Oh, yes, let's get back to this.
Right now? I am completing InDesign tutorials and refining my desktop publishing skills. I finished all the layout and design work 20 years ago using Aldus Pagemaker, so I have the necessary layout skills. I also did the majority of the writing, proofreading (which I take full responsibility for), and art (which, admittedly, got me a job). That cover was created in 3D (in 2005) and is my work.
George was primarily responsible for designing the rules and final approval, making him the rules guru of the game. He also developed the Power Design System and most of the Fighting Styles. Nothing went into the tabletop game without George's approval, and we had a lot of long nights fighting over rules and making compromises.
As the "writer guy" on the project, I can faithfully restore the game without needing too much input from George, but he is missed and will live on in the spirit of the game.
I am torn between restoring the game as it was and revamping the 500-page behemoth of a phonebook-sized RPG and making it playable. Currently, there is a lot of "why" in the "how," which leads to a massive, heavy, and far less usable tome. But, that said, if I go that route, that is a complete rewrite.
But there is a charm to the rambling nature of the original, as close as we can get to a Gygaxian rant on gaming in a book the size of a phonebook. And the cover looks like KFC the RPG, which is a thing of beauty.
An option would be to split the entire book into three volumes of approximately 200 pages, allowing for the inclusion of all bonus web content. Keep the majority of the 1.53c game as it was, but grammar-check the entire thing, rebuild the layouts, and make the minor fixes we made due to player feedback. This is the best compromise to keep the books reasonably sized, longer-lasting in the age of POD, and more usable at a table. If I go this route, the chapter order will likely change. This will also allow me to write future volumes and expand the game, becoming something more like Palladium does with their books, which add random new elements to the game in new books.
That said, a 2.0 version would involve a drastic reorganization, with a core book focusing on the base game, and the later volumes serving as the design systems. Once I delve deeper into this project, this is how it may unfold. My dream version of this game is a B/X-complexity-level core system in the first book that can be played as-is, and then it expands with design systems in later books.
Some significant omissions need to be addressed, such as how monsters and creatures are designed and "level up" with the characters, which was implied in the base game (and how we played it), but not presented in the book. In this game, "everything is a character" and levels up. That is a level one bear, and that is a level twenty bear, with Fighting Style: Feral, that can kill a roomful of ninjas.
And it is a 3d6, roll-high class and level system. It is a unique game, and one we wanted to have in case we had a chance to make a computer RPG out of it. It started as a CRPG system and evolved into a pen-and-paper game, so it feels natural for it to return to that form.
I'm not aware of any other game that did things like we did, nor let you design as much as we did, even the character classes. We never had "multiclassing" since, if you created your character class, you made your class concept first and never needed that rules hack. It was very JRPG-like in the sense that if you were a hybrid class, you could design it to start and never need to switch to different classes.
I am also considering changing the names of the ability scores to:
- Strength
- Brains
- Reflex
- Personality
- Grit
If you look at the first letter of each, you will know the reason why. It is cheeky, but at least you can create your character sheet quickly and know what game it is for. That would require a massive amount of rewriting, but if these ability scores persist into a 2.0 version of the game, this is a change that needs to be made early.
Back to the tutorials.
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