Saturday, April 7, 2012

Delvers of the Deep?

I'm hard at work on my set of house rules.  It looks like they are going to be under 8 pages long, but it is taking a bit more time that I expected as certain aspects require a more thought and explanation than I had planed for.  The biggest obstacle so far has been creating a set of simple critical hit rules that won't slow down gameplay. Currently I'm leaning towards a basic and an advanced system that you can choose from.  The basic system does not require a lot of record keeping, but doesn't give any detail to the injuries sustained. This has more of a wargame feel.  The more advanced system gives detailed descriptions of the injuries, and creates the possibility for permanent effects (loss of a ability point, blindness, limited movement etc).  However this requires more record keeping, and slows down combat. This system feels a lot more like Rolemaster or WFRP. I'm going to have to playtest these to see what works best. Hopefully I'll have a rough draft of the rules finished tomorrow or Monday, and I'll post a link to them when that happens.

Tentatively I am calling the rules "Delvers of the Deep" or DotD.

4 comments:

  1. It's a good name, but it makes me think of drowned palaces and underwater adventure.

    Are you going to make these house rules available? I always enjoy reading house documents.

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  2. FYI, there is a Delving Deeper OD&D retroclone that has been in development for a while and is almost ready for publication (by Brave Halfling):

    Delving Deeper

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  3. I am going to make the documents available once I finish them, which it seems is going to take a bit longer than I thought. I'm also going to come up with a more original name. Not that the name's all that important, but it is nice to have a good name.

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    Replies
    1. Names are always the hardest part for me. And they can have a huge impact on uptake, if you are interested in feedback from others. Like, I don't know if you are familiar with open source development, but without the awesome framework name Ruby on Rails, I doubt that Ruby would have gotten big as a programming language. And back in RPGs, an awesome name like Small But Vicious Dog did a lot, I think, to get that WFRP/D&D rules hack known.

      Then again, I also have a thing for names:

      http://untimately.blogspot.com/2012/01/nomenclatura.html

      So maybe I'm overthinking things.

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