16bit Games and 32bit Issues.

+Erik McGrath

Lately I have had what can only be termed catastrophic computer issues. Luckily all my Inspired stuff was backed up outside my machine. Unluckily I had to re-find all my programs and get them installed so I could work on things. I am almost done doing that.

Once all that is settled it's back to work. My current plan is to do some more with 16 Bit Adventures. Once I have an adventure module for each level up to 10, I can call it done. I also need to work more on 16 Bit Tactics and get those monster stats finished. With jobs, enemies and gear done, the skeleton of the system will be usable, after that it's how battlefields should be built.

Personally I use LEGO

This is a 32x32 blue plate divided up into an 8x8 grid using 2x4 blocks. Ultimately I plan to get colored plates to more clearly show the grid but for now I settle for changing the orientation of the blocks. This is a good size for a 3v3 or 4v4 battle. It gets cramped with more and feels a little empty with less, besides which a 2v2 battle is in itself too small for Tactics to handle well.



Each color is a specific terrain type. Green is grass, yellow is sand, blue is water, tan is earth (I don't have brown blocks), and grey is stone. Counting the water as HT 0 there are 5 different HT values shown here. This breaks up line of sight and gives an advantage to the high jump rating jobs: Thief, Ninja, Monk, Dragoon.

Downloads

+Erik McGrath

It's been awhile since I stepped back and looked at everything playable that we've done. Other than the unformatted 16Bit tactics rules these are all presentable PDFs that aren't embarrassing to have people download. Luckily I don't embarrass easily so the ugly one is up here as well.

16 Bit

16 Bit Adventures v2
Adventure in Firstown
Stopover in Secondville
Five Burrows Fiasco

16 Bit Tactics (unformatted)
16 Bit Tactics Jobs

RPGs

Celestial Warriors v3

PNP

Sudden Death PnP v4
Squabblin' Corbies v1

16 Bit tactics: Format and Updates

+Erik McGrath

I have not been able to devote as much time as I would like to working on 16-Bit Tactics lately, but I have still managed some progress.

Right here is a pic of the current format, such as it is. I've been toying with a few ways to set things up and it's surprising to me how time consuming it all is. Ultimately it should be worth it to hammer out a decent format now rather than having a good idea later and needing to redo the entire thing.

For those following along at home there are two rules changes that you can see with this new Job sheet. First is that DEF/M.Def is now part of your current job rather than based on your current armor. Second is the addition of M.Eva.

The additive stats have been reformatted so that it's plain to see which things get added per level and which stay the same across levels. We will be keeping some form of the high/low threat rule for fighting creatures of much higher or lower level. With defenses and evasions now baked into Job, it will be much easier to word things as well.

Rules Explanations

If you squint you should be able to make out that Battle Tech includes 3 types of things: 5 weapon attacks, 1 self buff, and 1 unarmed attack. 

Weapon attacks are the largest subset of melee attacks. They use the normal rules. Since the generic Fight command is a weapon attack, this means that once a Fighter has learned any one of the 5 special attacks they have very little use for basic attacks.

Unarmed attacks are another subset of attacks. They work just like weapon attacks except you do not add any of the stats for your equipped weapon(s). Mostly this means you don't add its DMG bonus to your hits, but it would also ignore any elemental or status effects provided by the weapon. 

Buffs are a type of status effect. The effects themselves are standardized and they do not stack with themselves. So the DMG Up status granted by Focus would not combine with other affects that also grant DMG Up such as the Bravery spell. They do, however, stack with Support abilities that give the same effect as those abilities essentially change the character's base stats rather than giving a status effect.

Items and Gear

Just as a character has 5 slots for abilities, they also have 5 slots for equipable items. The mini table at the bottom of the Job sheet shows which items can be used. Unless an ability says otherwise, a character should only have at most one head, one body, one weapon and one shield equipped. Equipping two weapons (or a single, two-handed weapon) additionally precludes using a shield. For accessories the main limitation is that only one of each kind can be used. So you could have both boots and gloves, but not two gloves.

Downloads

16-Bit Tactics: Jobs

16 Bit Tactics Jobs Continuing Progress

+Erik McGrath

Good evening and thanks for bearing with me.


Included herein is most of a jobs document. I say "most" because Thief and Samurai are still missing rules for one JA each and Summoner has no descriptions for its JAs at all.

