Sunday, August 21, 2011

[Adventures in Fantasy] Book of House Rules Pt. 1

Some Basic Ideas...
While I am going through the AiF rule books, I have been taking notes on what I would do differently or what I think needs to be clarified.  I plan on assembling these ideas into a fourth rule book for AiF, the Book of House Rules. Yeah, I know it's not the most intriguing of titles but it does fit the naming scheme of the other books and it does get the idea across.  Here are some of the ideas I have so far:

Artwork
I am not an artist by any stretch of the imagination.  I do, however, know several guys with extraordinary art skills.  I would like to get a cover image and a few illustrations in a similar manner as the existing AiF artwork.

Player Races
Upon reading the rules, it is apparent that AiF is a humanocentric game.  There's nothing wrong with that but I thought it would be nice to open up some more options.  I am not going to include stats for non-human races but include different varieties of humans.  For instance, maybe one type of human is stronger while another is more agile and so on.  Just providing mor eoptions based on the existing framework.

Basic Characteristics
The goal in this area is simple - clear up any confusion over the number of characteristics and the characteristics themselves.  The existing rules are not clear and need some work.  I would also drop the idea of optional characteristics; use them all because an optional characteristic is used in figuring Hit Points already. 

The Rest
At the end, I will have house rules covering sections of all 3 rule books.  I am attempting to stick to the following guidelines when developing these house rules:
  •  No changes just for change's sake - In other words, only change what needs changing.
  • Clean up and clarify - most of the house rules will just clarify and reinforce the existing rules.
That should do it for now.  As I stated previously, I believe AiF is a decent enough game but I think it was released before a proper edit was completed.  A cleaned up, consistent, and clarified version of Arneson and Snider's rules should offer plenty of role-playing goodness.

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