The Hydra Campaign Flavour – Mmm Cheesy :)

Brief Notelet of Introduction

Shock-horreur – here’s a brief summary of the campaign setting that Hydra operates in as per a recent request from the Nth Doctor Nathan. Don’t say I never give you anything Mister!

Where is our campaign set exactly?

I decided to run our new fantasy rpg system Hydra in the world of Fritz Leiber – Nehwon – where he set his fantasy novels largely about his cult characters Fahrd and the Grey Mouser. The rationale behind this decision was blogged about very early on here.

Where can I found out more about this place?

I recommend the Scrolls website (see my off-site linkage list thing) if you want to know more about Mr Leiber’s world. Yes ‘Nehwon’ is indeed ‘Nowhen’ backwards. Fritz obviously had one of those Dylan Thomas type whimsical humours when it came to his fantasy novel writing. In case that means nothing to you Dylan Thomas quite famously made up rude place names for his writing- like Llareggub (bugger all) for example – by reversing words.

Is your campaign setting the real McCoy then? Leiber through and through?

I wouldn’t say that our version of Nehwon is particularly authentic. I’m inspired by the works of Leiber rather than constrained by him. So our Nehwon is considerably more liberal. My source materials are the 2nd Edition AD&D City of Lankhmar source material, and indeed the City is the starting place and focus of our gaming activity at the moment. I have played to my strength having found that I thrive as a DM upon city settings. It’s the constant opportunity for skullduggery, politics, and socialisation that makes my DM-ing tend to liven up when I’ve played out games in cities. They make good jumping off points for my games.

Which bit of this Nehwon world are you in? What’s it like?

And what’s not to love about Lankhmar? It’s a city of thieves – where Pratchett is alleged to have got a lot of ideas for his Thieves Guild and city based writings. It’s a murky, misty, seedy underbelly of a sort of place. It’s also a fantastic sort of place in our version of the game. It isn’t overly wrought with magic, but it’s not magic starved either. I’ve upped the magic quotient I suspect over what a true Leiber advocate would care to see. I’m also not being too shy about littering the place with non-humans. Oh, the PC’s are human (although I have no doubt that will change in due course just as soon as I’ve finished the relevant creation system chapters), but why should everyone else be so constrained? I’m using a combo of AD&D, some RQII and other more esoteric sources to inform my non-human species generation. There’s a strong touch of whimsy about my NPC’s as well.

How are you growing it?

I’m sowing the seeds of future scenarios by making the City as rich with legends, stories, big characters, and back-story as I can manage. I’m fairly junking it up with rumours and tales or derring do and people best avoided. Scattering the old myths and wives stories about. Some of this is coming from Lankhmar based material and other bits I’m stealing wholesale from sources like Greyhawk and my fetid brain. I’ll happily weave in components and variations of such things that the players come up with as long as they don’t violate the growing hopefully shared vision for the immediate world the players inhabit.

Is that all we get to know about?!

Yeah – I’m bushed and this writing malarkey takes brain energy (maybe a whole watt to write!). That’s a few broad strokes of the brush for you to give you some clues as to what we are up to – if you want more, well read the game session entries in the session journal category. You’ll get a game by game account of how our plots are unfolding. Any more specific questions – just chuck ‘em my way. You know where the comment link is I’m presuming.

More Player Character Rolling Up Creation Experiences and the Manual Write-Up

Co-creating Player Characters and a Sneak into the Hydra Gaming Manual

So last night I sat down with two of my old chums, with whom we’d plotted over the creation of this new mashed-up hydra system back in the dark depths of earlier this year. We had a couple of hours to get the characters rolled up in the new system. I of course had the advantage of having rolled up quite a few characters both for DMC’s (that’s dungeon master’s character btw) and for the PC’s for the current playtesters. Having said this – rolling two up at once and only a couple of hours was a challenge.

We got pretty much all of it done, except for the little twiddly bits that don’t take too much effort. It was a co-creational process. So what the heck do I mean by that? Well it’s down to how Hydra encourages you to create characters. I’m working hard behind the scenes on the gaming manual for hydra as the playtesting helps prove the currently written rules. I’m currently scribing the framework (or philosophy/approach to gaming) and the human PC character creation process chapters. You can see this in the gaming menu, although as of yet – because it’s NOT READY YET – you won’t be able to see the protected entries that make up those chapters. Fear not, you eventually will but there’s a lot to do in writing a new system manual! And not all of the playtesting is done yet.