Jobs So far

Fighter
Black Mage
Thief
White Mage
Monk
Red Mage
Paladin
Dark Knight
Samurai
Dragoon
Ninja
Ranger
Summoner
Time Mage
Geomancer
Blue Mage

16 Bits, 16 Jobs. I like when things like that happen.

Coming Up

Now what I need to finish up is the rules themselves, and of course write up some gear and some example battlefields.

Monsters and enemy NPCs look like they will be simple. Common adversaries will just have levels in a single job, so when you encounter an enemy Black Mage all it is going to do is nuke. You won't need to worry about it knowing healing or status spells or being able to wear heavy armor.

Named NPCs, of course, are built like PCs and can have many different abilities available. I do not plan to create NPC-only Jobs though, so everything the enemy human-types can do is something that PCs are able to do. Barring any scenario special rules like them having control of a massive crystal that hurls Mega-Flare spells or similar.

There will be suggestions of how much XP/AP things like that should be worth though.

Downloads

16 Bit Tactics Jobs: Current

16 Bit Tactics Progress

+Erik McGrath

As always, layout is the bane of my creative existence. Eventually I hope my skill in that area will improve; if not in quality than at least in time spent. But since this is the 40th birthday of D&D I wanted to be sure I made some progress.

Job Sheets

Here's a pic of the job sheets for Fighter and Black Mage complete with fancy, isometric sprites.

The top part shows the stats and values for each job as well as containing a space to record LV, XP, and AP. The AP box is handy but the LV and XP boxes are redundant since they are the same for each character regardless of job.

I decided to do these two jobs first because they are polar opposites of each other. The Fighter has the highest HP, DMG and ATK stats as well as the lowest values in MP, M.Dmg and M.Atk while the Black Mage is the exact reverse situation. With that said, you may notice that HP and MP are not on the same scale. Everyone gains some of each but HP range from 15-30 and MP from 3-20. DMG and M.Dmg are almost the same scale. Both have a minimum value of 3 but M.Dmg caps at 12 rather than 10.

Abilities

This pic shows the complete list of abilities for each job. The Black Mage has only one option in both the Reaction and Support categories, and no Movement abilities at all. The Fighter, by contrast, has the very useful "Move+1" Movement ability and a choice of two each in Support and Reaction, though neither of their Support abilities are actually useful when Fighter is set as the main job because they are both Equip abilities.

If you add up the AP costs you will also see that to Master the Black Mage job it costs 200 more points than the Fighter. AP costs, as of now, are taken directly from the video games and that means that different jobs can cost different amounts to master and that is okay. The specific costs will certainly change in order to achieve better balance, but I am not committing to making the jobs all cost the same.

Mastering Jobs

As mentioned above, mastering a Job is easy, all you need to do is buy all of its abilities. As of now, what that does for you is grant permissions to use certain items and unlock additional jobs. I'm considering treating mastery as a bonus level so that when you finally master a job you get all the HP, MP, DMG and M.Dmg of gaining a level while that job is primary. 

There could be other benefits, such as allowing certain equipment in other jobs, but that can't be too much or it makes the Equip type support abilities redundant. In some cases it could allow a boost when using job abilities, so that your Fighter who has already mastered Black Mage isn't choking on a D6 M.Atk die.

But that's a problem for another post.

Links

Full size Fighter and Black Mage Job Sheet

Job switching in 16 Bit Tactics

+Erik McGrath

My primary goal with 16-Bit Tactics is to create a system that allows players to switch jobs between adventures/battles and still meaningfully impact their advancement. Currently for 16-Bit Adventures there is no special rule for switching jobs, we just switch whenever someone wants to play something different. Since the only real decision point is to pick a job all they have to do is pick up the sheet for that job and then get assigned some gear.

That method is certainly simple, but it doesn't lend itself to mixing job abilities in the way that the tactics series does, nor even how FFV does. It also can't capture the sphere-grid nor license-board methods nor subjobs, etc. In short, it's not good enough.

Methods

There are two ways I've figured that will work to allow characters to switch jobs. The first is the FFV method. Separate job level from character level and assign specific stats to each. This would mean that a Level 10 character would have one profile and the current job level would modify that template.

The second is the FFT method and it assigns each job stats and when you gain a level you add the stats from the job you gained the level in to your own stats. There is no recalculating anything when you switch. The only thing that changes in this case is your Primary Job Ability.

The second method is the one I've been working on.

Stats

You have two kinds of stats, cumulative and static.

Cumulative stats are the values that change with level: your HP, MP, DMG & M.DMG.

Static stats are always the same and depend on your current job and active abilities. They are MOVE, JUMP, ATK, M.ATK & EVA.

