and fighting its denizens will tend to generate similar spheres; fauna and flora.
Each quest will lean into different factions, and biomes which may sway the balance of the spheres available. This is somewhat mitigated by a greater choice of loot, and the mastery specialisations of heroes and the companions met along the journey.
It’s an important aspect of balance we need to keep an eye on. However, it’s fair to say the Learn To Play quest has little to no balance with regard to the memory spheres it generates; not enough diversity to the encounters and locations.
Gandali can convert any memory to Magus and Volken any memory to Violence.
The crypt faction is full of rot.
In the end all excess spheres can be converted to the mastery cache; a universally useful resource. The mastery cache cubes can be added to ANY mastery track.
During the LTP the map stack is highly constrained, and if I build this map in the order J4,J1,J3,J2 then – unless I am misunderstanding – when I draw the next tile Z3, there will not be any legal placement of that tile anywhere on the map, even if I apply the rule you cited that tries to handle the exception where there is no Hero-adjacent legal placement. Z3 can only be legally placed if I have an unconnected secret doorway or an unconnected yellow doorway somewhere in my map. I have neither.
That is a helpful reminder – might I suggest that the LTP might underscore this with an example? The current examples of converting memory to mastery on an item card all take the “direct” route where the memory matches the logo on the item card.
I did indeed, and interpreted it just as you say. 
There’s only standard or secret doors. Any colour change between biomes is for contrast only.
Doh! I think I had understood at at one point looking at the inset image on RB 23. But it is not suggested to my ear by the rule on RB 22 “Like doorways must connect; for example, only secret doors can connect to secret doors.” This suggests to me that (e.g.) red and yellow doors may not be alike.
