Well its time for a redo

Playing testing has revealed that we inadvertently mucked up the simplicity of the system. What we came to realize was that we had fallen into a trap of having different rules for different types of skills. Skill for Melee, Missiles and Spells were each getting their own rules set. This was a very sad realization and a violation of the games creed. "Keep it simple."

What is most interesting is that the rules actually worked very well. They were fair, gave good mechanics is play, but it was overly complicated as the rules were significantly different for: Missiles, Melee and Spells. Sadly all this work on Spells and Missiles will be abandoned. The spells points concept is dead. The rate of fire concept for missiles is dead. We are back to basics, and while not as detailed it is much much easier to learn, remember and most importantly PLAY!

So expect in the next few weeks to see a new draft of the Rules released at: D100 Open Melee System

...and Happy New Year!

Spells Spells Spells

Lately there has been some debate about how we are handling spells. The problem seems to be that at low skill level they are not powerful enough to be worth while and spell casters get bored in melee. At high level they still are not powerful enough. So in general magic is viewed as too weak and too slow. A fair observation.

The way to fix it has become a conundrum however. The discussion has been wide. Alternate ways have been discussed some are structured after novels but ultimately all of those have been dismissed as too structured and confining. In d100 we had more less followed the D20 model where a spell's level defined how often per day it could be cast. While this was simple it was not particularly fair to the caster who at skill level 1, would cast that spell 1 time per day.

So what we are play testing now is a way to increase the number of times a spell can be cast. We are testing a points based system. Once again our overriding goal is simplicity. This is not easy to achieve, we are currently going with a sort of scaled points system based on cost of the spell. Total number of points being a function of willpower and intelligence. I'll post more when some testing has occurred.

D20 Christmas Pagent

Ok I just had to share this!

More Pre Requsits

Well after some discussion and poking around we are probably going to drop pre-req's for melee skills.  However the consensus is to leave them for spells.  Speaking spells we need more a lot more.  So far spells have been created as needed in play testing, that is not a practical method for creation.  Over the next few months we expect the spell lists to grow every week.  

We have had some interesting discussions on the basis for spells, nothing has been decided but eventually our "theory" will be set and then spells will be reorganized.  At a minimum the spells will be split into 2 categories.  Spells of the Will (Willpower) and Spells of Intellect (Intelligence).  I'll write more detail on the that later once it has been decided.

To Pre-Requisite or not

In developing the the skills and spells we have adopted a hierarchy approach to the skills, meaning you needed one skill before you gained another.  On the surface this seemed like an easy way to add depth to the characters.

We have found in practice that for spell casters it acts more like a penalty and for melee skills it is near useless.  So I think for melee skills it will go away and for spells it will be simplified or dropped all together.

Play testing continues and new players are showing us many holes in the system.  We have been so focused on the mechanics that we lack the breadth of skills and spells of other systems.  So the evolution continues!

D100 Melee System DRAFT Rules go public

Enough typing on my part! Go read the draft rules for yourself!
The d100 Melee System

The draft rules represent nearly two years of work by the team of players who developed them. Currently the site has a hypertext version of the rules. A PDF version will follow later on.

Examples are a chore

With the pending DRAFT release of the D100 Melee System we need more examples.  They take some time to construct all the images and organize the events into an easy to follow narrative.  I figure we need at least 10 examples involving different skills: melee, missile and magic.  We currently have 1 melee example.  So only 9 to go!