Class Warfare: Alternate character+class creation rules. Modular. Semi-coherent, incomplete but playtestable draft.
http://redboxvancouver.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/class_warfare_20131112.pdf
This is an idea I’ve been kicking around off and on since I published Dungeon Planet. I figured I had enough to communicate the basic idea, so I cleaned it up as a way of procrastinating.
Anyway, see what you think. I figured this might make it easier for people to write new classes, and bring some variety to the existing base classes for people who have played them all a few times by now.
http://redboxvancouver.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/class_warfare_20131112.pdf
I have been contemplating something sort of like thince since realizing one of the big draws for me with World of Dungeons was the class modularity.
I like the way you procrastinate.
All the +1s
I love this. I strongly considered something like this for Pirate World, then decided the Backgrounds route was quite simply much simpler, and would expand onto existing content in a significantly easier way. I’m damn curious to see how your way works in practice though!
The main drawback of this would be that character creation takes more time?
The main drawback is too many options, yeah. Choice paralysis, hours spent min/maxing and optimizing combos, the GM has no idea what the PC character classes do, all the same stuff you get in 3rd edition.
Also, missing the nice neat booklet for organization. I do like playbooks.
Yeah, it needs an app where you input your choices and it spits out a pdf character sheet with everything on it and the stats all modified for you.
I don’t know how to do that.
This looks very interesting. Though I think some of these archetypes need to be combined, there’s a lot of overlap between some of them.
What’s the advantage in combining them?
Personally I love the idea. It was something I was looking at doing myself. Going back to making classes more generic and then having specialties. To me, it seems a better option to have say 1 Wizard class with 10 “kits” or “specialties” than 10 whole variants Wizard-like base classes. Personally I’d even go a step farther and combine the variant casting “moves” as a choice. (e.g. How do you cast magic? Choose 1: Wizard Cast, Mage Cast, Cleric cast, etc.)
Overall, great concept. I personally don’t mind putting a little effort into PC generation. I’m not a fan of the 2 minute character, but I can see how that style and the desire for the playbooks is in demand for the one-shot quicky games. I don’t play that style so I prefer a little more meat for ongoing games, which allows for a tad more work on the PC end. Its a great alternative option for those looking to run more in depth games rather than the 20 min to 2 hour one-shot.
Yeah, I thought about that version of spellcaster specialty, but then it becomes a character creation system all of it’s own, and I want to avoid that (esp. since I already have one with the different spell lists). Hopefully a list of specialties that give you spells will make it easy enough to navigate that part.
I love this idea. Of course, I see it as a master toolkit, not as a “player handbook”. Super useful to create custom classes for specific settings.
PS: search in the text for this typos: promie, doubed, Darkenss, positve, perectly, realitis, tagret, yourelf, tham
(also, you could add me in the credits as proofreader 😀 I’d love it)
Kudos!
Johnstone Metzger, the link is no longer working. Any way you can make this available again? Thanks!
No problem, David Benson , the last updated version is here: http://redboxvancouver.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/class_warfare_20131216.pdf
(I deleted the older version this thread was for, sorry!)
Johnstone Metzger This is great! I might finally have a reason to design a cool blank DW character sheet.
A blank, form-fillable pdf character sheet would be super awesome, hint hint, nudge nudge!
You know, it just so happens that I recently did some stuff like that for work.
Here’s a really pragmatic blank character sheet to use with this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lrynyjf4ierdvps/Blank%20DW%20Character%20Sheet.pdf
If I can get a few people to roll up some characters using this sheet and give me some feedback, I’ll considering doing a form-fillable pdf. I tried using one side of one sheet of paper, but I might be coerced into making a playbook (with a little more whitespace!).
Pragmatic, yeah. That’s super clean. What kind of tools do you use to make form-fillables?
Just straight-up Acrobat Pro.
/subbing hard
Brennen Reece could be nicer a 2sided version? More space, and a visual organization more similar to the original character sheet.
Also, a little more “medieval” font could be cool, this is too much aseptic.
Has there been any more updates to this playtest?
I still work on it now and then, in between other things, so there’s been some more work on it, but I haven’t put anything new out, no.
Cool! I’m going to try using it tonight to run a Glorantha hack. I’ll post about how it went.
Sweet! I’d love to hear about it.
In terms of updates, this is kind of what I’m looking at for the final layout style: http://redboxvancouver.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/cw-rogues-preview.pdf
Quite readable indeed. However, if you are not aiming to a printed prdocut, you should choose reducted margins, 2 columns, and esecially a landscape page. So we can read it very well on PCs and tablets, full page, and you’ll spare pages with the multicolumn.
If you have time to experiment with, have fun.
Yeah, I’ve considered doing landscape 2-page spread format before, especially for stuff that is meant to be printed, but I also know there are people who like having these pages separate for mobile reading. This one is a) huge and b) definitely a print product, so its probably too much work to do spreads.