Tonight was our first playtest of a new game system I’m working on called the Forge Engine, which is an Abilities and Skills based d10 system:
• Ability and skill based system (classless)
• Give players freedom to craft their own characters
• Increased power through larger dice pools (d10 dice)
• Opposed rolls for combat to keep participants engaged
• Skill challenges against static difficulty numbers for simplicity
• Dice pools give degrees of success (or multiple hits for combat)
• Combat rolls combine abilities, skill, weapon, and armor into one resolution step
• Energy depletion system reflects fatigue from exertion
• Meaningful decisions for players during critical situations
• Variable Energy economy replaces discrete action economy
Luckily, we had a pre-game run-through yesterday that ironed out a lot of kinks, so tonight’s game went surprisingly well (apart from almost getting killed by a pack of mutant rats).
And as an interesting experiment, I’m a player in the playtest, not the GM. This gives me a much better perspective on how the system is working, and gives me more time to help the GM and the other players.
No, I’m not dead. I’ve just been working on Hero Kids and its adventures, which are available at DriveThruRPG:
0 thoughts on “Playtesting the Forge Engine”
Any progress on this game engine? I'd love to playtest it!
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Progress yes. I'm working on some tricky attack mechanics, mainly do to with the interactions of abilities, skills, and energy. I guess if this was easy someone would have done it already!
Drop me an email (justinhalliday(a)gmail[dot]com) and I'll email you when there's something to test.
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Have been a while since your last post. The system is dead or are you so busy with Hero Kids that this system is on a hiatus? The system have a lot of unexplored potential, but unfortunately this system didn't get a community to discuss and improve. Any plan for an expansion, reworked rules or any kind of "official forum" for all your creations (Hero Kids, HaD, Forge Engine,…)? Somewhere where people could share ideas about the rules, ideas and homebrews without sharing space with other systems?
Hi Felipe, I'm still working on The Forge Engine. It's undergone a bunch of revisions and expansions from its original form, and all of the support I've been putting in to Hero Kids has certainly slowed the process down. I hope to have an Alpha playtest version by the end of November.
Drop me an email (justinhalliday(a)gmail[dot]com) and I'll email you when there's something to test.
Sorry, I am out of the loop. Is The Forge Engine world specific (IE how HAD or Hero Kids was based in a fantasy world) or is it geared to be adapted to other worlds?
Either way, is there any chance some of your fans could snag a copy for play-test/review?
Seems like this one's taking _forever_… It is a very different beast than HAD, the Forge Engine is a generic system (supporting fantasy and modern play), the anti-D&D: Where D&D has a binary success/failure mechanic, Forge Engine has degrees of success. Where D&D is a class-based system, Forge Engine is a skill-based (classless) system. Where D&D has a fixed action economy with discrete major, move, swift, minor, and free actions each turn, the Forge Engine implements a variable action economy based around energy.
I hope to have an alpha playtest version in the next couple of weeks.
I am very interested in this one; please keep us update on its progress!
Will do. I'm just finishing a Hero Kids Christmas-themed adventure, then I'll be back on this!