Passages Design Diary as Launching Point for Bullseye System - Feedback Please

[Justin D. Jacobson]

I just released Passages, which has been over two years "in development." It's been a long, strange journey in what I've come to call "incremental" game design. I've been posting design diaries on my site all along. (Passages product page) I just posted the last one, Design Diary 7, which summarizes the process pretty well and crystallizes the design goal I ultimately settled on. In short, the system strips out a lot of the rules relating to minutiae and shifts the burden back to the GM.

Overall, I'm very pleased with the system. It proved very robust in playtesting. All along, I had planned to "generalize" the system and release it as a multi-genre system. Presently, I'm working on an outline for the book, which I will post here. In the interim, I'd love to hear any feedback on the design diary generally (or, of course, if you actually have Passages, that would be the bee's knees).

[joepub]

Justin, in the Spring (May-ish?) I read entries 1-4.

You largely talked about the pro's and con's of d20, Perfect20, and designing a new system from the ground-up in those posts.

I can't respond to entries 5-7, because I didn't read them and don't currently have time to, but the ones I did read kept me interested in the product. I often unfairly turn my nose up towards d20 products, but your entries justified and explained why you were choosing to use a d20-based system. It made me feel like you were making thoughtful, intelligent design decisions instead of just "going with the mainstream" or whatever.