Wednesday, May 1st

The Daily Report

It's the first of May. A new month, and about three weeks until WisCon. I'm less confident than before that I'll have Book 2 of Tales of MU out by then... some of the chapters in this one are pretty emotionally raw to re-read, much less put under the microscope for commentary, so my planned pace of one chapter a day has become more like one every other day as sometimes I need more time to reflect on what I want to say. But if not May, then June... as long as I have the cover done before I go, I'll have no problem finishing it in Maryland.

I had two basic fears about posting the Basic Character Guide: that all the feedback I got would be telling me how poorly constructed and hard to make sense of it is, or that people would only tell me that they like it. I mean, I like hearing people are excited by it, but I knew it needed improvement before I put it up. What I really wanted was some direction on that.

The good news is that neither of those things happened. I've gotten small comments from a lot of people and substantial feedback from two people, which is two more people than I expected to do so in the first day. All the feedback has been very encouraging, but also very helpful in pinpointing the problem areas and figuring out things like what gameplay information needs to be provided in context of character creation for people to feel like they're making informed choices.

The early feedback's also been fairly consistent about what needs improvement, too, which is promising. That's why yesterday I replaced the confusing Spellcrafter with the more straight-forward (and frankly, better executed) Magic-User. Last night after work I started an overhaul of the Gear chapter that will be going up sometime today.

The State of the Me

We're having a cold snap here in the midwest, which is great for me in terms of sleep and work. I'm going to use it to try to get a solid sleep rhythm established before the heat returns and ruins my ability to sleep under a giant pile of blankets.

Reason #42724242 I'm looking forward to moving: once I'm no longer saving to move/buying airline tickets all the time, I will be able to afford a weighted blanket for the summer time.

Plans For Today

I'm still kind of tired today (slept great last night, but was behind on sleep) and my schedule shift on Tales of MU means this is kind of an "extra" day. So what I'm mainly going to do today is pick out some of the easier chapters in book 2 and get as much commentary done as I possibly can. That should give me a more realistic idea of how much work there is left to finish than just going by the number of chapters.

AWW: Gear Chapter Overhaul

Okay, so last night I sat in a bookstore and did a major revision of the Chapter 4's catalogue of gear. How some things work (especially the wizardly stuff) was tweaked, I compiled everything that can actually be "purchased" into bullet lists instead of having things scattered throughout the descriptive text, and I integrated the accessory versions of standard gear into the lists with the full versions. I think the intro part of the chapter will also probably be revised further, but I wanted to put the update out for feedback because the final version of the intro will have to reflect the final version of the catalogue.

If the new format works for people, I'm going to use it as a model for the Details and Magic Gear sections.

PDF.

AWW: Game design, charops, and unintended consequences.

I've had five different people send or describe their characters to me (without an electronic character sheet, it can be hard to convey all the choices made in character creation), and all of them had the same Wealth score: 3.

Before I say anything else, I want to say that this isn't about people making characters who are "wrong". If I didn't want it to be possible to have a certain Wealth score, I'd cap it off lower than that. If I wanted it to be rarer, I'd make it more expensive. But when people making different characters keep making the same choice, there's a potential balance issue. Maybe this choice is just too appealing to be ignored. Maybe the system seems to make it necessary.

The reason for the appeal is obvious with a little analysis: more Wealth means more Gear, with a side order of "having more attribute points than places to put them". As things stand, you can max out a character in their particular area of expertise (at least for a starting character) and still have plenty of points to spare. If the stuff your character is good at is maxed out, giving up one of your abundant Attribute point for a scarce Gear Point to purchase something that might make you even better in your chosen area is a no-brainer.

If people were to write character optimization guides for AWW as it exists right now, step one would be "Put three points in Wealth." For every character, regardless of their concept or image. Which is the opposite of what I want. A score of 3 in Wealth is supposed to say something about your character's background and capabilities, not that you wanted/needed more Gear. Wealth: 3 is pretty much "Baggins of Bag-End" territory.

The Wealth-Gear connection was something I added late in the development, and in retrospect I didn't think it through. I was worried that it would be an undervalued choice and I wanted to beef it up a little bit, so I tied starting Gear levels to it.

But Bilbo's moneyed upbringing didn't actually leave him better equipped for a life of adventure, did it?

So what I'm doing is this: cutting the connection between positive Wealth* and Gear. The new starting allotment is 4, and the first level of Extra Gear Detail a character takes gives 2 more instead of 1. This would actually keep the Gear lists of most of the characters I've seen the same, but free up those points that went into Wealth.

Negative Wealth might still decrease starting Gear, because otherwise the min-max guide will just begin with "take two points of negative Wealth"... if your character doesn't need positive Wealth for other reasons, there wouldn't be much drawback to taking negative.

Positive Wealth still might have some impact on your starting equipment, details pending, but it won't be in the form of additional Gear Points. Maybe a sub-system of Luxury Points. Any kind of trait that very specifically represents exceptional appearance or quality would be marked with the price in Gear Points or Luxury Points (i.e., buy them with either), and there could be some items that require Luxury Points. So Wealthy characters would still have more and better equipment, but primarily in ways that affect the social sphere of influence that the Wealth attribute is meant to be strongest in, anyway.

Yeah, I actually really like that idea. This way, being wealthy isn't a prerequisite for having armor, but the wealthy character is more likely to have shiny armor.

The other change I'm making is raising the attribute cap back up to the original planned ceiling of 6. My thought was "Ooh, too big a range of starting attributes might be too unbalanced, better start low and increase it if it's okay", but it's not like the test is going to spin out of control and kill people if the game's unbalanced.

These changes will probably go live tomorrow, since I mostly work on AWW at night, but I wanted to get the thoughts down and out of my head now while they're fresh. For people who are playing along at home, the cost for an attribute of 5 is 7 points and an attribute of 6 is 9 points. There may or may not be a "one 6 limit" for each character.

AWW: This isn't even my final form.

Okay, I have been surprised and gratified by how much detailed feedback has come in since I posted the test version of the A Wilder World character guide the day before yesterday. I really expected it would take longer for anyone to get into the nuts and bolts of the thing.

I think the Gear update is going to be the last incremental update for a while, because I think I have a handle on the material now. I'm going to be going over it from top to bottom now, moving it into the form it'll use for the beta.

People who have taken their time delving into the thing, don't despair. I'm not done accepting feedback. But I feel like now I have a clearer idea of how to organize and express my ideas. If anything, I expect to hear from even more people as the booklet gets more newbie-friendly.

On the subject of newbies, the people I've heard from so far have been a pretty decent cross-section of the gaming community, in terms of experience level, ranging from relative beginners to people with years and multiple systems under their belt.

One thing that the early feedback has made clear is the importance of having an electronic version of the character sheet. I think I can make editable forms in Word? In any event, I'll be looking into it.

The next configuration of the Character Guide is going to include a section called "Gameplay Primer" that will give an overview of the rules for checks, attacks and defenses, and magic... not enough to play the game, but maybe enough that someone who'd read it could sit in with or shadow a group of experienced players and pick up the rest, and more importantly for immediate purposes, enough to understand how an attack bonus compares to a damage bonus or what Magic Burn Tolerance does.