Some Playtesting Required.

We had a few minutes before our Scion game so I whipped up some stats for a trio of goblins and a generi-warrior guy and ran through a couple of rounds to see how they would fare in the system I've been tweaking. Within the first several rounds the warrior had hit one of the goblins and did about half it's total health in lethal damage right off the bat, which is to be expected anyway since they're goblins and in just about any iteration of D&D you'd kill or maim the poor little guy within a round or two anyway. The goblins however when they did hit warrior guy, couldn't get through his armor or soak to do anything to him. I'm rereading the rules this morning to see if maybe I missed something, but I might just have to mess with the armor values a little and see what happens.

I also printed out a character sheet and need some make a few adjustments to the size and spacing of certain things but overall I'm pretty happy with it.

Oh and I think I figured out how to incorporate the Table of Death and Dismemberment into my game. In Scion when you fill all your health boxes with lethal wounds you're considered incapacitated and dying and have a number of turns during which you're dying equal to your stamina. For most characters that's probably 2 - 3 dots. So, I think that if a character takes damage which exceeds that threshold in one shot they get to roll on the Table of Death and Dismemberment instead of dying outright.

New to the Sandbox.

I figured since I started commenting on a lot of Old School type blogs I ought to start one myself since I'm about to embark on this whole Sandbox thing. I've been playing pen and paper rpgs for almost 20 years now. I'm not positive when my brother and I started playing but we were pretty young and we used to play Magic when it had first come out at a local game shop. I'm pretty sure the first game I ever played there was Shadowrun, followed closely by AD&D. AD&D 2nd edition is what we cut our teeth on though and I've since spent countless hours having a great time with friends rolling dice around the table.

Recently, I ran into the Ars Ludi West Marches blog linked on a forum I frequent. I was pretty intrigued by the idea because it's been a long, long time since I played in a game where we just did whatever came to mind. I can't even remember when except to recall the very early days when we were kids and the idea of the STORY didn't trump everything. I've never really been the GM except for once or twice and never felt confident in my ability to do it. I decided after reading the West Marches stuff I wanted to give it a shot. I've since read a multitude of Old School blogs looking for advice and ideas. I'm not sure if what we're going to be doing counts as Old School exactly, but it will certainly be Sandboxy.

Most of my players and myself included are getting kind of tired of being stuck in Classes and whatnot. I looked around for a system that would work for a classless, low fantasy sandbox that would also fit in with what I want to do and couldn't find anything. So I'm taking the White Wolf Storyteller System and Scion and sort of mashing together the elements from them that I like. I've got about 15 pages worth of information and house rules to give to everybody, but I think they will like it. You can play just about anything without having to be pidgeonholed into a class. I've left the setting details purposefully really vague hoping the players (who I know are more than capable of this) will flesh out concepts on their own. See, I want to say yes instead of no. As long as it's not game breaking and overpowered or completely ridiculous, I want them to have the freedom to shape the setting along with me instead of the other way around.