Sittin' On A Fence

The past few months has brought some changes to my core mechanic.  This has forced me to take a hard look at the system as a whole, and re-evaluate my work thus far.  In effect, it was time to, "Kill my darlings."  This is never an easy task, especially if you've hitched your wagon to a particularly sweet mechanic, which you're convinced is The Greatest Thing Ever (Monte Cook be damned!).

So what brought about this change?  Basically, speed.  There's a bit of back-and-forth for resolution, which slows the game down quite a bit.  It's a neat concept, but doesn't belong in a game where people roll dice often.  As badly as I wanted to keep this mechanic, I couldn't fool myself any longer; it was time to do some slashing, and speed things up.

Instead of back-and-forth die removal, I decided to go with a sweeping resolution.  The player removes an opponent's dice, then the opponent gets to remove their dice.  A simple enough solution that nets results in a fairly quick manner.  Although this mechanic did improve speed, it added new wrinkles to the core mechanic as well.

I had to re-calculate the value of the dice, and how often successes should occur.  Before any changes were made, the amount of Hits equaled the amount of Misses that could be rolled on a die.  I increased this number slightly, but I had to make yet another change to do so.  Once again, I had to cut a favorite of mine, or at least, trim it down.

Strengths and Weaknesses had to be tweaked into something a bit different.  I had to separate them into distinct categories, and redefine their meanings.  They would no longer be two sides of a coin, but separate abilities that can be purchased.  I'm still playing around with them, so it's not completely written in stone.

As you can see, one change can make sweeping revisions in a core mechanic.  I found it necessary to make the game move faster, and ultimately, more enjoyable.  Next up is play testing the new revision, to determine how deeply it effects the system.  I have a feeling that it may have inadvertently made the game more deadly, so I'm interested in seeing the results.