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ar about it if anyone uses the beacon rules to run a game or if anyone out there is using the roll20 character sheet i love that sheet it was a buttload of pain and fun making it it was also the biggest reason i wasn t pushing updates to the rules because i was worried about changing the sheet on people mid game i wish that there was a way to get sheet usage statistics on roll20 to find these things out but i also see how that could be a pita for everyone too if you have landed here because of that sheet do check out the past posts to find out what beacon is and how it came to be also check out the blog roll to the right some of these folks are still posting and even the ones that aren t might have something interesting to you in their old archives so i might post here again at some point i might not in the meanwhile we will play some games posted by todd at 8 02 pm 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest monday march 25 2024 an update hello world i am still playing beacon i have a weekly game that s been running a number of years now and have had a chance to playtest things quite a bit it s not a proper playtest since i m also trying to keep the players entertained and some rules i would like to change and test i have not since it would impact choices they have made its been a great help running a long campaign and the rules are holding up mostly some creaking as the levels approach double digits and also as the play shifts from delving to more heroic adventures i haven t posted much in the last few years but i m still working things out and exploring the limits of d20 within my preferred styles of play i ve also been playing and running other games notably old school essentials and blades in the dark both great games i think you can play beacon as it is and it works for long term campaigns there is not a lot of support here for adventure material but you should be able to pull most d20 material into your game with a few tweaks i think you would be pretty safe with d20 materials for most characters up to 7 8th level but then i think the general power level of the game diverges from the baseline d20s i think that s actually good for my personal requirements and i prefer beacon advancement caps out at level 12 i m more interested in focusing the game to that older osr level 1 10ish range than adding more oomph to make beacon cover those d20 s later stages with that in mind i still do need to beef up the rules to smooth out that progression curve and to provide some good spells and game features for the final levels of the game my eye now is on those domain level rules however like all the other changes i want try to thread a needle between detailed accounting and total abstraction there are a bunch of things i have changed since the last published update i think i will wait a bit before doing another update however i d like to finish out this current campaign and do some reflection i can say that i want to move the needles even more into the direction of old school play and do away with more fiddly mechanics in particular how the movement combat actions work and having so many subtypes of shield and armour i do want to continue to deflate the combat numbers in this case on the ac side i think it would be much better overall to just have light medium heavy armour which would line up with leather chain plate but leave some space for custom and magic armors in the betweens that s an easy adjustment i think although updating the roll20 sheets is its own concern i would like to know if anyone is using it so i don t disrupt their game s i don t feel there is a lot of value in keeping the old version intact however i also want to work out a way to keep the current henchmen hireling rules but not have it bog down play so much in my current game i have about half the players have a companion and one often has a whole whack of hired men trained animals i like this approach however it really sidelines the player who only want to play their one pc its a tricky issue because even if you sort out the impact of having some players with way more actions because of their npc adjuncts there is still a table focus issue to consider players will want to leverage their many hands and sorting through that means other players do not have as much to do also the problem is that simply so much time is taken up by players with lots of character agents even if they are doing simple tasks that the turns and rounds get longer as the levels go up there seems to be more expectation of hiring large groups of guards or even small armies i want to encourage that but also keep it from impacting table time and stretching out encounters i know you can always do custom solutions for this based on your players but i would like to provide some mechanics mitigate or solve this issue and to make this an interesting part of the play ideally i would like to include mechanics that reward character choices for this kind of play without forcing it on other the players to stay invested or stretching the time required to manage it that s about it till next update if you play beacon and or use the roll20 character sheet let me know i m pretty interested in anyone s experiences as i consider what to do to cap this game off its been a really long process working on these rules and a lots changed in that time i ll keep plugin away but i m also interested in other stuff there are a ton of great options for this kind of rpg these days but i still find myself coming back to the simplicity of beacon and am happy to share my experiences with these rules posted by todd at 3 31 pm 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest friday september 23 2022 beacon is a rules lite fantasy game i prefer to spell this as rules lite and not rules light since using lite indicates this is a simpler variation of another object in this case the standard d20 srd lite indicates something lacking a substance usually present like salt or fat or in this case rules rules lite is tougher to define it could mean that there are few rules and some rpgs do go in that direction it can also mean that there are a few simple rules that can be applied in a common way across game concepts and this is more the definition i have applied i use it also because beacon is a derivation of micro lite so there is lineage implied in the term the microlite system was an eye opener as it managed to boil down the basic d20 rules and present them in an incredibly compact way by adding skills to emulate most class based abilities a huge amount of class and level rules were condensed into a tiny rules space much of the material i ve added to beacon is based on this one concept as i ve tried to extrapolate the whole system out from that base there are now currently a whole set of microlite variations to emulate different styles of game from microlite74 which emulates the original d d microlite81 which mimics b x and even m20 fifth which tries to emulate 5th edition my first d d was ad d so that level of complexity is the pinned expectation i have for fantasy gaming so its not a surprise that the development of beacon is my personal attempt to redevelop a level of rules similar in scope to first edition ad d from the core microlite rules but not to mimic ad d like other microlite variations i ve tried to model a style of play by adding features or modifications to the core system while trying to keep that