I was originally planning to patch up Slime Story enough to throw a playtest document up the site for people to look at and possibly play. Then my brain got to storming, and I wound up starting on another overhaul of the system. The overhauls are getting smaller each time, but they’re still not tiny.

This time, I made a major change to how consequences work, which in turn means I have to fiddle with a bunch of other things, since some of the ways in which I was using consequences in the rules are no longer feasible. There are still Tired and Upset status effects, but there are only four levels of such, and each gives a -3 penalty on related actions. This solves the problem of sometimes getting close rolls resulting in consequences that aren’t that consequential (no reason to care about taking a mere -1 penalty), but it also means I can no longer do things like have a Fighter feat that lets you do a big hit in exchange for taking one little rank of Tired status. As a result, I’m resorting to a bit of D&D4e stuff, with special abilities having At-Will, Scene, or Episode timing.

I also realized that concessions (basically the thing in IAWA where instead of taking mechanical consequences the loser can take story consequences devised by the winner) are the key to making the combat more interesting while simultaneously avoiding having characters get taken out. I didn’t want to rip off the flashback mechanics from 3:16, both for originality’s sake and because it doesn’t fit with the setting, and using something already in the system is probably the best way to go about things anyway.

That still leaves me with a few things to work out, notably how to make statuses more mechanically interesting, and how to make combat/encounters drive role-playing a bit more. I have an idea for “checks” on connections, which would make your next check to raise a connection’s a bit easier. I also have an idea for “Strain”, which (perhaps) would be points you have that others can tap to give you a penalty to a check. So far Strain is the only thing I’ve come up with to put some granularity into the rules.

And… that’s about where I’m at right now. Presently, the games that are influencing Slime Story are as follows:

Aitsu wa Classmate
Arianrhod
Bliss Stage
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition
In A Wicked Age
Meikyuu Kingdom
Mouse Guard
Primetime Adventures
Tunnels & Trolls