Facebook’s been nagging me about a lack of updates on my page lately, so I figured I was about due to make a condensed update of what’s been going on around here lately. I’m still picking at Project Irrgarten off and on, and do have the second draft rulebook done along with some dressed up card templates for the items and characters, but wound up hitting kin of a wall trying to come up with a new set of items in keeping with the idea that each should be important and valuable- i.e.; filling out the sheet with “filler” items was running against my intended goal for them in the first place. So basically, I’m in the process of trying to come up with enough “named” weapons to give all the classes stuff to play with.

I’ve already done a little bit of testing with the new battle rules using the old cards, so it’s really not been as drastic an overhaul as it sounds. The main reason I haven’t gone ahead and uploaded a new .zip for testing is I wanted to put more art assets in. I may go ahead and put a ‘rush’ update up in hopes some more people will try out the new rule set- I haven’t really had a lot of opportunities to test with other people yet, sadly, and setting up a virtual tabletop sounded a little over my head. Since one of the biggest things I did run into with a face to face test was that it was hard to tell the different sets apart when they’re face-down, I’m definitely going to make the next card set double sided.

I’m thinking that I’m going to keep the starting character set fairly modest, probably no more than 30. The rooms are really okay for the most part, but I’d like to add traps that play with the party’s marching order to the mix and maybe do something about those springboard tiles since they have a tendency to pop up consecutively (maybe I’m just a bad shuffler.)

So, I’m thinking of redoing the battle system with the marching order mechanic I was kicking around, which will also let me give weapon types more distinct properties because I just dig the idea of there being fringe benefits to them beyond an attack boost. This’ll also mean changing monster encounters a bit to accommodate a party with multiple chances to hit per turn, but I was going to be re-doing most of them next update anyway, so it’s probably not a huge amount of extra work. So anyway, let’s have a look at the old combat system against the new…

Original rules have the party designate a leader through whom all ‘direct’ actions are considered to be running through, and three Support characters who supply passive boosts to the current leader’s Attack and Defense ratings while also offering other benefits via Support Skills, like follow up attacks or healing. This was intended to keep play fast and streamlined, and ideally work like a risk/reward mechanic- when in the exploration phase of the game keeping your thief at the front can save you triggering a trapped room, but leave you at a disadvantage if you walk into a fight. In practice, though, it’s pretty restrictive feeling since space limitations on the card basically lead to a current party only being able to do one thing, and the constant buffs on the leader offset the weaknesses of some of the less beefy characters so much the ‘feel’ was kind of lost. So, here’s the alternative I’ve cooked up-

Keeping the four-person parties (because JRPG homage lawl), formations are now based around a “marching order” where characters receive defensive bonuses and skills may behave differently depending on their location in the party line. Basically, the lead character acts with their normal stats and the further back you go, the other members receive a -1 Attack and +1 Defense, unless they happen to be a class optimized to fight at a distance like a caster or archer. Each character will have their own action per turn, and all characters are valid targets for attack, but naturally the farther-back characters will be more difficult to touch.

Where the fun part comes in is how this affects attacks and other effects. Attacks will now have a Range value for how ‘deep’ they can hit into an enemy formation in addition to weapon cards being formally ‘split’ into their Power (potency) and Effect, which can get more abstract. For instance, an Armor Splitter Axe might have a Range of 1, Power of 3 and Effect that ignores equipped armor bonuses. Other possibilities include splash damage, knockback, and other effects to make fights more exciting. This could also allow for some more nuanced traps and encounters.

Hopefully soon I can toss together a testable edition with the new battle system for you guys to try out. Stay tuned!