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For any who might be interested this is my write up of the Action Tests mechanic for Spellwoven. It is a bit of an odd approach using a Base and Bonus for each roll. The Base acts as a lower limit to your roll, so that sufficiently skilled Characters don't really need to roll at all in some situations. The Bonus is added to your roll when you roll a score over your Base score.

This might be getting too complicated, but I think it mimics a heroic or epic fantasy sort of story narrative pretty well. Not very long. Just a few pages.



My next steps are:

- Write up Combat Rules
- Write up Experience and Advancement Rules
- Go back and Modify the Chargen to reflect the Base/Bonus Attribute and Skill system described here. The Chargen I posted a few weeks ago was using a slightly different single value approach. That should be a pretty easy fix.

Down the track
- Finish the world map
- Write up some details on world locations
- Add more Secret Histories
- Write up a Creatures section
- Illustrate, illustrate, illustrate...
- Work on Scenarios for play

Ok. So I realise that I only just posted the last version of this, but I've done a bit of thinking and have radically revised the system. This is mostly based on links to various discussions and ideas and game mechanics that have been forwarded to me by a friend.

The object is to:
- Create a version of the Otherkind Dice mechanic that
1) allows for modification by skill and difficulty
2) is not as harsh on Player Characters as the base system is
3) is a bit more gameist than the very narrativist approach in Otherkind

That last one is probably a bit of an odd choice, but I do want Spellwoven to have some gameist elements, especially because the idea behind it was to make something like a low to mid level, entry level RPG, and my experience is that most people who are fairly new to RPGs understand the gameist (or sometimes simulationist) element first up, and get into the narrative side of things only with a bit more experience. That's a broad sweeping generalisation, but it does seem to often hold true.

I've welded the Otherkind Dice system onto a sub-system much like 'Bringing Down the Pain' in Shadows of Yesterday. I've called this 'Making it Personal' ('Bringing Down the Pain' is too idiosyncratic and not right in terms of mood or theme).

The Making it Personal sub-system has been welded into a Attack, Manoeuvre, Block system from Dresden Files.

I've brought in Teamwork Rules to avoid the problem of a lone thief breaking into a temple while everyone else stands around twiddling their thumbs. These are somewhat inspired by but not identical to teamwork in Burning Wheel/Mouse Guard.

I've made the conflict resolution system universal, so that any danger or problem is resolved in the same way.

I've added sub-systems to take into account Player Character preparation ahead of time, and the possibility that one side will be at a strong advantage or disadvantage that isn't easily dealt with just using Skills and Difficulties.

I've retained Wound Thresholds and Death Thresholds for creatures and characters so that combat can be quick rather than drawn out and a bit tedious.

I've made an effort to make unconventional challenges interesting. I have yet to add examples of the following, but will do so:
- Escape from a collapsing building or series of death traps that are all going off together
- Heist or burglary
- Defeating an unkillable monster (through trickery, cleverness, speed etc)
- The environment as the enemy
- Research, looking for secrets, searching for lore in a library

Bleh. But, this is a first draft and I wrote it in a day, so it could be full of errors. I tried to add a lot of examples to make it clear what each step is trying to achieve. Let me know if anything is very unclear or just plain weird.

The PDF is here:



Given that this is more or less complete, the next steps will be:
- Add examples to cover the above unconventional challenges
- Do the Character Advancement section
- Make additional Character Sheet pages for magic-using characters

Then, finally, finally, finally, I can maybe start doing the actual world-building, which was the whole point of starting this game.

Thanks,

Chris