Overview: Skills (2023)

Today I want to do a comprehensive(-ish) look at the skills system.

Skills in The Next Project essentially come in two flavours: Core skills, and Knowledge skills. In either case, making a skill check always involves rolling at least 1d10 and 1d6, and adding the results together. You can increase your odds of success by gaining training (i.e. advantage) and/or mastery on the d10 roll, or by increasing your "ranks" with that skill -- allowing you to roll additional d6's, but only adding the highest.

In the latest paradigm, the d10 roll is considered to be the actual check, while the d6 is considered to be a bonus (albeit "always on") to the check, known as your skill rank bonus.

Core skills (including skills which can be used in combat) fall under both an Attribute and a Skillset. If you have training with both the attribute and the skillset associated with a given skill, you gain mastery on that skill -- which applies only to the check itself, not the skill rank bonus. This is a change from earlier ideas, where "skill mastery" would allow you to reroll 1s on any dice rolled as part of the check; it turns out that applying mastery to the d10 roll gives about the same odds, so having a separate mastery mechanic for skills was deemed unnecessary.

The idea behind using attributes and skillsets sort of comes from the ethos of using a given skill proficiency with a different ability modifier than the default; the classic example is adding Strength instead of Charisma, when using the Intimidate skill. (This showed up later on in 4e but is a bit more common in 5e, particularly when it comes to the tool proficiencies.) In a weird way, what ends up happening is that the idea reverse-engineers itself, to the point where the intersection of a skill with a different ability modifier creates (in fact) an entirely different skill.

The other influence on skillsets was the idea of taking class skills and being able to level them up as a group, without being dependent on ability modifiers. For example, in 4e pretty much every Fight-man class had Athletics (STR), Endurance (CON), Heal (WIS), and Intimidate (CHA) as part of their list of class skills. So what if we took all of those skills, and put them together in a skillset, and said, "you can use your bonus to this skillset in place of the ability modifier, for this skill"? That's essentially what the idea is with core skills in TNP. So, instead of needing to be equally good at STR, CON, WIS, and CHA in order to be equally good at all of the Fight-man skills, you instead need only be good at the skillset. This also sort of covers the design space of "skill synergies" as it existed in 3.5 D&D.

By structuring core skills this way, you're actually able to fit more skills into the "grid" -- as long as a skill can be described by the intersection of one attribute and one skillset, it can exist within the system. This works because you're always levelling up skills as a group, rather than having the overhead that comes with trying to manage 30+ distinct skills.

Another name for a check using a core skill is an "ACIDS test" which comes from the acronym for both the attributes and the skillsets:

Attributes (usually listed in reverse order):

• Agility
  
• Charisma
• Intelligence
• Dexterity
• Strength

Skillsets:

• Athletics
• Communication
• Infiltration
• Detection
• Subtlety

In general, at the start of character creation, each class gets training with some combination of two attributes and/or skillsets; this is one of the first areas where class categories start to make a distinction. "Skill Expert" classes will gain training with another attribute or skillset at 1st level; there is also a feat to gain training with an attribute or skillset of your choice, but only "Skill Expert" or "Jack of All Trades" classes may take this feat.

Now, knowledge skills are not tied to attributes or skillsets, but instead are linked to power sources. Generally speaking, each class will get to pick one power source at character creation, and either upgrade it or add another one at later levels -- this varies a bit by class category. When you gain a power source, you have the option to gain training with two of its associated skills, or training with only one but mastery with all three; upgrading a power source gives training and mastery with all three of its associated skills. As mentioned in an earlier post, each power source will have one unique skill, and two skills which are shared with other power sources. Ranks in knowledge skills will be gained as part of a universal progression, but can also come from feats or as a class category feature.

It's important to understand what the math (roughly) looks like for skills. A straight 1d10+1d6 against a DC (or "target number") of 10, is a 45% chance to succeed; this is the same rate as rolling 1d20(-2) against a DC10. Using a trained skill boosts your chances of success to 66.83% (an increase of just over 20%) which is comparable to 1d20+2, at 65%

Adding a 2nd rank to either a trained or an untrained skill increases the chances of success by approximately 10%; additional ranks produce diminishing returns, about 5% for the 3rd rank, and so on. This is why it makes sense to level up core skills by being able to add only a single rank to the attribute and to the skillset. Adding mastery to an untrained skill gives it a flat 10% boost, whereas it's a little bit less for a trained skill.

