Back To The Drawing Board

I guess the Tin Woodman didn't tell me everything I needed to know about combat.

I have gotten relatively few comments on the game itself. The best I've gotten are two people who said that it was a good representation of the stories, but not something that they wanted to play. When I pressed for details, one of them said that the game wasn't action oriented enough. The other one said that the game was clearly "kiddie".

While I realize that kids are likely to be a significant part of my target market, I'd like to do something to make their parents want to play, too. To that end, I am undertaking a revision of the system to make the combat system more interesting and likely to be used. Also, I'll be revising my setting information so that I am not relying so much on Baum's descriptions. Although he did really good stuff, I think that putting more of my own voice to that material will help increase the overall maturity of the work.

If you want to play the revised game now, here's what you do:

1) Eliminate the Fighting skill. All of it's functions are taken over by the Athletics skill.

2) Since the Fighting skill is gone, raise the Soldier template's Sneaking skill to 2.

3) All optional skills now become 1 point traits which allow use of the basic skills in new ways. For example, the Rhyming skill becomes the Poet trait which allows the use of Presence to perform improvised poems or songs. The Magic skill should probably be a 2-pointer, allowing the use of the Brains skill with the magic system.

Let me know how these changes affect your game, if any of you are actually playing it.

Next week may be another art blog, but that's okay, because I've started paying Bradley McDevitt and therefore feel comfortable showing off some of the work I've gotten from him.