A Character Sheet In Two Pages

I am the Warden!!

In preparation for playtesting, the first volume of Optional: Playtest, and the constant whining of a certain pair who shall remain anonymous to the public, a new draft of the Optional Character Sheet is available. It includes a second page for various notes, equipment, writing down creed benefits, and three special boxes I'd like to explain.

Throughout fights and challenges in OSRPG, there are 3 events all players need to make note of: series, critical hits, and the Edge. All characters have their own abilities when any of these events occur in a game, so to help keep players organized, we've set up these three event boxes for you to write down as they apply.

No More Decimals, Version 1 Is Ready

What?! I haven't posted since Tuesday? Holy crap!!

(ahem, cough, cough) I am the Warden!!

For the past 3 weeks, I've been knee-deep in rewrites for the Optional System. Completely, from scratch, start to finish. It has been a refreshing experience and has boosted my confidence in this game. There's still a lot of work to be done (there's a reason why it's not recommended to design a huge game on your own), but I'm feeling really confident about the latest updates.

On my screen, Optional: Playtest Version 1.0 sits smiling. 108 pages and 50,000 words of awesomeness. It's so good, it requires a made-up word: cramtapulous. Creator's pride, perhaps, but I'm feeling positive tonight.

Still, I'm going to wait until the next playtest on Friday the 21st before posting anything for it, particularly with some of the new terminology to ensure clarity. In the meantime, my mind wonders how to make vehicles work in the Optional System.

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).

Redpill Diary #2: Real Men Use Their Fists

I am the Warden and I am Canadian!!

Go Habs! Go Jets! The clock ticks down to 4PM where the NHL finally restores some Canadian pride as Winnipeg has its first home opener in 15 years against my team of choice, the Habs. What does this have to do with the Matrix? Nothing, other than my eye darts to the clock every now and then to make sure I won't miss a beat.

The quintessential battle of wills between Neo and Agent Smith.

But I digress. Today, I want to talk about combat in Redpill (and every other other possible inception of the Optional System, for that matter). Specifically, hand-to-hand martial combat versus unloading a machine gun on the son of a bitch. During my first Redpill playtest (originally known as Matrix: Restoration), the players loaded themselves up with every firearm they could conceive of, including grenades and grenade launchers. Looking over their character sheets today, I noticed none of them prepared any Brawling skills or made any effort to prepare themselves for melee combat. They were expecting to enter the Matrix with guns blazing and nothing more.

Enhanced Abilities

A good archer can do more than launch an arrow
straight and true; he can slip it between the
branches of a tree and kill ya!

I am the Warden!!

Yesterday, I talked about changes to the Optional System's stats to their current, much more awesome form. For some players, it might not be enough, especially after you get a little experience under your belt or you're used to playing RPGs with a bit more substance to your stats.

Fear not, good gamer. The Warden has prepared an optional rule for implementing bonus features for stats, called enhanced abilities. While you may choose your stats based on character development and personal taste, enhanced abilities endow your character with an additional edge solely based on your stat selection. Sure, it makes sense for an archer to select Dexterity as a Body stat simply because she's an archer, but what does Dexterity really do for an archer?

Easy. For every +1d12 Dexterity focus dice an archer has, she can reduce a modifier's benefit by 1d10 circumstance dice on a ranged or burst attack once per series. For every additional focus dice in Dexterity, she can reduce the same modifier by 2d10 circumstance dice or save that second reduction for another modifier later in the same series. Once a new series begins, our archer can try this again. This allows her the ability to launch an arrow further than a normal character, ignore the Cover modifier, and more. Now we're talking, right?

Focus and the Power of Stats

An example of Strength vs. Dexterity.
If you don't know who they are, shame on you.

I am the Warden!!

I've said it before and I'll say it again. One of my goals for the Optional System is to create a D&D-level of mechanics with the tone of an independent RPG. Disagree with this statement all you want, but the majority of major RPGs (meaning those released by big companies like Paizo, WotC, and Fantasy Flight) consist of locked rules, loads of charts, and enough pages to club your GM to death with. Independent games are built using minimal concepts, loose interpretations, and an emphasis on narrative rather than action. Fans of independent games love how they can "do more of what they want" without being bogged down by rules, while fans of major RPGs (man, I'm really hating that term) praise them for their clarity and precision. And here I'm looking to make some kind of hybrid. Good luck to me, right?

Flexibility seems the greatest difference between these types of games. There are elements to the Optional System I need to make clear and defined with no room for error, most of them relating to action and combat, but then there are others which should have room to twist, turn, and go nuts with. The player should be able to take their current selection of stats, skills, powers, and circumstance dice to describe their own actions in whatever original fashion they like. It is this ability for players to describe their own actions and participate in their environment to create mechanical benefits where I want this system to excel.

Redpill Diary #1: Identity

I am the Warden!!

If you didn't read yesterday's announcement of my first fully detailed Optional System setting, then this might be a bit confusing at first. Go ahead, click here, scroll down to the bottom, then come back. All good? Let's continue.

Seeing as the first question players ask when you tell them about a new game is "What can I play?" it only makes sense to make this the first priority for Redpill. What do the players play? As leading as the title to this project may be, I want to have as much variety and exposure to the entire world of the Matrix as possible. It's not just about playing everything exactly as the films, but creating a vivid, expansive universe where players can mix it up and try something new.