A peek into the project
Jul. 5th, 2025 09:55 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)
The game I’ve been grinding at currently has the working title “A Blade Uncertain” which, I guess fits because I haven’t settled on the title, aiyah. Anyway, this is a fantasy RPG designed to fill much of the niche that my friend’s highly modded 5E game does, without being married TO what D&D does; or rather, to be the kind of system that hits what she’s been trying to get from D&D, in spite OF D&D.
So anyway, a peek into character creation.
Stats & Background
We have 4 attributes; Physique, Deftness, Insight, Acumen. They each start at 7, we roll 4d6 and assign a die to add to each one.
I get 2, 2, 5, 5. I’m going with Physique 12, Deftness 9, Insight 9, Acumen 12.
For your Background you can choose or roll for one of the 4 options (Sword & Strife, Sigil & Sorcery, Wits & Wiles, Pacts & Promises).
I roll Sword & Strife:
Your life began in a place with common conflict and the potential of violence. Perhaps that was a military camp or garrison town, maybe it was rough life in the back alleys or a noble court where duels and assassinations were known to happen.
Choose one:
– I became ready to take on danger head on. (+3 HP)
– I learned cunning to never fight fair. (+3 Focus)
– I learned how to never be a target to begin with. (+1 Deftness)
So normally we’d have a basic setting outline to work with and I’d fit this within it. Since I’m just coming up with a character for the sake of it, I’ll say maybe my character was born in a fortress town full of mercenary families; lots of simmering blood feuds kept under control by a ruthless lord. I’ll pick “learned to never be a target to begin with” simply because it sounds interesting to have someone who might have a lot of past connections/rivalries mostly dealt with by avoidance.
Skills
This game runs on the “either you have training in this or you don’t” and doesn’t get into the granularity of how much training you have. Checks are either Easy, Normal or Hard and having a Skill improves it 1 step.
Since I’m thinking of this character having grown up in an area with lots of fraught rivalries and avoiding them, I’m going to go with Blending In, Making a Show of Things, and Healing & Herbalism as my 3 starter skills
Bonus Abilities
Since I rolled low on 2 stats, I get 2 Bonus Abilities. By averages, most players will have 1 stat that qualifies at least.
Since I’m leaning towards an armored type, I’ll pick:
Heroics
If you are adjacent to an ally who is at 5 or less HP, spend 1 Focus, you can take a hit intended for them. You can do this as many times as long as you can pay the Focus and aren’t knocked out from injuries. Gain 10 XP every time you do this.
I guess it also makes sense if I’m going to eat hits, I might want help recovering from that:
Plucky
When you do a 10 minute rest, you are recovered to ½ HP +3d6. If your HP is already higher than that, you regain nothing.
Classes
In this game, you pick 2 classes. Each class gives you some HP & MP, and a set of abilities. Right now I’ve got 12 classes, and they feel good, but I’m also not locked in on the names yet either.
Since I’ve already decided on a “tank” type, I’m taking Vanguard as my first class. The important part is that among the abilities I get these two:
- Worn armor counts as 1 stronger for you and adjacent allies behind you
- Once per round, swap positions with an adjacent ally, including outside of your turn.
Now… just for the sake of fun, I’m also thinking about playing against type a little, so I’ll take Skirmisher as a second class. Among the abilities I get 3 things:
- If you move at least 4 squares, you have +2 Armor until your next turn.
- Once per round, you can pre-emptively attack an opponent before they attack you outside of the normal turn order.
- If you have 5 or more unoccupied squares adjacent to you when you attack, do +2 damage.
So I’m thinking the tactical options here are: move away from allies to get the armor bonus and make an attack with bonus damage for unoccupied squares, then retreat back TO the allies, pre-emptively strike when the enemies come close AND with the armor bonus, soak up other hits for allies. The Skirmisher also gets a little bonus for ranged weapons so there’s flexibility there too.
Broad Thoughts
One of my goals in this whole thing is to make a game where you can get solid tactical design with also a minimal build mastery required. Your biggest choice is what 2 classes you want, and secondarily if you rolled any Bonus Abilities. Sure, some things will synergize better, but I want to minimize both “plan everything out to make your build” and “god this character is unplayable” balance issues.
Anyway, I need to get some friends together to playtest a bit since the game DOES require some math balancing and that will determine a lot more from there. The one really encouraging bit was in showing the character options to said GM friend, she was very excited and had several character ideas sparked from the choices available. Aside form a “sneak peak” to you, the general public, it’ll be a good post I can point my players to AFTER they’ve made characters to maybe ask what thoughts went through their heads and help me figure out guidelines and wording the final product down the line.
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Copy Heavy Games
Jul. 4th, 2025 06:53 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)
Let’s say we’re playing a game, and when you make your character, you pick one of 8 archetypes and that’s the majority of the mechanical choice you make; everything else is like “name, appearance” etc. So the choice part is not deep and complicated, you don’t have to think very hard about multiple systems interacting, or point balance, or anything.
But then, you have to get the archetype mechanics into a playable reference. Maybe you have a printer and you can just print it; great. Maybe you don’t. So then what? Do you hand copy a page of text, or several sentences and sub rules about how abilities work? Do you screenshot the page and track changing parts seperately? Use some program to put editable boxes over parts?
This is what I call a “copy heavy” game; the players or the group are expected to copy large amounts of information over into a more useable format. For in person play, things like PbtA playbooks or pre-printed spell cards for reference have become a regular thing. And this is also probably the number one reason VTTs that have character builders or easy “drag and drop” interfaces for spells or powers are popular; the copy process is simplified.
I think at this point in the hobby, if your game has a “copy heavy” aspect, you should be thinking about designing tools, printable, or online, that can ease that hurdle.
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Hair And Makeup
Jul. 2nd, 2025 10:02 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)
that's just, like, your opinion, man
Game Hype: His Majesty the Worm Bundle
Jun. 25th, 2025 06:50 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)
His Majesty the Worm has been on my to play list for a minute and is right behind Errant for dungeoncrawlers to play.
It has a few key features that really seem interesting; combat with interesting initiative/offense/defense strategies, a bit of bluffing, a resource system where you heal/regain resources by playing up your character’s relationships to other characters in the party: mentor/student, rivals, friends, etc.
They’ve also made a playing cards io custom file so you can play online!