Here’s (mostly) what I have so far of Slime Story:

Download Slime Story Playtest 1 PDF

If you’ve been following this blog or if you’ve let me talk to you in person much lately, you more or less know the drill. A world like ours, only teenagers hunt cute monsters for spending money. I’m working on a novel or two, and this is the RPG version, which is a strange hybrid of traditional, indie, and Japanese game design sensibilities. In A Wicked Prime Time 4th Edition Mouse Kingdom Koyake. Or something. To play you will need some friends, some six-sided dice, and some character sheets that don’t exist yet.

It’s rough all around, but I have the core rules in place how I want them, which means that it’s theoretically playable. There’s some other stuff (experimental alchemy, random events, achievements, etc.) that I haven’t yet put in, not to mention I’ve left out most of the monster write-ups. Some things I’m not yet sure how to implement, and for others I just don’t want to put all the work in, especially since there’s a good chance I’ll have to radically rewrite them later.

Aside from the really basic stuff (“Do the conflict rules actually work?”), the things on my mind are:

• Are the Feats reasonably balanced against each other? What new and better ones could I put in?
• Could the combat system do more to drive role-playing?
• Does the game’s economy of Resources actually work?

UPDATE (2/3/09): Ideas from talking a bit about the game with friends:

• Replace “Resources” with “Influence”, indicating both your character’s cash and his or her ability to call in favors and such from the local monster hunting community. Spending a certain amount of Influence on a healing potion could represent buying one from Monster Mart, or wheedling one from your NPC alchemist friend.
• Weapons can be customized/upgraded in various ways, some of which require monster parts. Hunters prefer weapons that are modular to varying degrees, and look down on people with “stock” gear.
• Achievements, kind of like in video games, are how the game represents gaining renown in the monster hunting community. Everyone participating gets to make up new achievements.
• Combat probably needs to be a little simpler. I’m thinking of a range map, a lot like 3:16, but you use dice to show how many hits the monsters have left. Still not sure how to work more social stuff into it though.
• OTOH the stuff with Tactical Actions may need to go, as it potentially makes combat considerably more complicated. Which would in turn require taking a closer look at the selection of attributes, especially since right now the main use of Athletics is tactical actions.
• The rules assume hunters are trying to stack the deck in their favor by researching portals, spawns, monster types, tactics, etc. (kind of like how the Exalted combat rules don’t have called shots because when you’re fighting you’re always going after the vulnerable bits).