Played a little VAMP after tea. Two initial thoughts.

The QUEEN twist (the Thrall takes no actions this turn) is *punishing*. My third fight was a room 7 with 2 Hewn and 3 Cutthroats and was absolutely panelled because they did be 4 of my 6 health in the first turn and blocked my movement so next turn, even with 1 block, they did for me. It's a little swings and roundabouts - thanks to the first fight of that run being 5 prisoners and a "heal 1 health when you kill something" I cam out of the run with 5 blood. But that round of "you can't act", with the confined spaces of a 4x4 grid, felt like it would have done for me even if I'd had a lot more health. Maybe "you can't do Harm" or "you roll 1 Die fewer" would feel less painful?

Secondly, comparing it to RUNE and REAP it feels like there are fewer choices to make in combat. I know that'll change once I win a miniboss fight and get a weapon, but the lack of decision as to loadout was noticable. The thing I noticed most mind was the lack of a gear item. Having a perk like "you move if you roll no move" or a little bonus that triggers when you roll doubles, for example, means the round of combat often feel a little different wheras they were quite same-y so far.

HOWEVER, I very much enjoyed the hour or so I spent with the game so far. The spending of Blood in the coffin was interesting, although I'd need to do a few more runs before I can get to grips with it. The conceit of a vampire fighting through dungeons was cool. The combo of random room, random monster, random twist made each encounter fresh (even if it did occasionally mean I started with a cutthroat stood on my head).

Yes - but work has gotten in the way a little. I've got 78% of the text written, and am working slowly with an artist in between other projects.

Don't think I didn't consider it, but it'd mean ditching our "UK TV supernatural procedural" vibe. it's defo on my list of games to try *after* MotW now though.

Enjoyed reading through this a lot - I think it's a solid implementation of the FitD rules with some nice additional elements. Really rate the bit where advancement requires you to frame a scene in particular. Setting info is interesting while leaving plenty of space, and I'm really wishing I'd read it before I started running my Monster of the Week campaign. 

Thank you! That makes sense cheers.

Query - Page 36 says of scrolls "They can only contain Phrases, not Sigils or Ceremonies." but page 37 gives costs and description for scribing sigils and ceremonies. 

Ah cheers :) That makes me feel a lot better

Cool! Cheers that's in line with some of the discussion I've already had. Will give it some more playtesting with the lower move.

I have no idea if this is a useful place to put this kind of thing, but looking for some feedback. I've been noodling round a "bow" theme. This is a draft. I suspect the BLOCK on the 1-handed Stance is extraneous, the flavour text is a bit bland, and I'm not sure there's enough room on a standard card to list the Focus effects, but apart from that....

Obviously the intent is you run around with the bow in your off-hand generating focus while doing something else with your other weapon, then switch to two-handed mode to unleash a barrage of arrows, then switch back to dodging about and staying at range until you have enough focus to fire again, but you could also just stay in two-handed mode if you have other ways of keeping your opponents at range.

HOLLOW!

Flavour wise this was excellent, and the (relative) lack of fights, with all but one being single-opponent, was a breath of fresh air. One of the things we really appreciated was the LEARN actions providing hints about where to go - the Church leading to the Observatory and the Observatory leading to the Crater in particular.

Church of Stars (point 4)

The Protovoid Fight was a bit frustrating; the Blink power was punishing for the combo I was using (Drake Talon and Engulfing Flame spell have 1 move between them) but knowing that you could escape or just die and come back with a different weapon set mitigated that a little... or they would have if I hadn't been very worried about wasting actions given the limited Realm Clock. In the end I only won the fight by using the Draco rune when the thing teleported from A4 to D1 and I'd had enough of slowly walking towards it.

