Version 0.44


This is a fairly substantial update. There's probably another one following fairly soon, but I figured I might as well get this one out of the way so the next one doesn't become enormous.

This version includes the following changes:

  • Added icons to the creature cards. I had an icon for bovines for the longest time but didn't have enough room on the cards at the time. Simplifying the cards throughout the many iterations has added enough room, so I spent some time making an icon for each animal.
  • Changed the layout for creatures to make everything a bit more compact and readable at a glance. I've also added default results for damage, dodges, and attacks to make everything a bit quicker at the table.
  • The change to creatures also includes a big change to how elementals work. It used to be that elementals were the only creatures with something akin to hit points, but with earlier changes to creatures that was no longer the case. I've now moved away from that entirely—elementals are now completely unlike all other creatures and act a lot more like environmental hazards. This makes them a lot more interesting to deal with in my opinion.
  • Added optional rules for a point map to complement the hex map rules of a recent update. 
  • Changed how hunting works. You can now choose what size to hunt, making it more flexible than gathering, but hunting is now more risky, since a struggle gets you nothing and a failure inflicts exhaustion. This hopefully makes the choice between hunting and gathering more interesting.
  • Changed the weather flower rules for hot and cold seasons/climates. My goal has always been to make the weather flower widely applicable, which saves having to use a different flower for different climates. I've gone through a lot of iterations before, but this one I think does the best job of making the more extreme temperatures more common without completely with how things work. The new rule does make it impossible to get fog in summer and thunderstorms in winter, but that seems like a reasonable trade-off for a more elegant system.
  • Changed the Sneak Attack ability. It used to add Scoundrel proficiency to attack rolls (in addition to adding it to the Damage DL), which has always felt a bit odd since assumedly if you're sneaking your target shouldn't be able to defend, right? This has now been changed to simply applying the boost to the Damage DL if the target doesn't get to defend for whatever reason.

Coming at some point:

  • Dungeon rules. This system will probably never be a dungeon crawling game, but I think I have a way of adding rules for dungeon crawling which make them somewhat easy to integrate and run.
  • Reworked encounter tables to add a more general approach in addition to the terrain-based approach. 
  • Rules for regional factions which will also add to the encounter table designs.
  • A ruins generator to help with exploration during travel (still).
  • Rules for magical disease/vampirism (still). Made some progress with this.
  • More guidelines for dealing with things which take quite some time but aren't travel.

Get The World Ahead

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