So we have most of two new PC’s carved out and it seemed to go well enough. A bit taxing on me as DM though – I’ve never been great at mental arithmetic and the skill category defining process is a bit math heavy for the DM. It’s getting easier though and the players seemed to find the experience pretty simple. That’s mostly thanks to my practise at doing it with the playtest group! We have a little more to do to the characters (equipment, some derived characteristics to calculate etc), and I’ll get them transcribed and up and published, along with the other PC’s of the current playtest. It will then be a wee while before the new PC’s are introduced into the campaign evolving out of the playtest sessions. This is mostly as a result of the practicalities of life more than anything else.

Some general DM tips though. With Hydra the good thing about creating characters is that mostly the players get to do that for you, you just help them clarify what skills to pick. Their attribute creation helps shape the working experience they settle on. The DM and PC negotiate around the character’s evolving experiences as a function of their generated ‘lived experience’, which determines age and length of occupational experience. The PC generates ideas for reasonable professions given where the player character has ‘grown up’. The system scaffolds this by helping generate family background and circumstances. The DM needs only to know the world setting and kinds of profession and skills that are reasonable to a given area of the world and the people who inhabit that area.

In a nutshell it is a combination of – some rolling to seed the process, some DM authored bits and pieces and a big chunk of PC driven imagination that creates a character in Hydra. We’d like to think that’s how it ought to be. Every character we’ve rolled up so far, irrespective of the numbers generated on the dice, has been created as-is, (so no discarding the stats), and has felt unique and as much the brainchild of the PC as the DM and, of course, partly the brainchild of the system that we are using. So, character creation is a collaborative process involving – the player character, the dungeon master, the system, the dice, and the world the character is to inhabit.

So What About This Hydra System Manual Then!?

Just to show you how the playtest is starting to influence the manual, here’s what the final (well 1.5.0 version) of the character sheet is starting to shape up as. This is the rolled/derived attribute description table section of the hydra character sheet (v 1.5.0) which is used in the character creation process in the manual. (Oooh snippets!). You can see that there has been some ‘rebranding’ of the attribute categories – strength has become ‘might’, constitution – ‘condition’, size has evolved simply into ‘body’, and dexterity has become ‘adroitness’. Appearence has become comeliness, and I’ve shifted towards ‘intellect’ for Intelligence. Magical affinity is the new Magical Power. The derived attribute descriptions are pretty much as they were but with a minor Nehwonesque twist. The changes have come about as a result of my opportunity to reflect over the attributes and from the playtesting experiences. Have to say though that other changes to the character sheet have been more affected by the playtesting, and certain bits of mechanics have been adjusted by the playtesting as opposed to these bits. I just find these terms better reflections of what the attributes are intending to ‘measure’ or ‘describe’. Also, it moves hydra several more steps away from the original material it is referenced from.

The revised attribute description table for the Hydra character sheet (Version 1.5.0).

More meta-blogging – month three of Hydra.

How many Heads has the Hydra got?

Well, look here I am in the third month of the Hydra project. Time to take stock and also reflect on the process. Well, ahead of schedule in terms of play-testing – one session down, and more to come, so hopefully all play-testing done by the end of the month and this will mean that the manual will zip straight to version 1.5 from version 1.0 where it is at right now. (Well it’s more at 1.1 but hey).

I’m behind on writing up the manual however. Not that you, gentle reader will know much of this because it’s locked behind passwords until complete. Or someone chucks gobs of money towards me to publish it. Or until I give up on the gobs (or goblets?) of money and publish anyway. People hit the link quite a bit which is encouraging – people are clearly interested in the manual. I am planning on releasing excerpts and tasters of it when there is enough stabilized to ‘taste’. At the moment I am still working on the character creation streams and the underpinning framework. You can I suppose see the progress somewhat in the relevant manual menu, even if you cannot see what lies beneath. I think I may have been very optimistic in thinking I could get the write up done in 6 months – I may need to double that at this rate.

What I have seen from the tag cloud (fusion processes) that there is now a fairly even headed-ness in the state of  Hydra development between the world development and the rules synthesis. World development and the manual writing should now start to take over from the core rules-synthesis you would tend to think if I keep up the writing. So if things are going badly it should become evident from the fusion processes tag-cloud. Let’s hope not. I expect also, as is starting to be borne out in the tag-cloud that the art-work category is going to get strengthened. I’m trying to upload things as they significantly develop, during the work so you can see how things are developing and shifting in the game development. How does the art shift, mature etc within certain pieces and across different work? Hopefully this is reflected in the blogging here.

