VI·VIII·X KUP RPG

In this deep dive some insights about how a character can suffer damages, what is the kind of injuries from damage and what is the game mechanic which rule the death of a character. Let’s start from the first topic: damage! A damage is anything affecting negatively a character, be it caused by either a weapon or a different cause like a poison or magic. In VI·VIII·X any damage is defined as a negative impact on a character’s stats. When a character suffers a damage, this means that one or more stats decrease and the character is in the position to act with a reduced score in that stat from the following turn; as a consequence the character gains the state of ‘injured’. Now, let’s better focus on what an injury is in the VI·VIII·X game. According to the damage suffered, the GM defines what are the affected stats of the character (this happens only when it is not already defined in a rule, needless to say). The damage is exactly the same amount of the decrease in the related stats, the r

This deep dive aims to provide an overview on the base game mechanic of VI·VIII·X the action resolution check, or ARC. This is used in most of the rules, whenever a character is asked to carry out an action: for combat, both melee and ranged, for non-combat actions (e.g. hide, ride, swim and so forth) and for spellcasting, both arcane and divine magic. In order to perform an action, the character uses one of his skills, the used skill is tied to an ‘unknown stat’ (or US) and the later is tied to a ‘known stat’ (or KS). Therefore, the starting point for the application of this mechanic is the 3-level stat framework of the character (in case here is a deep dive on this topic). Whenever a character needs to succeed a test, the player has to perform an ARC. The ARC is the result of 4 addends: The score of the KS (a value between 1 and 10) The score of the US (a value between 1 and 10) A modifier which is the outcome of the player’s roll for the ARC a value between -3 and +10) Additional (a

After long time I am back to complete the ‘deep dive’ posts with a new topic to be analyzed: the stats of a character. The overall concept of stats is not far from the one used in the most famous FRPG: a character is described by scores according to certain definitions. In VI·VIII·X any character is defined through 3 levels (or layers) of stats: the first level has a broad definition, the second level shows a more detailed definition up to the third level where a precise activity is defined. The 3-level framework is built by means of relationships between the stats of each level: a 1st level stat is linked with two 2nd level stats and every 2nd level stat is tied to several 3rd level stats. This framework helps to explain that the level of granularity of the definitions for each level goes from a general one (for 1st level) up to a detailed one (for 3rd level). This explanation helps to outline the framework where the 1st level stats are called ‘Known stats’ or KS (because they are kno

And the second baby has arrived as well! I got the second proofread from Ian Montgomery who did a superb job, not a mere proofread. The text has been revised according to the grammar but, moreover, also to the contents! Ian added a huge amount of notes about several aspects of the text: comments about marketing/purpose of the game, comments on the rules mechanics, comments on possible options for different resolutions of the rules. In a nutshell, a complete revision being a 360° analysis! …and to complete it, Ian also added some pages with overall recommendations and hints: he had not only done a proofread, he did acted as an editor! My huge thanks to Ian are absolutely a must! …now the tricky part is trying to carry out a combo of corrections + rediting of the text… the task is not as smooth as I thought…

...and the first "manuscript" of the VI·VIII·X KUP RPG core rules arrived back at home! I have to say a huge  THANKS  to Carl who did this "dirt job" for me on a pure friendship base! I am glad to see not too many "errors" (well actually I spotted some errors I should not have done!) and I am delighted by the spirit Carl had while doing this "dirt job"! I found scattered in the document some really funny comments that I am still laughing now when I think at them! Here below one of them: Now I have to update the book and once done apply some final changes... there's one in particular which I will detail in a separate post (btw I have already written about this idea,  here ). I am sorry if in this period I had no time to post anything... family and work got me stuck on the last post of end of August... but things are moving, I will be ready soon! I really look forward to publish my work!

Welcome to the last deep dive I planned (actually there are some other topics to cover... let's see if this is really the last one...). This is dedicated to the State of Mind. This is a feature that traditional RPGs have not taken in consideration. I have always played with FRPG (with one exception: a campaign of RIFT) but I've been told about the concept of sanity in Call of Cthulhu. This might be considered as an equivalent concept translated to traditional FRPGs. Before any further description, some thoughts that led me to add SoM in my game: Characters are never subject to a peculiar moment, with their fixed stats they are always "steady" and seems they have never met moments down (or up!)... or better, while a good role-player can act in order to show this through his character's behavior, there is no rule which includes it. Whenever there is an interaction with other characters, it is clear that the gap in the previous point is showing a hole in the overall

New post on the core rules "deep dive": this time I will focus on the progression of the characters. In order to make it compatible with traditional RPGs, this is in other words the game mechanics about the experience.  As a foreword, I have to admit that I have never been satisfied of the various solutions that were proposed in the several editions of the first and most famous RPG. The XP system had always some drawback or gaps. Nothing extremely important but any of them led me to do some amendments with a homebrew system which was basically closer to the approach of the tournament adventures than the one in the rulebook. Now, given the fact that even with my homebrew solution I was not fully satisfied, I came to the conclusion that there was something to change at a deeper level... and at the same time I felt very important to keep and stress out the improvement of a character in case he uses in the correct way his skills. This brought me to build a 2-way progression syste

