Stunts, Boosts, and Blunders

I am the Warden!!

In the Optional System, a stunt is an attempt at completing two options simultaneously. Seems fairly simple, right? Yet no other concept in the game has undergone so many revisions and tweaks or caused so many bald spots on my precious scalp. As the game evolved into a more complex ruleset, stunts became a liability and was nearly cut from the entire process.

Many other games use a stunt mechanic, but these are your typical point distribution. Do this real good and you get a stunt point, or everyone gets to do one stunt per encounter, blah, blah, blah. Not me. I always wanted stunts to be an integral part of the game with inherent risks and wicked benefits, it just never played out quite as I hoped at the table.

Over the past couple of weeks as the latest batch of revisions make it from brain to computer, it's the stunt mechanic which has undergone the largest transformation to what I believe (AKA hope) will be the final version (or final enough that it just needs a little tweaking with difficulty dice and such).

Focus: Rebuilding The OS Stunt Mechanic

I am the Warden!!

For the past four days, I've been mentally locked at my desk pondering all the upcoming changes to the Optional System's core mechanics, eagerly figuring out how to implement the Tracker (oh, you'll see), discussing character sheet revisions with Lady Warden, and setting aside a large chunk of today to write another revisions to Chapter 1 (again).

Then it hit me. Stunts won't work in this revised mechanic. Actually, they will, but they'll be no different than any other dice roll. All that thunder and lightning has become nothing more than a pretty screensaver. Crap.

So I turn to you, my faithful followers and casual observers, for advice and opportunity to peruse through the following random thoughts as I hope to dissect what was one of the most exciting elements to the OS (IMO) and return it to its former glory better than ever.

Optional: Playtest (Version 0.3)

I am the Warden!!

I'm committing myself to providing updates to the Optional: Playtest document every Monday right here on this blog thingy for as long as necessary until there's no longer an Optional: Playtest document. And wouldn't ya know it, it's Monday.

Version 0.3 now sits at 64 pages of experimental goodness with a few updates, primarily the monk creed (based on D&D's monk - I'm working on something a little more "modern" that's not D&D to show some versatility in this system), updates on Appendix I: Options (only those options available to all characters, not dependent on a creed, will be listed here), rules for gaining and losing the edge, rules for stunts, and a couple more tweaks here and there in Chapter 1: Mechanics.

More importantly, a first draft of Chapter 4: Circumstance Dice is provided to explain how d10s play a role in the game. It talks briefly (as all playtest docs should) about modifiers and gear.

To keep things simple, I've added bookmarks to the PDF with each updated section highlighted in red.