Gear can influence any stat, both cumulative and static. Additionally, gear determines your base DEF & M.DEF. A few job abilities can modify these but for the most part it is the items you equip that govern them.

Here's a shot of the amended character sheet.

The main differences are the addition of Move and Jump, that JAs are no longer a list specific to the job and that items are more customizable. You can still only equip one armor, and still only have 2 hands but you could equip 5 different types of accessory (helm, cloak, gloves, boots, rings...).

Your primary JA is always determined by your current job. Fighters have Battle Tech, Monks have Kung Fu, Black Mages have Black Magic, etc. Your secondary JA can be any JA of any job you have unlocked.  Reaction, Move and Support abilities must be unlocked from different jobs with AP. Once you know a particular ability you may equip it regardless of your primary job.

Each primary JA is an umbrella under which all actions usable by that job are placed. If you have the JA equipped you may use any abilities governed by that JA that you have learned in any job.

Learning Abilities

This is where the other new entry on the character sheet comes in. AP are ability points and you earn them the same way, and often at the same rate, as you earn XP. Unlike XP, which simply tells you what level you are, AP allows a great deal of choice. Each ability has a particular cost in AP and you may spend them freely; you do not need to buy a job's abilities in a set order though you do need to buy all of them to master that job. Your job level is the number of abilities you know from that job.

Layout and Design

+Erik McGrath

Making 16-Bit Adventures is a beautiful madness for me. The rules come together very easily but the presentation is driving my batty. Not only is layout the hardest part, it's the part I am least proficient with yet I can't seem to stop trying.

I'm sure most of it is due to inexperience with the tools. I'm using PowerPoint for most of it simply because it's what I know and I've been able to get it to do things. Contrast that to Scribus, which I have just started using, and I get basically nothing from it on the screen. I do get ideas though and one day I hope to be able to actually use Scribus to realize them.

For now I have gone back to PP.

No Layout vs Bad Layout

What it comes down to now is that I could have much more of the game posted where people can enjoy it, test it and hopefully point out its flaws if I just dispensed with the layout and posted a wall of text occasionally broken up with pictures.  I haven't done it for a couple reasons:

1) Too much Fallout 2. It was free to DL a couple weeks back and it has eaten my soul.

2) I don't personally like reading plain text and I tend to gloss over parts simply due to optical boredom. I suspect many other people are like me in this regard otherwise layout wouldn't be so important, right?

But it looks like at this point I can't slay the layout dragon myself anytime soon, so I am going to just offer what I have and then work on the rest later. Hopefully someone reading this will be a magical elf (or maybe just good at layouts) and want to join the Inspired creative team or even just help out on this project because they love sprite-art and Final Fantasy.

In the Works

As I have mentioned before, my next 16BA trick is to add the rest of the jobs and monsters and then do a Tactics module. The jobs are going pretty well and monsters are simple once the inspiration strikes. The Tactics bit is trouble though. 

It has cropped up repeatedly that the Jobs just don't all work in both modules as printed, so you really need to redo each for Standard and Tactics modes. Monsters at least work out pretty well. 

It doesn't help that I really want to get Job-switching in place and have it be more than simply taking the new character sheet like it is now. I want your character to be able to swap back and forth while still gaining in base capabilities and have it work out so that one PC could just pick Fighter and stick with it, but another could start with Blue Mage, then be a Bard and maybe then a Time Mage and actually use each of those abilities in some combination like you do in FFV and FFT(A).

It is a pretty big task so far to do that without needing to track lots of minutiae. 

My plan is to try it this way:

Every PC earns AP and XP for each battle completed equal to the total levels of the monsters fought.
Any PC that delivers a KO blow to a monster gains additional AP for that. 

XP will be used solely to increase Base Level and since all PCs get it at the same rate they will always be the same Base Level.

AP will be used to buy Job Abilities and raise Job Levels. Since AP is gained faster than XP this would mean that single Job PCs would have extra AP laying about so to be able to spend that I will be assigning each Job Ability a cost and not requiring a level minimum to buy it. So if all you want from Fighter is Retaliate then you can buy it first; it will be expensive though.

I am also moving to a more loose gear system where you would simply have 5 slots and the restriction would be that you can have no more than 1 armor or 2 held items (weapons and shields) but you could certainly equip an armor, a one-hand sword and 3 accessories if you wanted. Permissions for which items can be equipped will be based on current Job as well as mastered Job Abilities. For example if you master Fighter (ie buy all JAs) then you become a Master Fighter and no matter what Job you use next you can equip Heavy Armor (if that ends up being the Master JA, it could change).

