Monster Math (2018)

New content is now live!

That's right! The guidelines for monster stats are now available (in early-draft form) and a link has been added to the end of the Playtest document (linked on the sidebar.)


Square Peg, Round Hole
Since I wanted monsters to have a universal dice-rolling mechanic (1d6+1d10) I had to round off a few edges, in terms of bonuses and penalties. As you'll see in the document, Advantage and Disadvantage are adjudicated a little differently than how they operate for PCs.

Essentially, how it works is like this:

• Advantage: on a tie, maximize both dice
• Disadvantage: cancels out Advantage, or uses the lowest roll

I had tinkered with having Advantage work similarly to the "double roll and stack" rule, potentially maximizing one die or the other. In short, I found it both a little clunky and not a big enough bonus, so I went with maxing both dice, instead.

The Mother of Invention

It should also be pointed out that the previous post (Monster Math -- Part 3: Standards & Elites) contained a mechanical error, which has been corrected in this draft: Standard monsters will use the universal monster roll for damage, but only use the highest die, rather than adding them together. I had figured this out before, but it sort of got lost in the shuffle; when it came time to make the post, my brain reverted back to an older loadout.

However, when double-checking the math this time around (and coming across this snag) I came up with another lever that can be used to differentiate monsters a bit, and at the same time allow them to mesh with some of the existing mechanics.

When a monster is able to stack their roll, the roll is described as "Trained" whereas using only the higher result means the roll is "Untrained." So monsters that specialize in melee might only have this bonus to their melee attacks, whereas "artillery" types might have it only on their ranged attacks. It's worth noting that Expertise can be seamlessly applied to monster rolls, as a straightforward damage boost.

Rogues' Gallery

In addition to Standard and Elite monsters, Minions and Swarms were also established in an earlier post. This new draft rounds out the list of antagonists, with the addition of Solo monsters and Archenemies.

Solo monsters are what I envision as "Colossus" fights -- an enemy that has to be brought down in stages -- whereas Archenemies are the final boss of a shorter or longer story arc; they are exceptionally strong and resilient, a single combatant who is a suitable challenge for an entire party.

Moving Forward

I still have intentions of updating a few more classes, but monster math has taken my attention, for the time being. I have some ideas for implementing area attacks, as well as attacks that impose debilities (I just need to try and square the math); basically, the idea will be to use Trained/Untrained/Disadvantage as a means of "stepping down" damage, in order to leverage such powers. In addition to that, I will want to come up with some sample/example monsters -- in particular, conversions of popular or iconic enemies.

Check back May 15th!

The Sincerest Form of Flattery (2018)

I think one of the most important parts of designing TNP (along with aiming to be accessible) is to make refinements and improvements upon the games that inspired it. In order to avoid being wholly derivative, you have to be able to identify weaknesses and problems in a system you personally enjoy, and actively work to iterate on its design. So today, I'm going to talk a bit about how TNP compares mechanically to similar d20 systems, and touch on where certain designs came from.

Off-Turn Actions
4th Edition D&D: Characters have a 1/round "immediate action" and a 1/turn "opportunity action"
5th Edition D&D: Characters have a 1/round "reaction"
The Next Project: Characters have a 1/turn "off-turn action"

To greater or lesser extent, this is sort of the "Goldilocks" approach -- not too hot, or too cold. Where I can understand 5e wanting to clean things up and reduce the frequency of characters acting out of turn, it simply reduces things too drastically. A defender who can only make an opportunity attack once per round (5e) is far inferior to one who can do it once per turn (4e).

Furthermore, the important thing to remember is that off-turn actions always have to be triggered -- if the trigger doesn't happen, then you don't get the action. This should naturally keep things in check, particularly if the DM is playing the enemies smart, and not choosing to make them provoke extra attacks. Unifying the mechanics (rather than cutting them to the bone) was the way to go, I feel.

5th Edition's design choice in this regard is particularly frustrating for a class like Fighter; you have opportunity attacks, the Protection "fighting style," and feats (which historically are their "thing") like Shield Master or Defensive Duelist, all competing for the same resource within the game's action economy. Meanwhile, something like the 5e Rogue's "uncanny dodge" is a reaction that is designed around being once per round -- it would be almost infinitely spammable if it were available more often.