I have been advertising the blog site a bit more by spidering it to to some RPG specific search engines – both that I have bothered with so far  are being very slow in allocating the site to their respective databases. That’s a little frustrating but there is little that I can do to expedite this apart from a little e-mail pestering. That doesn’t seem to do much other than alleviate some of my pent up rage. RAGE! I mean, sorry :)

It’s also evident from the fusion processes that play-testing is another process at the fore at the moment. As it should be. I’ll be blogging each of the sessions, and also asking for my players to contribute to the blog if they feel so inclined. Would be nice to have some direct feedback on the play-test sessions from the play-testers themselves rather than filtered through the inevitably distorting eyeballs of the DM. Umm, or something like that. I still have the other PC’s to blog up, lots of NPC’s to add-up, and more artwork to do. I have some other players waiting in the wings to have their characters rolled up – and the next session will hopefully give the combat rules a ‘trot out’ as we say in these parts.

Right, gotta fly. I’m going to focus on writing up the manual and giving those PC’s something to run away from screaming in the next session. Roll 3d6 for me somebody. Thanks – was it more than 9 you got? Ace :)

New Hydra Character Sheet, Playtesting Update.

I have been working on character sheets, and they are now at version 1.1.2.  I’ve skipped putting up the intervening versions as this would indeed, be pointless! This has taken into account some initial character rolling feedback and reflection on my part. So you will see that there have been some changes to terms used in the character sheet. Fear not these are merely term changes and the mechanics underneath remain as is. Words have merely been changed to protect the innocent and better reflect the meaning of the stat/mechanic. My gratitude to the Hydra playtesters (Jordan, George and Vincent) for letting me try out my mashed up RPG with them. I will make sure my netbook has some power next time I bring the thing along so I don’t have to use ANY brain power or calculators at all. Hope you guys are enjoying designing your characters further. I have had to make some minor corrections where I got things wrong – will let you know what they are next time I catch up with you.

There are .DOC and .PDF versions of the hydrasheet available to download from the fusion site as of, about now. I have some printed off copies available for those who want them and will bring them along this week to WGH. I’m going to be around onWednesday evening when I should be finishing off the rolling of Jordan’s character with him if that works out to be possible. Be there about 8pm ish. Big thanks to WGH for being the ideal place to recruit players, talk RPG, have a laugh and so forth. If you don’t know what WGH is – check the link in the blogroll for wargames heaven. It does what it says on the tin.

All PlayTester’s I’ve asked have agreed for their initial PC character sheets to be published online, so I will have PC versions up in due course, and there will be the DM versions, but I’m afraid not available to public eyes they will be in the DM’s journal. (I’m such a tease :).

Feedback so far – generally well received. Positive comments about the overall character generation – categorical nature of the system, flexibility, and roleplaying within the character creation phase. I like Vincent’s point about re-rolls. I am a re-roll fascist these days – we used to have games where stats were conflated by re-rolls or extra dice and then I thought – why bother having stats less than 12 if that’s the case? Why have 3-18 if no one is ever a 3? Why not just 12-18. Hence – no re-rolls. his suggestion – 1 re-roll and you have to take it even if it is worse then the original. This way it is just another dice-roll. I think this could be a DM’s option. For myself – everybody rolls stats as is, once, and that’s that. Then Hydra let’s you, if you keep them alive, develop them up from their humble roots into a truly heroic figure. At least, that’s the plan and we shall see what happens from play-testing, rules revisions and subsequent Lankhmar campaign.

Now, excuse me I have to get off and do my day job. Science is a harsh mistress.

Re-jigging the Fusion Blog

I am having a re-design of the devblog as you can see and have stitched together the entries into a categorical system that I hope best reflects the fusion approach to mashing rpgs. In doing so I’ve ended up reflecting on the processes that are forming out of the fusion mashing and have discovered that:

the project title formed from system selection part of the rules synthesis and has also been influenced by wider group preferences from joining a rpg club and introducing the system to a group of playtesters

publication issues have stemmed from resource selection and have been helped by being involved in a play-testing process

devblogging helps you to understand your creative process because it tracks what you are doing and enables you to reflect upon your own creative processes

having a good blog system that affords good categorical tagging enables the meta-commentary to emerge

Getting a Play-test Group Together

Morning all. I’m having a bout of not sleeping so thought I ramble a bit on here to relieve the tedium. So where is Hydra at? Well – had a meet up with the core RPG-ers a couple of nights ago and chatted about the framework. Also, showed off the draft character sheet and disclosed/discussed some stuff on the make up of Hydra. So far, so good, everyone very excited. Then, last night rolled up some of a character with a play-tester.