You will also get some extra slots to equip JAs from your other Jobs whether you have Mastered them or not. So you could dip into Black Mage and then use your Black Magic as a Dragoon. 

There will need to be a restriction on AP, probably by making it Job-specific, so that you do actually have to play a Job to buy its abilities. 

As always, tell me what you think and I will get back to work!

Links 

16 Bit Adventures

16 Bit Tactics

Both are very much under construction, specifically the Jobs have not been added to either document. Since the Job pages are about the only thing I like the format of I am going to retain that and put up a separate doc for each module since the Tactics jobs require additional information to be used.

16 Bit Classes in the Works

+Erik McGrath

New Job Classes

Right now I am working on the Blue Mage. Its a favorite of mine from Final Fantasy V as well as XI. Something about using a scimitar while blasting monsters with their own powers just speaks to me on a spiritual level. 

The reason I'm only working on it now is that, in order to have a Blue Mage, one must first have a solid bestiary from which to draw its spells. As of now I feel like 16-Bit Adventures has that depth in the monsters and their powers so I can work on how to slot them into a PC class. 

While I am doing this I have been thinking about the other mage classes because the next one on my agenda was going to be the Summoner. However as I look over the spell lists for White/Black Magic I see a lot of options that can be frankly overwhelming or superfluous in play. That made me think that there is room for one of the classes I had originally cut: the Time Mage.

Time Mages

Time Mages are all about buffing and debuffing rather than the direct healing and nuking focus of the two primary mages. Looking at the current magic lists I can see that Haste, Regen, Reflect, Stun, Stop and Break at least are traditionally Time Mage spells. If I were willing to let Red Mages dip into Time Magic (and why not?) then a few others could easily be moved as well. Specifically Dispel in that case. Black Mages could do without Escape and Warp as well if there was a Time Mage to handle the spatial manipulation effects. 

Before I go and do a spell list for them what do people think about separating out the time and space spells from the others and having them in their own list? Would it make you not want to play a White Mage if they lost Haste and Regen? What about Black Mages and Dark Knights losing Stun and Stop?

Other Classes Coming

My to do list includes Summoner as mentioned above as well as Beastmaster and Ranger. After that I'm pretty spent for things to add. Geomancer had been mentioned to me before but they were awful in FFV and even Mog from FFVI had very few actual options in battle. In the future Tactics module I can see them being much more interesting since battlefields will have more varied terrain to utilize. Until then its at the back of the line.

So tell us what you think. We'll be around.

Wu Tang Flan Ain't Nuthing Ta Mess Wit

+Erik McGrath

Enter the 36 Chambers

Its  time for some 16-Bit Adventure. Particularly its time to face off against some of the most brutal and deadly of all monsters: the Flan. 

Flan are a type of ooze that tend to have magical or special abilities while retaining the ooze trait of being highly resistant to physical attacks.

Unlike in the video games though I am not cruel enough to make them just take half damage from all physical attacks so instead they just upgrade their defense. Any hit under their DEF is halved one more time, so they take quarter damage from hits under their DEF and eighth damage if under their 2DEF. Hits above DEF deal normal damage so its still possible for physical attackers to take down common Flan in a single action.

I have included the PDF below for people to have a look. As always I'm keen on getting feedback, especially of the sort where people point out what I forgot to include.

Downloads

Fiasco at Five Burrows.

16 Bit Adventures and Sudden Death updates

+Erik McGrath

Wu Tang Flan Ain't Nuthing ta Mess Wit

Prepare to enter the 36 Chambers of the Wu Tang Flan and defeat all nine powerful members to free the settlement of Five Burrows from their tyrannical rule and depredation.

Five Burrows was a peaceful town set into the rolling hills before the Wu Tang came and turned the old monastery into their lair. From there, the Ricearector and its disciples raided the town and carried off all its treasures, leaving barely anything  in the shops and fields. Most of the disciples are amorphs of one kind or another with flan taking on all the leadership roles and more common oozes used as foot... er, slimesoldiers.

New PNP 

Ninjas may end up on the back burner from time to time but they are never far away. To the right is one of the new cards for the Sudden Death PNP pdf that you can download below. If you want to see us finalize the art and get it printed on actual cards then download it now, play it and tell us what you think.

Downloads

Sudden Death PNP

16 Bit Adventures Current Rules

16-Bit Adventure in Roll20

Shifting gears to online-mode

+Christopher Andersen

As we've mentioned before, +Erik McGrath and I have been working to shift Roll20 into something that we can showcase, and give to others to showcase online.  To that end, the basic framework for a 16-Bit Adventure is under construction at Roll20.net so that we can run some one-shots of the system.



