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.
No comments:
Post a Comment