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Progress, progress, progress. I should really take a tip from Rob Lang and not even set deadlines. So I won’t set deadlines anymore. But so far, I’m nearing completion of the alpha. I got some new ideas for content and incorporated them (doubling the amount of available perks in the Alpha) and have nearly completed the monster section of Expedition. Part of the challenge of Expedition was making monsters unique and fun, as well as coming up with the implied “faction storylines.” The flavor text of each monster contributes to a kind of implied storyline about the faction that you can use to get you started on using it. There’s no actual implied setting though, and my plans to supply a sample town and dungeon will unfortunately have to be cut for now.

It was somewhat difficult to create new and interesting abilities, because I tried to model a lot of the common “status condition” stuff like “you got knocked down!” and such with the Strike system. So the typical monster design of “monster deals x condition!” with its attacks doesn’t really work – everyone can deal conditions, and it works under a unifying system.

The most time-consuming part of this whole exercise has been the section on GMing. It always is. I don’t consider myself too good a GM, so I’m always rather paralyzed about what advice to offer in these sections. I’ve struggled along, tried to present the bare bones I think is necessary to know about the game as a GM, but there will likely be holes. With feedback I can hopefully write a section in the Beta that is more helpful to the GMs who (hopefully) try the game in the Alpha.

I’ve already revised how character classes “look” like 3 times. Part of the issue is that I want them to be eminently playable, without actually needing to buy Perks. At first I tried to do this by giving them Starting Perks, but that left a bad taste in my mouth. I think the class itself should be playable without even needing to touch Perks at all just yet. If you wanted to you should just be able to read the class, write down your class stuff and buy equipment and then set off to play. So I decided instead to have each class award a few combat talents and a few traits. These, compared to Perks, are not great. But they’re not meant to, because they’re free. Perks cost character points. However, they make the character completely playable and interesting without needing to buy Perks. There is still the option of the GM awarding starting Character Points with which to buy a few Perks, but I want it to be just that – optional.

Names of the abilities are subject to change. They currently have this sort of accidentally hilarious Soviet theme to them because those are literally the first things that popped into my head. Without further ado:

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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.

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As I get older my shamelessness in requesting lavish gifts has decreased, but I got an Xbox 360 controller which I am happily using with my PC and having a fun time. Resident Evil 5 is wacky as all get-out. I don’t generally ask for tabletop RPG stuff for holiday gifts. Hope you’re having as nice a time as I am. Things you can look forward to from me: I’m gearing up to start writing some more in-depth stuff about each Nation in Adel. I’m pretty close to done with the Copper Coins! alpha document. I’ve yet to get started on that hex map of Adel, but I’ve got a few ideas for adding some islands and new stuff to the Spirits of Eden and expanding the world just a little bit. Hopefully you’ll stick around and we’ll both have gained something useful and entertaining by this time next year, too.

Though you don’t have to use templates to play NAA D6, to capture that Eden flavor of a multitude of races good at different things, I recommend that prospective GMs enforce the selection of a racial template for one of Eden’s races. A character can have only one of the following templates, and only two templates max. The templates define qualities shared by most if not all of the race, and include recommendations on further skills and advantages that can be used to refine that “racial flavor.” Setting information on the races can be found in the left sidebar Spirits of Eden Setting pages.

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WordPress is struggling to keep me from posting this, having already eaten it twice. Perhaps it’s a mark of how useful and awesome it is when it finally allows me to post it. This post I’ll try to walk you through NAA D6 character creation by turning a 4e character of mine into a NAA D6 character. The character will be a favorite of mine, Sunshine Metronome. I’ve played many different iterations of this character over the years, but she’s always had the same daredevil attitude and dual swords.

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