Quote Originally Posted by Evoker View Post
One, probably resolvable, thing that might be a problem: you propose that a fighter could use almost all of their inventory for passive damage reduction. But what if they go further? There's nothing preventing them from soaking the -lots penalty for carrying... ten? twenty? thirty?? protective items and being totally immune to weapon damage, even weapon damage from a piercing weapon, necessitating completely armor-ignoring attacks to deal with them, especially if you make specialized armor for taking less damage from fire/electricity a thing. Sure, this hypothetical ball of steel plating wouldn't be able to do anything but survive, but maybe that's all they need to or want to do. And a giant ball of steel plating really doesn't seem to be what you're going for with this system, so you probably don't want to enable that.

It also turns any "you can carry more items" boost into a de-facto "you take less damage" boost, unless you ear-mark some slots as being unable to contain more armor pieces, or set an absolute limit on armor pieces.
True. Let's take a look at this. Difficulty penalties stack up fast, so if you are wearing 6 items over your limit, you can't succeed on a success roll ever. This means no blocking, no attacking, no jumping, etc. This means you effectively put yourself in an iron coffin. Sure, nobody can hurt you, but you can't do anything meaningful either (other than walking at one metre per action).

What can we do about this?
  • We could make only the original slots be able to hold armor. This would be easy, but it would be a special rule that only would apply to armor, so it adds very much complexity to a very narrow field. I think this should be easier or broader.
  • We could limit the reduction a character can reach to disincentivise this behaviour as it has no use at a certain point. I have no idea how to make this without making the armor system wonky or introducing a "Target armor class" that will be expected of you to meet, which is counteracting the minigame of optimising your equipment.
  • We could make it really uncomfortable to play with encumbrance: You need to make a success roll for everything once you are over the limit, and you land prone every time you fail a roll. This would mean, encumbrance 6 would leave you helpless on your back as soon as you do anything other than standing still, with no way to get up and no way to stop people stripping your armor off piece by piece. Or just leaving you to starve. This would work for everything related to inventory, but is a more complex rule. On the plus side we get the "I stand up and immediately topple over because I packed wrong." trope.
  • We could just let it fly as an amazingly one-sided way to equip yourself and be embarrassed as soon as you encounter a ladder, uneven floor or a narrow pit.
  • If we add ways to mitigate Difficulty and make this viable, we could identify this as a first order optimal strategy and need to implement viable counterstrategies (Did you know a skilled blow with a quarterstaff can crack heads INSIDE helmets?). This would be the game development optimum as we don't prohibit a playstyle, but make it not an unbeatable one. This way, the game master can implement a villain using this tactic, and players feeling mighty or clever for defeating them ("The armor on this megagoat seems to be impervious, and the beast slowly but sure-footedly stomps on to ruin the kings wedding. What do you do?")


From a challenge perspective, I like the last point the best. I am afraid of pitfalls, though, and we should definitely think about this to find a fun way to do it. So why not define encumbrance like this:

Spoiler: Inventory and encumbrance
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Every item you wear on your body beyond your inventory maximum (default 6) as well as every item with the heavy property you carry beyond the first makes you encumbered and suffer 1 Difficulty on all success rolls. When you are encumbered, when you fail a success roll, you always suffer the Knockdown condition in addition to all other effects a failure might encline, and you need to make a success roll when you try to move at least one metre or stand up.

Then, we can give every class some different talents to influence the inventory game. The heavy melee types may carry an additional heavy item with the right talent. Skirmisher types get another inventory slot. Utility types may access their bags without actions, gaining them effectively three main slots that can't be used for armor (because armor doesn't help when you have it in your back). And some scrappy brave hero types just get a way to Surge through the difficulty a limited number of rounds. Or something.

