So lots of changes, some rewrites, and finally a big update

I think the result of the last patch went well. The game moved forward better and I am being more direct about the underlying mechanics behind the game, which helps clarify some of the math for players. Originally there were 4 tiers of power with the 3rd and 4th tiers having 1 and then 2 drawbacks. My players universally did not engage with the two drawback options after many repeat offerings, so easy enough to remove. 

Over the last year, I have had two players engage with the magic relic system. Neither really followed through with it but for reasons outside the game mechanics. This means I have an entire subsystem that is mostly untested. Good news: one of my players has made a new character that leans hard into the relic system so we will finally see how that plays out. 

I have been testing the larger mech and armor side of the game and overall… I am just not happy with it. Originally I was using BattleTech as a starting point and simplifying the mechanics again and again until it was quick and simple to learn/play. BattleTech is built around 5 types of weapons for a total of ~31 different weapons. I cut it down to 8. I then assigned those weapons to a few frames to add a feel of mech battle to the game. 

The rough design was: 

• Missiles were the best damage but had limited ammo and some hard counters to them 
• Cannons were ok damage and as a bonus there are no counter measures to them
• Some of the hard counters to missiles had secondary usages 

Missiles ended up being overly powerful. Not in terms of damage but in terms of decision making. If you could fire a missile, you should fire a mission regardless of what the other options are. The other weapons were just not as engaging as they should have been. The EW and other anti-missiles systems were ok, not great but also not bad. 

In the last 2 weeks I have done a bit of redesign on it. I have spent some time with Lancer. Great set of ideas, really messy game. This is one of those games that is filled to the brim with great ideas but due to complexity, and a poorly organized players handbook, it ends up being far less than the sum of its parts. That said, there are some really simple and easy to administer ideas that I think can be patched over. This should give players more fun lateral options. I also like how Lancer handles both their action economy as well as their heat system, which they do far better than BattleTech does. 

This redesign has reduced the pool of mechs to 7, 3 are the traditional good-better-best mix and then 4 niche mechs are added in. I was also using “pods” to hold 1 big weapon or a mix of small weapons. Then there were rules for constructing those mixed pods, the idea being to bring in all those infantry weapons they were collecting along the way. That may be too messy. I am instead making this less fluid with large slots which can hold predetermined pieces or systems where systems grant some of those unique flavor abilities. This allows me to realign to a new mech specific action economy: 

1. Move and Full Action (read, larger weapons and missiles) 
2. Move and 2 Quick Actions (read, smaller weapons and systems) 
3. Overdrive: Move, 3 Quick Actions, gain 1 Heat (Overdriving boosts some systems) 
4. Shed Heat, this is automatically triggered at 3 Heat 

Here the quick actions are some of the smaller weapons and systems. With missiles being the problem child, this provides a boost to the non-missiles weapons but with a controllable  drawback. I also wanted to provide two very different styles of play here, the first being the slow lumbering mech firing powerful weapons but in a style that is simple to play and adjudicate. The second is a multi-step comboing of actions with some push your luck elements thrown in. I might end up folding action 2 and action 3 together based on play testing.

All of these ideas still need a lot of testing, once again the mech level of the game needs to be able to move fluidly with the infantry level and the star-fighter level as well as be its own system with dynamic play. I do like that idea of giving different levels of play different action economies to make them feel different.

RPG Chaser

And while all of that is great, it is not the big news. I have put together the core rules for “RPG Chaser”. A system designed for DM’s who want to build their own worlds and their own systems. I see this as the front 80% of whatever custom system a DM wants to build. This doc will be free and released with multiple campaign settings included in it. This includes Star Chaser for sci-fi, Steam Chaser for steampunk, Cyber Chaser for cyberpunk (this is actually my original burning light setting) and Bullet Chaser for a post-apocalypse campaign, be it more zombie or more Fallout. I have few other settings I may or may not include. These settings are not “the correct way to play” a genre but example of how you could do it.

Back in my Alpha Test part 3 post… 4 years ago, I talk about having a system where DMs can bring in different themes to match their worlds. RPG Chaser is a more granular version of that. I recognized that my attempts to define themes was actually super limiting. Instead I am now focused on letting DMs create their own themes and I am fleshing out the rules and long lists of examples that DMs can leverage as building blocks to make whatever kind of world or game they want to run.