One of the things I wanted to keep (while still adding more skill gradations) was "a meaningful chance of failure." With that in mind, a maxed out skill (advantage, mastery, and 3 ranks) caps out at a success rate of 89.44% -- and classes which aren't in the "Skill Expert" or "Jack of All Trades" categories are only going to be able to (at most) gain mastery on one combination of an attribute and a skillset (i.e. one or two skills.) This means under most circumstances, the failure rate won't dip below about a 20% chance, which feels like a meaningful enough number.

When deciding on which skills to include, part of the idea was to "unpack" some of the skills which had been condensed down in 4th Edition D&D.
For example, Thievery (DEX) was broken down into:

• Sleight of Hand (Dexterity, Subtlety)
• Lockpicking (Dexterity, Infiltration)
• Disable Device (Intelligence, Infiltration)
• Forgery (Intelligence, Infiltration)

By doing this, we can have a larger set of more-precise skills, while controlling the bloat by limiting it only to skills which can fit into an attribute AND a skillset.

On the other hand, does 5e really need a vague Nature (INT) skill, as well as Survival (WIS) and Animal Handling (WIS)? I think the intent was to make characters who are strong at different ability scores still be able to contribute in these kinds of skill challenges. By divorcing these skills from ability scores (instead tying them to power sources, as knowledge skills) we can reduce it back down to two skills: Animal Handling (Primal, Martial) and Wilderness Survival (Primal).

When I had showed around a draft of the core skills list (to see if anything was missing) the answer I got back from a few people was the suggestion to add some kind of speechcraft and/or "decipher script" skills.
When I had decided to move Animal Handling over to a knowledge skill, there wasn't much reason left to keep Wisdom as an attribute, and it also meant that the skillset including Persuasion and Intimidation was left kind of lacking. Putting the linguistic skills into that skillset (under the Intelligence attribute) helped to even things out again; the name of the skillset went from Influence (when it included Animal Handling) to Presence (once it was dropped) and finally to Communication (when the Intelligence skills were added in.)

One other important thing with core skills is that the attributes are meant to be used as the fallback for actions that don't easily fit under one of the existing skills. This is where the distinction between Agility and Dexterity becomes most obvious --  and people always ask, when they see both being listed within the system.

When in doubt:

• Strength should be used for actions that involve the arms/upper body/core
• Dexterity should be used for actions that involve the hands/fingers
• Agility should be used for action that involve the feet/legs/lower body
  

...

Anyways, I'll leave it at that for now. I realize this post has been sort of a long, disorganized mess -- but mainly the idea was to lay out some of the starting points for further discussion. Let me know if there is anything covered or touched on here that you would like me to talk about or expand upon.

Next post should be up March 5th so be sure to check back then.

Interception!

Being that today marks the celebration of the Superb Owl, it seems appropriate that this post should touch on the mechanics of interceptions.

What are we talking about, in TNP terms, when we say "interception"?

• you must be 'open'
• as an off-turn action
• when an enemy moves

Let's decompose this further.

Open means that you do not have any enemies adjacent to you.

An off-turn action is an action that can only be done when it is not your turn; you may only do one off-turn action per (other creature's) turn, and usually there is a trigger tied to these types of actions.

Now, if an enemy is moving, they're either trying to engage one of the PCs, or move away from a PC they are engaged with; generally, moving away from a hostile creature you're adjacent to will trigger an opportunity attack, which itself is an off-turn action. So potentially, you could have an enemy move away from you and you would have the option to make an opportunity attack, or to intercept the enemy to stop them -- but not both. Of course, since you need to be 'open' to intercept an enemy, this opportunity to pick from both types of actions only presents itself when the enemy moving away from you is the only enemy you're currently adjacent to.

I can't speak from experience, but I've heard that older (pre-3.x) editions of D&D would allow characters to use their movement speed throughout the round, allowing defenders to mimic these sorts of intercept actions. In the 4e-ish paradigm of "move action" rather than "move speed" you need to have some sort of method for allowing off-turn movement, which is what this mechanic is intended to do. (4e used the mark/punishment method for tanking, but positioning was always they key to being able to dish out opportunity attacks -- this sort of movement should also help with that.)

Cunning Stunts

A related topic that I've been agonizing over, is the 'tumble' mechanic. Now, for those who remember 3.x D&D, a tumble check could be made as part of any movement which would normally provoke an opportunity attack, in order to avoid provoking such an attack.

