Copper Coins! alpha 1. The culmination of a couple months of on and off fiddling around. You all will probably get to play it even before I do. I am okay with that. There’s little to be said right now about Copper Coins! that I haven’t said before. I think it came out looking just the way that I thought it would when I set out to start it. It is by no means perfect. By no means for everyone. I could’ve added more monsters to start with, there’s already perks and talents swimming around my head that I wanted to add. But I thought it was time to tear this off from me and put it out there, so I can start playing it – so we can start playing it. I have something now that I can work with, that I feel comfortable going forward with. It feels pretty nice that what started as basically a rambling introduction page (that has since been excised) has grown like it has. It’s not the most original or revolutionary game ever. But I think it has a place, and has its charms. I am biased, though. I made it.
You can download it here: Mediafire. If you have problems downloading from Mediafire, you can email me for a copy.
232 pages!
Wow, can’t wait to get into reading it.
Congratulations on making it this far.
FINALLY!
I mean, ok. I’ll give it a look.
Skimming through the first 20 pages or so, it feels a bit like D&D mixed with Savage Worlds. Not that that’s bad, but I can definitely feel some strong inspiration from them.
The only thing I’d suggest, and this is purely from an aesthetic/formatting perspective, would be to italicize or bold Copper Coins! within the text. It just seems odd not seeing it denoted as being the title is all.
I cited D&D as an inspiration countless times in the lead-up to this release. As for Savage Worlds, I don’t know. I don’t really like Savage Worlds, though I’ve not given it a super thorough reading. But yeah, I don’t hide the fact that this is an offshoot of the D&D tradition. It’s a proud tradition.
My inspirations were basically D&D, GURPS and video games, particularly Etrian Odyssey (this was one of the particular reasons I even decided to write a fantasy heartbreaker, along with the idea of having multiple different elements which are leveled up separately with earned points), Fallout 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (those two gave me the idea for the word Perk as a purchasable stable bonus, among a few other things).
I wasn’t really following the preview articles to this. I’d see mention of them on twitter, but didn’t really look into them much. I won’t say I was really surprised to see D&D be a big inspiration, because it is the iconic table top RPG I think.
I’m not a big fan of Savage Worlds either, and only have passing familiarity with it. But the concept of Target Numbers, skills/perks/talents and the emphasis on “playing an archetype, not a pre-defined class” is very familiar. However, those things are pretty common in a lot of systems, so it might be that my familiarity with SW is making me more inclined to relate it to that than anything else.
And by, “didn’t really look,” I mean that I didn’t look at all. :p
That’s understandable I suppose. They are indeed very common elements. Part of the reason I went with archetypes is because Classes are a lot of work to build and can be restrictive, whereas I prefer point-buy in the style of GURPS better. However, I also wanted character generation to be quicker than GURPS’ by doing something GURPS already, in-part, does. But unlike GURPS’ templates, Copper Coins! archetypes are mandatory, so that the skeleton and a lot of the flesh for every character is there at the beginning. This saves time in my experience compared to doing a full-on, point-buy, build everything from scratch kind of character generation. It also makes the game a bit more cohesive in theme. I don’t really want to have characters in the game who are absolutely helpless in a fight, or who are absolutely unable to participate socially or use rope or something, so I hand out these skills in varying proportions to everybody.
I agree with that. Making classes is a lot of work and can be kind of restrictive, creatively. I remember first learning GURPS (not that I ever really got a grip of it) and being overwhelmed by the options.
I think that more generic terms for the archetypes might help, along with a description of what sort of characters would qualify for each archetype. Cleric might be replaced with Healer, or something similar, and mention that clerics, priests, shamans, spiritualists, some types of wizards, etc would qualify as a Healer. Fighter is the only one that could be renamed to Warrior or something similar (simply because all characters tend to be fighters of some variety). Adding more to each archetype and clarifying what sort of characters might fall under each would make it more understandable to newer players. Adding references to famous movies and novels would also help reinforce ideas of what characters would fall under each.
I’d suggest mentioning that writing and discussing your own archetypes with your GM is good too. Discussing and agreeing on something with him can allow for more customization. This might belong in a bonus/advance section later on. You might have said this and I haven’t seen it yet/didn’t notice.
There is a section discussing that in the GM’s toolbox near the end of the book, as I saw it more as an activity the GM undergoes rather than the players.
The reason I don’t use generic names is that I want that callback to D&D to be there, right near the start. I want you to think that you can be that dude/chick from your games in this game too. I want you to recognize the Fighter and the Cleric and all those classes, and look at them, and realize what’s the same and what’s changed, conceptually and mechanically. This really isn’t much of a game for new players who’ve never touched an RPG, at least as far as offering ironclad guidance as to how RPGs as a whole work. The section on What Is An RPG is only really there to try to set a tone for what I want the game to be seen as. A lot of people nowadays want the RPG to straight-up tell them that they can roleplay and that they should use their imaginations and they see it as a failure if it doesn’t. So I try to do that. I still think an individual GM can teach the game better than I can in the text.
And the reason I don’t cite specific inspirations is because I don’t want to color the toolbox purple (or pink as the case may be). I’ll consider it, but I find it unlikely I’ll do it. All I’d be citing would be animes, mangas and video games anyway because that’s the bulk of what I consume and colors my gaming. That’s all that would stick in an Appendix N, and that would undermine Copper Coins! in my opinion.
The point really isn’t what I think anything looks like or fits in.
Did you get some inspiration from BESM (Big Eyes Small Mouth) ?
I don’t really remember almost anything about BESM, except that in the distant past I was acquainted with and not terribly fond of anything about it. So no, it was not on my mind as I was doing this.