Was a bit difficult rolling up with someone I don’t know very well. However, he seems happy with what’s been done so far, although I’m sure I’ve mangled the lived experience/age/occupational years thing which is a bit tricky. I’ll have to check it over when I have more of a brain. Roleplayed a bit for his character development and he wants to meet up next week to finish off the character rolling. Have another play-tester lined up for next week. My original players want to roll up at the end of next month. It all goes well so far.

Have some more interested parties – and am going to have few slots left for the play-test, and developing game. All of which is GOOD NEWS! For a DM to have PC’s falling over to game is weird quite frankly, but good.

I have realised two things – need a proper character sheet pronto. Also, need to work very hard on the old campaign setting/scenario for play-testing. Also, need to develop props for the post play-testing phase.

Play-tester one found the roll up fine – made sense, wasn’t peturbed at the lack of numbers for the attributes/skills/traits and seemed to enjoy collaborating on the background development of the character. He’s rolling up a White Wizard/Wizard in the making which is straight into the deep end with magic which is pretty much only just finished. Have now got to properly flesh out the Wizard Ulris for the game as he’s going to be the Mentor Wizard for the play-testers character. Happens to fit in neatly with my NPC’s character development. Really enjoyed the bit of roleplaying in the character development with the play-tester, playing a cantakerous mentor Wizard. We also have some thinking to do about the origins of his character which emerged neatly as a consequence of his choice of character type.

There are some mechanical bits that are a bit fiddly, but I reckon once the occupational skills bit is done it’ll whistle through. Just was a bit awkard first time and with an audience as well chipping in somewhat unhelpfully. He wants to roll up a Wizard as well – which would be magic overkill, so that can’t really happen.

Think I will be down the club tomorrow night if but briefly to pick up some books from another role-player (hoorah! more source stuff).

Another GM suggested calling the game system Chimera rather than Hydra, which may well happen after the play-test revisions. I like that idea for a game system name :)

Another Round of Player Preferences and My Own

Finally I’ve stopped slacking – here are more of the player preferences for the game-world system, and mine as well tacked onto the end.

My fellow player provided me with a summary of his highlights/lowlights of past systems we’ve played, which proved useful.

Tunnels & Trolls: The saving throw in T&T (20 + 5Xlvl)= Target on 2d6+ attribute being tested). (This kind of roll is applied in CoC V in resistance rolls and characteristic testing so a version will be used in the fused game!).

No racial stereotyping. A non-humano-centric world. (Ok, so the world I’ve chosen isn’t as non-humano-centric as he would probably like, but its not as racially stereotyped as past campaign worlds – e.g. middle-earth).

D&D good feel for fantasy – too class bound. (Getting some inspiration from AD&D 2nd Edition for the world-setting, and from other AD&D materials for the world development so I think this ticks this box to some degree). And we’re not having a class based system but a more flexible HM-like skills-based occupational system.

RQ(III) – can’t remember too much about it now but the magic system was lousy as I recall – too complicated. Combat good but could be quite involved. (Fortunately I’ve gone with RQII rather than III, to up the mystery component. Our combat is largely CoC with some minor RQII twist for bits that CoC can’t handle so less involved than RQIII or II. I have drawn from RQII for the magic inspiration – RQIII magic was a pain.  RQII is pretty different though so hopefully this in conjunction with the fact that I’m also merging the RQII magic system into the AD&D type world-setting will change it up a lot. I considered using the HM system – but, he knows it too well – and I want that air of mystery and need for discovery. Also RQII and CoC are better in terms of compatability.)

HM (All editions) – beautiful character development – perfectly paced skill enhancement. Combat dragged the game down to a morass. Very powerful and flexible magic system. (Agree with all of the above and have therefore only taken minimally from HM. Not combat. Bits of CD that are compatible with CoC. Have used the CoC skill development which is HM like – not so well crafted but less to administrate which is a pragmatic concern for the GM. Besides – all players know HM too well!).

CoC like RQ but allowed guns. Hated sanity rules. Quick and fun combat. (Ok – so I dropped the Sanity stuff like a hot potato!).

So, loves: quick but sufficiently detailed combat, detailed character
development, rich gameworld, sense of adventure and wonder (like Tim).
hates: power gaming (min/maxing), mechanic heavy combat, arguing over
minutiae (especially in combat), no danger
wishes: to have that sense of tingling excitement when you  start an
adventure.

