back at it

Another delay, but much progress has been made in the two months of "down time".  I've nearly completed a Quick-Start reference.  I got the idea as I was prepping for all the systems that I 'm going to be trying out at GenCon, so gathering up all the Quick-Start guides for these and reading through them to get a handle on what it is that I've signed up for.

At the same time the D&D Next playtest came out, and they did the same thing (I have another post started on my experiences with D&D Next that I'm working on finishing).  So, during this I thought...that's all I really need now, and started weeding back all the extraneous rules...of which there are a lot of...wow, eye opening.

In doing this I'm essentially creating the basic game, then using a "side-bar" system for optional rules that can be adopted by individual groups.  Similar to how 2nd edition AD&D did things.  Additionally with many people focusing on the hype around D&D Next I can't seem to keep myself out of some of those discussions.

I have another post on the Archetypes that I'm locking into for the Quick-Start.  "Wait, What! Archetypes, I thought the initial design was complete freedom when creating your Hero!"  Yes, that is true and it'll still exist but I've decided some people really do NEED minimal choices.  This came out in the play tests a number of times, when I attempted to walk players through creating their ideal Hero, most suffered Analysis-Paralysis with the number of choices, the interdependence of skills and attributes, all had them frozen.

I admit that when I show up to try something for the first time, I don't want to spend a lot of time going through character creation, afraid that if I pick the wrong thing I'll have nerfed my character. So, just going with the "Show up and Play" mentality, I figured some Templated builds would be good, not only for new player, but these could be used by GM's for ready-made NPC's and advanced players could start with one and modify it, rather than creating completely from scratch.

So my archetypes, which I call templates will include the staple ones (Thief, Fighter, Knight, Cleric, Wizard) that all depend on one of the five main attributes, but five additional ones that are in-between (Assassin, Ranger, Barbarian, Monk, Psion) each of which depend on one of the five sub-attributes.  With these examples, I attempt to layout the "logic" behind the design.