I have set up the Roll20 campaign to make it easy for GMs and players to use.  Everyone will start on the Character Selection screen, where you all can choose your Job, which sprite you want to use (Boy or Girl sprites available for all jobs), and then configure your tokens for use in Battle.

Maps, Splash Screens and Tokens to Populate Them

Character Selection

GMs can add their own Worldmaps for the adventure at hand, and then throw the party into nostalgic Battle screens against the monsters rolled for the encounter.  There are currently Battle scenes for encounters in the Forest, Plains, Desert, Caves, and Castle.  GMs will have access to a monster token page which has tokens preset for all of the monsters currently in our Rules document, complete with HP values to make it fast and easy to simply copy and paste them into the Battle screen at hand.  Eventually all tokens will also have other information formatted into them (such as XP values and Loot Tables) to make it even simpler to get through a random encounter quickly and without the hassle of having to consult the rulesdoc every time.

The Plan

The hapless party encounters an Ogre in the forest

Initially the plan is to use this campaign to run a few games ourselves when we have a free night, and eventually copy it and hand it off to any GM who is interested in running this with their own gaming group.  If all goes well, all images, sprites, et al will transfer with the copy and it will be easy to transfer our game to new GM to take the reins and run with 16 Bit Adventures.





So if you have any interest in giving 16 Bit Adventures a try as either a player or a GM, let us know and we will include you in any announcements when we schedule our games.  And as always, comments and suggestions are welcome and encouraged.

16-Bit Adventures updates

+Erik McGrath

As promised I have made an updated PDF.

It includes the static damage changes as well as the tweaks to single target spells.

16-Bit Adventures Downloads

16-Bit Adventures Rules PDF

Trouble at Castle Funfstein.

+Erik McGrath

The trouble was that the Good King's evil brother staged a coup and threw our heroes in the dungeon since they were known do-gooders.

They promptly escaped, and sans weaponry they fought several battles to get their gear back and then several more. We stopped before they finally got to face off with the Usurper.

Many things were learned in this Lv5 test.

Calculating Damage

Frankly its much too slow to use the rolled value when there is also division to be done. The solution is to give each character a static value to add to their other bonuses and each hit just does that much damage. The static value added is calculated the same as for magic attacks: half the max rolled value of your ATK die. 

We had crits doing 1.5x normal damage but I think they will need to go back to 2x. The reason being that the Dragoon could roll 3 crits and not drop a standard, Lv5 soldier. With DMG 15 his crits did 22 and Grunts have 100hp. If he used Jump his DMG went to 19 which still doesn't cut it. Granted this was with a Lv4 Spear but even with a Lv6 Spear (which was randomly in a chest) his numbers are 17/23 (crit 25/34).

So it takes a Lv+1 weapon and 3 crits on 3 attacks (12 on a d12) to one-shot an on-level monster. That's much too low a chance in my opinion. I want to see it be more like a 50% chance using appropriate gear for your level with your normal attacks.

My thought is to improve the rate at which DMG increases both by weapon and base. Right now the top-tier damage dealers have a DMG of [Lv + 6] for their base and Weapon Lv x1 for sword/spear, x2 for Axe or 2hand Sword and x3 for 2hand Axe. 

The alternative is to change the monster hp math. Its a lot easier to just do that, but if I narrow the numbers too much then there isn't enough difference by level for them so I will be looking at both methods and coming to some middle ground for the next test.

DMG and M.DMG

Specifically the trade-off between them. Today we discovered that our Lv5 Paladin healed for 12 when using Cura AoE. When you are routinely getting hit for 30 that's not good. 

The culprit was that even fully armed and armored plate, shields and swords don't help your M.Dmg. The fix was to just add half their DMG to M.Dmg because that's how Rods and Staffs work in reverse. This helped by upping the AE heals from 12 to 16 and single target from 22 to 26. Hi-Potions heal 50hp. so the AE stuff was good but the single heals were not that valuable, especially not in battle. 

Dark Knights would suffer similarly in this regard. 

The issue is compounded by having both a low M.Atk die and a slowed progression. I'm confident that they could go to the normal progression while keeping the D8 and become better without worrying the White Mage. For comparison a WM with a Lv5 Rod and Robe would have a Cura of 48 AE and 63 single target. Which, come to see it in print like that, is not that great for single. I think Cura needs a boost there as well from +5hp/die to +10. 