With 4th Edition, the balance, tumble, and escape artist skills were ostensibly combined into the single 'Acrobatics' skill. I say ostensibly, because the tumble skill completely vanished. This mechanic was replaced with 'shifting' and did not require a check; in 5th Edition, the Acrobatics skill remained, but shifting disappeared (aside from the 'Disengage' action, which is considerably more limited in its application.) I've always wanted TNP to re-introduce the tumble mechanic, largely to make Acrobatics a more relevant skill in combat. So how should we go about this?

Well, we need to add some more context.

TNP uses a "disengaging" mechanic, whereby you cannot be engaged by certain enemies until the end of your next turn; this effectively comes in 2 different flavours:

1. Shift: disengage from the enemies in your current maelstrom
2. Withdraw: disengage from ALL enemies in the encounter
   

Now, the question is, how should the acrobatics/tumble skill factor into using these actions?

Should you have to declare which method you're using, and then make the check -- burning that action if the check is a failure? Or does failing the check only mean you fail to avoid opportunity attacks?

Would a successful check let you 'step down' the action type (i.e. from Standard to Move, or Move to Minor) for whichever disengaging mechanic you're using? Or should this be a benefit only bestowed by class features?

Should the action fire off regardless, with a successful check only giving you something like... a save bonus against enemies you've disengaged from?

These are all options which I'm considering, and I haven't really nailed down or settled on one particular execution.

To bring the topic full-circle, perhaps tumble checks could also be used to avoid attempts at interception(?)

The problem that these sorts of off-turn mechanics can potentially create, is the situation where you have to go around the table and make sure no one "objects" to the action you're taking, before you can continue resolving your turn; this is especially troublesome in game formats like play-by-post. The problem is that 5e (for example) throws the baby out with the bathwater, swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction. So I'm trying to strike the right balance between having enough meaningful, impactful options during play, while not compromising elegance or game flow in the process.

Daily Mechanics (2023)

Continuing on from where the previous post left off, if we assume average card-dealing results, the most number of reserves a character will need to spend recovering from combat will be 7 (during the 5th level "adventuring day") -- leaving quite a wide amount of flexibility in how to use the remaining reserves.

Getting back to some of the basic mechanics, as mentioned before, the dice have to do everything. Naturally, this means that the number of reserves a character class gets is based off of their class dice; in order to raise the floor on this number, d4 classes will always be treated as having (at least) "2d4" reserves -- a total of 8. Some d6 classes/subclasses will still only have 6 reserves, but most will have 2d6, i.e. 12.

So what does this mean, in its totality? Well, if we are to balance around the assumption of needing 7 reserves to heal up from combat, the remaining number of reserves (which can be used for other purposes) are as follows:

• 1d6 reserves: (-1)
• 2d4 or 1d8 reserves: 1
• 1d10 reserves: 3
• 2d6 or 1d12 reserves: 5

These numbers sort of point me towards the idea that 2d4/1d8 classes could have a "1/day" reserve-burning mechanic, whereas 2d6/1d12 classes could have a "1/encounter" mechanic. Now, this wouldn't expressly imply any sort of "short rest" refresh mechanic; in this context, the 1/encounter is meant only as a limit to its uses, with the number of daily reserves being an additional hard limit. The 1d10 classes would land somewhere in the middle of these two distinct paradigms, and so might need to be taken on a case-by-case basis.

This ties back into the idea of "class categories" sharing some sort of similar progression or mechanics. The "Disciple" category in particular is one which I am considering giving a mechanic which would allow them to switch their subclass once per day, at the price of a reserve.

With the Occultist being a 1d10 class in the Disciple category, it might make sense for them to have one additional per-day ability, while the Druid and Warlord (both being 1d12 classes in the same category) could potentially have per-encounter abilities, in addition to their per-day category ability.

Now, for particularly tanky 2d6/1d12 classes (who are expected to absorb a lot more punishment and therefore need more healing) perhaps only a 1/day reserve-burning mechanic would be more reasonable for them to have. On the other hand, a 2d6 subclass like the Sorcerer would very likely have a per-encounter mechanic.

An example of one of the ideas I'm toying with is for the Barbarian (d10, d12) class, with regards to their Rage mechanic. Probably they could enter a rage to gain 1d10 extra damage to their melee attacks; burning a reserve would increase the damage by 1d10, perhaps limited by their level -- burning 5 reserves at level 5 to add 5d10, for example. Should they be able to enter a rage once per day? Or once per encounter?