Fourth post with an insight on the VI·VIII·X core rules: this time I will focus on the background. Let me have a foreword before.  I am not sure if my experience in traditional RPGs is a common case or not but I always found myself (as well as any other player in the party I had) to build up a character from the stats. This means that I never though beforehand to who was the character; first it used to come how this was and afterwards I started building his history. This is regardless of the GM: that way was accepted by almost all the GMs I met in my life. The odd part of this thought is that the background used to be created according to the needs... I mean: if my character's parents were not an useful detail in the campaign (doesn't matter the reason), then my character had a huge "?" on this piece of info... I could have been the son of either the ruler of that land or of a slave and this was not necessary and known. Then, when I ran into a situation where I needed

Let's go through this peculiar aspect of the VI·VIII·X core rules. Time is a very "traditional" concept, it is turn-based, so any RPGer will find himself comfortable with it. What it is not "traditional" is that any effect occurring in a turn will take place at the end it only. Conventionally, every action/event/situation which provokes an effect has to be considered simultaneosly at the end of the turn. This seems odd but given the fact that the sequence and other game mechanics are developed in a certain way, this is the most rationale solution. Realistically this could also have an explanation: if a PC suffers a mortal hit in a turn, is it really possible that in the last seconds of his life (i.e. the time till the end of the turn) is not able to try a last blow or action? This question may raise some concerns or, even worse, a lot of criticms... therefore I will simply state that, even if this is not the best solution, I adopted for several reasons, some of

This is the second topic I wanted to cover in my deep dives: really, I love to transmit the message to the reader about how it is structured the magic system in the VI·VIII·X game. Firstly the way I call magic in the game: SS or Secret Sorcery and CC or Clerical Canons. These are 2 ways rather different to have a magic effect. Hopefully I had been enough skilled to use the same mechanics despite the difference in concepts. SS is the eldritch magic, the arcane powers, what is used by high wizards. It is secret for a precise reason, this is not disclosed in the rule book (it will be part of the setting and it has origin from the cosmogony to be more precise). SS casters know words of power, every word is one of the two parts which a spell is composed. The caster needs to use 2 different words of power: an element and a principle. These two are then enough to create the effect wanted by the caster. This means the SS is completely open! There are no constraints in the spell definition. The

I stick to the notes I have on the desk and as promised I will try to provide you with some insight of the "new" game mechanics that I introduced in my  VI·VIII·X game. Let us start with Morality: it is a concept similar to alignment and to my eyes this is one of the weakest features in rules of "traditional" RPGs... I am well aware the topic is extremely "slippery" as you may find yourself with accusations of Satanism and media campaigns ruining your reputation if you push too much into a strong direction. However this reason is not enough to give up and make up a solution to preserve the detail of the character's alignment however completely empty of contents. If you think for a while what is the meaning of a chaotic-good alignment, for instance, you will soon realize that you can do whatever you want in the game and nothing will be affected by the fact that you have an alignment and you can follow this or not without any consequence. IMPORTANT: plea

After some days spent on DriveThru in order to understand how tricky is the preparation of a title over there, I am back to the real matter, the game. Let me only say: yes, I will likely put on DriveThru my stuff and as soon as the Core Rules will be ready, I will start a communication campaign. Now, what is in the rulebook: this book has 9 chapters, I will provide you with a summary of each of them here below. Ch.I - Introduction to the VI·VIII·X KUP RPG game; here you will read what is the KUP concept, what is the underlying rationale and how the rulebook is built. Let me add a detail: for this book I decided to write the rules in a (hopefully) easy to read way; short explanations, some examples and many many links to other related or recalled rules; in order to help the reader I outlined keyword or concepts in bold (now, with the formatting, I lost this feature but I will insert it in the printed version).  Ch.II - Character's definition: in this chapter all the main stats of th

Well, I had a couple of busy days: I had to manage my first proofreading process... It's likely that I didn't do the perfect job but it seems that I worked it out. 3 friends will look after my text... I could still extend it to a fourth one, I am not sure... For the time being I am really happy of what I have in my hands! It's something completely mine and this is a great achievement for me. I even took a pic like if it was a baby: That said, let's move to serious topics: I am still trying to figure out what could be the best steps once I have completed the proofreading revision. I will have a book and my idea is to launch a voluntary playtest. At the same time I need to do some fund raising in order to cover the expenses of such a print run. So the overall idea is to print a very limited number of books and then distribute them for a playtest. The first question is: how to carry out this wishful thinking?!? In the meanwhile, while I am working on other products for thi

Today I have not so much time, therefore a very short post! I'm happy as I finished my last review of the full text of the Core Rules! It's done! Next step is to have a third party proofread... no clue how long this will take... but as soon as it has done, I will be ready to launch a limited print run of the VI·VIII·X KUP RPG Core Rules for a playtest! Next step is starting to work out how I will manage this step, both in terms of time, of people and of money... Let's see... for the time being, I am happy!