What will be included in beta?

[Marras]

I began to plan a setting for my playtest a week ago and now I began to wonder what rules are included in beta? Does in include character generation or are some pre-gens included? I assume that character generation rules are included but as it was so eloquently put in a movie 'Assumption is mother of all f**k-ups'

Anyway, happy new year to all!

[higgins]

Beta won't be including the mounted combat rules, nor the announced drop-in microsetting, but other than that it will be pretty much what you'd expect from any other complete product (except art).

[Marras]

Sounds good and complete enough for my purposes. Thanks!

[higgins]

Happy new year, everyone!

[EinBein]

Same to everyone!

[EinBein]

I can't wait for the realease to come We play a mixed up version of TRoS and Blade since a couple of months, but I would really love to see your take on the Norwood-approach...

Do you use specific equipment rules or rather abstract ones? From the riddle higgins posted concerning money, you are definitely not going for the no-money approach of Burning Wheel or Blade.

[higgins]

Do you use specific equipment rules or rather abstract ones?

Care to be more specific on what you're asking here?

[EinBein]

In a classic RPG you buy a rope for three copper for example. Maybe even with some stats or advantages.

In The One Ring every character has "travelling gear" and this contains everything that is needed on a journey. Instead of money, the characters have a standard of living and the GM judges - based on the game guidelines - which type of additional equipment can be bought with a certain standard. Without tests or else.

In Burning Wheel, each character has a "Ressources" value, which is tested when they want to acquire something. They have an item called "travelling gear" as well, and the player can choose what it comprises himself (with some limitations).

[higgins]

Ah! Okay. Well, as you figured, we use very specific, well defined coins, so, no abstraction there. Using abstract coinage just would not have that visceral appeal that we're striving for -- especially since we make figuring out the actual weight and volume of coinage that easy. So, although you need to keep track of your coins, we're not building a shopping simulator. Not by far -- such thing would simply not fit the fiction our engine is geared towards.

To give you the gist of it, our three lowest money unit tiers are penny, skilling and mark. So, most things simply cost two units and the GM picks the tier to which the cost will fall. This also makes it easy for the players to judge/say things a'la "I'll toss two pennies at the tavern keeper for a quart of ale" and move on with the scene.

Want to buy a sheep? Two skillings. Want to hire a skilled professional for a month? Two marks. Etc.

Having the standard price being two units (instead of one) allows us easily to buy sheep (or whatever) from where they are in abundance (single skilling per sheep in a Plenty area) and then sell them where they are in demand (three skillings per sheep in a Scarcity area) ... and making a healthy profit without any merchant skill check BS, as well as avoiding unnecessary GM judgement or fiat. Plus having Plenty and Scarcity areas gives more character to the locales themselves. Scarcity and Plenty can also easily model friendly prices and stranger prices, when getting good deals from allies or bad deals from some wretch trying to make money off of you.

Another benefit to this setup is that... since there are virtually no equipment price lists, it's easy to for a greedy person with rare goods to ask double, triple or even ten times the price, which (unlike a random number) makes the difference obvious and then people can haggle about it.

Also, as most martial equipment is in the skilling/mark range, we also have some suggestions for non-standard pricing for those that care about economic realism.

Hope that answers your question.

[EinBein]

It very much does, thanks Your system sounds pretty easy. A great plus everytime!

And it's still Thursday

[higgins]

It indeed is, but alas, Agamemnon remains just as elusive as during holidays.

RL BS, apparently.

[EinBein]

What a pity! This means we have to wait for next Thursday at least

In the meantime: How do you rule skilltests?

• With a number of dice equal to an attribute against TN of a skill
• With a number of dice equal to an attribute or skill against fixed TN
• With a number of dice equal to the sum of an attribute and skill against fixed TN

What do you variate then for different difficulties?

• Number of dice
• TN
• Number of successes

Sorry for being curious, but I have experimented a lot myself and am not content with the current state of affairs...

[higgins]

In the meantime: How do you rule skilltests?

• With a number of dice equal to an attribute against TN of a skill
• With a number of dice equal to an attribute or skill against fixed TN
• With a number of dice equal to the sum of an attribute and skill against fixed TN

None of the above.

Okay, fair enough... #3 covers 75% of the setup, but that last missing 25% is reeeeally important. From a technical standpoint, that 25% is hands down the innovation I'm THE most proud of in the whole game. Compared to TROS, it helps us to reduce mechanical bulk from the most complex part of the game by 80% (no joke). Okay, there's no hard metric to derive that number from, but 80% is the conservative estimate of what the reduction feels like during play... with virtually no detail lost from the expense of it.

The beauty of it is that... new players won't even notice it's there, but I'm sure the concept would blow the socks off any TROS veteran. I mean, when we started to realize the implications, it certainly blew ours.

What is that last 25% though?

Well, I think some things have to be revealed in the beta.

[EinBein]

Argh Thanks for the teaser though. Hope beta is really close now

[Marras]

Sounds intriguing.

Any Thursday now, any Thursday now