Thank you for taking a look at Carnage & Aether! I wanted to clarify that it is, indeed, a skirmish game, not an RPG. You need to play with minis and a battlemat. The game comes with an arena you can print out, as well as tokens, but folks are building their own arenas with terrain and playing it with minis.
This is great Jeff, really like the creation process! I personally loved the thought of how wisdom could add to the range skill in some way; or at the least maybe have a low score reduce your range skill, so it's not a complete dump stat. I'm just spinning ideas, but maybe having low mental attributes provide some penalty in either chance to hit or damage done could be good. After all, if the PC isn't smart or wise enough to know the weak spot of an enemy or discern its capabilities, how can they fight as good as someone who has a better understanding of their foe? This way maybe a wizard with a rock is, well, not entirely useless, and the person who wants a genius fighter, well, it can still be playable...maybe. Anyways, thanks for the vid, have a great rest of your week, and good luck on your creation! 👍👍
Id like to see some specific rules put in place to govern the use of keywords, so that they’re more tangible as a game element. Also, “hero coins” or “luck tokens” seem popular these days, so how about a rule for some form of “earned luck” that can be stored away for some opportune moment down the road.
Really looking forward to your review of "The Terror Beneath." I have the Penguin Classics collection of Arthur Machen stories and have considered buying this one (after the holidays). Your insights are usually a good guide. As for the game, to distinguish it from Fate (whose Aspects work much like your Keyword/Advantage system in play), the combat system needs a bit more crunch. A Bruce Lee fan should be able to create a mechanically distinct character that feels different to play in combat than the character created by a fan of Robert E. Howard. Perhaps Offense, Defense, and Exploration as sections get their own keywords? Attributes and Exploration Keywords could take the place of skills to keep the system light. Players would have to remember a half dozen attributes and maybe a dozen keywords (or fewer) instead of Attributes, a long list of skills, Feats, Class Abilities, Traits, and so on. This should be much less of a burden than 5E.
In total agreement with your take on advantage/disadvantage. Two d20 rolls ends up being too powerful/nasty. Appreciate that you are looking for that old school vibe where the PCs are working up to being heroes vs. being super-heroes almost from the start. Love this series!
One of the tricks of point values as gates to abilities is what skills/abilities sort of offer. Like if you say a martial skill or a casting skill might be more expensive, so do you imagine someone easing into what in a class based system would be a multiclass or dual class setup over time, or could someone start that way? Or would some of these be lower impact (stealth plus magic, stealth plus only utility magic, nature survival plus urban thievery), but doing something more special would be harder to link with other abilities? The work will be trying to lay out that landscape, and I guess that's the flexibility with this approach, since you could have a very different list and have an entirely different setting and tone while still having essentially the same system. Might be good to get a white board so we can keep track of the development stages :)
Yeah I have been playing around with keywords in my own homebrews games. With combat oriented it’s best to base them on a weapon like sword master, bowmen, or Ax Battler. I like mana point idea too. Will it be based off a stat like intelligence or constitution? Oh how many keywords will we be getting starting out? Will that be based on a stat?
@@Thegaminggang in fact since you want low math, the stat is the amount of mana. So a character with a keyword of mage and INT of 12 would have 12 mana. Straight up and simple.
That was also mentioned; you might have missed it. There would also be keywords/traits/whatever we're going to call them which would boost those points by a couple too.
Thank you for taking a look at Carnage & Aether! I wanted to clarify that it is, indeed, a skirmish game, not an RPG. You need to play with minis and a battlemat. The game comes with an arena you can print out, as well as tokens, but folks are building their own arenas with terrain and playing it with minis.
This is great Jeff, really like the creation process! I personally loved the thought of how wisdom could add to the range skill in some way; or at the least maybe have a low score reduce your range skill, so it's not a complete dump stat. I'm just spinning ideas, but maybe having low mental attributes provide some penalty in either chance to hit or damage done could be good. After all, if the PC isn't smart or wise enough to know the weak spot of an enemy or discern its capabilities, how can they fight as good as someone who has a better understanding of their foe? This way maybe a wizard with a rock is, well, not entirely useless, and the person who wants a genius fighter, well, it can still be playable...maybe. Anyways, thanks for the vid, have a great rest of your week, and good luck on your creation! 👍👍
Id like to see some specific rules put in place to govern the use of keywords, so that they’re more tangible as a game element. Also, “hero coins” or “luck tokens” seem popular these days, so how about a rule for some form of “earned luck” that can be stored away for some opportune moment down the road.
Really looking forward to your review of "The Terror Beneath." I have the Penguin Classics collection of Arthur Machen stories and have considered buying this one (after the holidays). Your insights are usually a good guide.
As for the game, to distinguish it from Fate (whose Aspects work much like your Keyword/Advantage system in play), the combat system needs a bit more crunch. A Bruce Lee fan should be able to create a mechanically distinct character that feels different to play in combat than the character created by a fan of Robert E. Howard. Perhaps Offense, Defense, and Exploration as sections get their own keywords?
Attributes and Exploration Keywords could take the place of skills to keep the system light. Players would have to remember a half dozen attributes and maybe a dozen keywords (or fewer) instead of Attributes, a long list of skills, Feats, Class Abilities, Traits, and so on. This should be much less of a burden than 5E.
In total agreement with your take on advantage/disadvantage. Two d20 rolls ends up being too powerful/nasty. Appreciate that you are looking for that old school vibe where the PCs are working up to being heroes vs. being super-heroes almost from the start. Love this series!
One of the tricks of point values as gates to abilities is what skills/abilities sort of offer. Like if you say a martial skill or a casting skill might be more expensive, so do you imagine someone easing into what in a class based system would be a multiclass or dual class setup over time, or could someone start that way? Or would some of these be lower impact (stealth plus magic, stealth plus only utility magic, nature survival plus urban thievery), but doing something more special would be harder to link with other abilities?
The work will be trying to lay out that landscape, and I guess that's the flexibility with this approach, since you could have a very different list and have an entirely different setting and tone while still having essentially the same system.
Might be good to get a white board so we can keep track of the development stages :)
Yeah I like the idea of having a bullet point SRD in progress. Which can be on a white board that Jeff screen shots to us.
@@malchitos @nutherefurlong agree, SRD whiteboard to track changes. Perhaps a google doc?
That would be cool too
I worked at a Barnes & Noble with a café for several years. Used to love an eggnog/chai mixed drink.
Yeah I have been playing around with keywords in my own homebrews games. With combat oriented it’s best to base them on a weapon like sword master, bowmen, or Ax Battler. I like mana point idea too. Will it be based off a stat like intelligence or constitution? Oh how many keywords will we be getting starting out? Will that be based on a stat?
Bouncing around the magic points being based on INT for arcane casters and CHA for divine magic. ~ Jeff
@ yeah I heard you mention the charisma for clerics, I like that, makes a lot more sense.
@@Thegaminggang in fact since you want low math, the stat is the amount of mana. So a character with a keyword of mage and INT of 12 would have 12 mana. Straight up and simple.
That was also mentioned; you might have missed it. There would also be keywords/traits/whatever we're going to call them which would boost those points by a couple too.