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Author Topic: Eldritch Requiem - A tabletop squad-based fantasy game  (Read 1386 times)

Kilo24

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Eldritch Requiem - A tabletop squad-based fantasy game
« on: December 10, 2009, 01:55:39 pm »

Eldritch Requiem.  This is a rule-set for a tactical squad-based tabletop game.  I've taken inspiration from a lot of places to whip this up:
-Final Fantasy Tactics is probably the most similar execution in terms of having a roughly 4-person squad with terrain layouts similar to what's available in that game. 
-Age of Wonders's spells.
-Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition for spell durations and a few tactical aspects, like polearm implementation.
-Arcanum for a point-buy character system and a few ideas with maintaining spells.
-Mechwarrior 2:Mercenaries/XCOM for the level of tweaking possible for your squad outside of combat.

There are others, but those are the main ones. 
One part of this game that I haven't seen in other games is the importance of terrain.  At its most fundamental reliance on terrain, magic in the setting works by consuming life for fuel, especially the nearby terrain.  So, a mage constantly needs to keep moving to cast spells, and you can deny him his magic by setting the grassland or trees on fire, or killing the land with death magic, or simply getting another mage there to eat up the land first.  Many spells also affect the elevation of terrain, create fogs and towers that interfere with aiming weapons, or blow the enemy off of cliffs or into your prepared polearm-wielding ally.

Each character is created with a point buy system that makes all of the base attributes for that character useful.  They also have an advantage from a current list of over 50 that gives them a significant and unique bonus that helps to diversify them from other characters.

I've tried to make weapons be useful for reasons that are vaguely similar to the real reasons they were used.  Maces still decent do damage against heavy armor, pikes are great for defending at chokepoints/covering a wide area with the aid of other pikemen but they're really bad in close quarters, heavy crossbows are really damaging but need to be reloaded.

There are four races and each of them uses magic in a different way.  Humans need empty hands to cast spells, dwarves cast spells automatically when using their enchanted enchanted equipment, elves don't consume the land but have to wound others or themselves to get Mana to cast spells, and goblins can't cast spells until they're possessed by a demon that they chose (which gives them a number of advantages based on the demon.)


It sounds complex, but I've tried to keep it as simple and easy to read as possible for what it does, especially during combat.  All characters have only one non-trivial statistic that changes during play: the amount of wounds they've taken (except elves, who have one more.)  Magic is quantized in the amount of fuel it takes: it takes one adjacent Alive tile to cast or maintain a spell; and you only need to remember what spells you have active and not their durations.  Magic-heavy characters get only up to 4 (but more likely 3) spells to pick from in combat, out of a current spell list of over 70.  I've also tried to keep to a few conventions in the rules like bolding names of spells/advantages/terrain, and italicizing keywords and traits.

The game is still under construction.  The non-optional game rules work fine (the present optional ones make it more RPGlike), there is a lot of content for it at this point, and I've tried to keep it balanced, but the main thing that I need is playtesting to really balance it out, which I haven't been able to procure much of.  I've seen a few posts about Warhammer 40k (which is something that I'm somewhat familiar with, but haven't played) which is probably the closest niche that this game lands in, so I figured that I'd see if anyone here was interested.  I'd appreciate feedback if anyone has anything that strikes them, with the presentation of the rules, the rules themselves, some greatly appreciated playtest reports, or really anything concerning it. 
There is an introduction section which goes into a little bit more depth, especially with some of the design philosophies that I have making the game, if you're still not sure you want to look at the whole huge amount of rules.

Thanks in advance.
« Last Edit: December 10, 2009, 01:58:24 pm by Kilo24 »
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