Daniel Barker, long time fan and convention Games Master, took the current Play Test Draft of Monkey 2nd Incarnation out for a run at London’s HateCon One on Saturday.  Sounds like he had a good time 🙂

OK, I ran it twice. Both went well. I liked the new mooks/goon mechanic. It meant players often got overwhelmed by mooks. in the first play through soldiers over ran Pigsy and tried to steal him off. In the second game Pigsy (again) got caught by bandits and was barbecued with honey but the “lovely ladies” saved him.

Play is much smoother, though people tended to stack a lot (trying to find ways to use every single ability at once). Monkey in both play throughs wanted to use his staff AND cloud all at once while using Kung Fu mischievously.[Newt: This is an area that needs tightening up in the current draft].

Some players didn’t get that being in “combat”  didn’t mean that they needed combat skills.[Newt: The final draft will give more examples of this] That said Tripitaka being 2 strikes down against a lustful demon only to deny the world of maya as she tried to strip him of his skin was pretty awesome. The second Triptaka was the epitome of party poopers, constantly giving sermons on right thought/action, and often bored parties of goons into submission
everyone seemed to enjoy, and one player, Lloyd was eager to see what the new rules were like. He liked the changes muchly, and told me tell you to pull your finger out 😉

All said and done, I’d run this version in a heart beat.