Saturday, September 28, 2013

Big mechanics changes

There were some flaws and some of the design features in the first draft did not fit the design goals for the game itself. One of my friends and colleagues helped to work out the knots in the mechanics.

Now, the main concepts explained in the blog haven't changed dramatically, but there have been significant changes to the printed dice mechanics and character creation since the first draft.

Character creation has been dramatically simplified, while keeping the main elements of point buy in place. One physical stat has been removed, and three rethemed. Two resources have been combined, another two redesigned entirely. The entire concept of 'Force' has been removed from the game entirely, removing a layer of unnecessary complexity.  To allow for power scaling, more than two hits (stitches) may count, unlike before, but now each extra stitch adds an increasing risk to the action afterward.

This continues the design goal of allowing for simple strategic choice on how to deal with a dice pool, and also keeps optimization in check by adding significantly more risk with each stitch used in a success, keeping player power levels more in balance with one another.

This simplifies the way skills will react to successes, and does mean major overhauls of nearly every aspect to the original draft, but in a positive way. It has the added benefit of moving it further from typical game mechanics, eliminating possibly some confusion or assumptions made on similarities with other tabletop RPG systems.

Things are looking up overall, and progress has started again on getting Dreamcatcher into a playable shape.

Thursday, September 5, 2013

All Quiet on the Western Front

Current Draft: 2nd

The blog has gone quiet for a couple weeks since the first draft was completed. The author has taken a mental break for a bit of recovery after the long process, before the hefty revision work begins.  Some major mechanics changes are happening that will affect balance of numbers, though nothing systematic on the dice front, most relating to character creation to bring it more in line with design goals.

Some very limited playtesting has occured, though nothing of significant consequence.

The first large piece for Dreamcatcher has been commissioned, contract will be signed tommorrow delivering a nice two page spread for the book involving Entropy, the artist's choice for most interesting thing in the book to illustrate that fit her tastes and style.

http://hanmonster.deviantart.com/ is the artist, she's very talented and great with color and mood, but this is one of the more dramatic and complex commissions she's had to do.

This artwork is a pretty penny, and hopefully will be made back up in kickstarter, but it'll be great for promotional material for the kickstarter campaign.