Friday Afternoon Ramblings

It's been a pretty long day so far today, which isn't helped by much going on in the office and the weather being absolutely goregeous outside. I've had a couple proto-posts running around in my notes for a while, but they never developed into full-fledged posts, so I figured that I'd toss them in here to pass some time.

First off, in my "Perfect" System hack of SWN: This project is turning into and fun creative exercise. I'm now on my 3rd version of the Character Creation chapter, and I think I've finally hit on something that I really like. I mentioned in my last post that I was playing around with the idea of taking ideas from Alternity's character profession structure and applying it to SWN. What I have is 5 fully flesh-outs classes: Diplomats, Experts (though I may end up changing the name to Tech), Freelancers (name may change to Rogue), Psions, and Warriors. Here are the changes I've made so far:

• I changed the background packages into careers with very little to actually change.
• As for the classes themselves, each one has an initiative bonus and two special abilities.
• Skill points have been increased since I'm switching to a format like that found in most D20 games.
• Psionics rules have been updated to reflect the change in the skill system, and to assign each power one of four different categories of psionic power: Biokinesis, ESP, Telekinesis, and Telepathy because one of the Psion special abilities is that they get to choose a category and apply a bonus to the activation rolls when using those type of powers.
• I've dropped Tech and Luck saves in lieu of just having Physical Effect, Mental Effect, and Evasion.
• Attributes and bonuses are in line with most D20 games, with bonuses or penalties for each 2 point step from 10-11. This may seem like an overpowering of the characters move (and once I run some more playtests I may deem that to be the case), but characters in SWN are so fragile anyway that I feft they could use a little boost anyway.
• Characters all have one XP table. This is largely due to how I'm going about handing out XP. Even though the classes aren't balanced, most times it's how the party works together that's the most important rather than any individual goals. So rather than handing XP for how much loot a character gets or how many creatures they personally deal with, the GM is granted the freedom to dole out XP as they wish (largely for completing goals) with some guidelines.
• The gear list has been largely replaced with less generic weapons. I'm a gear nut and I like to have a lot of options for gear. Much of this chapter is modified from D20 Future, Babylon 5 2e, and Futuretech (D20 Modern).

I'm currently adding new cybertech to the cybernetics section. I like SWN's cybernetics rules alot, so nothing is mechanically changing. I'm just added some new tech to the list. Really, beyond what's already been mentioned and the Xenobestiary, I don't expect that I'll change too much else.

My wife popped Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in the blu-ray player last night, mostly to save us from having to watch Up for the 80th time (don't get me wrong, Up is a good, sweet movie, but it loses some charm when your 4 year old wants to watch it day after day...). This got me thinking about my partially finished "magical modern world" setting for Savage Worlds. I started work on this setting, which is part Harry Potter, part Dresden Files, part Call of Cthulhu, with some X-Files tossed in for flavor, after reading the Harry Potter books. (Everyone I knew recommended them, said I would love them. I resisted for a long time figuring they would be the standard kiddie faire, but I'm glad I relented. Sure the early books were pretty simple, but the series got great by The Goblet of Fire when it started to get darker.) After those, I finally started in on the Dresden series as well. Anyway, long story short (too late, I know) I got the itch to play in a world filled wizards and monsters that few people even know exists. Mechanically, it's a mash up of a couple different Harry Potter Savage Worlds fan-books, with some spells converted from D20 Modern's Urban Arcana and some other ideas from various modern-day games. I rather like how it turned out. The rules are larely done, and I really just need to work on background information for the world and put together a sample bestiary and it would be done. Maybe I'll pull that out when/if this sci-fi itch ever goes away...

The Dungeon Roll Kickstarter is nearly done. Last check this morning, over $149K has been pledged. Not bad for a $15 dice game, which from a recent update will likely end up retailing for $20, so if you've checked it out but were on the fence, now is a great time to jump on board. Not only will you get the game cheaper than you would in store, but you'll also get a lot of extra characters (one of which, the Guildmaster, is an exclusive to the KS), extra dice, and some other little goodies as well. Definitely worth checking out. Here's the link.

That's all for now. I hope you all have a good weekend.