I'm sure there is a really neat game here. The mechanics sound clever and the flow of the hunt sounds really fun, but sadly the layout of the rules is so bad, I gave up before I could find out. As a fellow game designer, making your ruleset understandable to others is oftentimes harder than creating the game itself.

Building a Hunter and pact is by no means straight forward and the rules for doing so are scattered all over the place. For just one example, the weapon sets section makes mention of a difference between "Guild rank abilities" and "two dice bonus". What is this two-dice bonus and why is it nowhere specified in the prior guild section, or here? The author has assumed you know what this means. To find what this means, you have to reference the "playing the game" rules in chapter 2. Assuming your reader has remembered a key rule for building out your group from a prior chapter is bad layout design, and makes for a frustrating experience.

Great fun, an engaging solo/co-op game that gives you alot of freedom for your fun

Like other games by Patrick Todoroff nigthwatch is a wonderful sandbox for players who no longer have the time to devote themselves to longer games, or like me have no regular opponent. The rules are simple and you quickly immerse in the history of your miniatures. I like the freedom to be able to adapt the game to my collection. My advice if you don't like a rule, change it. Your adventure, your rules.

Comme les autres jeux de Patrick Todoroff nigthwatch est un merveilleux bac a sable pour les joueurs n'ayant plus le temps de se consacrer à de longues parties, ou comme moi qui n'ont pas d'adversaires réguliers. Les règles sont simples et on se plonge rapidement dans l'histoire de nos figurines. J'aime la liberté de pouvoir adapter le jeu à ma collection. Mon conseil une règles ne vous plait pas, modifiez là. Votre aventure, vos règles.

Big fan of patricks previous titles, but was honestly a little dissapointed with Nightwatch.

its just too abstract in some areas with a few limitations that dont really fit, a turn limit for example has no place in a coop game with a plot, by all means crank the difficulty up the longer it takes but failing a campaign because of something so forced is not good.

The dice system used is actually pretty good, with player characters having a action pool of 3 with 3 dice (D6,D8 and D10) usable on whichever action they like against a target number of 4 with modifiers. If the action is one the character class is skilled in they roll 2 of the die and take the highest result.

Equipment is sadly very basic, even more so than similar games (Rangers of Shadow Deep, 5 leagues from the Borderlands) and aside from ranged weapons granting a ranged attack, typically provide a once per turn ability that are a mixed bag. Polearms for example allow you to attack from further away, but only once per turn despite having 3 attacks. A personal peeve carried over from Zona Alfa is present here too in which grenades can be thrown further than firearms.

The enemies are the biggest disappointment. In a game centred around hunting monsters, there are no monsters, or at least beyond whichever miniatures you choose to use. There are 3 levels of lesser enemies with the only major thing differentiating them being the die they roll. Every mission sees the group fending off waves of minions while completing basic objectives until they reach the final mission which is to hunt the big bad, which again has no unique stated adversary but the same stat as one of the human player characters with a few abilities to jazz them up a bit.

While I dont doubt fun can be had with Nightwatch and it is a game thats quick to play, it feels like there's a lot missing. There's no tracking mechanics, no equipment to exploit vulnerabilities (silver bullets, holywater etc) and while I understand the enemies are intentionally simple to aid the agnostic nature of the game, it leaves very little depth which is only exacerbated by the non random spawn tables.

I should mention that throughout the book does mention houseruling things as you like.