Halfweight 0
A system I've been writing and tearing up ad nauseum for a couple years now.
Breadth and Depth
I remember during the release of Daggerheart, several reviewers wondered some variation of "what is this game for?" Daggerheart is designed to be flexible. Lately, I've been enjoying the opposite: a system absolutely tailored to one campaign, one story. Classes are all setting-specific, there's a lot of storygaming and in-world thinking, and we tweak the rules as we play. It really works! All of our games have been great, players new to the hobby pick it up quickly. We don't spend much time mulling over rules, and I don't spend much time figuring out how Wizards of the Coast thought this monster should be balanced.
However, I still have an itch for another system—clean and refined, bursting with the intent and customizability of 3rd edition while being just as accessible to my RPG ducklings. I don't think this is a contradiction of the "make the game for the campaign" rule, it just means I like different kinds of campaign.
The Vibes
Since some of what I want can't be expressed (or I can't express) as a strict rule, here is a mood board of mostly noun phrases:
- The excitement of leafing through pages of cool character options.
- A grand reveal of a boss that makes players think they should have been more careful with their resources.
- A good-hearted quarrel about whether a rule applies in this circumstance.
- The excitement of finally hitting level 5 and getting that one spell.
- Dropping players into a sci-fi setting but they know the ropes.
- There's combat and violence, and it's about rules, abilities, resources. The character sheet decides the move, not the narrative. The anti-FKR.
Rules about rules
Here are the meta-rules that I really should stick to but probably won't:
- The core rules should be minimal and system agnostic.
- Setting-specific detail should be encoded in either character options or an additional page or so of rules.
- Combat should be snappy and tactical. Players should have buttons to press.
- The interface between the world and the characters should be small and well-defined. Attacks, damage, conditions, whatever. I want the options of intricate preparation or rapid improvisation.
Open questions
One criticism (that I share) of D&D 5e's statblocks is the verbosity—we have keywords, but then the whole description is repeated on every single statblock with that keyword. How then should repeated mechanics be represented? Should they be part of the core rules (possibly bloating them), should they be part of a setting's additional rules, or should they be repeated on every single statblock, making generation more difficult?
What setting(s) of mine should I use as my "default" while I work out the design?
Should I make things like downtime rules explicit? Per-setting? Another kind of optional rule?
Closing thoughts
I have been thinking about a more subversive, non-violent but still open-ended campaign/game. This ain't it. Even if this is technically folk gaming, there's a lot of tradition.
I have a fair bit of content from previous drafts. It remains to be seen how much I will reuse or recycle. I'm definitely keeping some form of a Focus system—where defense is restored fully between encounters, but hit points/injuries are much scarcer.
After using first make, then a custom build system for the last two drafts, I'll be sticking with typst this time around.
Appendix e
Chris McDowall's blog has been really inspiring me lately. For this project it's more a stylistic inspiration since many of his rules are about situations and people, not stats.
Worlds Without Number remains the closest thing to my dream game. This project started as a set of tweaks to WWN, way back when.
Many others :)