Don't Blink

I was thinking about what a game with Weeping Angels in it would be like, which led me to wondering what mechanic to use to see how long a character could keep their eyes open without blinking. In Renaissance, a round is only 3 seconds. After a little experimentation I guesstimated that a character, in Renaissance, could keep their eyes open for a number of rounds equal to their Con score before they would need to start making Con rolls. In terms of other game systems, which use 6 seconds (D&D 3.0 and 3.5, Pathfinder and 4e too I think), you would need to limit that to half the character's Con in rounds. Regardless of which system I use, I can't wait for my next Halloween game!

Have you ever played in or run a game with Weeping Angels in it? If so, tell us about it in the comments below, I'd love to hear your stories!

Designer's Block

There are things I'm good at designing and thinking about, and things I'm not. Some of these things are consistent while others fluctuate. I can almost always come up with a new way to do a magic system. Actually sitting down and building spell lists though, that's when I get bogged down. Right now progress on Renaissance has crawled to a stop because the remaining tasks are either time intensive (reading the whole of the book, building an index, etc.) and I don't have time for that, or because I have designer's block. It's just what it sounds like. It's like writer's block, only for designing. I need to create lists of Divine Powers (clerical spells, basically) for about 8 or 9 deities still and I'm just stuck. Perhaps some of the tricks for resolving writer's block will work here too.

Road's Scholar

Something I've always disliked in role-playing games is that there was no way to advance other aspects of your character beyond the established rules for advancement. If I wanted my warrior to be a history buff, I had to waste valuable experience or skill points on his knowledge skill rather than putting them towards something more appropriate to his role in the party. To remedy this I have included mechanics in Renaissance to allow for characters to learn skills without having to obtain them with xp. That sounds foolish, but let me explain.

Supernatural Attributes

It occurs to me that I mentioned Supernatural attributes in my post on Monday but you may not be familiar with them. I won't go into the details of the mechanics for them but I thought you might like to hear a little about them so you would have some idea what I was talking about in the event I mention them again in the future.

Hit Points vs. Wounds

As I near the completion of phase two writing on Renaissance I have spent quite a bit of time considering what to include in the initial book and what should be sectioned off as GM's material or supplemental material. In particular, I've gone back and forth on whether to include an appendix with alternate rules for HP vs. Wounds or whether I should release an HP supplement once the beta testing is done.

Contacts as Starting Resources

Allowing players to begin the game with some number of contacts from their character's past experience is an idea I've been tossing around recently. Based on my last article last week, it's obvious that I see starting characters as generally inexperienced in the world of adventuring. However, it would be a grave error to assume that they sprang fully formed into the world with no past connections or experiences whatsoever.

Too Many Rules

I haven't updated things in a while (and I know you're still waiting on that Galaxy Prime review) but work on Renaissance and table-top role playing have been on unintentional hiatus for a while. In part because of scheduling issues preventing everyone from being able to get together and also partly because of SKYRIM!!! I'm 100 hours or so in (on one of my characters) and I'm still psyched about it every time I think about it. I'm sure this excitement will die down eventually, but maybe not.

Returning to my original topic, though, I was making a note to myself about some table-top thoughts I'd been mulling over and thought they'd make a good article, maybe something others could benefit from as well.