And now to something new:

Spoiler: Make the party a party
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I have gm'ed and played in some very fun games where all the fighter types were a bundle of hit points and a strength score and all wizards where a fountain of magic points, where we went dungeoncrawling and killed some dragons for their hides and goblins because they were there. This can be fun once in a while, but we don't need to build for this type of game. These just happen when the dungeoncrawling rules work out.
I played in parties where the players became friends or friendly rivals and bested dangers to not only save the world but also each other. Those were very fun and I remember them fondly.
I also played at tables where there was a rich story going on and everyone had just these nicely done characters with quirks and voices but I had the feeling that the characters didn't like each other that much. The players did like each other, mostly. The characters were at least two-dimensional. But apart from the social contract of the game, they had no reason to travel together. Sure, the fate of the world was at stake, or the blacksmiths brother had gone missing. But this was more of a strength in numbers kind of party. And that felt like missing a step, because every player and the GM worked hard at building the foundation to something that wouldn't come together. Of all unfinished campaign in my life, the majority were that type of games, because everybody invested and didn't get the full returns, so people got tired and tried something else. And those things mostly don't happen in my campaigns anymore because I do some things to force the party to become intertwined. And I would like to build some of the things into the mechanics of this game to help GMs craft bonds between player characters. In a way that doesn't fell forced or invalidate the classical dungeoncrasher or beer and pretzels tables.

First things first: This willnot be a bond or character trait thing. I mean, we can do that. But people need to decide for themselves how they want to play their characters, and most players will have a pretty neat idea how they want their players to work. The only thing we need is for the characters to interact with each other in a low stakes environment. Of course, you can give depth to your character when telling everybody of your long lost sibling, or how orcs murdered everyone you loved, or that you send half of your earnings home to your parents whenever possible. That's cool, but it's not a job of the game mechanic. We need a way to give characters scenes were they can interact without making it about the fate of the world, but about them being people. A mechanic that handles creature comforts. And we don't want this to be all fluff, because table time is valuable, so if there is a rule for it, make it worth it for optimisers and dungeoncrawlers. Give the players something valuable to do in low stakes situations and shine as a person rather than a fighter or a mage, and we naturally give the players some opportunity to become friends.

We don't need to do this for the action parts of the game. Dungeons and fights gain a nice focus already with round-based time. Also, social encounters in town have their fair share of characters showing who they are. We want a fun downtime gameplay mechanic. With the added bonus to give some sense of time to wilderness travel and staying in town. A thing were characters can make themselves useful. We already talked about cooking to upgrade your healing items in the thoughts about inventory, and I would like to expand on this thought.

We will replace the natural healing at rests that is so rampant in many games with the rest/camp action minigame for wilderness travel. This should lend itself well for staying in town, to:

Making camp
When making camp, the characters will handle most things themselves. Setting up or finding shelter, keeping equipment working, feeding mounts and preparing and eating their rations and catching some sleep are things that work out well unless the game master introduces obstacles or dangers to this. Every rest, characters will cross of one food item from their inventory.
Apart from this, characters have enough time to complete two camp actions per rest. These can include things useful for the party, useful for themselves, or useful for the camp. Some examples include:
  • Gather food | The characters spends a camp action to make a success roll. On a success they find something edible, represented as a raw food item healing one Heart, at the game masters discretion. Talents may improve on this, and specialise the character in fishing, hunting or gathering herbs and roots with better effects. The terrain may make this difficult or impossible for unskilled scavengers.
  • Prepare food | The character may prepare a meal from raw foodstuff. On a success roll, a character may combine the effects of two or more raw food items into one, creating higher quality prepared food items, or may increase one raw food item into one prepared food item healing one additional Heart. On a failure, the food is ruined. Characters who are good at this may do incredible things, like preparing low level food items from nothing or making exquisite meals with additional effects.
  • Entertain | Reciting a story or doodling away on a musical instrument, a character may try to get the camp feeling on. On a successful roll, all other characters gain an additional die for their camp action. A very skilled entertainer can reach additional effects.
  • Tend wounds | A character with some medical training can make a success roll to heal one additional Heart for a wounded character. Skilled physicians may achieve better results or tend to more patients at once.
  • Maintain equipment | A character may use their time to make sure one equipment item works at peak efficiency. On a successful roll, all success rolls with one designated item are made with +1 quality for the next day. Skilled handymen may repair broken equipment or build entirely new contraptions.
  • Early night | A character may spent their camp action to get some extra sleep in to restore one Surge.
  • Gourmet/Glutton | A character may eat another food item. On a successful roll, they gain the Heart from this food item as extra Heart for the next day.
  • Help out | A character aids another character with their camp action, giving them another die for their success roll.
  • Watch and learn | A character tries to learn a camp action talent by watching another character doing it. Here we could implement a non-stressful learning technique.
  • Fortify camp | A character sets up traps and snares around the camp. Should the camp be attacked, they can make a free attack roll against a random attacker before the attack starts.
  • Gambling (per game) | Two characters can bet on a game and make contested success rolls to determine the winner.
  • Prepare spell | A character can fill a spell into a small flask to use it later, or give it to another character as a throwing weapon. This takes up magical resources and needs a successful die roll. On a failure, things could get explosive.
  • ...

