So some of my early playtest feedback is that melee feels less good than range which...yeah, tactics games are sure like that, huh! I'm fixing to handle this in a few ways right now.
The obvious moves first:
Lower the utility of Far range attacks. (This is even more pronounced because 3/6 of my players have abilities that hit to Far - basically almost all of the ones in the book. It's a good stress test at least!) Far range support is probably fine.
Add movement to a lot of powers. I'd done this with some of the later classes I designed (self-buff powers, for example, are usually move + buff) but the older ones could stand to have that energy too.
Ok. This is the part where I talk more firmly about the scenario. (See the map above.)
The goal of this scenario, as repeated from above, is the same goals as Level 0 in general:
Establish some "starting points" for characters, and give some playstyle options.
Figure out, through play, what kind of people your characters were and are. (The Background mechanic is the obvious version of this, but even more subtle decisions inform a character.)
Make sure the party is a persona non grata in some way.
Get the party a spaceship. That's a major part of the game going forward.
I had more to do here than just present a fun adventure. I was tasked to present a jumping-off point for the rest of a campaign! And I think it worked.
I'm in a posting mood because I'm putting off finishing writing a press release/kit so I figured I'd ruminate a little bit about how I put the Liminal Void Quickstart rules and scenario, Escape from CICP-1, together. Mild spoilers for the scenario under the fold if you care about that sort of thing, but most of the big scenario stuff is going to be in a follow-up post, but also it's just long and this seems polite.
As you can note by the big ol' index above, I played a lot of RUNE last month! As someone who has both made a few Realms and played a ton, here are my opinions (not rules or anything! Just my observations) on what helps make a good realm.
I realized I barely described what the rest of the system is in favor of being a Probability Weirdo. Let's do that. I also didn't describe, or even mention any of the three games I'm outlining while I'm writing it somehow. Let's do that too.
The Subsystems
What's a core system for the system? Like what parts do you need? You need the core mechanic, which can in turn be expressed through any of the subsystems listed. Basically aside from how to roll, the concept of escalation, and some concepts around level/tier advancement, there isn't any one system that's "core". My big intentions for this system/toolbox/SRD/whatever are modularity and configurability, which I'm defining as:
So this is my first public post/design blog/etc about a system I'm developing as a SRD/toolkit, Total//Effect. It includes a bunch of probability stuff at the end if you're into that, but I do sum up the important bits if you're not.
I'll start with my initial forays into the humble 3d6 (and the originator of some of these mechanics), 36th Way and LUMEN.
3d6 and 36th Way/LUMEN
Total//Effect's resolution is a kind of combination of two different resolution systems I've used in the past: 36th Way and LUMEN.
