My silence has been caused by three things.
i) Work has been keeping me busy
ii) I've been revamping various rules (often in light of feedback on this blog)
iii) I've been working to get the rules into a publishable state (which will assist playtesting)
Regarding the first, work sucks. Here's hoping I can one day quit my job and write games instead.
Regarding the second, here's an overview of the changes I've been making.
- Skills can now be trained. Although this increases the time needed to create an NPC (adding ~six words to the description), the system is now much more flexible, allowing specific skills to be better than usual. It still isn't absolutely flexible - you can't make a character with no martial talent who is a dab hand at parrying. But you can make characters whose training makes up for their lack of talent, or make characters whose training allows them to take full advantage of their talent.
- Rolls are now 3d6 instead of 1d20.
- Spells no longer fail. It is possible for them to be so weak as to be essentially useless, but your spell won't just fizzle. Spells are still managed via Aspects, and Aspects are still generally added one per round, however there are two mechanisms that can be used to speed up casting. One is "Hasty casting". This reduces the power of the aspect in exchange for being able to cast more than one aspect in a round. The other is "Manifold casting". This allows you to "save" Aspects, allowing for the fast repetition of a spell. So you can cast a spell in one round, and you can cast a spell more slowly, but once it's complete repeat it every round. Or both if you're a very skilled mage and the spell isn't too demanding.
- Interactions have been slightly simplified, and the rules surrounding Motivations clarified. Altruism has been added as a Motivation.
- Combat has been simplified and rebalanced slightly. Rules for monks are now in. Rules for manoeuvres (jumping behind tables) and formations (fighting back to back) are now in.
- Skills have been slightly condensed.
- Benchmarks have been added for skills, talents and attributes. This has enabled proper adjudication of starting stats and helped to consolidate the system.
- Spells have undergone first proper draft for 5 of the 10 magic areas. Current favourites: "Lichedom" which allows you to turn your character into a liche and "Frozen Scabbard" which prevents weapons being drawn unless the targets pass a Heave check.
- Damage resistance has been simplified. Initially, this was very complex, since it was hard to treat "Suffocation" in the same way as "Immolation". With a few liberties, the damage system now works rather well. There are still 11 types of damage, which is a pain in some ways. But I couldn't quite bring myself to remove any. Fortunately, at any given time, you will only tend to be dealing with a few damage types.
Regarding the third, I've done a lot of formatting work, and added a bunch of pictures snaffled from the interwebs. The artwork is all provisional, all uncredited, almost certainly in breach of copywrite were it to be distributed. Nevertheless, it's really helped me get a sense of what the rulebook could (will) look like. The artwork will be removed (or replaced if I can find a friendly artist) prior to any significant distribution. As it stands, it's likely the rules will consist of 5 booklets, each of about 20 pages. Four of these booklets will cover Basic Rules; Characters; Magic; Bestiary. The final booklet will have various tables consolidated into reference sheets as well as blank character sheets and similar useful things.
Here's some screenshots so you can see how it's coming along:
2 comments:
Very interesting. I've been working with a modified version of the (3d6) Tunnels & Trolls rules for decades.
T&T uses (AYMWK) 6 attributes, no skills, and a 2d6 saving roll (with chances of complete failure or extraordinary success regardless of character or save level).
I've been considering a loose skill system where successful saves towards "feats" that would indicate a particular skill would add points to that skill (in addition to general bonuses gained by levelling due to making all types of saves), and a skill-specific bonus would be gained by reaching successive amounts of points, i.e., a character that makes 30 saves towards freeclimbing would gain a skill point in freeclimbing. Skill points could be added to saving rolls for that skill activity, increasing the chance of making the save. But meanwhile, all STR and DEX based actions (might) benefit because the character would eventually level while making all these rolls, and add a level bonus to STR or DEX.
One thing that is really wacky about T&T is that attributes are completely open-ended. I've played in a game where our party met 10000 year old samurai warriors that had such high attributes that it was suicide to even think about thinking about fighting them (but one guy tried it). I have a wizard who due to unusual circumstances has INT and LUK scores in the triple digits. But a simple anyone-can-do-it save is hitting 5 on 2d6!
Another problem is that the melee system is so simple that you often either have no chance of winning, or after one successful combat round, your opponent has no chance.
Depending on how you interpret it, T&T's simplicity can be either annoying/unrealistic, or extremely good for real roleplaying.
Good luck with E8! I'll be watching.. (makes Observe save :)
P.S. I use quite a bit of stuff from Chivalry & Sorcery too.. I actually own a rare first edition copy, although it is quite dogeared..
Post a Comment