Welcome to the third installment of the DE news letter. The purpose of this letter is to update players on game session evaluations, rule clarifications & updates, campaign setting information & to entice player input. In case you are wondering the last issue of this letter was written about 6 months ago, and boy have things changed.
Our last session began with the adventurers tracking down a local renegade/murderer & his pet grizzly bear. Along the way they encountered/learned that, casting sorcerous magic draws the attention of demonic lizard-men that can sense the magic, Bowar burry their remains into cairns & disturbing these cairns draws their attention and upon it’s death one such creature implied “they would meet again”. The session ended with a battle at the entrance to a lizard-man lair & the heroes resting at the edge of the small swampy area nearby. I hope they had fun.
The first thing to note of the session was of course my lack of preparation. I’m trying to run more tightly scripted adventures, but I’m still having problems plotting proper leads & hooks to draw the players into the story.
I’d also like to discuss the rules in this issue as well. But before I do, I’d also like to discuss the dynamic of player input, ego & game design. Firstly I do enjoy & will always encourage your input on the game, both mechanically & literarily, however I also will always take your observations both subjectively & cautiously. I know this may come across as arrogant, but you also may notice that I’ll often integrate many of those suggestions in time. This is because of the following reasons,
I’ve been designing games for quite a while now & have developed my own theories on how to go about testing & implementing new ideas.
All ideas have to be considered on how they will affect other aspects of the game.
Any additions have to fit within the games’ “design” parameters.
I prefer to play-test/witness any flaws players may point out before I consider changing them.
And with that Cha, Cha Changes;
During our previous session & over conversations with some of you both before & after that I re-evaluated a few game play elements worthy of re-evaluation. Such as, the combat effectiveness of offensive spells, the cost of parrying, excessive dice rolling & chartitis, discontinuity with regards to who rolls dice & when, shield effectiveness, tactics & spell misuse/abuse, magic tactics, character sheet omissions & probably some other stuff.
After putting some thought on the matter here are my conclusions;
I’ve altered the damage/difficulty chart from base four to base two & altered the point to dice conversion system to a one to one ratio instead of one to two ratio. This simplifies things greatly, reduces the amount of necessary dice rolls, is easer to understand & allows more game-element integration.
I’m not going to alter offensive magics or add magic stat bonuses because the new chart above effectively doubles their power without alteration.
Parrying an opponent’s weapon requires the weapons factor (pacing penalty to wield) for all attacks against that weapon, For example,
Your fighting two jackal-brood with two weapons, you attack X with sword(2×2) & dagger(1×1) for a total of 5 pacing, X must pay to parry with spear for each weapon (3) once, regardless of how many times you attack him. When the brood counter attack you’ll have to choose either to parry with the sword (more defense & more pacing) or the dagger (less defense & pacing cost) for each of the broods weapons, not how many times they attack.
From now on combat works as follows,
player declares how many attacks & w/what weapons.
GM declairs how many blocks/parries/fends.
Player rolls to hit for all attacks (your offense score converted directly to a dice roll).
GM determines how many hits & any possible bonus hits (ie special tactics may be used).
Player rolls damage & tactic effects.
GM declairs how many attacks & w/what weapons.
Player declairs how many blocks/parries/fends.
Player rolls to defend for all parries (as per normal).
GM determines how many hits & any possible bonus hits (ie special tactics may be used).
GM rolls damage & tactic effects.
The point being, the players roll more often/ GM less often.
Spells that add bonuses will be limited by the level of magic cast.
Shields are better at parrying.
Tactics have been elaborated upon.
Some spells may use certain tactics.
Added a sections for weapon bonuses on character sheet.
Well that’s all for this issue, till we meet again & your welcome to respond to anything within.
