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t 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 a pretty good read and very relevant to this topic beacon ties skills to leveling and already bounds 20 and 1 rolls with a critical hits and fumbles but that bounded accuracy does not apply to rolls outside of combat its possible to roll a natural 20 and succeed a non combat challenge but roll a 19 3 and fail one he does have some good discussion in that article why the different versions feel so different power wise the next design choice i want to talk about is related to how these d20 core mechanics are leveraged beacon is a rules lite fantasy game so that s next time posted by todd at 3 35 pm 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels influences mechanics review rules tuesday september 6 2022 beacon is 12 years old where does the time go it was september 2010 when i started posting about beacon there have been big stops and starts in that time but i have been pushing my thoughts for my fantasy heartbreaker rpg out onto these pages for quite some time i ll be the first to admin that this blog is not a very good ambassador for fantasy role playing or osr games or even for beacon i post rarely and when i do its usually a rambling kind of post that references rules and obscure details the beacon blog seems to be more of a navel gaze and not a really a repository of comprehensive ideas the purpose of this blog is to represent the game and document the design choices i make that said the most useful thing a general audience will find on this site is the page where you can download the rules and maybe a notification of a new or upcoming update i did write a sticky page to help players navigate character generation i should do more of that kind of thing i find that when i have time to work on the game its generally fixing rules that are not working and trying to do layout changes to the pdf or updates to the roll20 character sheet that s important stuff certainly but i think it may all be for nothing if i don t occasionally communicate what beacon is about and why you might want to play it so what the hell is beacon anyway beacon is my take on the dungeons and dragons game by way of d20 microlite and osr content i realized i haven t come back to the beacon mission statement in quite a while over two years ago i laid out a bunch of changes i wanted to make to the game and i ve made most of those changes then i went on to make many more changes based on running the game over a longer period of time once that rabbit hole was opened i ve dived right in and i have been updating and playtesting and re updating the rules i ve pushed past the fairly minor tweaks and polish and have been really making a lot of additional changes i didn t foresee part of this is just catching up with ideas in gaming over the last 5 6 years but there have been some bigger changes as well playtesting has been a real boon and i m lucky i have some players who are pushing the rules and making me think about the how and why of beacon vs other systems and or their expectations of how the rules should work what works online and what suits the kind of games i like to run i think that the game has been improved tremendously over the years the last 3 years especially in my opinion it is just overall cleaner simpler and better designed for the kind of play i want to be doing but as i ve alluded to already my thoughts lately are trying to sort out if its all just a stack of home rules or if beacon is its own game and following an actual design certainly i have an internal idea more of a feeling of what rules i want in the game i ve had many discussions with players on why a rule works a particular way in beacon as opposed to other d20 systems i think i have a design but i m not sure i ve communicated it out also beacon has some rules or systems that are clunky or that seem inelegant but have been kept for compatibility with other d20 games and i have done a lot of back and forth over if i should fix these or leave them i ve had some large back and forth swings on how to deal with some aspects of the game over the years for these situations sometimes i need to swoop out and look at the bigger picture of what the game is supposed to be doing so what is the mission statement the design what separates beacon from basic d20 and the hundreds of other fantasy rpgs next post i ll start with the first one beacon is a d20 fantasy game posted by todd at 3 04 pm 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels d d influences mechanics rules wednesday march 2 2022 beacon 7 5 i ve updated the current pdf of the beacon rules it s the 7 5 draft now this version of the rules lines up with the changes i made to the roll20 character sheet in february as always i wanted to fix more things then i had time for and i had to weigh the need to have the new rules available against fixing unfinished items or formatting you will see some stuff in red that is under revision along side the stuff in purple which is highlighting new content or changes the pdf isn t as pretty as i d like but its usable this version of beacon has a lot of changes and includes new rules or tools that i ve been using for some time in my playtesting this release is really the skill release and many changes involve the skill system during playtesting i noticed that the power creep was starting to become very noticeable around levels 6 and 7 i tried to address this by halving the dice bonus from skills at the same time i was able to make skills more important in all aspects of the game in most cases i am trying to give players choices in how they can progress their character builds by choosing where to put their skill points i also had noticed a problem with the way spending coin to add experience points was causing some players to outpace others as well as generally making leveling up too rapid changing the level requirements from instead of xp plus treasure equals the level target to xp and treasure both equal the level target allows for a lot more treasure in the game in general and doing this means that i don t need to put any arbitrary limits on how much a player spends on their advancement other important tweaks to the game were reworking the attack bonuses to utilize the physical skill adding the rogue s ability to have a special skill and changing the hunter environment bonus to apply to any non combat skill checks instead of just survival rolls any place i could take out a lookup table or special class rule related to a particular skill i tried to do that i did wind up making a new class of small weapons which are the same as light weapons but have less encumbrance this change primarily serves the character sheet but is necessary in the game because of the way weapons are abstracted i balanced this out somewhat by removing the special rules for two handed heavy weapons and codifying how bonuses are applied to these now three categories of weapon small weapons get no bonus for str light weapons get an attack bonus and heavy weapons get an attack and a damage bonus i do like having weapon damage being set instead of rolled but at the same time i ve added back in some complexity like weapon damage types blunt slashing and piercing damage types are good fun in combat i think and give reasons for pcs to carry specific weapons again i ve removed the monster section for now i plan on replacing it with more of a monster builder section instead i still use the basic idea of everythi...
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