I expect the revisions to be done by midweek and I will update the PDFs links then.

16-Bit Adventures musings

+Erik McGrath

Final Fantasy XIV is the Very Devil 

If you were wondering where I've been and what inspired has been doing there you have it. For those who have no idea what I'm talking about FFXIV is an MMO that just came out and like all such things it devours the souls of those who play. Naturally, most of the Inspired family is playing. 

16-Bit Adventures

Adventures!

+Christopher Andersen and I have been discussing doing some more adventures for 16-Bit Adventures like the ones we did for Firstown and Secondville. So as of now my goal is to make an adventure path designed to take PCs from level 1-10 and fight a horrible Endboss and if they win they will save the world. 

We will assume 4 PCs as a base and provide notes and suggestions for how to make it work for more players. Normally it means just making the random encounters have more or fewer monsters and adjusting Bosses to account for the different damage being given and received. As is the math for Bosses is pegged at assuming they are worth about 5-6 monsters so I'm hoping it will be easy to make it work for other numbers without needing too much effort.

More Bits!

At this point the basic engine of 16-Bit is done. It needs a lot of formatting, perhaps more than I am capable of providing, but the gist is solid. 

For here I want to work on two things: Switching Jobs and Tactics.

Switching Jobs

Right now you pick your job class and then you just follow it as you level. Since the inspiration for 16BA is mainly FF5 I think its important to capture the real essence of that game by having a core level for your character as well as job levels which add abilities and traits. I've not yet decided if it will be comparable with the current system but I would like it to be. 

Tactics

This is the most requested thing about 16BA, when will it be able to do FFT. For my view it has to come after job switching is in the bag and it will require modification of a fair part of the system. Not only will it need movement and facing rules, but weapons and spells need ranges, you need terrain, etc. The biggest change would be to the monsters though. Fights will take a lot more time in a Tactics environment than the bare bones system currently in place. Not to mention monsters will need to be adjusted just like PCs.

In all its a lot of work I've got ahead of me, and a lot of FFXIV standing in the way. I will try to get it done week by week.

16-Bit Adventures: More Monsters

+Erik McGrath


 This week sees very little in the way of rules changes or updates. There were a few typos but that's it. The main draw this time is that I have been working on adding more monsters to fight.

Now you can enjoy goblins, bees, soldiers, bats, ghosts, skeletons, ghouls and slimes.

Alternative Monsters

 With the addition of more monsters comes thinking about how to use them and how you can mix them up so they aren't always the same. The first rule I've come up with for that is pretty simple, you just swap out the special ability of the monster in question. So to get the first of the alternative monsters, the Bumble Bee, you take a bee of any level and swap Poison Sting for Pollen. The only restriction is bumbles always appear in the back row so there will always be some normal bees or other monsters with them.

New Sprites

Some of the monsters have also gotten a facelift. I've been digging through the game files and trying to pick the more visually interesting options for each monster. So here's the new ghost sprite.

PDFs

16-Bit Adventures V2

Inspired Updates 8/19/2013

+Erik McGrath

I've been focused on 16-Bit Adventures a lot lately, and I'm still working on it but this week I want to take some time to give some updates on the current state of everything else as well.

Battle Tank

As I have mentioned before a board game that needs as many pieces as Battle Tank is an expensive undertaking and Inspired can't afford it right now. We are considering our options on physical production but they look a ways off. 

So instead we are working on making a PNP version so that those who have expressed interest can at the very least try it out. Once we get some feedback on that front we want to work on how to improve that experience. 

Sudden Death

The game is ready, the artist is lined up, what we are missing is the time to really promote it. This is probably my favorite thing that Inspired has designed for its simplicity. We will get this made, its just a matter of getting CJ and I in the same room to do the details. 

The most important of those details I think would be videos to showcase the game and talk about why we made the decisions we have with the art and gameplay.

Drachenheim

Magnus by
+Laura Fallon Andersen 

I'll admit this one has been pushed to the back burner pretty hard. I return to it every now and again to poke it and see if any new ideas fall out. It feels almost done to me but the gameplay is just a little too clunky and there is too much reliance on dice rolls for my tastes. 

Its a boardgame where the board is defined by the cards in play rather than a pure cardgame so I'm ok with some dice rolling but I prefer the decisions of the players to be the most important piece and leave the dice to decide limited things. If I can get to a point where the dice are only thrown to decide the outcomes of battles I will be very happy.

