Rules simplifications

[Dave M]

I have been thinking a lot over the last year about our combat system as a whole. How can we make it easier/less confusing for new members and trainee/low ranked characters. How can we make monstering better prepare new members for playing? How can we make less occurrences of distracting rules queries mid-fight?

I spent some time a few months ago trying to come up with a proposal to put to Anthony for merging monster and player stats but it is just too big a change affecting too many things/characters all at once. I abandoned my attempt, as I discovered had a few people before me.

A better approach perhaps is a collection smaller changes over time which will add up to a larger positive overall affect.

My plan is to introduce here ideas every week or so for open discussion which would either clarify or simplify the rules in some way or improve the low rank combat experience. I would love for as many people as possible to express their opinions even if it is a simple 'no'. (Obviously I'll be in favour of my proposals)

Perhaps if the club like any of them they could be tested individually on appropriate events e.g. Solstice? to see if they work in practice?

I'll set them up as polls where you can go back and change your vote at any time.

[m!g]

It is interesting that 20 years after the rules first came out they are pretty much the same.

What has changed is the variety of spells, invocations, colleges, sects, special skills as well as addition of things like standing and training skills.

It is these latter additions that really complicate things but also allow flavour to be added to a character. After all, in the good old days, by the time your warrior had 90 life and could do triple, you more or less had everything you could get...now there are long lists of skills you can take to make your character more interesting and different from every other fighter.

It will be fun to see what you come up with in terms of simplifications. I know another LARP variant that decided damage should go up in increments of 5 (not 4) and that level/Rank 0 should be called level/Rank 1. Ask Luke and Jem what other things they did. Equally, I know of a variant that got so complicated in an effort to make things realistic, that it completely turned off any newbies because it was too difficult to remember everything.