I'm a frequent visitor to Tabletopgamingnews, because it's a handy site that gives a broad overview of what's happening in the tabletop industry.
Today I noticed an interesting project - an Open Source Skirmish RPG called Chronicles. Usually I'm not too interested in "homebrew" stuff, but this one has a lot of people involved and the possibilities Chronicles has got me intrigued.
I will be keeping an eye on this project, at least I want to see the core book II and a couple of adventure "modules" before I make up my mind if I'm totally fascinated by it or is my interest some idle curiosity.
What sparks me in Chronicles is that it combines elements of tabletop wargaming and role playing games. Battle scenes are done with the miniature scenery you've grown used to, and battles are scaled to use inches. Characters can progress, which is nice. What I'd like to see is that they could be permanently injured, too. Maybe they can if it's something Core Book II offers.
However, what I dislike is the need for a "game master". Well, rulebook stresses that you don't actually need one, but at least as-it-is the game looks ill-suited for play without the game master. Adversaries and adventures plot advancement isn't "scripted" well enough.
That can be a thing adventure "modules" correct. If the design team releases adventures that require zero GM input, this thing starts to look like a cooperative tabletop skirmish wargame with some kind of plot and character advancement, which sounds awesome in my books.
Well, these were the thoughts on this nice looking project.
Link to the homepage of the project is in the second paragraph of this post, in case someone became interested and overlooked it.
Thank you for taking an interest in Chronicles. I'll just go ahead and provide an answer to some of your thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI will have to think about the permanently injured part. I hadn't thought of it yet but as it turns out, it fits perfectly into something I wasn't quite satisfied with yet. The only problem is it wouldn't fit on the character sheets...
I could of course write a couple of non-GM modules. The original plan wasn't to include too many modules, rather just "themes" (Undead, Orcs, etc.) for a GM to write an adventure around, but hey, if the people playing Chronicles enjoy the modules, who am I to say no?
Core Book II will be released pretty soon. I guess I am halfway through. I wanted to wait though, before I got some playtest results in to see if the system actually works well enough.
Again, thanks for taking an interest.