A Year Late and a Dollar Short

Amidst all the shuffle of real-life considerations, The Next Project has unfortunately taken a back seat, this past year. I'd say it's only since the last couple months of 2019 that I've given it serious thought. There were a few ideas I sort of left notes on, for those in the Discord server; not much of that has been completed, but it is still under consideration.

So where do we go from here?

Well, let's start with some good news. Something that I have had some success with working on, is the skill system. Now, I want to dedicate a full post to that topic (so I'll keep this brief) but suffice it to say, d20 has been axed from skill mechanics. I wanted to add a few things to this aspect of the game's engine, and a change to the dice (and math) was ultimately necessary.

Reworking of class subtypes was a major component that I felt needed to be tackled, as part of implementing leveling systems into the game. This has caused a major paradigm shift, creating a question that I haven't completely answered. If I were to try and put it succintly, the trouble comes at the confluence of Class, Power Sources, and Archetypes -- how those things relate to each other, and what unlocks what. Again, a topic I want to expand on more thoroughly in the future.

Finally, another major structural change in the works is completely re-working the concept of "class dice." In short, my plans going forward will be to have each die paired with another -- creating 10 combinations, making up 2 of the class slates -- with only 5 classes remaining tied to a single die. With the research into the dice math and mechanics, each die sort of took on its own character, and "role" within the typical RPG ethos; these changes allow me to better implement this idea, and also open up the designs of certain classes. While I have, at this time, settled on who will be getting which dice, design and testing may produce bugs or other unintended interactions which may yet change things -- we will have to wait and see.

Hopefully some of you are still around, and we can restart the conversation going forward.
In terms of blog scheduling, I'm tentatively hoping for a return to the 3x per month frequency, evenly spaced (roughly) and alternating between Tuesdays and Fridays.


Please check back March 13th.