After a fair amount of testing, I’ve decided to concentrate on the core game loop. I’ve cleaned it up and make it more interesting. I got tired of dealing with my scribbled cards, so I used a label maker to create some neater cards. In the process I got rid of the quadrant idea, for now. Instead, I have a simple list of four items; From top to bottom, they are the quadrants: event, encounter, discovery, location.

I’ve also decided to go from 9 cards and the camping card up to 12 plus the camping card. This allows the cards to be evenly dealt in hands of four cards. That was a stupid mistake originally that i should have thought through.

I now have double-sided cards with the four items. This allows for more variety. Now when you run through the deck, you cut the deck in half, flip one half over and then shuffle.

I’ll update the manual in the next few days to reflect the changes.

I’m taking a break from this project to deal with holidays and to catch up on stuff elsewhere. I haven’t abandoned this project and will resume posting and developing the game in the next few weeks. 

I’ve played a bunch of games using what I call the Stats plug-in. As play-testing usually does, it showed me a few weaknesses in my original approach. On playing, I thought the way stats are used was overly complicated. Worse still, the game felt flat and repetitive. I’ve simplified the rules.

First, these rules apply only to Event, Encounter, and Discovery cards. I’ve added the discovery cards to “the mix”.

Second, instead of having fixed values such as M=7 (Mind = 7), all cards are now of the form X+?, X-?, and X=?, where X will be M(ind), B(ode), or S(pirit).

If the player encounters a card with one of these, the player takes the corresponding character stat, adjusts the value (only for this action) according to the card value, then rolls one die. If the value rolled is greater than the resulting change, the character succeeds in the action, applying the Result of Rolls rules to the story.

NOTE: The adjusted value can be greater than 10, but not less than 1.

The simplified rules allow me to adjust the difficulty relative to the character, instead of trying to force the difficulty based on absolute values. This makes more sense.

I’ll play a bunch of games with the new rules, then post the cards and values, and update the manual.

By the way, if you’re trying this, please let me know what you think. Feedback is welcome.

Last time I talked about player character stats, how they’re initialized and how they decrease with an action dice roll. I see there being two other ways the stats will change throughout the game.

1. Interacting with the special Camping card.

2. Interacting with specific actions and encounters.

3. Training

If the player draws the Camping card, that indicates a rest period for the player’s character as outlined in the core rules. If the player is playing with the Stats plug-in, playing the Camping card also increases each stat by 1 up to the current value. The current value, in this sense, means the highest level of a stat achieved in the game capped at the maximum of 10. This tells me I should give the player an easy way to track stats: current and highest achieved. But I’m thinking ahead.

So camping will restore one point of each stat up to their “healed” level.

Encounter and Event cards may have a stat value on them or a modifier. Modifier in this case means a value by which to modify a stat. So a Body + 1 modifier would mean add 1 to the character’s Body stat. They become stronger, faster, etc. Alternatively, an encounter or Event card may have a stat value: for example, Mind == 7.

Addendum to Player Creation (I’m thinking aloud, after all): When creating a character, the player has a pool of 12 points they distribute. The value they add to each stat I’ll call a modifier.. **The player will need to track this**

If the player draws the Mind = 7 card, they must roll a die and beat 7 (die roll + character’s stat modifier) in order to succeed at whatever the story action is. Also, their dice roll will be subject to the Dice Roll rules I laid out last time. Let’s say the player character has a Mind of 8, which is an initial roll of 4 plus 4 modifier. Let’s say the player rolls a 5. Add the modifier of 4. That results in a 9. The player character succeeds, but gets no story benefit (because he rolled a 5).

This may seem confusing because I’m thinking aloud. Once I put it into the rules, it will, hopefully, be straight-forward.

Training. I should probably call this Training/Study. It should be difficult. It shouldn’t be a vital part of the story, per se. That means I either need a training card, or work it in some other way. Because it’s difficult, I think I’ll work it into the Camping Card. As a first pass, I think if the character’s stats are at their current “healed” level, the player can roll a single die. If they roll a 6, they may increase a single stat up to the maximum of 10. This should be rare enough that training/study is valuable and difficult.

Now that I’ve thought this through, I need to distill this and incorporate it into the manual. Then I should play a bunch of games to see if it feels right. So, I won’t be posted for a few days until I think I have something to add/fix.

Last time I came up with the player character’s stats of Body, Mind, and Spirit. I did some more thinking and believe I have a way to create your character.

First, the assumptions.

1. The player is telling a story through role-play.

2. The player will create the character, its background and characteristics—the game won’t deal with that aspect.

3. The player doesn’t want to get bogged down by a ton of stat management.

Point number 2 is the key one. The game shouldn’t have a set of tables or a form to fill out in order to create a character. However, if the player wants to use the stats plug-in, the game should have rules for initializing the values. Here is the first pass at those rules.

1. No stat can go above 10. The total, therefore, cannot go above 30.

2. A character’s base stats will be determined by rolling a single die one time for each of the three stats.

3. The player can then distribute an additional 12 points across the 3 stats as they choose.

I think this allows for some randomness and also allows the player to skew the character based on who they want to play.

The next thing I need to be concerned with is how the stats adjust throughout the game. The three stats of Body, Mind, and Spirit will be adjusted in-game based on encounters and discoveries. Any time a character performs an action in the story that involves one of the three, the action will affect that stat. For example, if the player wants the character to search a room, how that affects the stats isn’t described in the rules. The player needs to know that searching involves searching or perception which in turn maps to the Body and the Mind.. The player then needs to resolve the action based on those stats of the character. The player chooses either Body or Mind.

Let’s say the character needs to search a room for a key and the character’s Body stat is currently at 7 (a little above average.) The player rolls a single die, which gives a result of 4. What’s that mean? The way I envision dice rolls working is that a roll of:

6 - is success with a story benefit. The player finds a key, and in the process discovers what it unlocks.

5 - is success with no story benefit. The player finds a key but doesn’t know what the key opens.

4 - is partial success. The player finds something they weren’t looking for.

3 - is partial failure. The player finds the wrong key.

2 - is failure. The player finds nothing.

1 - is failure at a cost (the stat drops by 1). The player finds nothing, and his Body stat drops by 1 to 6.

This is just an example of how I envision the stats interacting and decreasing with dice rolls. It will be up to the player to tell the story and determine which stat applies to an action.

Next time, I’ll lay out how I see the stats increasing and the character growing.