My own preferences/dislikes are:

a rich world, highly detailed, preferably in advance that affords short, medium and long-term story-telling opportunities, exploration and fantasy escapism

potentially far-reaching campaigns, but also with short and mid-term group-shared (if possible) goals

overall a developed capacity for inter and intra character group conflict/cololaboration i.e. dynamic social expression, where it affords good story-telling, drama, exciting combats (with less mechanical drudgery and mental effort), narrow-escapes and dramatic deaths.

mind-numbing tedium of calculations to the nth degree and endless debates about bloody rules

power-gaming for whatever reason that leads to campaign destruction

not being able to ‘wing it’ and go ‘off-piste’ at any time for any reason.

So there you go the round of preferences is over.

Hopefully it’s fairly obvious how the preferences have influenced the system choices, and weighting of various system-parts with each other.

As I mentioned in the previous blog post, I’ve got to the point of the second draft with attendant mutations. I’ve got a gaming framework sorted which I’ll publish seperately. For now I can say that I have a working title for the system – yeah it’s about fusion, but more specifically for this little beast its a Hydra (because it’s multiply headed so to speak and more than a hybrid).

Right Where Am I?

Ok. So where am I now in the fusion process? Well, quite some way on from when I last dev blogged. I am now rewriting the fused rule-set. I have yet to finalise magic, but need more of the world developed to tailor the magic rules, so I’ve had to put that on hold for a bit to get the world sorted. This is new territory to me, so I’m learning it by writing out the original source material, and getting the root sources as well. I’m drawing up maps and stitching in resource material from other generic sources.

I’m concurrently writing up the RPG framework to submit to the PC’s that outlines the principles of the system without talking about what lies beneath. I will also publish here the second set of player preferences and how I’ve integrated these into my writing process – I’ve mentioned them already but I’ll just underline them for you and do a bit of a walkthrough.

What else? Oh yeah the main rules – now in their second rewrite as I craft the game-maual further and in the process having some mutations, name changes to protect the innocent but with all the original sources referenced. In case you’ve been wondering I’m hoping to approach the original authors and copyright holders for the main copyrighted systems (Chaosium) and see if an authorial credit/copyright share is an option from the mashed system. The world is copyright another company – so I may well write it for another world too, later on, before approaching Chaosium and the lead authors. I’d have to scrap the HM stuff completely before doing that, as that’s a different couple of companies and I’m not having a negotiation with Columbia Games/Kelestial Productions bunch as well as Chaosium! Might as well just bring about world peace and all that! The FUDGE stuff is open-sourced I think, but I’ll check that out before doing anything else.

I’m about 3-6 months away from being able to do the above, but my thinking is there for you all to see and we can see from this devblog in 3-6months time whether or not I got it right, or very wrong. Also, this whole thing may remain out of the public domain and just end up being our pet system. Or I might adapt key elements not dependant on the source systems for something publishable. Who knows? We’ll see eh.

So yeah – some mutations in the rules going on which is pushing it away from the original source material (all sources acknowledged explicitly within the text to trackback all decisions so they can be undone so to speak).

That’s my update – next time the second player’s prefs, and my walkthrough for how I met them, and also the framework for the fusion system. Which, by the way, now has a project title. I’ll let you in on that in my next devblog post.

A Weekend Blitz on System Creation

Ok, so I had a free day at the weekend so what did I so? Plough on with the spreadsheet toolkit for the fusion game? Oh god no. I need a break from the spreadsheet programming and design mission. So I grab my notebook and get a pen. I sit down and I write it out the old fashioned way using what I have already constructed in the spreadsheet to guide me through the process of character creation.

I document the process from start to finish, jot down notes and reference the material as I go. I swap out rules and finalise the combat system. I’ve got character creation down nicely and have played out some sample combats with my NPC’s. I nearly lost the sample NPC twice in combat, she’s already been in gaol and now has a thief on her tail.

Oh yeah and I settled on a world and have been building the system towards it now. You get to a point where you need to get more world specific – so I’m pretty much mashed up and ready to roll. Except magic – I’m currently mashing the magic system to fit the world which is a couple of days work I think.

I have also sourced a master equipment list – stole this from a HM3 campaign of old. I have sample NPC’s pre-rolled to use. It’s all going very smoothly. I’ve tweaked the creation system and because of the world I have chosen to develop the system for more specifically now I’ve cut out quite a considerable amount of work (there are few demi-human PC’s in this specific world and a lot of the conversion work has been done for me by the  RPG world writers).