The Campaign Trail (2023)

One of the ideas that I’ve been conceptualizing behind the scenes is how to randomly generate a campaign, from scratch. I decided to start with a standard deck of cards (52 + 2 jokers) since I felt that something so ubiquitous would lend itself to the overall ethos behind TNP. One benefit of doing it this way, is that you have a definite end point -- a campaign consists of 54 encounters, of various types. (This addresses something I hear from people new to D&D; they often ask, "So, how do you win?" or, "When is the game over?" or some variation of those questions.)

The basic idea with using a deck of cards is that the suit would determine a type of encounter:

• Combat ♣
• Exploration ♦ 
• Social ♥ 
• Subterfuge ♠ 

Face cards would be the exception to this; all face cards would be combat encounters (regardless of suit) with each card type corresponding to a different enemy type. For example, Jacks would represent "standard" monsters. The Jokers are meant to represent campaign-level threats ("archenemy") and one would be shuffled into the deck before dealing the encounters for level 2, and the other shuffled in for level 4 -- alternatively, these cards could potentially be inserted directly into the "hands" for levels 2 and 5.

Dealing the Deck
If we take the 54 cards and split them into levels of progression, we end up with something like this:

• 4 encounters at level 0
• 6 encounters at level 1
• 8 encounters at level 2
• 10 encounters at level 3
• 12 encounters at level 4
• 14 encounters at level 5

Now, the idea is that non-combat encounters would be handled as "skill challenges" -- requiring a certain number of checks before continuing onward. Since we'd only be using the numbered cards for these types of encounters, we can also use them to help scale the "DC" of the challenge. My idea is that either the face value of the card, or the number of encounters for that level (whichever is lower) would be the DC.

So, for example, if you were dealt a 10 of diamonds at level 0, instead of having a DC10 Exploration skill challenge, it would be a DC4.

This would work similarly for combat encounters resulting from being dealt a club; effectively these numbered cards would be "Minions or Swarms."

In the previous draft of the monster-building guidelines, minions would have between 1 and 4 hit dice, whereas swarms would have between 5 and 15 hit dice. Since the numbers of encounters per level range between 4 and 14, I'm inclined to use those numbers as the "maximum number of hit dice" which can be used when building swarms and/or minions into combat encounters, at each level. This would mean that swarms could appear in combat as early as level 1, so some other limitation might need to be implemented, as well.

What is an "Adventuring Day"?
Another thing that I immediately start to notice is that the number of encounters very closely maps to the number range of reserves that the PCs will have -- between 6 and 12, to be specific. If reserves are assumed to be a per-day resource, then this begs the further question: Should you gain a level after each adventuring day? If so, then clearly, an "adventuring day" (if it is to be called that) would likely last multiple days of in-game time.

Let’s go back to the cards for a moment; the basic idea would be that each type of face card would represent a different enemy type, but otherwise the suit would determine the type of encounter (with clubs being combat encounters, as touched on earlier.) This would mean that the cards 2 through 10 of the remaining three suits would be non-combat encounters -- 27 cards out of 54, exactly half.

Now, translating that information back into the schema for reserves, if we’re assuming you’ll need 1 reserve to heal up from each combat encounter, then a class with 12 reserves would (on average) be using 7 reserves to heal up, through their 5th level “adventuring day” (consisting of 14 encounters, in total.) This means they would have about 5 reserves available for other uses, even at the most difficult stages of the game.

This begs a question of how to "win" or "keep score" when it comes to non-combat encounters. Should there be a reserve cost, to failing at a skill challenge? Or, instead, do you simply create a "failure" pile and a "success" pile with your non-combat cards, and tabulate whether the overall campaign was a success, once all's said and done? If non-combat encounters are NOT meant to burn reserves, this means that there is more design space left open within character classes for in-combat, reserve-burning mechanics.

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Next post is due up by January 31st, so check back then!

The Role of the Dice (2023 Edition)

 As we harken back to the previous post with this title, it is important to remember that each die within The Next Project has to serve multiple different functions. It isn't just about weapon / spell damage -- the dice have to do everything.

Setting the Criteria
With that in mind, today we're going to talk about how the class dice are going to be used as bonuses to attack and damage. When working on the previous slate of bonus mechanics, their utility was evaluated/balanced by using a score, which was generated by calculating the total hit chance that the bonus provided, plus triple the crit chance it provided (since crits were assumed to do roughly 3x the damage of a regular hit.) 

When evaluating the updated mechanics (which will be presented here today) I instead calculated the expected damage output of the bonus, based on the average rolls of the damage dice; a “base damage” of 1d8 was used as sort of a placeholder, just to crunch everything out. For context, by using this metric, each bonus produces an average damage of roughly 7.3 (taking into account hit chance and crit chance.)