Observatory (Point 5)

Likewise the fight in the Observatory was fascinating, but luring the Azure Comet fellow round the permanent terrain until I was ready to rush in and beat it to death lead to a certain amount of lurking in a corner while it healed itself. I don't know if it's intentional, but Azure, First Sign has a major weakness; once you are adjacent to it, it can't hurt you. As long as you generate at least 1 Move each turn you can *stay* adjacent to it thus preventing it attacking (as it only attacks at range 2 and 3, and only has Move 1).

Comet Strike Spell

The Comet Strike spell appears to have a typo - the dice ranges for it's powers are 3-5 and 5.

Anfel

The limited clock added real tension. We we picked up the Void Blessing we had some serious decisions about whether to duck back  to get the boon or push on and explore points 6 and 7. Unfortunately the tension was a bit undone when we discovered that if Anfel beats you, you have another six segment clock. But Anfel didn't beat us so that was fine.

The Anfel fight unfortunately just didn't seem to work. There's a few things about it. Just to be clear before I start, it was conceptually fun and captured a real spirit of a Final Fantasy boss battle complete with choral music and lots of expensive SFX

1. We couldn't see an indication about when Anfel changes phase. We assumed it was when we defeated him in Phase 1.
2. In Phase 1, Anfel's only Move is on the action that causes him to do harm at Adjacent range. His other direct Harm action only works are Range 2 and he has no Move to go with it. So he moves to Adjacent range on a 1-2... and then can't do damage with his 3-4 unless the Engraved is retreating. 
3. Because the two Phase 1 basic attacking actions are at different ranges, it's hard to see what the intention is with Prophecy. If you rolled 1-2 and 3-4, then presumably Anfel the only way he can complete both actions is if he is already at range - attack at Range 2, then move to Adjacent range. If he's already Adjacent, he can;t use his second attack action.
4. Comet works fine and was fun the one time it went off.
5. In Phase 2, Anfel has no movement. Consequently we just stayed adjacent and beat him to death, blocking occasionally when he did Meteor or his (cool) Range: ALL attack. His basic attack action at Range:2 won't work on adjacent or same targets.
6. Corruption creates hazards that trigger if the Engraved moves into them - and this would be really exciting if not for the Anfel's lack of movement. Because the enemy just stayed where he was, we didn't need to move, so even when he creates hazards in the space the Engraved is stood in, it doesn't do anything.
7. The shape of the fight seemed cool, but it didn't seem to work in practice which was a real shame.

Summary

The realm was great, bursting with falvour that really put me in mind of the old 4e D&D evil stars (one of my favourite bits of 4e), with a nice cosmic horror-without-tentacles feel, but i felt the Rune Lord fight let it down a little.

Under normal circumstances you can do any or all of the actions at a point while you're there.

If there's a Fight, you generally have to complete that (or have it marked from an earlier visit) to do any other action. 

Page 11 of the rules covers actions. Often (but not always) taking an action at a point will cause the Realm Clock to tick - which usually means something bad is getting more imminent.

Incredibly useful piece of work.

DRACO LANDS

Just finished the realm in four moves (1 -> 2 -> 8 -> 9 -> 10) and while it was cool to catch the Rune Lord with their pants down (metaphorically) it seemed a bit easy to do, given the clock only advances for movement or death. I didn't die once, which is a first. To be fair, I have a few realms under my belt now, but even with my standard loadout of great-axe and shield I think we could have taken the Realm Knight in Dragon Knight form, without exploring half the realm. 

Maybe the fight should offer a different reward for beating them before they complete the first stage of their transformation?

The only other fight we had was against DRAKE and that was a lot of fun - the cadence of having two stances was a nice change. My only query there is whether the Drake's Talon card should have the "sword" quality on it?

Moved this across from Realm Questions as it is more feedback than questions.

FROSTDALE! 

I've got a bucket of feedback. Before I start, I enjoyed it - the theme was cool, and it was my first "one way clock". There were what seemed to be a bunch of errors however. This is what I can remember from the Stream

POINT 4 (ABANDONED ALTAR) - there's no details of the fight for the DELVE beyond the enemy card.

