Homebrew Diary #3: Blending Things Together
Posted: May 25, 2011 Filed under: Copper Coins!, Homebrew, Houserules, RPG Leave a comment »I created and released a game called High Score pretty much on a whim. I had a fun idea for a mechanic and I wrote a whole game around that concept. I received brilliant feedback on it from a number of a sources, and I was excited and went back to work fixing some of the problems and tweaking some of the mechanics there. That tweaking and fixing involves making High Score a part of a Copper Coins! – Copper Coins’ non-combat resolution system will, basically, be a tweaked High Score system. In Copper Coins! it is referred to as the Success Pool, and works in ways similar but also different than before.
Homebrew Diary #2: A Dragon
Posted: May 14, 2011 Filed under: Copper Coins!, Fluff/Inspiration, Homebrew, Other Systems, RPG Leave a comment »I promised we’d look at non-combat mechanics next, but I’ve found I am not yet ready to totally discuss them. Instead I did something else. One important element, at least in my opinion, of designing your own RPG is knowing what your enemies will look like. If your PCs are anything like your enemies, writing down what an enemy will look like will also tell you a lot about how what kinds of information players will need on their character sheets for eventual combats and competitions. Fairly early on in any project I try to write an enemy. This helps me visualize things I’ve done already and things I plan to do in the future. The creature will mutate over time as rules are added and dropped, and may contain things that aren’t altogether necessary, but just having it gives me a non-abstract vision of what I want to do, and some idea of how to get there. For the Copper Coins! redesign I made a dragon that helps to illustrate some of the combat abilities, and some of the goals of the game for me.
Input On A New Direction
Posted: April 22, 2011 Filed under: Copper Coins!, D&D 4e, Homebrew, Legacy D&D, Other Systems, RPG 4 Comments »After my experiments with High Score! I’ve found out some significant things about my audience and the people willing to play the games I’m putting out there. If you disagree with them, let me know:
•Most were daunted by the huge size of Copper Coins! rules. Most were much more receptive to the idea of the much smaller rulebook in High Score and were more eager to read it.
•Most people thought that the similarities of Copper Coins with the D20 system were a bug, not a feature. Most were much more receptive to the idea of a more “unique” set of mechanics, given they already have a plethora of D&Ds to play.
•Most people thought that there was a level of redundancy in the Copper Coins! rules. Perks, Talents, Weapon types, as rules items in a complete game they could have been conflated into smaller groups and retained their functions.
This is going to sound like some Street Fighter-esque stuff right here, but I’m postponing the beta for a second alpha phase of Copper Coins! I’ve made a big deal out of listening to feedback, and I am and I will listen, so buh-bye D20 callbacks, buh-bye 200 page rulebook, buh-bye SPT-System. I’m starting from scratch and really looking to do something a bit different.
Copper Coins! beta: Fighter Archetype
Posted: March 21, 2011 Filed under: Copper Coins!, Homebrew, Other Systems, RPG 2 Comments »Here’s a preview of the Fighter archetype from Copper Coins! beta. For comparison purposes, this is basically what an archetype was in the alpha:
Fighter
Perks: Vitality (6), Mettle (5), Wounds (5), Willpower (3), Light Armor Use (1), Heavy Armor Use (1), Shield Use (1), Protect Allies (1), Weapon Power (3), Brawn (1), Language (1), Aggressor (1)Skills: Simple Weapons (5), Athletics (5), Object Use (5), Advanced Weapons (4), Labor (4), Exotic Weapons (3), Intimidation, Deceit or Persuasion (any one at 3), Medicinal Lore (3), Wilderness Lore (3), Common Lore (3), Stealth (2), Artistry (2), any other Lore skill (2).
Talents: Agitate (1), Power Blow (1) and any talent at (1).
Spell List Bloatedness Quota
Posted: March 14, 2011 Filed under: Copper Coins!, Homebrew, Other Systems, RPG Leave a comment »I’m still working on Copper Coins! I’ve been quiet about it because I’ve been trying (and not being successful) at expanding the blog beyond just talking about Eden and just talking about Copper Coins! and instead trying to talk about general RPG things that might be a bit more attractive to a wider audience. It’s a doomed project, and I’m probably not going to bother anymore. So on that note, back to Copper Coins – that other doomed project. There’s gonna be changes, and one of them is that I’m cutting back on the number of spells that exist, in some ways – and I feel this is for the better.
Different Kinds of Classes
Posted: March 11, 2011 Filed under: Classes, Copper Coins!, D&D 3.5, D&D 4e, Dark Heresy, Deathwatch, Homebrew, Legacy D&D, Other Systems, Rogue Trader, RPG 1 Comment »Most people, when they think of “classes” in RPGs think of the typical class-level system in D&D. You pick a class and you advance in levels within it. You might have numerous choices to make each level (in D&D 4e) or you might have no choice of what you get in a particular level (seen more often in Essentials D&D and pre-4e D&D), but you only make those choices within that level when it is achieved. Until you’ve broken the threshold to a new level, you have no more pick of abilities. You have some limited ability to use powers from other classes each level as well. However, there are other ways that “classes” are done. I’m not particularly saying they’re better, though I will not claim to be fond of D&D’s class system, but that there’s different ways classes are handled, and the D&D model is not the only game in town for design of a class-based RPG. Here’s my personal favorite.
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