In working on Quintessence of Dust, I decided that I liked some parts of D&D Next’s skill list, and didn’t like others. Of course, I’ve talked about D&D Next’s skill model extensively. I particularly liked the skill-die model of earlier playtest packets, with skills rated +0 to +1d12, and with each […]
In working on Quintessence, I’ve been trying to think of situations, either realistic or cinematic, that other tabletop games don’t model well, if at all. So when Kainenchen and I watched Stardust the other day, I was struck by the many times that a character sets a blade at another character’s […]
This is another post about my work in progress, Quintessence of Dust, where I lay out the game’s resolution mechanic and how I’ve gotten there. The first post and starting point on this topic is here.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve put 15k words into a playtest document for Quintessence, and today I got to a span of rules I’ve seriously dreaded writing. The 4e brawler build of the fighter class is about the only version of grappling rules I think I’ve ever seen in […]
Dear Design Diary, While I was away for Thanksgiving, thanks to the unflagging support of Kainenchen, I started working with some ideas for a new fantasy roleplaying system for tabletop. I particularly want something that borrows a bit more from the style and substance of LARPing, without sacrificing usability. When […]