June 18, 2015 How I Review CRPGs – My Methodology & Rating System Learn what factors I use when I am reviewinG CRPGs. Categories Game Design
June 11, 2015 Races are like Species in the Broken Staff CRPG CRPG Races There are two parts of the race sub-system: racial groups and races themselves. The system includes standard fantasy races from Tolkein as well as what are commonly called ‘furries’, elemental style races and even a couple of undead options. In the Broken Staff CRPG system we use the standard term races even though with the large breadth of... Categories Broken Staff CRPG
June 10, 2015 Broken Staff CRPG v0.4 Has Been Released Broken Staff CRPG v0.4 Available After a long wait the next version of the Broken Staff CRPG (v0.4) is now available. You can download the release here. This release contains updated .xml data files, an updated System Browser utility and for the first time source code of the System Browser and the RPG system. What’s Included in the Download? If... Categories Broken Staff CRPG
June 1, 2015 Can We Build a Classless Society? I Hope Not… CRPG Classes When thinking of the ideal CRPG I kept taking classes out and making skills the key to character builds and then later changing my mind and putting them back in. While I think you can design a CRPG without classes, I kept coming back to them as a way of making meaningful character choices and differentiating characters. One... Categories Broken Staff CRPG
May 28, 2015 Items in the Broken Staff CRPG CRPG Items Items are another CRPG area that are hard to get right. One of my main design goals for the system was to make it easy to change over time in response to testing and feedback. ItemTypes.xml Item types are how the system organizes items. In the default system there are 14 types of items: Weapon – items to... Categories Broken Staff CRPG
May 21, 2015 I Put a Spell on You CRPG Spells One of the more important parts of any CRPG system set in a fantasy world is the magic system. As a person who primarily likes playing mage characters, poor, undeveloped magic systems are a sore point of mine. Magic systems are very important to me. While I am trying to keep the main system’s magic as neutral and... Categories Broken Staff CRPG
May 14, 2015 It’s Time For the Feats of Strength! Feats (or abilities) have been in CRPGs for a long time. They usually come in two main types: passive or triggered. For me feats really took off in DnD 3.0. The feats system in Broken Staff CRPG is modelled after the DnD system. For those familiar with the DnD system there are a few differences: All characters get a new... Categories Broken Staff CRPG
May 7, 2015 CRPG Skills: Do You Have the Skills to Pay to the Bills? CRPG Skills – A Tricky Element to Get Right This is the third in a series of posts where I will be outlining the Broken Staff CRPG system and giving an introduction of how it works. In a previous post I covered attributes, which if we continue the admittedly poor analogy of our CRPG system as a human body would... Categories Broken Staff CRPG
May 3, 2015 Attributes – How the Broken Staff CRPG System ‘Measures’ Stuff This is the second in a series of posts where I will be outlining the Broken Staff CRPG system and giving an introduction of how it works. In a previous post I covered effects, which if we use a human body as an analogy would be the skeleton. They provide structure to the system. The next major element in the... Categories Broken Staff CRPG
May 2, 2015 Introducing Aerth What is Aerth? Aerth is the ‘house’ world for our Broken Staff CRPG System. The system is designed to be as world-agnostic as possible but for our own games they need to take place somewhere. I will never be as great a world builder as a master like Tolkien. Or even a Martin. So Aerth has a lot of developmental... Categories Aerth