By setting off-turn actions to once per turn, it also allows additional triggers to be a meaningful design space for class features. The more ways you can trigger this action, the more likely you'll be able to benefit from this boost in action economy, on any given turn.


Minor Action vs. Bonus Action
4th Edition D&D: On your turn, you have a Standard Action, Move Action, and Minor Action; Standard Actions can be traded down to Move Actions or Minor Actions, and Move Actions can be traded down to Minor Actions.
5th Edition D&D: If you have a feature that allows you to use a Bonus Action, you may do so once, on your turn -- otherwise, you effectively do not have this action type. You can move up to your speed, at any time throughout your turn.
The Next Project: On your turn, you have a Standard Action, Move Action, and Minor Action. You can perform any Minor Action or Move Action using a Standard Action; however, you cannot take the same Minor Action more than once on your turn.

I think the 5e approach is a reaction to the 4e char-op mentality: if you're doing anything less than using every action at your disposal to be dealing damage, you're being sub-optimal. This makes at-will minor action attacks valuable, because they are very repeatable within 4e's action economy. In both 5e and TNP, something like a two-weapon attack uses your "main" action and your "simple" action, so not being able to trade down movement for another attack creates the desired effect within the designs.

Actions in 5e are simultaneously the thing that does everything, and the thing that can't do Bonus Actions (which strikes me as odd.) TNP kind of tries to split the difference: Standard Actions can do any "smaller" actions, but Move Actions cannot be traded down.

It's also worth noting that where 4e would use minor actions for interacting with items or the environment (such as doors or levers) TNP eschews items altogether, thus not requiring an action to draw, stow, or use them. 5e has a sort of vaguely-defined "interact" action for these uses, which is limited to once on your turn. TNP does not have many "universal" minor actions; different uses for this action type largely come from class features.

As a side note, TNP navigates the Move Action vs. Move Speed divide, both by using its more abstract positioning scheme, as well as allowing movement as part of other actions (such as melee attacks and certain skill checks.)


Bonuses & Penalties
Generally speaking, 4e uses a +2/-2 or +5/-5 system for modifiers tied to either status effects, positioning, or powers. Some debilities imbue a -10 penalty to things such as Perception checks.

In 5th Edition, it's pretty much down to Advantage/Disadvantage, although there are a few interesting uses of proficiency bonus (which starts at +2) being halved or doubled, and then added to rolls where it would otherwise not apply. There's also bonuses from things like Maneuvers, Bardic Inspiration, or spells such as Bless, which add (or subtract) a dice roll to a result.

For TNP I went with Advantage/Disadvantage (which is functionally analogous to the +5/-5 from 4e) and use Expertise as my "+2" allegory. There are also bonus dice used for some features, but they all function off the conceit of "class dice" so as to make things a little more uniform.

Generally larger penalties are just a way of saying "don't even try it," so in this regard, I've followed 4e's lead, and instead used penalties to action economy -- requiring "bigger" actions to complete the same task, or requiring a successful skill check in order to do it quickly.


Durations
4th Edition D&D: Generally the duration for an effect is defined as either "until the start of your next turn," "until the end of your next turn," or "save ends" (meaning the effect can be saved against once per round, generally at the end of the effected creature's turn.) Some feats or similar features allow you to "save" out of an effect at the start of your turn. Things such as zones often have a "sustain minor" clause, allowing you to extend their duration by spending a minor action.
5th Edition D&D: Generally you save against an effect when it happens, but sometimes you must roll a save on each of your turns to continue trying to shake it off. Concentration abilities require a constitution save from the character creating the effect, if they take damage, and you can only maintain one spell with this keyword at a time.
The Next Project: In the latest revision, the "Sustaining" keyword basically specifies that if the feature bestows a benefit, it lasts until the start of your next turn; if it bestows a penalty, it lasts until the end of your next turn. These features can be "sustained" by repeating the same action once your turn comes around again.

Within the 4e char-op circles, effects that lasted for one round (i.e. until the end of your next turn) were found to be the most powerful and reliable, since they could not be saved out of. Since saves in 4e were generally a coin-flip, the chance that you wouldn't get more than a round out of a "save ends" effect was pretty high.

