Rules suggestions for NDG Pirates

[rafial]

This thread is continuation of the game design issues brought up in a previous thread which is now closed.  Since I am responding to a question regarding future directions of development for a game, I believe it is appropriate material for this forum.  If it is not, please let me know.

Back to Rafial and Feng, would you like to see more variant tables, for critical attacks, setting, or anything else? Perhaps critical hit and miss tables associated with Character Class? We're testing that idea on the premise that different Classes have different fighting styles and thus would score different kinds of wins or make different sorts of blunders.

As far variant critical hit tables go, I'm more than happy to make up my own.  However, I do have some suggestions.  Note that they are all  based merely on several read throughs of the rules, and not on actual play, and should be taken in that light.

1) The primary area of the game as it exists today that needs more developement are the character creation rules.  The rules as printed are contradictory, and seem overly complex.  

a) As an example, the rules initially state that the character creation steps must be followed in a strict order, but there are several backwards dependencies and missed steps that make this impossible.

b) Until a player becomes significantly experienced with the system, it is not at all clear when and for what character creation points can be used for.  This ought to be summarized in a chart at the beginning of the process.

2) I'd suggest providing a formalized die mechanic, explained in the rules, for ability and skill rolls.  Currently, you talk about these rolls in terms of "chances in twelve" and "chances in six" but don't actually explain how one might use the die to generate such odds.  Someone with experience in RPGs could probably figure this out, but I think your game has the opportunity to appeal to those with little or no RPG background, so for the benefit of those folks you might want to set out an explicit mechanic in the text.

I'm curious to know what method you use in your own play.  For my own part, in running the game as a it stands today, I plan to use ability + bonuses/penalties + die roll > 12 as the formula for ability rolls.

3) It seems like you might seriously consider removing classes & levels altogether.  Only two of the eight classes have a class feature that increases with level, and otherwise levels only seem to serve a mechanism for granting skill and ability increases.  Why not cut out the middleman, and allow experience to be spent directly on those areas?

The classes as they exist still could serve as "starting backgrounds" for character, which as the rules already allude, is what they are.  Call them "former career" or something like that.

Finally, not strictly a game design issue, I think that the core rulebook ought to contains a short sample adventure.  It would be great if someone with just the core rules and some dice, but little experience, could be up and playing within an hour of reading them.