Note I haven’t mentioned which world yet, just so as not to jinx my decision and make myself have an anxiety based backtrack. All together though I am very excited by what I have put together so far. There are a few snags with the magic system mashing that I’ve bumped into so far to make it fit the world I have selected (mostly because I know little about the world and am learning it on the fly and also because I know little about the RQII magic systems and am learning that on the fly as well). However I feel once I’ve got that crunched I’ve pretty much got enough sorted to run games – except for the need to get very busy with the most fun bit which is sourcing game material for scenarios, building some sets (literally) and plot-devices/artifacts (literally), make props (literally) and all the pizazz I like to have for a good game.

Oh yeah – and get the players back into a room again (sigh).

Right gotta fly – I have some magic mashing to do… :)

Near Miss in Rules Synthesis

So yesterday evening I sat back down to continue with the system build, and also to explore again the world I was going to run games in and had a narrow squeak in terms of the fusion build.

Up until now I have been stitching together Harnmaster 3rd Edition for the character profile development and the Skills set (not the character description in terms of attributes/characteristics itself). The character description in terms of characteristics was coming from Call of Cthulhu 5th Edition (was 3rd Edition but 5th Edition is a bit more refined and still not too clunky). So the rules-set is mainly CoC 5th Edition because the combat mechanics are relatively lean, quick, 100% based so relatively compatable with the other bits, and its deadly. Problem is – lack of data for the fantasy setting which was troubling me. Harnmaster has that in spades but it is a slow system and I don’t want to take too much from it.

So, last night I’d turned to my old systems – I was meant to be doing some game world development and I sifted through my various systems and ended up looking at RuneQuest 2nd Edition. Never played. I played Third Edition before I ever saw the previous 2nd Edition. It is of course out of the same stable as CoC, is %-ile based and so I started to think it was my solution to the lack of weapon data without having to go to HM and getting overly bogged down. I didn’t want to go there – because a strong preference expressed by player one is not having the hell of armour profile management.

And then I got carried away and on reading through RQII, and loving some of the ideas and how everything was in one book, and also that the monsters were well described – I nearly threw away the baby and the bath water, by junking what I had done so far in terms of the character sheet and switching it all out for RQII pure and simple. Thought I would cut out a lot of work – even liked the magic system. Nobody had used it before or played it so the ‘air of wonder and mystery’ would be preserved.

Problem is – I don’t know it and as I read through it more carefully I found it hard to grasp as it was similar but significantly different to the IIIrd edition I’d played, and different from the CoC I know and love.

Urgh. Fortunately I’d saved what I’d already done on the ‘cloud’ and grabbed it back again. I’ve aborted switching the main system from CoC to RQII, but now I have an alternative magic source (still not certain), a compatible monster base, a weapons base, and also a possible source of world system that no one else has played in – including me. So that is all great.

Today I have recovered and started to stitch in elements of RQII into the Character Description (just add in the CHA characteristic into CoC – which used to be there in Third Edition so not so difficult). This makes RQ monsters for the Fantasy setting almost immediately accessible. Great. RQ weapon data is also almost immediately compatible.

Now, because I have a layer of FUDGE (Freeform User Defined Game Engine) acting as an effective translation matrix for d6 and d% to put categorical descriptions of the numbers underneath, and have synthesized from frequency tables of d6 and d% the means to do so into a 7 category system, I’m really cooking with gas.

I can see how this would work, and how to fix little incompatabilities. Plus, it’s offering a new-ish way to describe characters to players, and rolling up characters is my major mission objective at the moment.

Magic is a biggie, as is equipment etc – which is more world dependant. I’m enjoying the challenges of synthesizing character development and so forth from the RQII & CoC systems which is turning into an interesting and satisfying project. Still not certain about the world – although a shopping trip yesterday to ‘The Works’ in Brighton, and seeing Clash of the Titans at the cinema is making me think of the Mythic Europe setting I have lying around somewhere in Ars Magica and RQ Vikings. Thing is I can’t find those old systems in my flat – so having to reconsider with what’s available. I did buy a big illustrated book of monsters in the shop which has some wonderful inspiring illustrations. Looking forward to getting to the world stuff, but first feel I need to ground out most of the rules set.

Further to this – there is the second players wish-list on my mind, which I will come to next, because it adds a few twists to the current rule-set mash development.