TNP gets rid of the mechanic of saves altogether, instead allowing you to maintain these abilities reliably -- so long as you're willing to pay the action economy cost. It also has less-painful debilities, overall.


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This post has already gotten a bit long, so I'll cut it off there. I still have a few comparisons I would like to touch on, so that may appear in a later post.
I'm also going to try and find time to work on updating another slate of classes, with Druid as the first priority.

Check back May 5th!

Functioning As Intended? (2018)

I wanted to take this post to go over some of the (seemingly) more odd-ball mechanics that are in the game, and outline some of the thought processes behind them.

Combat Skills
One of the rule changes that came out of playtesting, was to limit each character to one skill check per turn. The reason for doing this ties into how the mechanics behind intimidation work.

The baseline rule that I came up with was that you can intimidate an immobilized enemy into surrendering; this causes them to be "dropped" and therefore removed from combat. The rationale for this was that I wanted a mechanic whereby the enemy has to be in a vulnerable position before they'd consider surrendering (from a narrative standpoint) but also mechanically, I didn't want it to completely invalidate combat.

The problem cropped up with classes that either get to make grapple or intimidate checks as a minor action (since grappling is the main way to immobilize an enemy.) This creates a scenario where, by succeeding on two checks on the same turn, a player can remove an enemy from combat without a fight. This doesn't really conform to the narrative intent, nor the mechanical assumption of fights typically lasting for three rounds.

To compensate for removing this combo, some classes were given the ability to intimidate enemies who are bloodied (or who are immobilized.) This keeps a feature like being able to intimidate as a minor action still useful, while also requiring the players to engage in the combat mechanics.

Similarly, elite monsters were made stronger, by requiring that they be both bloodied and immobilized before they can be intimidated into surrendering.


Inspiration & Restoration
I specifically went out of my way to not use the terminology of "healing" within the rules; rather, restoring HP is meant to be as abstract as possible.

It's generally accepted that HP itself is an abstraction, often combining wounds, stress, and the will to fight (among other things.) Using the terms "inspiring" or "inspiration" for most of the HP restoration mechanics serves to highlight the "will" part of the equation. It also makes it easier for non-magical/non-medical characters to have abilities that restore HP.

This brings me to another point: what is the role of "healing" within combat?

As mentioned before, since the earliest designs, there hasn't ever been much in the vein of "combat healing" in The Next Project. The idea behind spending reserves is that it should be a way of returning your HP to its maximum, once combat has concluded. This is more of a DM-side contrivance, because it then allows all encounters to be balanced around the assumption of "all PCs will be at max HP, at the start of every combat." (It should be noted that this is also true of 4th Edition D&D.)

The goal within combat is to simply survive until the end, at which time you are then safe to heal up. In-combat healing is meant to be about on-par with "striker"-level damage; it's something that helps the party to better survive until the end of the fight, while also being a mechanic which is in keeping with a particular play-style, but without being a further tax on limited resources (i.e. reserves.) This is one of the ways that healing operates differently from 4th Edition.

All that being said, HP is further abstracted in TNP by effectively folding the design concept of "temporary hit points" into it. The whole "not real hit points" distinction is sort of meaningless, in a concept already so abstract -- so we junked it. When you receive "healing" in combat, it is allowed to increase your HP above its maximum; any excess is lost at the end of the encounter, however. Likewise, spending reserves after combat cannot increase your HP above its maximum.

What this serves to do is functionally increase the times when it is "appropriate" for a support class to use their restoration ability. In 4th Edition, generally the right time was whenever an ally's HP was down below their surge value, since the standard "leader" heal was usually [surge value + an ability modifier, or 1d6]. Further to this, the "bloodied" mechanic being a condition which all combatants were aware of (once someone had that condition on them) was an effective way of signposting to the support characters, when someone needed to be healed.

Because of how TNP handles HP and in-combat healing, you may very well consider "inspiring" an ally before they have taken any damage, since they will still receive the extra HP (and it may very well make sense, if they're a class who you can expect to soak a lot of damage; if they don't end up taking the damage, it'll have been a waste of one of your actions, so choose carefully.) It also avoids the pitfalls of 5th Edition D&D, where the only time to restore someone's HP is when they're at zero (because damage so drastically outpaces healing, you really only use it to prevent death and/or loss of actions.)