And so on. This list should never be final, and GMs should make experimentation an incentive. This doesn't force anybody to interact with each other, so it can be a couple of die rolls at each day of wandering or each rest in a dungeon if you are not interested. But we introduced some skills a character can have apart from swinging swords and throwing fireballs, showing off their 'civilian' life. We also - and this is important - create the opportunity for people to talk in an environment with less tension. Let the guitar player really doodle on a guitar, or play a quiet song on their phone at the table. Let the cook describe their new creation. Let the gamblers decide to cheat, and build a reputation as a scoundrel. Let the doctor cuss at their patients for their repeated recklesness. Plus, we introduced a sense of time to describe travels. And a neat way for the game master to introduce terrain changes. And camp encounters.

Camp encounters
Most people think ambush by raiding parties or predators here. But this gets boring really fast. Plus, this game is not entirely build as a resource management game, so we don't need to wear players out. Do a raid if the characters are being chased and caught up with, or to make a point how dangerous their current location is. But don't overdo it. Instead, make some (not every) rest something to remember. Prepared adventures should give out some ideas what may happen in camp, or at night. Maybe a fairy will sneak into camp and start to dance right next to the musician, or nab some insignificant amounts of food right from the cooks spoon. Maybe their is an aurora that night. Maybe some other wanderers travel the same road and join for some friendly conversation. Let the players handle the scene after you set up the scene from there. And then, sometimes, let a hungry eaglecat prowl around and attack when the fire burns low. Because adventure. But most importantly, let the characters be people for a change (if you want to have a game about a party of characters. If murderhobo suffices, remember, you can just make the rolls whether they find more food or heal more Hearts).

In town
Procuring food in town is less of a problem, most of the time. Make a rest in town about finding rare equipment to buy ("Monkey paws half price? I never noticed that shop over there. I looks quite old. Was it there yesterday?"), spend some quality time over at the tavern or make some friends (e.g. increasing Favour), earn some free food and board with their entertainment skills or make a quick coin. The idea stays the same, but town actions are not as interesting, as there is a reason to stay in town most of the time, and less need to stay together outside of the planned encounters.


And now, this:

Spoiler: Classes and Talents
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We want to have a lot of talents at the ready to support different playstyles and warrant a certain variety in these playstyles. But half a page, two pages or twelve pages of talents will always leave a new player guessing what they should take to play the hero they envision. Classes help a lot with going at a certain build, and every talent will be related to a class. But not all will be exclusive to that class. E.g. a bruiser/fighter/knight will have nice exclusive talents for fighting related stuff, and non-exclusive, recommended lesser talents to really specialise. Other classes may poach from the non-exclusive talents to broaden their repertoire.

As player characters start out with three dice for most rolls to ensure a base level of competence, they will have three dice left to reach the mundane level of 6 dice for a task that still has a chance to fail (albeit a very low one). This means, a class could get you a +2 to your shtick in an exclusive talent, and a +1 in a recommended talent that is free for others. Or a class could get you a global +1 for all things considered your strength exclusively, plus some goodies, and the non-exclusive talents get you either the goody or a narrowed down plus +1. Talents can also do other things for you when not modifying dice pools. But they should work on this power level.

