Scampir

With the exception of 1 advancement, and having just taken on some more comprehensive force-rules, i can safely say (am i in danger?) that what I have left to do is Clades (Crews), Advancement (hoh boy), Acts and Arcs (Campaign Structure), and Downtime. There might be a return to character creation but for now, hoowee this looks finishable. Open inviation; If you want to see, let's coordinate a way for me to link you to the google doc I draft in down in the comments.

I'm glad I did the initial playtests for Exilium when I did because wow I am getting home from worked tired and wanting to curl into a little ball most nights. However, I was able to revist and develop some new advancements for the playbooks.

So, important to note is that in Force and Destiny, each career (class) has it's own specialization (subclass) linking it to one of those star wars jedi lightsaber forms. This is very neat, and each specialization assigns five of six attributes (stats) to be used for lightsaber attacks instead of Brawn. Wow! Neat! Very cool that the Shien Expert gets to use intellect to block all those blaster bolts and use a counterstrike maneuver (ffg is one of those games).

In Exilium, having to cut down any kind of skill breadth into the 3 attribute/12 action form means that I can't do the same "grand template" trick, so instead I'm going to jot down some advances that activate when you ignite your lightsaber (something that triggers heat in this game!).

• For the Consular's Disciple Specialization: Disciplined Stance - While your lightsaber is ignited, you can immediately dispel any deceptions, illusions, or misdirections.
• For the Guardian's Defender Specialization: The Final Stance - While your lightsaber is ignited, you may use the level of your highest current harm as your tier.
• For the Mystic's Duelist Specialization: Duelist's Stance While your lightsaber is ignited, if you are engaged in combat with only one opponent no others may join the fight.
• For the Seeker's Striker Specialization: Striker's Stance When your lightsaber is ignited, you can leap to any height or distance you could throw a stone to.
• For the Sentinel's Expert Specialization: Expert Stance When your lightsaber is ignited you do not give ground unless you intentionally cede it.
• For the Warrior's Knight Specialiation you have uh...

Take all Comers - If you are outnumbered in a fight, treat the tier of all of your attributes as one tier higher.
Defensive Training - Once per session, if you would take any amount of strain, you may choose to take one strain instead.
Sweep - When you are outnumbered by a group, treat your scale as equal to the group opposing you.

Business as usual :)

taking Exilium out of the "Star Wars Folder of Shame" folder and into the "My Dev" folder proper.

I'm just collecting my playtesting notes for my playtest of this Fugitive Jedi FitD game, and the 5 sessions were, in addition to a lot of fun, very helpful in stress testing what I had written down. FIST Ultra also released today and while doing a quick read of that this morning I couldn't help but notice just how much writing was devoted to communicating what was going on in the game.

I'm so far from that right now, but between reading FIST Ultra and getting particular feedback, I have been thinking about my time reading and writing one-page rpgs and minimalist focused 24XX games. I see the appeal in 24XX and the like. Things are small, the premises are simple, and that can be a lot of fun. Yet with Exilium I can not take it for granted that I am both designer and GM during these playtests. There is a lot going on with the vision of the game that I am going to have to commit to the text.

My particular curiosity carrying me through this is that the small games, the minimalist games, are trying to get away from bloat. Too many character options, too many rules to remember, and procedures with too many inputs that are built into the game instead of emerging from the fiction. In some moments I see the division so clearly, but as I try to revise this alpha version of Exilium, I'm trying to steady myself in the belief that actually, I have to pull back the curtain of what I want distinct parts of the game to be about, and it's fine to take the space to communicate that.