For those keeping score, the blog had just over 1000 views a year ago, and now it's at just under 3000.
Today I'm going to try and touch on as many thing as I can, pertaining to what I plan to write about on the blog this year, as well as the sorts of innovations and changes that will appear in the game design itself. But before getting into any of that, I'm happy to announce that the first draft of the "starter slate" classes is all ready to go:
I should point out that these classes have been written with much of the new framework in mind; it shouldn't be difficult to have the rest of the classes match up to that. Notably, since there are no "archetype-only" classes in this slate, it'll be important to make sure that those classes have enough customization options, once they are re-written.
In terms of the blog itself, of course I will be including information on changes to the designs, as they come up. In addition to that, I would also like to go back and discuss how some of the existing ideas came to be, and why those decisions were made; for example, I'd like to write about the original slate of 5 classes, the use of Class Dice, and the skill setup. In terms of scheduling, I'm hoping to stick to the plan laid out here, adhering to my "every 10th day"-ish routine, with breaks in July and December.
As I touched on in my previous post, in terms of development, I want to essentially update the classes to the 2018 Edition aesthetic, one slate at a time -- rather than doing all classes in concert with one another. What this means is that (once the core rules are likewise updated) I intend to do some playtesting with the starter set, then adjust those classes (and the core rules) as needed, then work to release another slate of classes, playtest them, and so forth in that fashion.
...
For some mechanical changes (in addition to those already announced) I'm going to work at streamlining and fixing a few things:
Opportunity Attacks: Though I like the conceit of just doing auto-damage with these actions, it's not a good fit for TNP. With some classes getting "double roll and stack" on this damage, it clashes with the positional mechanics that can impose disadvantage on OAs, requiring a specific rules-exception that I don't like. Also, not having an attack roll makes it sort of a misnomer, and I haven't found an alternate piece of jargon that's to my liking. As such, OAs will now use a traditional attack roll. One potential benefit of this is that it will allow for classes to have both a basic attack and an Opportunity Attack "loadout" which may open up new design space.
Trade-offs/Double Rolls: The mechanic of Trade-offs is one that has often been classed as a misnomer, by some of the readers. As the designs have evolved, the specific use of Trade-offs has not been applied uniformly enough, in my estimation. Since things like Counter-attack and Power Attack already have design changes planned (to make them operate without using Trade-offs) I'm going to remove this piece of jargon from the rules, completely. This means that some class abilities will have to be (or have already been) completely changed or replaced. For other instances, the "double roll" terminology will be used instead. Since double rolls that are not just advantage or disadvantage are generally limited to using Class Dice (rather than d20s) you can expect to see that spelled out more explicitly, in the next draft of the rules.
Advantage/Disadvantage: I am considering a few changes to these mechanics:
1) a return to "if you have both advantage and disadvantage, roll 3 dice and use the middle result" (which appeared in earlier drafts.) I might want to have this in place, so that the design space of using both the highest roll and the lowest roll remains viable, in instances where both advantage and disadvantage would apply.
2) re-rolling the dice, in the case of disadvantage resulting in a tie; overall, I don't like to have re-rolls (particularly for play-by-post purposes.) However, the general rule of "treat one result as its maximum value on a tied double roll" functionally does nothing, with disadvantage -- I may want to change that.
Neither of these are set in stone yet, but they are both on my radar.
...
That's about all for today; check back next weekend for another post!
As I touched on in my previous post, in terms of development, I want to essentially update the classes to the 2018 Edition aesthetic, one slate at a time -- rather than doing all classes in concert with one another. What this means is that (once the core rules are likewise updated) I intend to do some playtesting with the starter set, then adjust those classes (and the core rules) as needed, then work to release another slate of classes, playtest them, and so forth in that fashion.
...
For some mechanical changes (in addition to those already announced) I'm going to work at streamlining and fixing a few things:
Opportunity Attacks: Though I like the conceit of just doing auto-damage with these actions, it's not a good fit for TNP. With some classes getting "double roll and stack" on this damage, it clashes with the positional mechanics that can impose disadvantage on OAs, requiring a specific rules-exception that I don't like. Also, not having an attack roll makes it sort of a misnomer, and I haven't found an alternate piece of jargon that's to my liking. As such, OAs will now use a traditional attack roll. One potential benefit of this is that it will allow for classes to have both a basic attack and an Opportunity Attack "loadout" which may open up new design space.
Trade-offs/Double Rolls: The mechanic of Trade-offs is one that has often been classed as a misnomer, by some of the readers. As the designs have evolved, the specific use of Trade-offs has not been applied uniformly enough, in my estimation. Since things like Counter-attack and Power Attack already have design changes planned (to make them operate without using Trade-offs) I'm going to remove this piece of jargon from the rules, completely. This means that some class abilities will have to be (or have already been) completely changed or replaced. For other instances, the "double roll" terminology will be used instead. Since double rolls that are not just advantage or disadvantage are generally limited to using Class Dice (rather than d20s) you can expect to see that spelled out more explicitly, in the next draft of the rules.
Advantage/Disadvantage: I am considering a few changes to these mechanics:
1) a return to "if you have both advantage and disadvantage, roll 3 dice and use the middle result" (which appeared in earlier drafts.) I might want to have this in place, so that the design space of using both the highest roll and the lowest roll remains viable, in instances where both advantage and disadvantage would apply.
2) re-rolling the dice, in the case of disadvantage resulting in a tie; overall, I don't like to have re-rolls (particularly for play-by-post purposes.) However, the general rule of "treat one result as its maximum value on a tied double roll" functionally does nothing, with disadvantage -- I may want to change that.
Neither of these are set in stone yet, but they are both on my radar.
...
That's about all for today; check back next weekend for another post!
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