So, to go at the classes, we need to take inventory what players could specialise in, and then go from there to make specialised classes and hybrids.

Things players do from the top of my head
  • Fight monsters
  • Move around
  • Support allies
  • Manage inventories
  • Manage Surges
  • Cast spells
  • Make friends, allies and enemies, collecting Favour

So we have 7 things classes want to be good at. In the initial post we had some class ideas, so lets expand on that:

Spoiler: Fighting | The Bruiser
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We want the bruiser to be able to fight. They need to be able to be a threat in melee, and they need to be able to pick up a weapon and some nice armor to be more of a threat. We want their specialised talents to go into the following:
  • Better fighting without focus on the type of weapon used
  • Being good at parrying stuff
  • Have more Heart than others
  • Being able to have heavy armor and a heavy weapon -> More heavy items allowed
  • A way to catch up to the enemy -> Some movement bonuses

Their non-exclusive talents could be weaker stuff:
  • Better at fighting with some weapons
  • Some parry bonusses
  • Slightly more Heart


Spoiler: Fighting | The Deadeye
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Someone who can rain some hurt down from afar. As fighting from a distance is quite the nice tactical advantage, we don't want to make it too powerful, but a valid option for the specialised class.
  • More dice with ranged weapons
  • Trick shots
  • Some way to eat actions to supercharge shots (eat up actions to counteract too much kiting :))
  • Making specialised ammunition
  • Some options to lay traps and create ambushes

The non-exclusive list could include:
  • Some climbing skills to get up to high places quickly
  • Some dice with certain ranged weapons
  • Some way to come up with fresh ammunition when out


Spoiler: Movement | The Acrobat/Monkey/Cat
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Let's get fancy with the class that is quick. If all they can do is move around, they will only be useful in jumping puzzles. Give them some things that feel like they are quick.
  • A nice movement bonus per round
  • Balance and Dodging bonusses
  • Jumping bonusses
  • Things to do with additional successes while dodging or jumping (Tackling people down, Counterpunches, Getting into a blind spot)
  • Some disorientation tactic to use the speed against large monsters or large groups of monsters, so they can take the initiative instead of only reacting to stuff

The open list is everything characters want when they want to get more mobile
  • Additional dice for dodging, jumping, balance, sneaking, climbing, swimming, the like
  • Some slight movement bonusses


Spoiler: Support | The Brave
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The Link. It is tempting to just slap a Bard in here. We want the character to be somewhat competent at some things and very competent at helping others.
  • A way to remove Conditions from others, maybe while doing cool stuff -> Additional successes can be used for condition removal
  • Designating enemies for focus fire. Leading a charge or finding weak points
  • Stay in the game. A way to keep on trying even when others give up. Maybe a special heal from Surges or a way to keep in the scene with negative Heart
  • Stereotypical heroes need a heros weapon. Be very competent with a bound weapon. A Sword Of Destiny type talent group
  • Give others bonusses by cheering them on

I am struggling with the open list here, as this class seems to have its own shtick. Some things everybody wants to learn without them being a shining beacon of hope.
  • End conditions on yourself
  • Use Surges to retry throws? This is one of the things that bogs the game down but can build up suspense, I don't know wheter this would be a net gain


Spoiler: Inventory | The Polymath
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A crazy mechanic/alchemist/inventor type. They can build some of the more useful items and give them to others, or use them themselves with higher efficiency.
  • Build or repair certain items: Magnetic shields, net throwers, taser rods, grappling hook cannons, helicopter hats, rocket boots, bombs. You name it.
  • Training for whole groups of inventions, making the talent work with "All things electric" or "All things combustible"
  • Being able to weaponise their inventions in resourceful ways
  • Improving mundane equipment with extra bonus action uses
  • Improving bag size or bag action economy

The open list is mostly just "+2 dice to success rolls with rocket boots" or "+1 die to repair stuff". Things that are useful for the characters who use the gadgets, but don't build them. But as this is the Polymath, we also want to build in some science knowledge.
  • Knowing medicine can be a boon if you want to heal someone
  • Anatomical knowledge will help a great deal to damage certain enemies (a favoured enemy mechanic?)
  • Brew your own poisons, and identify them.
  • Knowledge of metallurgy and gem stones helps at appreciating your treasures correctly
  • History, Architecture, ... The unadventurerlike talents can be made more interesting with +1 Favour (respected scholar) or +1 Surge (action professor).


