Update - 02/12/2024

Hello, and welcome to another weekly update! I hope you all had a nice weekend, especially those in the US, since you had a long one! I'm still recovering from my flu, but I'm basically fine, just some coughing. I'm still unable to do any exercise, though, I end up breathless in a second. I didn't do anything interesting during the weekend, just worked.

I am, though, extremely happy, because I finally managed to come up with something that had been bothering me for basically a whole year. It all started with a simple question when working on Ruthless Heavens, Boundless Fate: should Target Numbers (or Difficulty Class, if you come from D&D) should increase with a character's power? there are pros and cons, as usual. On one hand, it's good to leave them static because that way characters feel like their PC is noticeably getting stronger. This is the traditional approach, and the vast majority of games just do it this way. But on the other, after a bit of leveling, it truly trivializes basically any task. As a GM, this is easy to compensate for, and that's what I usually do. But playing solo, it gets trickier! As you guys know, my core design philosophy is to take as much decision-making when it comes to rules and mechanics away from the player as possible, so they can focus on the story. So if you have to be thinking "is this task difficult? Is this TN fair, or am I just making it easier/more difficult for myself?". It quite honestly interrupts the flow of the game, or at least it does to me.

So the alternative is to have a system that will adapt the TN to a character's power. My first iteration of this idea was what you can find on RHBF, something I basically took from Pathfinder 2e: you look at the PC's level, and compare it to the table, and it gives you a TN for that level. This is fine, but it's basically a rough patch. At the time, I really couldn't think of anything better, though, so that's how it stayed.

But now, as you guys know, I'm working on Sacrifice 2e. And the same question came up: static or dynamic TN? I went back and forth with it a lot, and since I am still working on the character creation chapter, I really didn't need to answer the question. But I reached a point where I actually did need to know how I would solve it, so Saturday night I sat and started testing things. And then, I finally managed to reach a solution I am really happy with! Levels are an indicator of a character's power, but not necessarily a reliable one. You could have been unlucky and ended up with lower stats, or very lucky and find awesome gear that boosts your stats. So what is a better way of measuring how likely a character is to pass a test? They modifier total, of course! So I came up with this table:

I'm sure some think it's silly, but I really think this is the smartest thing I've ever done, probably together with using Usage Die for other stuff than simply tracking gear. It's simple, and it does exactly what I need it to do. And of course, it can be used with any D20 ruleset, so it's just perfect. If I ever write another D20 game, it will definitely use this table. For now, though, it will be part of Sacrifice 2e.

Apologies for the wall of text, I am just so excited about this. And of course, if folks don't want this sort of dynamic TN, I'm including the traditional D&D one that assumes you have at the very least a +2 to any check you make. Which, quite frankly, is rough, but that's what we're used to, so...

So this week I hope I can start preparing the Karum Station Blues files for DTRPG, since I'm already late with it (Marcin, the illustrator, had some issues and has yet to give me the missing art). I will then shift to working back on Across a Thousand Hollow Vaults, since what comes next is the meat of the game: all the exploration systems. I think I've mentioned it before, but it's going to be hex-based. I have a lot of cool and unique ideas, so I'm excited to see how I put it all together.

That's it for this week, I hope you all have a great one!