Hi all. It has been more than a week. Some personal things happened a couple weeks ago that took my focus away from the game. I don't mind talking about it, but don't want to put it on the internet. But, I'm back, so...
Weekly(?) Updates:
I've made new backgrounds and figures for my rulebook. As a preview:
I'm hoping that this looks stylistic, rather than cheap.
I currently have 12 abilities that I feel are balanced, two still undergoing testing, and seven written that I need to start testing. I've started testing multi-ability parties (previously, everyone would have the same ability); this is handy, because I can now test support characters.
I still need to do the following:
-More abilities
-Test characters with multiple abilities
-Test the campaign mode
-Write flavor text for the book
-Edit the book for clarity, formatting, etc.
I'm nervous about making my May 31st deadline. I can do the first three by making a campaign mode and testing it. This will involve giving characters multiple abilities and playing with lots of different abilities. I did this a previous ruleset (one I've replaced with a better one), and it worked well.
On that note, today I thought I'd talk about my campaign mode.
The campaign mode's story is that each player controls a group of mercenary-prospectors, who search Illeria for materials used to create magic back home (e.g. fool's copper, phlogiston, energized scoria, etc). They are under a strict contract, and cannot return until they have gathered enough materials. Battles involve fighting other mercenary-prospector groups for materials. I'll put notes in that players are free to make up more story-based campaign modes too.
I'm planning on starting with the campaign mode I used for the previous ruleset. Each party begins with something like 15 characters. Most battles have like four to six characters, so only a subset of the party will fight in each battle. Before each game, players randomly determine the spoils of battle; these can be magic materials, or things that make the party stronger. Then, the battle happens. If a character's real-world doppleganger is incapacitated, then after the game you roll on a table to determine their injury. Parties then gain a certain amount of materials from scavenging. Then, surviving characters level up. Finally, there are phantom attacks. A party "wins" the campaign if they can gather enough materials to fulfill their contract, and they lose if too many members die off first (thus there can be multiple winners). My goal is that most parties don't win, so it is an accomplishment they do.
My goal is for the injury table to be fairly deadly. Previously, character's had a 33% chance of fully recovering, a 33% chance of dying, and a 33% chance of being weakened (which made them more likely to die in later battles). For comparison, in Necromunda (and most GW games), characters had about a 33% chance of recovering fully, a 16% chance of being better off, a 16% chance of dying, a 33% chance of being weakened. In Frostrgave, soldiers had a 50% chance of dying and 50% chance of full recovery, and wizards had a 60% chance of full recovery, a 10% chance of dying, a 20% chance of being temporarily weakened, and a 10% chance of being permanently weakened. It always bothered me how likely characters were to survive in these games, it made battles feel consequence-free. Like, in Game of Thrones, if a character fell in battle, they almost always died; if 85% of the time they survived to fight another day, the show would have lost something. The effect that this has, however, is that you expect your party to dwindle over time (making it different from Frostgrave or Necromunda).
I had a neat leveling system. Parties gain "training dice" from every battle just for fighting, and can gain more as spoils or from scavenging. You assign those dice to your characters after the fight. You then roll the training dice for each character, and if any dice is higher than their current level, they gain one level. This ends up being less bookkeeping than most other games (e.g. in Necromunda or Frostgrave, you need to keep track of every kill, every spell cast, etc). It also allows you some control over how your party levels, but also introduces some randomness. However, it requires that characters can obtain up to 6 levels, and I don't know if this will change.
I'm not sure if I want to keep the phantom attacks element. Previously, the story went that there were phantoms that roamed Illeria, which could be warded off using powdered crystals. Each party started the campaign with a certain number of crystals, and could find more. After each battle, they spent crystals to ward off the phantoms. If they didn't spend enough, then some characters might be attacked (and could be injured or die). This was meant to give characters a reason to fight, as I feared that otherwise players would retreat too fast: a player that retreated before anyone died would have no consequences for losing a battle. With phantom attacks, a character that retreated too many times would start losing characters post-battle, so they'd need to balance in-game vs. post-game losses. I liked the system, but I'm not sure if it fits the theme. I'm debating replacing it with something to represent water and other resources (which will be scarce, now that I've made Illeria a desert).
So, to testing! Hopefully there won't be too many diversions this time.