Spoiler: Surges | The Adept
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Someone who has a Jack-of-all-trades vibe on them. They can do incredible things with Surges. They get many Surges.
  • A talent for way more Surges
  • Being able to use more Surges on the same action
  • Being able to do extraordinary stuff with Surges, like keeping under water for long times, or jump up roofs. This would be an interesting group to do.
  • Surge-powered buffs. Maybe a Chi-Strike feature were Surges can supercharge attacks or elemental up for a scene (Fire resistance, poison attacks, and so on)

The open list is our spot to give every character gain more Surges together with some of the talents we want them to take.
  • +1 Surge and +2 dice in... Swimming
  • +1 Surge and +2 dice in... Climbing
  • +1 Surge and +2 dice in... insert thing you need characters to do but would be otherwise too boring for a talent.


Spoiler: Spells | The Enchantress
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A mage character. Talents open up certain spells. The powerful ones are exclusive, as are talents modifying what those spells can also do. The trick to make magic feel "hard to learn" would be to make the dice pools stay small.
  • Spell: Transpositions/Short range teleports
  • Modification: Take someone with you on an additional success
  • Modification: Open a magical shortcut between to points for people to walk through
  • Modification: Long range teleports instead
  • Spell and modifications: Time clones | freeze a copy of you in time and return to that place, that health, that condition status. Gets harder the longer ago it was cast.
  • Spell: Compel someone to move closer/farther away
  • Spell: Glamour | Make something look like something else
  • Modificaton: Make something invisible instead
  • Fill up spells into containers to consume or throw at someone
  • Get more dice for your spells by concentrating more actions for casting.
  • Combine spells into one action for ramping up Difficulty
  • Use additional successes to choose additional targets
  • Concentrate for X actions before casting a spell to receive X bonus dice on the success roll.

The open list is our basic magic. Each talent represents one Condition that can be cast on a target, and sticks on a successful roll. Only mages can use more of these in one spell (with each success allowing another effect).
  • Push with a spell. Additional successes push farther
  • Blind/Hinder X, where X is the success rolls quality.
  • Lightning attack with a spell.
  • Inflict Stun 1 with a spell. Additional successes inflict more Stun.
  • Inflict Knockdown with a spell
  • Set something on fire with a spell
  • Parry by spell
  • Insert condition here and adjust by strength of condition...


Spoiler: Social | The Wayfarer
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This will be a challenging class to make look fun. The Wayfarer can do amazing stuff with Favour, and gain more Favour. But Favour as designed right now is a none-renewable resource. So we need to make the Wayfarer have some other skills as well. Lets make him the class that excels at social stuff, camp actions and managing the backpack part of the inventory, so they can do fun stuff with non-Polymath equipment.
  • Using the backpack just takes one action instead of two.
  • They can use Favour to influence the story in little ways. Make NPCs react better (old friends). Knowing a guy (black market contacts). Getting appointments (unused favours). The like. Could be fun, could be game breaking. This is were this class will shine or fall. There could be even combat boons ("You don't want to kill me specifically, there is a bounty on bringing me in alive..."; "Do you know who my boss is? Save everyone some trouble and just drop the sword!")
  • Throwing a round to say hello. Using money to get a foothold in town easily, trading gold for favor
  • Quartermaster. Using influence to commandeer or scrounge up equipment. Use Favour to buy stuff. Should not end in a cycle with the previous talent group (there should be a net loss for switching Gold to Favour to Gold)
  • Bonusses to judge character and coercion rolls.
  • Knowledge of the widely travelled. Giving nice bonusses to rolls remembering details or information gathering.