• d4 bonus: 7.33125
• d6 bonus: 7.2875
• d8 bonus: 7.275
• d10 bonus: 7.29
• d12 bonus: 7.325

Axing Advantage
There were also two things that I identified from previous drafts, which I wanted to change.

Firstly, the existing class dice bonuses didn’t provide as big of a boost as Advantage did. Secondly, I wanted to remove Advantage from the designs as much as possible, including axing it for attack rolls at a bare minimum.

Basically, the interaction between stacking and/or cancelling one or more instances of Advantage or Disadvantage can become a confusing mess (for some people) which I just wanted to avoid. I also wanted more of a unique mechanic, rather than just continuing to borrow 5e's shtick. As such, in order to get rid of Advantage, you need to have a competitive replacement, which is why the class dice bonuses were beefed up. Further, having a bonus and a penalty that don’t directly interact or cancel one another is something I saw as a valuable improvement. By having class dice as the bonus mechanic and Disadvantage as the penalty mechanic, there is no longer a question of which one overrides the other -- both can always be applied.

Dealing the Dice

Another reason for building around bonuses that use class dice, is to encourage diversification within party composition. One of the early comments that TNP received was, “Well why wouldn’t everyone just play d12 classes? They’re obviously the best!” So, if you’re allowed to have 5 class dice bonuses, but only one of them is allowed to be a d12 bonus, you have an incentive to balance your party around being able to get as many different bonuses as possible.

The other consideration was just that rolling 1d20 to hit, and dealing 1dX or 2dY for base damage simply would not output enough DPR. The base of 55% hit rate (or 60% with mastery) just wasn’t going to cut it; both the hit chance and the damage needed to be beefed up. With the designs moving more towards "roll X and keep 1" mechanics, I didn’t want unused attack bonus dice going to waste; letting these dice be added to damage would also help with the overall objective of raising the damage benchmarks.

For example, using standard monsters with 28 HP, applying any one of these dice bonuses would result in the monster being dropped to 0 HP by the 4th round of combat:

(7.3 damage/round) * (4 rounds) = (29.2 damage)

By getting the party to stack multiple bonuses, the number of rounds can be reduced even further.

Attack Bonus vs. Damage Bonus
Now, the important thing to remember is that even though there can be up to 5 bonus dice applying to each attack (one for each class die) only one of those dice may be used to modify the actual attack roll. The general rule is that the die which is used as the attack bonus cannot also be used as a damage bonus -- but there are exceptions, as will be laid out below. The player is allowed to roll all bonus dice alongside the attack roll, and choose which bonus die to use as the attack bonus after seeing the result of all of these rolls (attack roll and bonus dice.)

(It's worth mentioning here that when Combat Mastery is said to apply mastery to the "attack bonus die" it is referring to whichever die is chosen to modify the attack roll; essentially, this only matters if one or more of your bonus dice rolled a 1 -- so keep an eye out for those.)

d4:

As an attack bonus: the d4 can be added to a miss (1-9 on the d20) or a hit (10-19 on the d20)

As a damage bonus: the d4 can be treated as having mastery (i.e. a roll of 1 is treated as a 4 for the damage bonus, but not for the attack bonus)

Special: the d4 result can always be used as BOTH an attack bonus and as a damage bonus

d6:

As an attack bonus: the d6 can be added to a miss (1-9 on the d20) or a hit (10-19 on the d20)

As a damage bonus: the d6 can be added as bonus damage

Special: the d6 result may be used as BOTH an attack bonus and as a damage bonus, only if the attack was a miss (1-9 on the d20)

d8:

As an attack bonus: the d8 can be added to a miss (1-9 on the d20)

As a damage bonus: the d8 can be added as bonus damage

Special: if the d8 result is equal to the result of the attack roll, you can treat the attack roll as being a critical hit; this counts as using the d8 as an attack bonus

d10:

As an attack bonus: the d10 can be added to a hit (10-19 on the d20)

As a damage bonus: the d10 can be added as bonus damage

Special: the d10 result can be used in place of the attack roll, if the attack was a miss (1-9 on the d20); this counts as using the d10 as an attack bonus (i.e. a 10 on the d10 can be used to turn a miss into a hit)

d12:

As an attack bonus: [none]

As a damage bonus: the d12 can be added as bonus damage

Special: on a critial hit, the d12 can be treated as having rolled its maximum result, regardless of the natural result of the die roll

Summation
As you can see from this, I sort of consider d4 to be the best “support” die -- it just always works. The d8 is another good support die; it's not as flexible, but it has a greater ability to turn a miss into a hit, just because it does have a bigger number range than the d4.

