I've realized that my past few weekly updates have been really long and I end up spending more time writing them than I do working on the actual game. Which doesn't seem very good for my long term productivity. So from now on, Wednesday and Sunday updates will be a bit shorter, and aim at giving outlines of some of my design thoughts and quicker descriptions of TWE's progress.
This week I'm mainly working on TWE's classes and thinking up fun and mechanically interesting abilities to put into players' hands. A nice thing about classes in TWE is that they don't have to carry the full weight of character customization and progression, because they are only one source of a character's power and advancement. I can really focus class abilities, called feats, on giving players tricks to use in conflicts of various kinds. Since characters primarily progress through traits, and since every character has a bunch of magic at their disposal with Whispers, classes can have more flavoral and niche benefits than in many other rpgs.
But as I'm working on classes and feats, I'm also implementing some feedback I've gotten from friends and play-testers and kind commentators.
One bit of feedback just involves cleaning up some of the language around conflicts to make sure that TWE's conflict resolution system is as effortlessly applicable to all kinds of conflicts as possible. Part of this is ensuring that social conflicts in particular get enough attention. Players of rpgs are much more familiar with martial conflicts, how they work, and what their consequences are than social conflicts, and so I added some extra clarity on pages touching on social conflicts to better communicate what the stakes of social conflicts are and what limitations are involved.
A second bit of feedback involves TWE's health and damage mechanics. TWE has a version of hit points at its heart. Characters have two pools of hit points, one physical and one psychological, that can be lost or recovered independently. Losing a certain amount of either involves some small penalties. This reminds many rpg players of "death spiral" style mechanics, where taking even a little damage starts a character down an irrevocable path toward death as their consequences and penalties begin to pile up. This is something I wanted to avoid and so I have clarified some of the consequences of taking damage. Although there are penalties for taking damage, because of the way TWE's other mechanics work, they are not debilitating. And a character's ability to Whisper, that is, to use magic, is never impacted by injury of any kind. So even if a character's physical abilities are diminished somewhat by damage, it only means that Whispering becomes an increasingly attractive option.
I've also outright added a few new options related to health and taking damage. Previously, when characters ran out of hit points, they had consequences imposed upon them by the rules. Now, there are several opportunities for players to make choices about how they take damage and what consequences they suffer when they do. A couple examples: Before, when a character got knocked out, they were just knocked out. Now, a character can make a kind of last stand, by taking a serious wound and remaining conscious. Before, when a character took lethal damage they simply began the process of dying. Now, if a character takes a small amount of lethal damage, they can ignore the damage entirely in exchange for taking a serious wound. Before, when a character was manipulated by an NPC, they simply had to deal with the consequences. Now, the character can opt to take a mental wound in exchange for having a say in what kind of effect the NPC has on them. These options should allow players to feel more in control of their characters, even as their characters are being beaten or defeated.
I think these additions are a significant improvement over the situation before, and I think they work elegantly with the pre-existing mechanics. They don't really add any complexity. The rules already existed. It's just that now players are presented with choices rather than being forced down certain paths of consequences.
Anyway, back to working on the classes! See everyone Sunday for the next update.
- ABH
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