A Wilder World: Irregular Update Post
Feb. 25th, 2013 11:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinOne reason that A Wilder World continues to rumble along in development is that I've kept refining exactly what I am trying to do, and each redefinition causes me to re-evaluate other parts of the project.
Another reason is that one of the centerpieces of the game--the modular character creation system--requires quite a lot of content to be generated before the game is even playable, and that content creates a lot of "moving parts" that will need playtesting.
But I realized late last year that the stat system and core game rules that I had created ended up doing their job muuuuuuuuuuuuch better than I'd expected. You could staple on a more generic D&D-style equipment, skill, and leveling system and you'd have a finished game. The stat system by itself allows for an incredible amount of variation between characters and allows you to define your character as "a warrior" or "a sage" or "a thief" or "a whatever" to a fairly impressive degree.
Take heart, AWW fans... the realization that I could do this didn't cause me to abandon the concept, I only saw that I don't need nearly as high a level of definition from the modular Character Qualities. I don't need a bunch of character options to help you define Hey I'm A Fighter or Hey I'm A Rogue when the stat system covers that.
The stat system itself has had some changes from when last I posted. I've dropped the device of calling stats "Character Strengths"... I liked it for thematic reasons, the idea being that all characters are "strong" in their own fashion and you decide how that is, but for people used to D&D/d20 style stats, it seems like it would be jarring. The official term for stats is now Abilities.
The Endurance ability is gone. It was there as a relic of when the game had Primary Abilities that were split into two Secondary Abilities, and Body represented Brawn and Endurance. But Endurance was pretty unique in being something that can't be used to actively overcome obstacles, and most situations that would challenge someone with a high Endurance would endanger everyone in the party with a lower Endurance. That, and the separation of out-of-combat Endurance from in-combat Toughness was one of the hardest instances of stat segregation to justify. In the instances when you have to withstand extreme temperatures or resist poison outside of a fight scene, Toughness will suffice. Though I'm considering renaming Brawn back to Body and making it so you can use Body or Toughness in those cases... a lot of resit-the-immediate-peril-y situations currently allow you to use a combat or non-combat stat to respond, and I'd like to continue that trend.
The Combat Ability called Tactics is gone, for reasons covered in my last post on this subject. It had become superfluous, and rather than adding some mechanical kludge to combat to make it relevant again, I've just dropped it.
I've added Healing as a Combat Ability... previously, if you wanted to make a character who was a healer, you'd have to take a Quality that gave you some form of healing. I never liked this because it creates a hole in the system in terms of character archetypes that can be represented by stats, and makes healing characters less diverse in terms of their special-fu. Healing has some advanced uses that involve making checks, but the basic effect of it is that in the aftermath of a fight scene, a healer can heal a number of patients equal to their Healing score of a number of points of physical damage equal to their Healing score (apiece) before they're counted for wounds.
As for the Character Quality system...
Well, I've increasingly come to the conclusion that Bonuses Are Boring should be a guiding principle. The more Qualities there are that simply give a bonus to certain rolls in certain circumstances, the less interesting the differences between characters become and the more balance issues can creep in. That's not to say that no Qualities will give bonuses, but I'm looking harder at any Quality that only gives bonuses and figuring out if it's actually necessary/if it actually adds something to the game besides a way to "max" a character.
So between that and less focus on Qualities that exist to basically mark a character class, I think I can wind up with a more interesting system with fewer moving pieces.
Another reason is that one of the centerpieces of the game--the modular character creation system--requires quite a lot of content to be generated before the game is even playable, and that content creates a lot of "moving parts" that will need playtesting.
But I realized late last year that the stat system and core game rules that I had created ended up doing their job muuuuuuuuuuuuch better than I'd expected. You could staple on a more generic D&D-style equipment, skill, and leveling system and you'd have a finished game. The stat system by itself allows for an incredible amount of variation between characters and allows you to define your character as "a warrior" or "a sage" or "a thief" or "a whatever" to a fairly impressive degree.
Take heart, AWW fans... the realization that I could do this didn't cause me to abandon the concept, I only saw that I don't need nearly as high a level of definition from the modular Character Qualities. I don't need a bunch of character options to help you define Hey I'm A Fighter or Hey I'm A Rogue when the stat system covers that.
The stat system itself has had some changes from when last I posted. I've dropped the device of calling stats "Character Strengths"... I liked it for thematic reasons, the idea being that all characters are "strong" in their own fashion and you decide how that is, but for people used to D&D/d20 style stats, it seems like it would be jarring. The official term for stats is now Abilities.
The Endurance ability is gone. It was there as a relic of when the game had Primary Abilities that were split into two Secondary Abilities, and Body represented Brawn and Endurance. But Endurance was pretty unique in being something that can't be used to actively overcome obstacles, and most situations that would challenge someone with a high Endurance would endanger everyone in the party with a lower Endurance. That, and the separation of out-of-combat Endurance from in-combat Toughness was one of the hardest instances of stat segregation to justify. In the instances when you have to withstand extreme temperatures or resist poison outside of a fight scene, Toughness will suffice. Though I'm considering renaming Brawn back to Body and making it so you can use Body or Toughness in those cases... a lot of resit-the-immediate-peril-y situations currently allow you to use a combat or non-combat stat to respond, and I'd like to continue that trend.
The Combat Ability called Tactics is gone, for reasons covered in my last post on this subject. It had become superfluous, and rather than adding some mechanical kludge to combat to make it relevant again, I've just dropped it.
I've added Healing as a Combat Ability... previously, if you wanted to make a character who was a healer, you'd have to take a Quality that gave you some form of healing. I never liked this because it creates a hole in the system in terms of character archetypes that can be represented by stats, and makes healing characters less diverse in terms of their special-fu. Healing has some advanced uses that involve making checks, but the basic effect of it is that in the aftermath of a fight scene, a healer can heal a number of patients equal to their Healing score of a number of points of physical damage equal to their Healing score (apiece) before they're counted for wounds.
As for the Character Quality system...
Well, I've increasingly come to the conclusion that Bonuses Are Boring should be a guiding principle. The more Qualities there are that simply give a bonus to certain rolls in certain circumstances, the less interesting the differences between characters become and the more balance issues can creep in. That's not to say that no Qualities will give bonuses, but I'm looking harder at any Quality that only gives bonuses and figuring out if it's actually necessary/if it actually adds something to the game besides a way to "max" a character.
So between that and less focus on Qualities that exist to basically mark a character class, I think I can wind up with a more interesting system with fewer moving pieces.