Recently I handed out a preliminary draft of the first few sections of a beginner's version of the draft version of the handbook *deep breath*
My good friend Dave correctly pointed out that I needed to include as healer class. I had left out clerics and bards to make it easy on beginners. Bards because, well they didn't feel necessary enough and clerics because I didn't want to overload a beginner with talk of religion and domains.
I've figured out what I'm going to do though. I'm going to remove the wizard and cut him in two and replace the wizard with a Black Mage and a White Mage.
The Black Mage will be restricted to mostly offensive spells, whilst the White Mage will focus mostly on curing and buffing.
These classes will remain exclusive to the beginner's version though and will not be included in the default ruleset.
Also, it wont be called the beginer's version anymore. I've decided to focus on the full rules first, and then produce a "3.S Light" for beginners and anyone else that fancies using it. This edition will miss out most classes, containing only the fighter, rogue, sorcerer, black mage and white mage. Actually, it doesn't seem right that the sorcerer stays while I've cut up the magician...but I need to leave in a class that has magic inherantly, as opposed to studying for it. Unless I split the sorcerer in to the B&W mages and do something else with the wizard...
Hmmm...I shall ponder on this.
Anyhow, a lot of the feats and magic a character wont get until higher levels will be missed out. Religion will be omitted altogether.
There will only be two races, also. Originally, I had humans as the only race in the "beginner" version, but I've decided that it'll need at least two...to prepare players for the choices they'll have when they upgrade to the proper rules. I haven't decided what the other race will be. The obvious choice would be elves (being the lowest common denominator in fantasy) but I'm tempted to find something new that can be exclusive to the Light Version.
Anyhow, I don't have to come up with these just yet. I'll be constructing it using input from the forum.
Speaking of which, the forum is steadily growing, which is nice ^_^
I'm looking forward to collaborating with so many people. I want this to be a project
by everyone
for everyone.
Oh well, I suppose time will tell on how well it goes. Still, I've got some amazing graphics donated by some of deviant's best artists, which is (frankly) amazing. A few of them are also interested in doing artwork for the books, when they're made.
Methinks it's more of an incentive to see if we can actually get some of them printed...I might give them away if I can or something...some kind of competition perhaps?
Anyway, I'm going off-the-point.
I think I'll leave it at that on the Light Handbook. I've been up to quite a bit lately; taking notes, and pondering mostly. A lot of what I've come up with is now on the forums. We have the makings of the following builds: -
Pokemon,
Naruto,
Bioshock,
Silent Hill,
Kingdom Hearts &
Legacy of Kain.
We're also doing original settings so players don't have to be restricted to playing games devoted to fandom. We'll have two in-the-end methinks.
We'll be doing a general one as a default setting...with just enough details to give a DM something to work with but not enough to stifle his creativity (that'll be a tricky balance to master) and I'll soon initiate another setting (kind of like our version of Faerun), complete with history and the entire project's contributor's worth of input.
Anyhow, that's all for another time. Have fun folks...
PS -
A link to the forum...as always...
HMR