Celestial Warriors

Our first RPG is in the midst of a fourth version and it is a long time coming. With this iteration I think its time to add some art and sharpen the formatting skills I've been working on with 16-Bit Adventures to make it look more interesting and so that it reads more easily. 

16-Bit Adventures

We didn't get a chance to play with the whole gang this week but we did come up with a solution I like to the fact that DEF could still go over 10. That answer is that separate devices give separate DEF ratings so if you have a Shield and Armor you don;t add the values together, instead you check all incoming attacks vs both values. 

We call this effect Double DEF. If an attack is under both then you only take quarter damage from that hit. If its under one but not both you take half. If its over both you take normal damage. 

Wrap up and Downloads

So that's were we stand right now. We'd love to hear your comments and feedback about any or all of our games. 

PDFs

16- Bit Adventures V2

Sudden Death

Celestial Warriors v3

16-Bit Adventures V2 Arrives

+Erik McGrath

A day early or a week late

Whichever it is is in the eye of the beholder. If you get one of the three instant death eyes, my bad. 

The document is still pretty ugly but it contains all the rules and is as proofread as I can make it on my own. No doubt someone will catch a typo (or pile of such) in the next few hours. If that person is you, then leave a comment and I will fix it.

Likewise I have tried to be clear and stick to the same keywords throughout. If something doesn't make sense, or if you simply feel it should be different, let me know and I will explain what I meant and why. 

Classes

The current PDF has 12 Job Classes: 

Fighter

Thief

Monk

Red Mage

Black Mage

White Mage

Paladin

Dark Knight

Dragoon

Ninja

Samurai

Bard

I have these ones on deck:
Blue Mage
Ranger
Beastmaster
Summoner

Each of those last four have proven challenging to say the least. Ranger is the closest to being done. Blue Mage is done, class-wise, but since its spells are all monster skills I need to finish the bestiary or at least make a better dent in it.

Beastmaster will need some more JAs and for me to work out how its animal control will actually work. I am leaning toward a JA that takes an action to command an animal. If it works the PC then decides what that animal does on its next turn. Other JAs will enhance that effect as well as adding more types of controllable enemy.

Summoner is the toughest. I haven't worked out the summons yet but I know that I don't want them to play like other mages' spells. Summons really need their own feel. I'll keep working on them.

Monsters

The enemy section of the PDF is pretty scant. 

On the one hand I have started a new format for monsters and actually included their skills so you can know what to roll for them. Specifically their Agility is listed so you know their initiative but since spells and JAs often call for a skill check the others will come up pretty often. 

On the other hand, well, there are only 4 monster families shown: Goblin, Skeleton, Ghoul, Bee. The two undead share a page and that's the format I am currently going for. The others are more open but I think in this case page count will matter more than white space. I'm not sold on my choice so if you have a preference now is the time to convince me.

16-Bit Adventures PDFs

16-Bit Adventures V2

16-Bit Adventures v2.0

+Erik McGrath

Yesterday saw a moment of truth in 16-Bit Adventures. I had a vague suspicion that the math of DMG vs DEF was a time consuming and that it would break down in a few places. I was not prepared for the fact that it lead to LV5 monsters being largely ineffective vs low armor PCs and, in the case of Redcaps, incapable of doing any damage at all to the Fighter with their Goblin Punch.

Even a crit did 0 which was very bad for the monster since LV5 Fighters have Retaliate which gives them a free attack when they are critted by a physical attack.

The Trouble

The root of the problem is that offense needs to keep ahead of defense but more specifically the worst physical attacks need to keep pace with the best defenses otherwise you get these issues with monsters dealing 0. Its one thing if the physical attack of a caster monster is ineffective against a fighter with maxed defense, but these were standard monsters who only had physical attacks. Attacks that were meant to be dangerous.

Now I will admit that changing the math could have fixed that, but it would do so by inflating the numbers even more to the point where we would see great axes dealing +50 or more damage than staves by level 10. With defense factored in that would mean a staff has no net bonus and a great ax is more like +50 total. That would work but it requires doing more arithmetic than I am comfortable forcing people to do. I'd prefer most of the math to just be addition with subtractions being something special.

The Fix

The simple solution was to simply remove DEF and M.Def from the equation. It makes it so the DMG and M.Dmg numbers can stay smaller and let's HP take up the sole role of saying how tough a character is. Like I said, simple, but not entirely satisfying. 

To make it satisfying my idea was to move DEF/M.Def into the attack roll in a similar manner to how EVA works. If you roll equal or under EVA you miss, so its an easy matter to add a small step there: if you roll equal or under DEF you deal half damage. 

