Posts and discussion about how various pieces of Echelon work.
Character creation is a very important activity, since it establishes what abilities the players’ avatars bring to the table. However, it can be a fiddly pain sometimes (often, or even usually!), and I am trying to avoid that in Echelon. There are two primary considerations, building a new character and …
Echelon, being derived primarily from the Revised System Reference Document, uses a d20-based task resolution system. Pretty much all character-related actions that can pass or fail have the decision made with a single die roll: d20 + modifiers >= Difficulty Class (DC) This is about as simple as it gets, really. …
Rounds per level, minutes per level, hours per level… or some random number of rounds, minutes, or hours, or a combination… This gets to be a pain to manage. I can’t be bothered to count things too carefully, especially when most of the time the duration doesn’t run out while …
Range can be abstracted. I discussed it recently in Weapon Speed in D&D at KJD-IMC, but it can be abstracted slightly more than that. Range honestly amounts to “too far away”, “just right”, and “too close”. “Too far away” means you can’t affect your target, or can only do so at a …
I was talking with John Payne from Sycarion Diversions about system simplification. Many games build complex systems, then offer means to simplify the rules. John suggested that perhaps games should build simple systems, then offer options to make them more complex. I can’t help but agree. I aim to make the …
I recently bought Adventure Fantasy Game, an OSR game by Paolo (tsojcanth of Lost Pages — how’s that for an inversion?). When he sent me the PDF we ended up striking up a conversation that drifted into Echelon and he asked me where I want to go with it. Ultimately …
Ray Case at google+ had some questions about keystone talents. +Keith J Davies has thrown me for a loop with his echelonD20 ruleset – his keystone idea won’t get out of my head! I am struggling with what makes a cornerstone versus what makes a capstone. Even while I am …
A while ago (January 1, so almost four months now) I considered an Echelon Intro Box Set. I evidently don’t have enough to do with my copious free time (do I really need to mark that as sarcasm?), so on top of all the other stuff I’m doing, I’m thinking …
I was talking with tussock in rec.games.frp.dnd about talent design and what various tiers mean, for practical purposes. Among other comments, I read (with [new tier names] added) Speaking of which: I flicked through the OD&D Deities, Demi-Gods, and Heroes the other day, and couldn’t help but notice they considered …
I have been reading Rule of Cool’s Legend and am starting to think that the baseline Talent Slot table may give too many talent slots to be practical. Six top-tier talents plus five of each tier below that makes for a lot of talent slots to assign. I think it …
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