A new spoiler: the expanded rules

While waiting this endless period for the delivery of the playtest books, I am thinking on the expanded rules I have already written (to be precise, more than 80% are still on my pad and only some of them are already present in the word document on my PC...).

My concern is related to the outcome of the playtest: it'd be wise to wait how the playtest goes before thinking how to further develop the core rules. As a matter of fact this is only in part true: some rules have been written as core rules and in a 'streamlining' process I decided to keep them on-hold to keep the game not too complex. These were part of the original design of the VI·VIII·X core rules but after some thoughts (and recommendations of friends!), they were converted as optional rules. In a first stage of the writing process I had in mind to keep the optional rules within the core rules. This would have made the set of rules maybe too heavy or blurry (it is hard to remind what is core and what is optional if both are present in the same book) and therefore I decided to add these to other rules I had in mind as the 'true' expansion. This change helped also to keep the length of the core rules to a 'reasonable' quantity (the printed book is approx 220-page, counting also the designing notes while the digital book is approx 180-page long).

Along with the 'optional' rules I wrote also the 'advanced' rules. These were thought as a first tweak on order to detail better some aspects of the game. 

Since I didn't like both terms and I merged them in the new book, I decided to use the term 'expanded' rules. I am well aware that this is a merely matter of semantic but I definitely prefer to call them this way.

Lastly the expanded book will have a likely large chapter about the way to run a VI·VIII·X game. Even in this case I was concerned about the fact that this topic should have been part of the core rules but again I found that it'd have been better to leave the playtesters unbiased without any detail or concept about my way to see the game.

Therefore in the next 'expanded' rulebook there will be:

  • 'optional' rules for combat, weapons and armors, for other game mechanics such as movement, sequence and reaction; there will also be new classes while I have to make my mind up about races... I am unsure whether to add them there or in the setting...
  • 'advanced' rules about actions, skills and magic; all of them will push the game to a further detailed experience;
  • the 'how to run the game' part where I have many suggestions and tips to keep as much as possible KUP the game.
What is nearly sure is that the title of this book will be VIII·XII·XX... if you wonder why, no spoiler will be done for the time being.

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