Feb 01
Just to offer a few minutes in the mind of someone who’s creating a game system this is what I just emailed to my play group, mainly to clarify the thoughts to myself more than anything. I do that a lot, putting it down as a stream of thought onto ‘paper’ to get a clearer …
Jan 25
How to host a murder This is the rough first draft of the chapter of tips and suggestions for would be directors, aka game masters. I have the feeling it may come off as preachy, definitely opinionated and with a bit of ‘this is the right way to do it’ but I’m not sure that’s …
Jan 24
Cash And Carry The carry mechanic also known as the how much phat l3wt can I carry out of the dungeon… I’ll be honest since roughly 1980, I’ve abstracted weight and limits and capacities for my players to a ‘whatever seems reasonable’ limit. I remember once I had a new player join my DnD session …
Jan 17
Based on comments from my group and other who I broached the question to, I’ve added a ‘semi-random’ skill up mechanic to LCA!. The idea is to cater to the folks who enjoy a little bit of randomness in their character’s path choices as well as the ones who have a definite, “This is what …
Jan 17
Using a Change Log About version .7 or so of LCA! with the bulk of the rough mechanics was done I started a change log document. The changes were getting small enough that it was feasible to note them and as I was starting to forget that I’d changed things due to information glut it …
Jan 16
Random skillups Curious if anyone has an opinion on the pros/cons of a random skill up system. Most systems I’m familiar with, skill gains are done either automatically as you level up or you get character points when you level that you can then spend to level up your skills as you see fit. There …
Jan 11
Sigh, nothing is more painfully annoying than making a drastic change to a mechanic as far spreading as damage health healing and having to go back and edit the changes everywhere it’s mentioned, every example, every sample character etc. But as a result I as I was scrolling along I did some clean up in …
Dec 27
The 'tension' factor of the various re-roll mechanics out there has been something that I've been considering off and on ever since reading an article by someone, the details of which escape me. To sum it up, if a player has the ability to re-roll then any given roll loses it's immediacy/tension/pucker factor, whatever you …
Dec 19
The Red Queen Mechanic – In the upcoming zompoc play test I’m going to be running it’s possible that some of the heroes may be immune to the Z virus. I’m going with ‘rage’ zombies, at least at first… Anyway, I’m going to pull out 8 misc cards and then add the two red queens …
Dec 08
The Snap Shot – In LCA! each character has X spaces of movement that they can scatter at will during their turn. They can move three spaces, shoot a gun, taunt a bad guy, open a door etc. And then move 1 more space and shoot their other gun. I want movement to be fluid …
Dec 07
I’ve been going through and working on the penalties and bonuses or handicaps and boosts as I’m calling them and trying to balance the checkbook so to speak and make them useful, meaningful but not onerous. Right now they range from +/- 1 to 10 but typically they run out as a 1, 2, 3, …
Nov 28
Obviously not a lot of awesome updates to post the last couple of weeks. It’s all been minor cleanup on LCA! and working on the sample scripts. I’ll be using the included Zombie Apocalypse script that will be included with LCA! as a general play test that I’ll podcast in the upcoming weeks. Getting the …
Nov 15
This is the Noise Rule which is a setting specific rule for the zombie apocalypse sample script that will be in LCA. Firearms / Loud Noises – At the start of any scene set aside 0 to 10 d6 dice or note the number down somewhere. These are the scene’s Infected dice. The exact …
Oct 03
Okay I’ve switched to rolling 2d20 for skill mechanics. It’s an odd choice I know but it makes the math pretty on the back end and I like pretty math. It also lets me fall back to a unified “Any skill roll on your turn takes a standard action” rather than “All skill rolls …
Sep 23
First draft of the Traps chapter in the adventuring section. As always excuse the formatting due to the pasting in from google docs. In a side note these are traps that I’ve used in the past. In the case of the vertical spear trap the bars were also electrified and ended up impaling and killing …
Sep 20
The rough draft of the Drives and Motivations chapter for LCA!. The purpose of the chapter is to assist those players who are new to the game/hobby or those for whom typically their character is just the equivalent of a nail in the wall to hang their guns and swords on. Hopefully by including these kinds …
Sep 16
Just added the Simple Chase mechanic to LCA! as I needed a quick way to improv chase scenes like those below rather than using the full blown Extended Challenge system which is much more involved, includes stunt systems and the like but requires prepwork to work at its best. The Simple Chase is more narrative …
Aug 27
This is a continuation from the first DS playtest and the queen mum of the scarabs changed into a Gaj to allow for a more complex encounter… Actors: Gerao an escaped pit fighter slave, Areen a disenchanted noble, Jaina a spy for the Veiled Alliance and a practitioner of defiler magic. Scene: Exterior shot of …
Aug 26
Lots more internal changes and changes to various mechanics although not massively drastic. I’m now working on Section 3, Chapter 3 – Damage and trying to make it as least confusing as I can get it. To sum up every character has three areas of damage they can take, Physical, Mental and Vitality. Physical …
Aug 19
[Just an FYI: After discussing this with my wife who will be using this system I'm leaning heavily on a single attack roll at +2 bonuses to attack and damage. A character dual wielding the same type of weapon i.e. two melee or two ranged can make a single attack roll at +2 attack and …
