[Age Past] Up on Kickstarter LIVE!

[Locke]

Hello All,

My game Age Past has been in development for some time. I have just recently launched a Kickstarter to help me get my book finished. Please take the time to check it out. Also to promote the game I am offering a Beta Soft Launch so everyone can take a look and decide for themselves!

To give you a premise, Age Past is a gameist fantasy RPG that employs an Archetype build system and a new rolling system. Players have about 140 powers to choose from and most powers can be taken 4 times. This means that no two characters are built the same ever. The powers can be chosen based on level and there are no perquisites so ou can take when you want when as long as you meet the level requirement. Each power has a cost balanced based on its usefulness so therefore characters are made balanced to each other. Factions, religion and a cadre of weapon combinations can be used. The game completely places the options and control in the hands of the player.

Included are:
- about 140 powers
- about 150 spells
- about 75 fully developed monsters
- a complete and balanced crafting system
- a DM screen, character sheets, printable maps, and initiative cards

Age Past also employs a new rolling system that helps standardize the result you get. People in play testing really like it as they have a greater chance to get a range of expected results. Also new players seem to be able to take the Age Past faster than Pathfinder or similar d20 systems. The PDF below is free, download it and take a look. It is a full 300 page game not a 25 page shell or supplement and therefore will take a bit more reading to get into. The game was built to be extremely dynamic yet have much less number crunching. The design emphasis is on taking action not adding and determining stacking values. I hope you enjoy!

http://upload.dirdim.com/upload/agep...10607-0011.pdf

Click the link to download the PDF.

Please take the time to check out the website: www.agepast.com
and to take a listen to GMS Magazine's Podcast: http://www.gmsmagazine.com/podcasts/...cast-episode-2
and to read an interview with me: http://www.gmsmagazine.com/articles/age-past-interview

And once again please think about supporting this project on Kickstarter: http://kck.st/jNe0rJ

thanks and all comments are welcome.
Jeff Mechlinski

[Locke]

I just added a new and much better video on Kickstarter explaining and previewing the game.  I hope you take the time to check it out and pass the word on!

http://kck.st/jNe0rJ

thanks!
Jeff

[Locke]

We dropped the Price of the PDF copy to $10 from $20 and added the Image for the Limited edition T-shirt!!! check it out!!

http://kck.st/jNe0rJ

thanks,
Jeff

[Mike Sugarbaker]

So, I'm reading about Elegant10 on your web site, and if I have this right:

• Roll a pool of d10s
• Take the highest result
• If you have doubles (or more) of the highest, add 1 for each tied die
• If you choose not to roll some of the dice in your pool, add 1 for each die you don't roll
• If >50% of the dice you do roll are 1s, you fail

This all leaves aside what it is that we're rolling against (the page mentions opposed rolls; are all rolls opposed rolls?). But anyway, I haven't done all the probability math here, but at your example pool size of 6 dice, why wouldn't you always decline to roll all but one of your dice? That gives you a 10% chance of crit-fail, which I guess is a bit high, but it means your next lowest result will always be a 6, on up to a possible 15. I should think that's beating most of the likely results if you roll all 6 dice. Am I wrong?

[Mike Sugarbaker]

Oh - also your DL link doesn't seem to work...

[Ben Lehman]

Actually the statistically best option is to leave 2d10 in your pool. This gives the highest mean return and drops critfails to 1-in-100.

yrs--
--Ben

[Mike Sugarbaker]

My bad, it's actually >=50%. So rolling even one 1 does it on two dice.

Does that come out to... 2%? Or back to 10%? gah.

[lumpley]

Worse! The odds of rolling at least one 1 on 2d10 is 19%. Two dice is critfailville.

-Vincent

[Mike Sugarbaker]

Wow. OK, so, anyway, as a way to take more risk but get more upside, this is effective, but maybe not with a curve that's straightforward. But that might be fine. Your other stated goal for the mechanic, though, is to have it scale as the character grows in effectiveness without just piling on the dice. How do you see that working? And finally, where are those difficulties coming from? They're the linchpin of all this, after all.

[Locke]

As far as I can tell the link on kickstarter should work.  I just used it.

The website has some old data regarding the rolling system.  It has been modified slightly.

- Extra d10's grant a +2 bonus instead of +1
- natural 1's have no ill effect.

  Here's the new text:
Age Past employs a new type of rolling system called Elegant10.  Elegant10 allows the player to choose the level of reward and risk with every roll.  The player has total control of how to use their pool on every roll and in response to what is happening during play.  In Age Past characters have a pool for each skill but the players can modify how the roll occurs.

Here's how Elegant10 works...

Lets say a player has a pool of 6 dice.  If she rolls all the dice and the results are 3, 5, 8, 9, 9 and 10 she takes the highest score for her total.  In this case it would be a 10.

So therefore the more dice a player rolls the better chance she has at getting a maximum score...

...but sometimes a player is especially lucky.  If she rolls again and gets a 3, 5, 8, 9, 10 and 10 her total score would be a 10, but since a second 10 is rolled a +2 is added so the total score is a 12.  A +2 is added for each additional 10 rolled after the first...

...but rolling a lot of dice isn't especially interesting or anything much the player has control over.

So she can hold dice, or choose not to roll them.  Each held dice grants a +1.  Therefore if our player holds 3 dice and rolls 3 she will gain a +3 to the highest value rolled.  If she rolls a 3, 7, and 8 while holding 3 dice the total score will be an 11.  But if she rolls a 10 as her highest die then the total score would be 13.  Extra 10's always add +2.