The Wayfarer is a travel specialist, but not the only one travelling. Some things that non-specialists will like are found in the open list:
  • Bonus dice to travel related stuff. Navigating the wilderness, riding, captaining vehicles.
  • Packrats can fit more stuff into their backpack when they have the time
  • Being better at camp actions is found here (more on camp actions below)
  • Narrow bonusses to social success rolls.



This is really raw and drafty for now. We will have to write the talents down soon.

On talents for camp actions
As talents will always be a valuable resource for characters, we will need to make sure investing in these will not be a trap. Giving out Surges or Favour could work here, but we will miss an opportunity here. Camp actions can also be a source of a teacher/pupil-relationship. A good cook can teach their talent to someone else with a camp action (remember, these are in the game to forge bonds between characters). This should be dependent on a success roll, but not on a single one, else everybody could do anything everyone else can do after a couple of days (after months on the road together, I can see that. It would even be a sort of accomplishment and something new additions to a travelling group could try to achieve to "fit in"). Then again, this is a really interesting idea for any talent really (Boromir teaching the hobbits the fundamentals of sword-fighting, a mage showing an apprentice the first cantrips, and so on...). But this will seriously hurt any controlled character advancement if players just stay in town until everyone has learned every available non-exclusive talent in the group. So we will have to limit this in a way. We will have to talk about character advancement.

Character advancement
I noticed the trend to abandon experience points in new systems over the last decade or so, and even many tables even doing away with them in systems built around XP. This idea is in no way new, there were many games that didn't have them for nearly as long as games advancing characters have been around. Growing on achievement is a nice feel, really. And a good incentive for roleplaying a personal quest for sweet bonusgrowth (which has a lot more flavour to it than 50 roleplaying XP). Burning Wheel had a nice idea with a P&P-version of skill advancement on use, but that got silly quickly ("I will close my eyes for the rest of the combat to collect some hard successes and failures, else I will not advance."). The Call of Cthulu "see if you succeeded way to learn anything this adventure" is also nice, but will rob a player of the accomplishment of learning something cool after an adventure arc (which is cool for the CoC flavour, but not what we should be going for). I think advancing after a story arc has a nice, Zelda-y touch. Focusing on character growth, we can also try to hand out bonus talents for personal goals. And we can hide advancement behind puzzles without breaking the feeling of the game.

Lets say we do it like this as an early version:
  1. Each character starts with 3 talents, 6 Heart, 3 Surges and 0 Favour.
  2. When the adventure arcs big obstacle is overcome, every player receives +1 Heart and one talent to spend freely
  3. When players complete (GM-designated) sidequest, they receive one Learning Point.
  4. One Learning Point can be used to learn a talent from a character willing to teach it. This needs a camp action/town action and a successful roll on Learning and Teaching from both parties respectively, increasing the Difficulty for this talent for the learning character by one for each failure. Non-player teachers may charge for teaching services.
  5. Two Learning Points can be automatically used to select a new talent freely.
  6. A character completing their personal story arc receive +1 Heart (At the GMs descretion. There should either be an attainable goal for every character or none in the game).
  7. There are artifacts in remote places that give the characters consuming them +1 Heart. These are often at hard to reach places. Sometimes, they are used as a highly valued trade good between monarchs.

I am not completely happy with this, but it is something to go on for now. Giving out Hearts on the end of a dungeon or big scene may be important to prepare characters not specialising in combat to survive the typical evergrowing curve in a campaign. Should teaching and learning be learnable in the game? Which classes would be on the receiving and which on the providing end? But we can teach stuff without breaking out of the curve. And you can't just wait until a talent is learned, it becomes impossible after too many tries, and you have to look for a different talent to learn.

Camp action should maybe be the talents that boost learning. That would be a nice circle: Spend talents to later learn talents a lot faster and easier.


This is it for today. I think most things in here need some refining. And next time we will need to lock down on the talents.