AWW: Two things to make your life easier, testers.

As I said, the Basic Character Guide is undergoing a major rewrite, but for people who want to keep playing around with it while I'm working on the next version, here are a couple of things that might help.

First, it's been brought to my attention that the section on how to read a Quality wasn't very useful for learning how to read a Quality. I'd thought it had more information than it actually did, but then, I went through a lot of drafts.

Here's an improved version.

(Sidenote: The pattern of alternating bubbles in the third tier is reversed in this. That's because I got it backwards before. It should go big-little-big.)

The second thing is something that was created by a playtester whose name I'm realizing I don't actually know. Let me know what to call you and I'll give you credit. It's an Excel spreadsheet version of the front page of the character sheet that automates the task of totaling up attribute points... it doesn't tell you how many you have left, but you put your scores into the appropriate spaces and it tells you at the top how many you've spent. There are also spaces for the other things on the front page of the sheet.

Here's that. Note that you can't edit it in the viewer; this is something you'll have to download and then open in a spreadsheet viewer on your own computer. It's a great start on an electronic character sheet.

Couple things that should improve the quality of life a little.

Thursday, May 2nd

The Daily Report

Yesterday, I had an unexpected expense that set my WisCon budget back a little bit. I was a bit ahead of where I'd planned to be at the start of May, now I'm a little bit behind. The really crucial stuff is covered, so this is not an emergency even at the level of "now I can't meet my con commitments/see my friends/go to the con", but I'm still going to be stepping up my fundraising efforts a bit between now and then to try to make up the difference.

(Hint, hint.)

The State of the Me

Slept awesome yesterday, feel awesome today. I also recently added an element back into my supplement regimen that I had tried briefly then dropped because of expense (it wasn't particularly expensive, but the regimen as a whole is and it seemed the most expendable), and I think it's responsible for me feeling fairly calm yesterday afternoon even as I dealt with the minor crisis, despite said crisis requiring me to make a phone call and talk to someone I didn't know, which is one area where I haven't had as much success controlling my phone phobia.

Plans For Today

Today's a writing day, alternating with commentary and poking at AWW. I normally do most of my AWWing at night during my spare time, but my brain's stuck on it and I know better than to try to ignore it when my brain's raring to go in a particular direction.

AWW: Character spreadsheet updated.

Okay, playtester Pip has updated the electronic character sheet/spreadsheet that I posted last night. Among other improvements, there are now three separate, more detailed sheets for Qualities. Each Quality page is basically a template. Because different Qualities have different numbers/arrangements of abilities, you'll need to copy and paste rows of cells to re-create your individual Quality and then delete whatever rows are extraneous.

It occurs to me as I'm looking at this that this is the kind of thing that Access was tailor-made for. It's been years since I've played around with Access, but it's possible I could actually make my own full character creation app without much problem. That's the sort of thing that's going to depend on character creation being a finalized process, though.

Anyway, here's the link for the updated sheet. Some parts of it look weird in the web viewer, but you'll need to download it (menu at the top) to use it anyway.

AWW: Update progress.

Doing the rewrite has proved to be tedious in some places, so to reward myself I've been adding more of the fun stuff in... specifically, more Qualities! When the next update goes live, it's going to have at least four more: Brute, Tracker, Smooth-Talker, and Pyromancer. Another possible one, Theurge, is pending some development/conceptual issues.

People who've been following my development logic might notice that these five Qualities fit the theme/pattern of the first ten in the Guide: Fighter, Ranger, Rogue, [Cleric], and Wizard. It's always been my intent to have three Qualities for each of the "basic character classes" present in the Basic Character Guide, to better convey the mix-and-match aspect of things.

Brute (Berserker/Battlerager) is a pretty straightforward "striker" template. It's grouped with the fighter types but as of this writing nothing in its abilities specify close attacks or physical attacks. Anybody who takes the brute force approach can be a Brute. The Brute's presence actually adds to intimidation tactics used by anyone in the group. There's no "uncontrollable rage" mechanic attached to the higher tiers, despite their names... merely abilities that reward the character for not defending/taking hits. Combine with Stalwart for a kick-in-the-door barbarian, with Assassin for a really brutal striker.

Tracker (Hunter/Hawkeye) has tracking and sensory abilities, mostly vision but others at higher levels. The Tracker has an ability similar to "Hunter's Quarry" from D&D 4E, but more tied to actual observation of an enemy than battlegrid mechanics. The third tier needs a better Commando name... I'm looking for a noun form of "inescapable" and not coming up with anything. I might go with the dramatic, fantasy-sounding "Foestalker".

Smooth-Talker (Charmer/Silver Tongue) can be a con man or otherwise ridiculously persuasive character. They not only make a good "face" character for the party but are good at social combat, to the point that by the second tier they can fend off physical attacks verbally. In the third tier, they get an ability that's called Diplomancy, as a nod to the D&D 3E munchkin trope, but it's a bit more specifically limited in scope.

Theurge (Heirophant/Wonderworker) is the "divine magic" character. Qualities like Life-Touched are there to represent specific divine blessings, but for people who want "cleric spells" that work as analogue to "wizard spells", Theurge is designed around reflavoring the Magic system as divine magic. The thing that's tricky is that this has to provide specific advantages, to be Quality-worthy.

Pyromancer (Fire Mage/Phoenix Wizard) is a specialist wizard. This is going to be a major subset of Qualities when I put out the magic-themed Character Guide. Specialist wizards have a static ability in their first tier that gives a +2 bonus when using magic that relates to their specialty, usually with something that improves that in the second tier, and other abilities that revolve around it.

If it seems disappointing that two of the three wizardy Qualities have so much overlap (Pyromancer and Battlemage are both kind of focused on the fireball-throwing kind of wizard), there will be at least one more specialist wizard in the Basic Character Guide by launch: Illusionist, as part of a cluster of Qualities based around the bard-type character class.

The final slate of Qualities will be between 30-36. I want to pack a lot of value into the basic set, because while I do plan on selling expansions and that being a major source of income within the project (insofar as money made from roleplaying games can ever be "major"), I also want there to be a lot of replay value in just the basic set.

As for the actual rewrite/update... I have the Qualities chapter redone and the Gear chapter redone, and I have started on the Attribute chapter. After I finish that and the Detail chapter, I think I'm going to rewrite the overview as it exists now and put the update up. It won't be "finished" because I want to redo the whole overview with a different approach and add a primer on gameplay terms, but it will be in a state of usability greater than or equal to the original draft I posted.