MaliQuest: Character Creation v2

Good Thursday everyone!

I have a massive announcement today, one that I am quite ashamed to have to make:

Character Creation is changing.

Yeah I know, the character pack has only been available a day and already it's getting altered.

*************

If I may, let me explain why:

So last night I was talking the game over with my wife and she pointed something out - character creation is backwards!

If you go back and read my early posts I talked over and over about how your character is supposed to start off as a nobody, but then in order to get the Skype game up and running with the equivalent of 'demo' characters, I forgot that what I was doing for them is not what a normal character would be like.

You see, for SkypeQuest we are breaking a lot of the rules, we're not using models, we're playing with maps rather than terrain and I wanted the characters to feel like seasoned adventurers rather than newbies.

So you see I got so focused on how to do the final part that I forgot about what a new character is supposed to be like.

And so I present you with my first rules errata:

When creating a starter character, you do not pick the 2 offensive, 1 defensive and 2 mods from the entire card pool.

Instead you pick 2 cards from a small collection of 'starter' weapons.

This will be in the form of 'Starter Pistol', 'Starter Sword', 'Starter Shield' and 'Starter Ranged Spell Artifact', 'Starter Control Spell Artifact'.

There is no starting equipment to be worn and no starting mods.

While this incredibly reduces the customisation available, it reinforces the feeling of being a newbie trying to make your fame and fortune.

- for those who are scheduled to take part in SkypeQuest, if you would rather do this, please let me know and if there is a majority vote in favour, then we can do that.

************

We also discussed something else, deck management.

Currently the loot deck is unwieldy. There are so many cards that it's huge and all over the place.

What I am doing is looking at way of limiting it. My initial idea is to work on a 100+ concept.

First the GM goes through the deck and removes anything they want to feature as boss drops. Then they split the cards into the different rarities, they then select at random 50 Common cards, 30 Uncommon cards, 15 Rares and 5 Epics.

This gives a random selection of 100 cards which can be looted throughout the game and means that the player doesn't know exactly what to expect, however as the GM has already specified Boss Drops then they have the opportunity to fix certain drops to get items they want into the game.

- I should probably also explain boss drops.

You see, normally when a room has been cleared, you flip a number of random loot cards, usually it will be something along the lines of 1card for 3 30mm base models, 2 40mm base models or 1 50mm base models. But this is of course at the discretion of the GM, if he feels that the party really struggled with that room and needs a greater reward, they can flip more cards.

Also the party can try to search for loot. This happens by every member of the party flipping a card and the party average needs to be 10. So if there are 3 players in the party, the total needs to be 30. This can only be done once in every room, but if it's successful generates 1 loot flip. - oh and it's an (all) action.

BUT! If there is a designated boss character, placed by the GM at certain points, then the GM can specify it's loot drops as Boss Drops.

In this instance, the loot flips are like corpse counters, 1 for a 30mm boss, 2 for a 40mm and 1 for a 50mm
- in fact I might do that for all loot, thoughts?
But one of these loot drops is one of the cards previously put aside.

And that is basically it. The changes made are pretty sweeping, but it my belief that it creates a more involving and engaging game.

That's it from me today, stay safe and I'll see you all breachside

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley