During a recent plumbing of my hard drive, I discovered an old (circa 2012) iteration of the Corona rules. After a little polishing and combining of disparate parts, I have decided to make this artifact available on both itch.io and DriveThruRPG as Pay-What-You-Want. It's 81 pages, no art, playtested and edited, but just not what… Continue reading Corona Ashcan Available
New Fate tech for Corona
If you haven't gotten your hands on Uprising: the Dystopian Universe RPG yet, it's got some great innovations in various facets of the Fate engine (some of which I'm planning to adapt for Corona). Just from a first read-through, here are the highlights: The approaches from Fate Accelerated and the four actions are replaced with… Continue reading New Fate tech for Corona
Corona, a Fate take
I'm trying out some heavy modifications to Fate to see if it works as a core system for Corona. Those modifications include: adding another axis of action in the form of theaters of operation: you may act on the Personal, Tactical, Operational, or Strategic level with your skills incorporating the "dark vs. light dice" mechanic… Continue reading Corona, a Fate take
A mostly inconsequential name change
It's been brought to my attention that a game called Spectrum has been released, and in the interest of not causing any confusion, I've renamed my open-source game system to Spectra. It's been a dormant project for years, but I think I want to revive it, and this would head off any potential miscommunication. The… Continue reading A mostly inconsequential name change
What’s a point worth?
Mulling a change to point costs in the character creation rules for G&F - the simplicity of Everway's approach is appealing, but I've been rereading Nobilis 2e for inspiration as well and I'm torn because Nobilis has a more robust ability creation method that would raise the prices on things. (In Everway, a power costs… Continue reading What’s a point worth?
Advancement and experience in Glorious and Fearsome
Since Everway doesn't have a hard advancement system for characters, I'm looking at existing tech to graft onto the game that won't disrupt the feel too much. My leaning is toward goal-based advancement such as the Motivations in Exalted or the Keys in games like Lady Blackbird. In Everway, as I mentioned before, you have… Continue reading Advancement and experience in Glorious and Fearsome
“Fixing” Everway, addendum
As I continue to read through the original Everway box, there are some areas that catch my attention now that never did before. One of those I'd like to comment on is the way wounds are handled in the game. They're very abstract, broken into three categories - flesh wounds, serious wounds, and mortal wounds… Continue reading “Fixing” Everway, addendum
“Fixing” Everway, part three
Overall, as I said before, Everway has a lot of good things. Among other things, it has a great spread of magical schools, and powers, and setting background (seriously, over half the playing guide is about the city of Everway and the spheres). It uses generous amounts of example text to walk players through how to… Continue reading “Fixing” Everway, part three
“Fixing” Everway, part two
Part of the way you know you're reading a game from the 1990s is Everway's use of language. It was relatively progressive for the time in using "his or her" frequently instead of defaulting to the usual "his" (although the singular "their" is still better), but it fails to acknowledge the problems intrinsic in the… Continue reading “Fixing” Everway, part two
“Fixing” Everway, part one
Let's start off with one important point: Everway is a good game. It has a lot going for it: its aggressive multiculturalism, its extensive use of examples to guide new players, its production value, its use of art as part of the play experience (especially the vision cards), and for me in particular, its embrace of… Continue reading “Fixing” Everway, part one