Also, by going with the "once per ally" model for these abilities (akin to the Healer feat, in 5th Edition) rather than the "twice per encounter" model from 4th Edition, these abilities effectively scale to fit a party of any size. However, once a party's size exceeds the typical number of rounds a combat is expected to take, choosing who to heal (and when) suddenly becomes a tactical consideration once again. Overall, I think this framework allows for more interesting decision-making options for the healer "role" and I quite like that outcome.


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Check back April 24th for the next post!

The Moment You've All Been Waiting For! (2018)

It's finally time for me to officially release the 2018 rule-set into the wild!

This has actually been ready since just after the previous blog post (and I've distributed it to a few, select places) but now it is out to a worldwide audience. I've added a link to the sidebar, so it'll be on the front page of the blog, going forward.


First things first
So what is this document, exactly? Well, I'm calling it a "playtest" version, because it is sort of the bare-bones minimum needed to run the game, from the player-side; I still need to do up a "monster math" compendium, with some DM rules/advice, in order for everyone to really be able to run it. (That being said, the pertinent info on monsters is on the blog: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.)

I had mentioned previously, that I was writing down the rules section by section, but in light of recent D&D-related considerations, I felt it was finally time to make a (rough) full assembly of what I've got so far. Really, the only things that are missing (in terms of player content) are the rules for character re-specs, and a list of skill descriptions.


Updates
A lot of this will just be re-stating things that have been mentioned in the blog (or planned for) previously. Anyway, here's a loose outline of the changes:

Double Rolls have been rewritten for clarity, and to feature more prominently in the text; "trade-off" has been removed from the jargon.

Bloodied Threshold has been changed to function as it does in 4th Edition D&D.

Surge Value is a new piece of jargon, used to describe the minimum HP restored when spending a reserve; for most classes, this is still "maximum value of your class die."

Subclass replaces the "Path" subtype from Beta 4
Combat Role replaces the previous subtypes of both "Role" and "Subclass"
Specialist Class replaces the term "Archetype" from previous iterations (abbreviated as "Spec")

Knowledge Skills/Power Sources have been implemented as described here.

Attack Types have been more clearly explained, i.e. Iconic vs. Basic Attacks, melee vs. ranged, etc.

Stacking rules have been cleaned up a bit; only one die can be added to a d20 roll, but there is no limit to stacking of damage dice.

Power Attack/Counter-attack have been changed to no longer use "trade-off"
Opportunity Attacks have been changed to use a standard-style attack roll, and have also been clarified a bit further.

Sustaining keyword has been greatly overhauled, to help make its intended implementation more clear; essentially, effects with this keyword last one round, unless the appropriate action is taken to continue them.

Combat Skills were cleaned up a bit, giving a better idea of which skills can be used with which actions, and under what other qualifiers.

Positional Rules have been revised a bit. Rules for "reach" and "high ground" have been clarified; "Adjacent" replaces "Engaged" to allow allies to group up more easily, and to have more distinct wording from the "Engage" action; "Open" replaces the sort of non-jargon of "unengaged"


Other minor changes can be found throughout, so give it a good, solid once-over!


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Upcoming Content
I recently came up with a rough timeline of blog posts, specifically pertaining to actual-game content (i.e. playtest versions such as the one posted today, as well as updated versions of the remaining character classes.) Basically, I should have already been doing some playtesting by now, so hopefully that will get rolling soon. Additionally, if the 2018 Edition is to be completed... in 2018, then the next slate of classes will need to be out very soon -- hopefully within about a month. So stay tuned for that!

As per this year's blog schedule, the next post should be out on April 14th.

Design Origins -- Part 2: Class Dice

Continuing on from where "Part 1" left off, today I'm going to talk about something I consider to be the defining characteristic of The Next Project: Class Dice.


The Previous Project
As I touched on last time, to a greater or lesser extent, TNP evolved out of the previous RPG that I had written. That system was defined by using only the d6 and d10, for all of its mechanics. In discussion and in playtesting, people found it unintuitive; it essentially functioned as a d20-style system, but with 1d6+1d10 as your "action" die. The main "selling point" of this particular dice gimmick simply wasn't compelling enough.

The game also suffered from being more of a "point-buy" style of character assembly, with only the thinnest of fantasy trappings applied. Players sort of had to take the jumble of mechanics and create their own "skin" for what sort of character their "class" was supposed to be. The game just failed to click with people, on an emotional or psychological level.


Paradigm Shift
So for my next project, I knew that I wanted to do something more recognizable -- something class-based. I had also basically settled on using the d20 for the "action" die; whenever you make an attack or a skill check, just roll the d20. You may need to modify it, after making the roll (i.e. by adding static modifiers or additional dice to the roll, or rerolling using Advantage/Disadvantage) but I knew I wanted something straightforward, and easier to tinker with than 1d6+1d10 had been.

However, I still wanted to retain some of the sense of "these two dice are all you need" that the previous game had brought to the table. Somewhere in an internet discussion about purchasing extra dice, it was pointed out that buying the sets of polyhedral dice (with 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, the "percentile" dice, and 1d12) was sort of a waste, since the d4 and d12 are so rarely used, particularly prior to 5th Edition coming out (which was when this discussion took place.)

That was where my mind sort of made a connection.

Instead of having the entire system function around the same two dice, use the d20 for the core mechanics, and the other die-shapes for the class mechanics.

This was something I really liked, from a tactile perspective: a table of players with just one or two sets of polyhedral dice could/should be able to play an entire party of characters. The idea of using dice rolls for bonuses was also something I liked from 5th Edition, as I wanted to remove any redundant or fiddly modifiers.


Credit where credit is due
Games such as Dungeon World and 13th Age sort of influenced this design ethos, with the former using damage dice as a class-based mechanic, and the latter having the combination of class and weapon "group" determine the damage die to use -- Rogues do better damage with daggers and shortswords, whereas Fighters get the most out of a greatsword or greataxe.

The idea, then, was to figure out which classes each of the dice would represent.


The Original Slate
As mentioned in the last post, from the outset, the first slate of 5 classes was probably going to include some combination of these classes:

• Bard
• Rogue
• Barbarian
• Ranger
• Fighter
• Monk
• Paladin

In 4th Edition D&D, the numerical stats for classes are generally just reverse-engineered from the baselines established within the mathematical framework -- there's nothing really flavourful about them. So I went back to D&D 3.5 for inspiration.

If you think of a Wizard in 3.5, they have a d4 for their hit die, they generally will have a dagger or darts for their backup weapons (using d4 for damage) and one of their iconic spells is Magic Missile (also using d4 for damage.)

Similarly, when you think back to Rogues, one of their iconic abilities is the stacking of d6s for sneak attack damage -- conveniently, they also used d6 for their hit die, in 3.5! The same kind of thinking went into the Ranger (d8 hit die, d8 weapons such as longswords and longbows) as well as the Paladin (d10) and the Barbarian (d12)

I wanted this first slate to be as quintessential as possible, which is why I went with the 5 classes I did: Mage, Rogue, Ranger, Paladin, Barbarian.


Growing the Roster
A similar process was undertaken when designing additional classes, in order to expand to a 2nd and 3rd slate. In some cases d4 and d6 were used to mimic the d8 and d12, giving those dice some additional design space to muddle in:
 - Monk was designed as a "1d4" class, with the Archer as a "2d4" class (and later the two would start to blend together, in the Acrobat.)
 - As a class that would gain HP by shapeshifting, it made sense to slot Druid in at a d4, adding one extra die to its HP in "cat" form, and double that for "bear" form.
 - When the Fighter finally became a d6 class, it was so that it could simulate both dual wielding (shortswords,) archery (shortbow,) or two-handed weapons (greatsword,) to showcase it as the "weapon master" style of class. Doubling the d6 for their HP helps to slot them into the frontline "warrior" space.

Having a Warlock (with a d10 Eldritch Blast as its iconic ability) also helped push me towards mixing things up a bit, instead of having every d10 class be melee-focused. Conversely, the need for a "heavy mage" made d12 the obvious slot for the Spellbinder.