If she rolled a 7, 10 and 10 while holding 3 dice the final result is a 15.

What's great about holding dice is that the more dice that are held the higher the potential of score can be but the risk is higher as well.  The fewer dice that are rolled the greater the chance of rolling low as well.  So the player can mitigate risk by choosing to roll more of the pool.  Extra +2 from bonus d10's happen just enough to mix things up.

With each roll there is a chance of critically succeeding or fumbling.  If the target score is doubled the PC has critically succeeded at their task, but if the result is half or less that what was needed a fumble will occur.  During PC interactions, including combat, if the PC doubles her opponent's score then a critical hit has occurred.

By rolling lots of dice and always choosing the highest the player can expect the score they will get and thus can control the skill level their character has.  Also, the total scores rolled generally fall between 6 and 18 and since the pools are calculated before rolling the entire system is both satisfying and efficient for game play.  The final value is added very quickly so you spend more time playing and less time number crunching.

[Locke]

http://upload.dirdim.com/upload/agepast/pdf125/Age_Past_v125_small.20110607-0011.pdf

Here's the new link sorry about the broken one.  It can also be found in my sig.  Enjoy and I appreciate feedback!

Jeff

[Mike Sugarbaker]

+2 for doubles changes the game a bit, but, well, I suck at statistics but I can code a little, so I did some Monte Carlo simulations. For basically any number of dice in the pool, the bell curve of results is centered on 10, with a big divot at 11, then the rest of the bell curve picking up at normal with 12 and flattening out. It almost never reaches 16 and never goes higher. It never really goes lower than 3 unless you're rolling a small number of dice (say, 3).

So yeah, generally, it is always a better deal to not roll dice and take a guaranteed +1 instead to whatever your best result happens to be. Given that... I know you place some value on having an innovative die mechanic, but what does innovation really count for if it doesn't make a difference at the table? It's just forcing someone to learn something for no real reason.

You could get essentially the same mechanical effect as an Elegant10 roll by rolling, say, 2d6 to make it a little bit bell-curvy (or if you're married to d10s, roll 2 and subtract the high one from the low one), then adding your stat.

There's no real reason to value innovation in the die mechanic in particular. Innovation can happen in lots of places in a game's design, and IMO most of them have bigger upside.

[Locke]

+2 for doubles changes the game a bit, but, well, I suck at statistics but I can code a little, so I did some Monte Carlo simulations. For basically any number of dice in the pool, the bell curve of results is centered on 10, with a big divot at 11, then the rest of the bell curve picking up at normal with 12 and flattening out. It almost never reaches 16 and never goes higher. It never really goes lower than 3 unless you're rolling a small number of dice (say, 3).

So yeah, generally, it is always a better deal to not roll dice and take a guaranteed +1 instead to whatever your best result happens to be. Given that... I know you place some value on having an innovative die mechanic, but what does innovation really count for if it doesn't make a difference at the table? It's just forcing someone to learn something for no real reason.

You could get essentially the same mechanical effect as an Elegant10 roll by rolling, say, 2d6 to make it a little bit bell-curvy (or if you're married to d10s, roll 2 and subtract the high one from the low one), then adding your stat.

There's no real reason to value innovation in the die mechanic in particular. Innovation can happen in lots of places in a game's design, and IMO most of them have bigger upside.

Yes I agree that the system could be called elegant6 or elegant8.  Here's what I like about the rolling system:
1. its quick at add and scales well at high levels
2. the players can choose how they roll and while this isn't as innovative players do like the choice I've found in play testing
3. the system leverages potential.  in D20 a +8 is just potential it doesn't mean the PC is good.  If the PC only ever rolls natural 1's then the + doesn't matter as the character isn't performing and therefore sucks.  There is an old saying in football "you are only as good as your record".  With the bell curve you get a BELL CURVE hence potential is non-existent and the PC just performs.  Yes the "1's" thing isn't he best example but I player Pathfinder a few weeks ago and rolled an average score of about 6 or 7 over 20 rolls the character didn't perform and it wasn't fun.
4. the system has just enough inherent instability to increase the randomness to make it fun and not too predictable.

I agree that rolling is rolling, but PC's are suppose to perform and do what they are good at with some regularity.  The risk plays in it as well since most rolls are opposed, if a monster gets a high score the player has to choose between trying to defend and avoid a critical hit by rolling too low.

I believe that the dice mechanic integrates into the game and the global design effect is very innovative.  But technically I guess you are right rolling is rolling is rolling...  you get scores and check them against a task.  If you only do this its just a die mechanic, but Age Past takes it further.

[Locke]

30 Days left on the Kickstarter.  Tell your friends and take the time to think about backing the game on Kickstarter!

http://kck.st/jNe0rJ

thanks!

Jeff

[John Michael Crovis]

My opinion from skimming your game system.... I like the dice mechanic and the morality mechanic. Good stuff. I wish the morality mechanic would appear sooner in the book. I don't like point based character creation, and I think the majority of the setting information should be pushed to the back of the book and leave only a brief summary at the beginning. The intro touts this as a great book for beginners... but it isn't. I'm not saying its a bad RPG, but from a beginners stand-point, this is complicated stuff! The art, so far, ranges from being fantastic to so-so...

Would I play it? From what I can tell, this is just another flavor a D&D. I've pretty much settled on Pathfinder/3.5 as my favorite version of D&D, so I am not too keen on trying another version right now. Sorry.