Build em up, Break em down!

Thanks to a few other fun game design ideas I've gotten to work on the past few weeks, my mind has taken a solid break from Hostargo, and is now itching to get back to it, refreshed and revitalized. Unfortunately, when I opened up my "core rules" document, I was slightly disgusted with what I found there.

The last I had left Hostargo, I had been crashing through design challenges and knocking out content at top speed. While I'm proud of my progress, I was a little too over-zealous in some areas. For example, I had added in an extra die to roll, extra sub-stats, fleshed out a combat system with extra damage rolls and (shudders) division based armor. Like I said, it was a bit of a face -> palm moment for me when I had realized what I had done.

Despite the immediate whiplash, there were a lot of good ideas hidden in and around those rules, and more importantly, there is now a good deal of actual game content (e.g. weapon modifiers, backpack sizes, lists of items and gear). So now it's time to dig those gems out of there.

The key word in my discoveries above is extra. Extra rolls, extra stats, extra math. I immediately stripped all of that as a first-step, and took a good look at what was left. Sure, now all of that content is "broken", but I can see where those ripped up mechanics left holes. This allows me to actually think about each hole, and decide to fill it in with something good, or find that it's just not needed.

A good example of this is my character gears mechanic. I had a whole extra die just to tie it in, and there were a few other stretches to bridge the gap. Instead, I can safely remove the whole thing and possibly add it in as an "optional" rule for those groups that want more in-depth role play and character development.

I'm excited to get back to it! Next up, that damn armor system...