From there, most other classes just sort of fell into place, to flesh out the three slates:

• Warlord as the "heavy martial" made for a nice d12 class, for the 2nd slate
• a fireballing Sorcerer for d6 -- almost a no-brainer
• Bard and Cleric at d8 (as the support classes) seemed the right fit for dabbling in both melee and ranged combat, without being the strongest at either.
• Adventurer as a two-weapon, melee fighter made sense for d10
• Guardian with a "2d6" melee subclass (Warden) and a "1d6" caster subclass (Shaman) seemed the right fit

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Next Post

Check back April 4th for the next update; hopefully by then, I will have at least a playtest-ready version of the rules document compiled, to share.

Skill Difficulties (2018)

In the previous post on this topic (for Beta 4) I covered most of the fundamentals about how skill usage should be handled, in The Next Project; it's probably worth re-reading before diving into this post. Today I want to expand on that, get into the skill math a little bit deeper, and also touch on "free-form" skill use vs. more structured "skill challenges."

We've already set up the parameters of "when not to roll" -- if a course of action is either trivially easy, or impossible -- but perhaps that needs to be expanded on a bit, with some more crunch applied. Specifically, this means that if/when the DM is going to ask for a roll, there is going to be a chance of failure. So what does that mean in numerical terms?


Math behind the Madness

The 'Beta 4' post established the different degrees of competency that characters can have with each skill; with our universal difficulty (or "DC") of 10, this gives us the following success rates (including critical successes):

1. untrained: 55%
2. expertise: 60%
3. trained: 72.5%
4. trained+expertise: 81.666...%

What this means is that at the highest competency level, the failure rate caps out just below 20%, with the DM having the discretion to further reduce that to zero -- if they declare that a course of action simply succeeds without needing to roll.

Meaningful Results

If we look at the numbers when allowing multiple rolls at the highest competency level, the chance of failure almost immediately starts to approach zero (which, if that is the desired result, then the established rule for "trivially easy" actions should have been invoked.) So while it has always been enforced in my playtests, I'm not sure this has ever been explicitly written into the rules: the party should not be allowed to attempt the same skill check more than once, to overcome the same obstacle. If they are required to roll, it is because the DM wants there to be a chance of failure, and if failure is the result, then the party must attempt a different course of action, in order to proceed.

The example of this from the previous post would be "picking a lock" vs. "breaking a door down" -- if one doesn't work, the party can try the other (or they must simply choose an alternate path.) But the effect of the failure is that the approach must be changed, instead of just rolling the same approach until it succeeds.

Another tool we can put at the disposal of the DM borrows from 4th Edition D&D's skill challenges; a failure can mean a change in approach, or a loss of resources. In some cases, it might be appropriate to allow a failed course of action to succeed, if the player is willing to sacrifice one of their reserves to do so.

Structure vs. Restriction

If only one attempt can be made at each skill check, it also incentivizes party members to diversify their skill selections, across the group; each character should have their own area of specialization, and should only really overlap in case the party gets split up. With all of this in place, we can see how the system helps to facilitate teamwork and "sharing the spotlight" a little bit. The question then becomes whether this needs to be formalized mechanically, even further.

The way skill challenges worked in 4th Edition, it was essentially turn-based; you went "around the table" and everyone took a turn making a skill check of some sort. This, however, is counter to the best practices that came out of actual play experience, with the system. My own anecdotes line up with the advice that "the best skill challenges are the ones the players don't know they're in." 

The best way to achieve this is to put the party in a non-combat scenario with multiple different leads or threads that can be followed, and then ask them which ones they choose to pursue, and how. Giving everyone a chance to act and to have their share of the spotlight is important (as it always should be in gaming) but "gamifying" it into turns can sometimes get in the way of the scene evolving organically, or "the action flowing from the fiction."

Turn-based skill challenges should be a tool in the DM's kit, but one that is used sparingly. All characters in TNP are designed to be able to meaningfully contribute in any encounter; there should be no "risk aversion" on the part of the players, in non-combat encounters. If this is a problem that a DM consistently runs into with their group, then instituting a round/turn structure can be used to help cajole people into putting themselves out there a bit more.

Keeping Score

The next question when examining skill challenges is how you measure success -- and I'll just come right out and say, that I think this comes down to taste.

If a non-combat scene requires the party to amass a certain number of clues, the DM can weigh the numbers of successes and failures it took to get them all, and decide (based on that) whether to award XP or not -- perhaps even going so far as to penalize reserves for particularly unsuccessful outings.