Now the ATK or M.ATK roll determines if the hit deals 0, half, full or critical damage just by comparing the result showing on the die. 

As a bonus this is more like how the video games parse attack vs defense. They work as a ratio with a randomizer that is altogether too much work for me to do at the game table but this method gives a decent approximation of the results with a minimum of effort. 

The last thing that's needed as some way to make relative level matter more and for that I will again use the solution I have for EVA. If the attacker and defender are more than 1 level apart the higher level one gets +1 to EVA, DEF & M.Def and the lower level one gets -1 to those. 

16-Bit Adventures Version 2

Look for the PDF mid-week. There's a lot of reformatting to be done. 

Today's share brings the number of classes to 10 for 16-Bit Adventures.

+Erik McGrath

Yesterday was game day for Inspired and it went so well that I never got a chance to post about it until now. Well, fixing the toilet may have contributed but nevermind that...


So without further ado, here's a teaser pic of:

Monster Families

In this case the picture is of the Goblin Family. You can see there are only four of the evil, little buggers but no doubt you will encounter many dozens of each of those in your own adventures. Goblins are an example of a quick monster. They have low HP and DMG but high EVA and Agility. They aren't particularly smart, not personable nor strong, all they really have is their speed and the power of the punch. 

Their normal attacks are really nothing to fear. Most of them will hit the Party Leader (ie the tank) and they are not good at hurting anyone in heavy armor. Even a higher level Goblin is nothing to fear if it sticks to normal attacks. The catch of course is Goblin Punch. Zoom in on the pic above (or click on the link to it at the bottom of this entry) and you will see that Goblin Punch throws a lot of dice. the individual hits are still weak, in fact they are weaker than the Goblin's normal attacks, but there are lots of them. 

And that means lots of chances for them to crit. Due to their low HP, Black Mages find Goblins to be excellent target practice for trying out their AE2 spells.

Chapter PDFs

For ease of editing I am now handling each section of the 16-Bit Adventures rules as its own document complete with copy-pasta front page. This allows me to more easily focus on one aspect of the game and in the last week that has been Monsters and Job Classes. The monster chapter isn't even close to done which is why I've only shared a single page, but the JC chapter is perfectly usable and is included in this week's links. 

Rather than sticking two different classes on one page and then doing the same for their character sheets the new method is to put the sheet and class info on one page and then print the entire thing for play. This gives the player a reference since all the rules for their abilities are on the sheet and also let's them salivate over what is to come as they level. 

The sheets themselves are much improved and now have spaces for such things as XP and GP.

16-Bit Adventures PDFs

16-Bit Adventures: Job Classes

16-Bit Adventures: Goblin Family

Stopover in Secondville: a module for 16-Bit Adventures

An Old Tower and a Dark Knight

+Erik McGrath

These days the small village of Secondville is little more than a waystation across the plains, between the river crossing and the northern mountains.

Long ago it was part of a thriving cluster of settlements ruled by the wise Count Orlock. From his fortress in the western hills, he could survey his entire domain and see invaders and monsters approaching days before they could be a danger.

But old age is an enemy that even the wisest are ill-prepared to face, and the Count could not go quietly into the night. He dedicated his wealth to finding a way to reverse his aging and give him more years to guard his people, but year after year there was no result and eventually the Count was too old to leave his bed and one night he finally died.

The seasons turned and for awhile the county prospered but then soldiers came from the west and without the old Count there was no hope of turning the invaders back. All seemed lost when the enemy arrived at the old tower, but the soldiers who went in with the first wave never returned and when the second wave attacked they were met by a towering figure in black armor with eyes of fire leading a battalion of howling ghouls and whispering shades.

The unholy force easily destroyed the invaders adding the many dead to its own ranks and then for a brief time there was peace once more... until the undead began to hunger once again and there were no invaders on which to feed. The Count, as he called himself though none could recognize their noble lord in the terrible monster they beheld, demanded sacrifices from the people and soon the villages became abandoned.

Now only Secondville remains. It is too far for the undead to reach in one night from the forbidding tower, though many lurk in the hills to west and north, emerging when the sun sets. Most disturbing are the living soldiers who have entered the Count's service. How they withstand the hunger of the damned is unknown, and why they would serve such a monster even less understandable to the villagers.

16-Bit Adventures PDFs

Now that you have some backstory, here are the PDFs you need to go and slay the evil Count!

Stopover in Secondville

16-Bit Adventures:Basic Rules