About Rules Changes and “Chasing the White Whale”
19 Jul 2015 19:10 - 19 Jul 2015 19:23 #1
by Gallion (Gallion)
- James C. Kimball Director, Knight Realms
About Rules Changes and “Chasing the White Whale” was created by Gallion (Gallion)
About Rules Changes and “Chasing the White Whale”
In the name of progress and constant improvement, We have never been shy about changing the rules at Knight Realms. Most of the time we felt strongly that the changes that we made benefited the game enough to warrant the inevitable heartache some players might go through having their skills, lists, and rules changed on them. Sometimes the changes have been clearly beneficial and even fun, and sometimes they were clearly a NERF. After more than fifteen years of constant periodical rules changes, even we are getting weary of these changes, even though, they are all meant to improve the game. I personally have a dream that one day soon, we will be able to print out a beautiful hardcopy rulebook and rejoice in its awesomeness! I have however had this dream for over ten years, and the more I reflect upon it, the more I feel like our quest to improve the rules to perfection and thus ready to print makes me feel like I am Captain Ahab, chasing the White Whale. I realize now that I really just want to stop and print that hardcopy.
Even with this conviction, we know that there is more we want to do before hand, and we feel the need to draw a line in the sand and pledge that once that line is hit, its over, at least for the lower list rules, and at least for a couple of years.
What we'd like to do before hitting that line:
- Final release of the Racials (Almost Done)
- Tweak a handful of Promo Skills (Almost Done)
- Clean up Trait System to be simpler (Almost Done)
- Insert a little bit of simplification in some areas. Condense a few skills to help the flow of combat, particularly in the field of lower list physical defenses.
- Evaluate if spheres of Magic need to be brought in line to be more similar to the domains of druids and priests. 2/2/2/2 instead of 4/4/3/3. Both for reasons of balance, and also to make some of the other classes more viable by removing some spells that mimic their key abilities.
- Aside from the rules, we'd like to re-format the lay out of the rulebook to be more user-friendly, and re-word some of its sections to be simpler and more precise.
LINE
After that we want to work hard on producing a hardcopy that players can hold and be proud of. Perhaps every six months for two to three years release a one page errata of clarifications and minor changes.
Heroic List refinement can and should be done outside the scope of the above, and can be started on once we enter the “lay-out” phase of the core rulebook.
To recap: The rules updates will continue, but only for a little while longer, and only major topics listed in this post. We are allowing this post to act as our commitment, and so if you know the above list is done, and hear us talking about other core rule changes, than wave your hands wildly in the air, and get our attention, because our focus at that point should be producing and printing the hardcopy book. Thanks!
In the name of progress and constant improvement, We have never been shy about changing the rules at Knight Realms. Most of the time we felt strongly that the changes that we made benefited the game enough to warrant the inevitable heartache some players might go through having their skills, lists, and rules changed on them. Sometimes the changes have been clearly beneficial and even fun, and sometimes they were clearly a NERF. After more than fifteen years of constant periodical rules changes, even we are getting weary of these changes, even though, they are all meant to improve the game. I personally have a dream that one day soon, we will be able to print out a beautiful hardcopy rulebook and rejoice in its awesomeness! I have however had this dream for over ten years, and the more I reflect upon it, the more I feel like our quest to improve the rules to perfection and thus ready to print makes me feel like I am Captain Ahab, chasing the White Whale. I realize now that I really just want to stop and print that hardcopy.
Even with this conviction, we know that there is more we want to do before hand, and we feel the need to draw a line in the sand and pledge that once that line is hit, its over, at least for the lower list rules, and at least for a couple of years.
What we'd like to do before hitting that line:
- Final release of the Racials (Almost Done)
- Tweak a handful of Promo Skills (Almost Done)
- Clean up Trait System to be simpler (Almost Done)
- Insert a little bit of simplification in some areas. Condense a few skills to help the flow of combat, particularly in the field of lower list physical defenses.
- Evaluate if spheres of Magic need to be brought in line to be more similar to the domains of druids and priests. 2/2/2/2 instead of 4/4/3/3. Both for reasons of balance, and also to make some of the other classes more viable by removing some spells that mimic their key abilities.
- Aside from the rules, we'd like to re-format the lay out of the rulebook to be more user-friendly, and re-word some of its sections to be simpler and more precise.
LINE
After that we want to work hard on producing a hardcopy that players can hold and be proud of. Perhaps every six months for two to three years release a one page errata of clarifications and minor changes.
Heroic List refinement can and should be done outside the scope of the above, and can be started on once we enter the “lay-out” phase of the core rulebook.
To recap: The rules updates will continue, but only for a little while longer, and only major topics listed in this post. We are allowing this post to act as our commitment, and so if you know the above list is done, and hear us talking about other core rule changes, than wave your hands wildly in the air, and get our attention, because our focus at that point should be producing and printing the hardcopy book. Thanks!
- James C. Kimball Director, Knight Realms
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