system consistent the main areas of customization in beacon are finding formulas for game mechanics like penalties bonuses leveling costs and class abilities instead of relying on charts defining race and class abilities as stat and skill bonuses with fewer special rules simplifying base damage and damage bonuses to prevent monster hp inflation and long combats dealing with spell effects vs spell casting costs in a point based system when 5th edition came out the bar moved slightly since it was a very good game and introduced many good ideas to streamline rules such as the advantage mechanic adopting the advantage mechanic allowed for a lot of simplification for situational modifiers that were in the earlier rules other popular modern d20 ideas like inspiration talents and feats i didn t incorporate since in my opinion they didn t streamline the core rules but rather added additional tangential systems not all the design has been towards simplified core mechanics in some cases i have actually added complexity where i though it added value the removal of level based dice bonuses found in microlite have been slowly phased out in favor of skill choices in order to add weight to the skill system you can see this in how physical skill now determines combat bonuses or in how some spells are more powerful if you have the appropriate skills anytime i can add in interesting choices for player builds while keeping a simple rule i tried to do that there are also rules that were added that are more complex than their traditional equivalents the initiative and morale systems are cases in point these systems i ve made more complex than typical rules lite mechanics because i wanted to bring some additional tactical choices into the game for combat and also include a type of death spiral for npc relationships initial versions of beacon opted for a stage or phase based approach to initiative while the current rules incorporate even more complexity by focusing on pc actions the other aspect of rules lite is determining what you need the rules for some rpg have rules for every situation that might come up and others barely have more than a pass fail rule there are some really great games available that have super streamlined rules that will let you quickly resolve anything that might come up in an rpg i really admire a lot of the rules lite old school games for their simplified and interesting take on the game but find that most of them leave out a lot of things i like to see in my games particularly in the areas of level advancement and spells i tried to include rules that codified aspects of the game so that players can make informed decisions or interesting choices i like to have players choose which skill to invest in based on how it will impact their melee combat bonus vs how it will impact particular spells or how many companions they can manage at one time that adds interest and customization without requiring a whole feat system also i wanted to reinforce some types of game activity over others by including rules for those activities so i added in rules for encumbrance travel exploration and learning spells but this leads into the next design statement beacon is an old school fantasy game but i will leave that for next time posted by todd at 3 00 pm 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels influences mechanics rules monday september 12 2022 beacon is a d20 fantasy game beacon was designed to be light and simple while still feeling like d d and to remain essentially compatible with in 2010 modern d20 materials there are lots of interesting fantasy games that use other systems or even rebuild classic d d some use dice pools point economies or player and gm playbooks tempting as it can be to play with these however the core design of beacon is the d20 system using the standard d20 mechanics you resolve most challenges using a dc or difficulty class the dc is assigned by the game master is determined by how hard the described action is vs the method used to attempt it a dc of 5 is for simple things 10 for normal risk 15 for hard stuff and 20 for really challenging things you can even go higher dcs like 25 or 30 should be used for truly heroic tasks there are additional rules but unlike older versions of d d with their many tables and charts d20 really does try to standardize challenge resolution on this simple mechanic even combat uses armour class ac as a special version of dc with its associated combat modifiers the best reason to use d20 is the amount of material that is available for it with very little effort you can adjust materials on the fly between sources i do remember the days when the most interesting modules were written for fantasy systems merp or role master and converting these on the fly to d20 took some effort years later when the d20 open game license came out it seemed that this was going to become the standard for a vast library of sourcebooks and games now there are always going to be published materials that need tweaking for your campaign adjustments to monsters treasure spells the desired tone etc however i wanted people to be able to use as much of the existing d20 material in beacon with as little work as possible after 12 years has this paid off well yes and no using a simple d20 system has been great for running games and for tweaking rules its a great baseline as for using other material its not come up as much as i expected and to be honest most of the material i personally use for games is scaled and compatible with the older pre d20 rules and so needs a lot of adjustment anyway the d20 materials i have read don t fit the tone i like although the power levels are closer to beacon up to the point where they aren t i have had a constant tug of war trying to find that balance to maintain compatibility between the low values often seen in old ad d style games and the higher values seen in modern d d my preference for campaign materials seems to land in the older material mostly the pre d20 or more modern osr stuff however i am first to admin that beacon which has d20 in its core tracks much closer to d20 monster manuals than it does to the old school monster stats i enjoy i have a simple monster stat system in the rules but you can still easily pull 5th edition monsters right into your beacon game for use at their intended threat level where say labyrinth lord monsters would generally be too low powered and take a bit of adjustment i have mostly relied on generating simplified beacon monster stats based on creature hd type x number and then adding special abilities from the source material i have many times lamented this and thought about making changes to down shift this towards the old materials but it would come at the expense of this initial design statement twelve years ago that seemed like crazy talk to throw away d20 sources but today with so many niche d20 experiences its not as wild a prospect the market keeps changing however especially with digital vtt products coming out to be useful beacon needs to be usable and so maybe its not so bad a novice gm can drop in their favorite 5e dungeons and monsters while still benefiting from the other streamlined features in beacon as for my preferences i can always adjust my favorite adventures on the fly as i was writing this post the alexandrian posted a thing about the difference in skill resolution between different editions of d d which is...
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