Alternatively (if appropriate to the scene) failure at a skill challenge can end in combat (resulting in a similar expenditure of reserves) albeit with the express understanding that whatever knowledge there was to be gleaned from the skill challenge will be given to the players, at the end of the fight. In any case, the over-arching plot still needs to be advanced, regardless of the outcome.

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Next post

Work has been going on behind the scenes on compiling the new draft of the rules, but there haven't been any real revelations from that process -- it's just the usual, expected grind.

As always, check back in 10 days for the next update. If you have any questions or requests for blog content going forward, leave a comment below, or get ahold of me wherever you get your TNP links from.

Knowledge is Power! (2018)

One of the things I've been fiddling with recently is how knowledge skills will be given out, and I've come to some conclusions that will be implemented for the new draft. Despite being more "flavour" than mechanics, this has always been something I've wanted to get just right, probably agonizing over it more than was really warranted. But I feel like I've got it whittled down to a sharp point, now.


Origins

I mentioned in my last post that at one point, "Knowledge" was treated as a Skillset -- essentially, a grouping of skills -- meaning that you could either be good at all of them, or at individual skills, based on whether or not you were good at the attribute related to that specific skill. This presented problems, and eventually knowledge skills were migrated away from being a skillset, to being tied to Power Sources. The intent here was to give additional design weight to Power Sources, beyond just their function for re-specs.


Next Steps

Initially, each Power Source was assigned 3 knowledge skills; if you had that Power Source, you had training with all 3 skills. Since there are only 10 knowledge skills in the designs, this meant that some of the Power Sources overlapped. This lead to some classes (assuming two power sources for each class) would end up with 6 trained knowledge skills, and others would end up with 5.

The main thing I didn't like about this setup (probably) was that it didn't mirror other skills in terms of math, i.e. those skills could have both training and expertise. With the plan to implement leveling also coming into focus, it seemed like a good idea to have knowledge skills be a part of that progression.


Present Day

So the idea going into the 2018 Edition (at the start) was to narrow the skills of each power source from 3 down to 2, and then, grant training to one of those skills, and expertise with the other (at the player's choosing.) Over and above this idea, was the plan to allow a separate progression track for all characters: each time you gained a level, you would also gain training with a new knowledge skill, or expertise with a trained knowledge skill.

The problem with this is twofold. First, "Knowledge" as its own separate progression becomes messy, if it is intended that the upgrades it provides can also be applied to skills gained from power sources -- specifically, it causes problems if a power source is changed, as part of changing your class. The two methods of gaining/improving knowledge skills needed to be untangled from each other. Secondly, it still ended up giving out too many trained skills, meaning that party members would be stepping on each others' toes; gaining one trained skill per power source, plus up to 5 more as you gained levels (from a list of only 10, to start with) just didn't make sense. Even at two power sources per class, this would be too much, and I already knew that I was going to have a handful of classes be able to get three.


Moving Forward

After much deliberation, the solution I have come to is this:

Each power source is associated with two knowledge skills.
When you gain a power source, you gain one of the following benefits with those skills:

• Training with both skills

• Training with one of the skills, and expertise with both

The decision to remove "knowledge progression" as a tool for precise customization was kind of a tough one, but I feel it is in line with the game's premise -- that The Next Project should be more of a "pick-up-and-play" gaming experience, than be about character creation and crunch. This setup allows for knowledge skills to function like other skills (mathematically) while also helping to reign in the number of skills each character will have. It will also allow two characters with the same power source to still have differences in their skill loadouts.


Backup Power

All that being said, I kind of what to utilize the system that was suggested previously, as sort of a backup/catch-all/fail-safe kind of measure. Specifically, if a situation reasonably calls for a knowledge check, but doesn't map to a specific skill, the players can fall back on their Power Sources. If the DM feels a PC's power source is applicable, the knowledge check can be made as a trained check; if more than one power source would apply, the check could also be made with expertise. As mentioned before, this is fairly similar to  the 13th Age system for Backgrounds, but a little more narrowly-focused.


Next Post

Hopefully I'll be able to get some more writing/designing done, before the next post is due to go up. I am always taking requests for blog topics, so send me your ideas!
Check back March 13th.