Coming Up Next

I am the Warden!!

One peaceful night's sleep and it's time to start pumping out OS goodness again. Yesterday was an incredibly productive day on five fronts. A proud moment, to be sure, but keeping that kind of momentum running for two days in a row has always been a challenge. I'm feeling confident about it this time, having spent training points on bumping up my Concentration and Typing skills to give me 3 uses of +2d6 trained dice.

(Oooh, I've been waiting for the day when I could finally making an Optional reference.)

Yesterday's upload of Optional: Playtest weighs in at 79 pages, only 9 pages less than what's on the actual Word file. It won't be long now before everything still in working phases will be ready enough to make it to the next step: PDF. That brings me to today's topic, an overview of everything listed as "In Progress" for Optional: Playtest.


Chapter 5: Power Dice
To be honest, this one's been giving me trouble. Not because I'm not sure how powers work, but the emphasis on power originates from its source: creeds. Everything you need to know lies in the creed. That gives me two chapters (the other being Chapter 2: Base Die) coming in at half a page so far. However, until there's something else concrete to add here, this one will be ready for the next upload.

Chapter 6: Trained Dice
Skills are the bread and butter of this chapter and it's been sitting at 5 pages for a while. What started as a listing of 12 skills or so has grown into closer to two dozen. It's the multiple genres that have kept me from publishing this chapter, but this one is nearly done as well.

Chapter 7: Bonus Dice
Moment of honesty. I love bonus dice and I'm expecting a lot of fun in this chapter. If there's anything in the Optional System specifically condoning Director cruelty to the players, it's this one. I let my players toss on a bonus dice whenever they want, but seeing as it's only happened a couple of times, nothing's bad has happened. Yet.

At this phase, a majority of Chapter 7 is speculative and optional. Rough notes lie scattered across my whiteboard on how best to use bonus dice and it's just a matter of digging through them all, eliminating the unnecessary, and getting down to the nitty-gritty.

Appendix II: Reactions
Similar to Appendix I: Options, this was originally going to include every single reaction you could find in the book until I made the choice to keep all non-creed options and reactions published here. It fits within one of the main objectives of the Optional System: you only need to know the rules that apply to you. Unless you're a warlock, the Zombie reaction is just going to taunt you.

This majority of this appendix remains a loose collection of rough notes and will require the most amount of work. Once complete, also planned for next month, it will contain all base reactions and a few trained and weapon reactions. Reactions have yet to play a major part of the game, so my goal is to give the playtesters something to truly sink their teeth into.

Appendix III: Equipment
Anyone who knows me well understand why this one will be put off until last. I'm not a big fan of equipment in most RPGs because the games are built upon a premise that equipment increases your character's power. Without them, you have no hope. Of all my foundations, I am bound and determined to ensure this never happens in the Optional System and while I'm certain this remains intact, there's still the matter of building equipment lists... for multiple genres.

I'm also waiting to get in a bit more playtesting on lethal damage before locking it into non-editable fonts and test out armour further against critical and devastating hits. While there's no reason why I won't have the time to have this ready for October's update, I can see this being held off just a little longer until the playtesting reveals a solid application for all forms of equipment.

And that's where we stand. Of course, that's just from my POV. Anything else I'm missing?