I tinkered quite a bit with the d10 before finally settling on this version. The 'special' feature seems a bit niche (indeed, it’s effectively a [10% chance on the d10] * [45% miss chance on the d20] = 4.5% increase in hit chance) but this little bump was needed to keep the damage math in line with other bonuses.

Now, I had wanted to have this sort of “use the class die in place of the attack roll” mechanic be part of the d12 bonus in some form. However, I just couldn’t get it to work without the overall bonus being too damn high. This would in turn require another round of increasing all of the other bonuses --  a task made nearly impossible by the fact that the d4 has effectively already maxed out its possible applications. After tinkering around with the numbers, I felt satisfied with using the bonus damage on a crit -- and allowing the d12 mechanic to just be something simpler than the others. These bonuses also serve to create a distinction in playstyle, between the "2d6" tanky classes and the "1d12" tanky classes, which I think is a valuable bit of design space to explore.

...

Next post is scheduled for January 21st, so be sure to check back then!

Back in the Saddle (2022)

Work on TNP will be resuming in earnest soon!
From time to time (as inspiration hit me) I'd put in some work here and there. There is a "2021" draft containing most of the rules -- but it's almost 2023! So that's well overdue for an update.

Today, I'll talk about some of the refinements and changes that have been going on. Some of the bigger ones will be expanded upon in future posts; the plan is to get back into the usual schedule (30 posts per year) and hopefully to have 'the project' done sometime in 2024, finally.

Crossroads

As someone who has been working full time, through everything going on in the world today, I haven't had the "benefit" of a sudden, unexpected stretch of free time. Admittedly, the turnaround time from the previous post is shorter than I usually do, but aside from a brief bit of conversation, I haven't found any opportunity to even think about TNP, let alone put pen to paper on it, since that last post.

So I'm realizing that I need to take a break; I can't see things changing in the immediate future, so the current logjam will just persist, and possibly even worsen.

Before I step away, I'll kind of lay out where I'm at (aside from rehashing the previously-mentioned obstacles with subtypes.)

First off, I want to say I really like the new regime for skills. I want to test it and make sure it "feels" right, but I'm optimistic about it. That being said, with the move away from d20, the game's design is sort of fracturing into two distinct halves. Why not staple the skill system onto a different set of combat mechanics? Those are the types of questions it starts to beg of me.

In the last couple of posts, it has become clear that the mechanical, crunchy side of the combat needs to be completely overhauled. The focus is shifting towards the "damage + effect" combo-making style of gameplay (in the vein of 4th edition D&D) and the status effects and conditions need to be built around a new paradigm (starting with disadvantage on skills, as one of it's foundations.) This effectively means that every combat feature in the game needs to be reconsidered. A game largely focused on hacking through HP, I'm beginning to realize, does not lend itself to the idea of using d20 (with minimal modifiers) for its combat resolution. So either that mechanic needs to change, or the game needs to be about something other than HP attrition. Whatever the approach, the designs would need significant renovations.

What it comes down to, is I'm seeing myself not having been able to put in the level of time and energy that would entail, since I restarted blogging. And I can make no guarantee that anything will change anytime soon, meaning the amount of work the game needs put into it, is probably not a realistic possibility right now.

I think there are probably two possible paths forward:
1) Scale the game back in scope, to a manageable level, and just push out the best product I can manage.
2) Shift focus to something new.

To be clear, in either case, I won't be blogging; any work being done will be behind the scenes, until I have something meaningful to report. Likewise, in both scenarios, I'll need to sit down, talk, and think long and hard about what I want to get accomplished, and what would make the most sense for a possible new project.

Building a completely different (probably simpler) combat engine, to work in tandem with the skill system, is the first branching path that springs to mind; what shape that takes will depend entirely on what else I can figure out. One such possibility might be unifying around the skill mechanic -- migrating combat away from d20 + class dice.

Really, finishing the game instead of doing something new, boils down to an exercise in managing the scope. If subtypes, combat powers, and status effects all need to be reworked or completely rewritten (in service of a particular gameplay ethos) that's a behemoth task. It also begs the question of whether or not (for example) the skill mechanics will still make sense for the resulting product. It's not long before we're questioning if it'd be easier to start everything from scratch -- so I think if this project is to continue, it'll have to be a case of "addition by subtraction."



I'll leave it at that for now. The TNP Discord will be kept open for anyone looking to join the discussion, so hopefully I'll see you in there.