POINT 6 (ECLIPSE WOODS) - Ran into several issues here.

• The terrain in the Required fight seems to make no sense - permanent terrain basically blocks you and the enemies in. We removed some (the permanent terrain at B3 and C4), just so that everyone could move about. The Scout at A3 can;t move, and nor can the engraved! Even with that we ended up in a weird situation where the only place for the scout to move and attack was their own trap. 
• The status of the required fight is unclear -Is the intention that you have to fight it as soon as you enter the point, or only if you want to access the other actions?
• It's not entirely clear if the Fight is meant to get reset when you die/Rest? Given its only purpose seems to be to set up the second Fight, it felt odd that you could theoretically do it multiple times by resting/dying - and that if it's not "optional" (in that you can move on rather than face it) you have to do it every time you come through point 6, even if the camp has already been raided.
• I'm not sure how intentional it was, but the cramped environment in the Camp fight meant I was immediately trapped in the bottom corner by the soldiers blockading B4. This might be operating as intending, mind. I managed to take them out thanks to a combo of Bottled Blizzard and Great Axe combo but it was very close.
• Finally (and this is a taste point rather than a "bug"), the Callers are very odd enemies. The fact they don't have an ADJACENT action meant they couldn't inflict Harm particularly, but they are annoying to kill. The one in the first fight worked... okay? But given how cramped that fight was it was an easy matter to run up to the caller and the scouts and just prevent them doing any damage because their minimum range is 2. In the second fight, it was also notable that the blizzard ability penalised the soldiers as well as the engraved - making the caller a liability to their own side

POINT 7 (STORM GIANT) - This was a cool fight, very different to the previous two Realm Lords. It had the feel of a boss fight which was very cool. Some other things that came up however were:

• On a 6, the Storm Giant does Freeze and Smash, but there's no indication of which columns it smashes. We just assumed it was a mispring and ignored the smash which might not have been intended. 
• I wasn't entirely certain on the timing of the powers so went back to the rulebook. My assumption is that SMASH and THUNDER are "harm causing actions" meaning they take place during the Harm phase of combat, and that FREEZE is meant to take place before the Engraved moves. It might be worth making this more expicit.
• Finally, I got hit by FREEZE twice in row 2 while stood in front of the Storm Giant and it wasn;t clear what to do - given the Storm Giant is permanent terrain. I think in retrospect that the wording "moved one row closer to the Storm Lord, if possible" implies I should have stayed where I was (as the Storm Giant spaces are permanent terrain) but the engraved can't stand on Permanent Terrain so... is there an optimal response? Given the fight is all about positioning it felt odd to just stand on the permanent terrain and keep whaling on the storm giant.

CARDS:The card for Sun's Wrath appears to have a typo in that there is a "3 - Move 1, Harm 1" entry and a "3-4 Move 3, Harm 1" entry. 

Also - purely another taste point rather than bug - the Storm Rune seems very potent. I've not got a huge number of runes to compare it to but 5 damage once a fight to everyone on difficult terrain feels super potent.

Regardless of the bugs, I had a lot of fun with the realm. The most fun fight was probably the Rime Knight on the drawbridge which presented a meaty tactical puzzle and again ended in a fun "both of us go over the side of the bridge but I get the item" climax.

Fell Woods - how do the Mystic Boon and the Reinforced Wall interact? We had a mild argument about whether preventing the first reinforcement wave prevented the healing.

Also the timing on the Mystic Boon was a bit unclear - does it happen when the first reinforcement wave arrives, or when you first set up Gorrax and his Lads?

(The realm was really fun - lots of little touches worked very well for some fine emergent story. It's my favourite realm so far)

Brilliant solo game. Plenty of atmosphere, straightforward mechanics, with plenty of applications, and loads of potential. Five stars, would Kickstart again.

Excellent. Beautifully arted. And some grand dialogue too.