Baxil's Game Thread

Jason,

Your comments are much appreciated! And I know what you mean about the audience ... my two gaming groups were both admirably willing to help me shake the rules out, but virtually everyone I've talked to has found the game too dark, which I know for a fact is an audience mismatch rather than a systemic problem. (After all, Call of Cthulhu, Sorceror and Don't Rest Your Head all have enthusiastic audiences despite their themes.)

Points 4 and 5 are well taken. One of the major goals of the next revision of the game will be to pare down the crunch to the bare minimum necessary, and make the role-playing guidelines more robust. Rereading it, a great deal of the fiddly crunchy bits are restrictions I added in to prevent munchkinism (and there are probably better ways to deal with it than I did), but there are entire sections (bennies and items, especially) that add complexity but little flavor. I think my natural gaming tendencies gave Simulationism a foot in the door, and then I was trying so desperately to wrap up the game by the end of the week that the rest of it snuck in while I wasn't looking, and this isn't supposed to be a primarily Simulationist game.

It also occurs to me that I can better organize the material by having the base game first (in 2/3 or less of its current length) and then a chapter for "Game Mods" or some such. All the discussions about "You can make the game harder/easier/longer by ..." and "you can alter the tone by ..." should take place after Baxil's Version Of Egregore has been established.