Well, that was quite an iteration, wasn’t it? While it was entirely focused on one thing, (“Powers”, and giving characters access to upgrades), it covered an enormous amount of ground. I think you could make the case that it was 2-3 smaller iterations. Psionic powers and Communion certainly took up a considerable amount of time, as did martial arts, and I’ve spent more time playtesting this iteration than nearly any other iteration. In total, this full iteration has taken up nearly as much time as all of the rest of Psi-Wars put together.
Why is that? Well, I suspect it comes from the fact that building powers is ultimately about building gameplay. What I did this iteration is the equivalent to putting together all of those powers for D&D 4e, or the Charms of Exalted: They’re the meat of what players will fuss over when discussing the choices they make during their game, and what they’ll focus on with their experience. After all, the Jedi is the soul of Star Wars, so the Space Knight will naturally be enormously important to many people who choose to play Psi-Wars, so they need to work very well, and the game needs to fit together.
The State of the Game
At the beginning of every Iteration, I say “And we could stop here,” and I always imagine my reader nodding his head with a small smile saying “Uh huh, yeah, sure, now just give me the next bit,” but this time, I think you may well actually nod and say “Yeah, actually, you could.” This begins to feel like a sort of Star-Wars knock-off that people might actually play or enjoy. I’ve noticed my friends talking about it with more interest, and a general rise in views, discussion, in a more picky way (“You should do this or that!” rather than “Good on ya, Mailanka!”). Specific criticism tends to signal something that someone is actually using, or considering using.
Normally, at this time, I talk about what was a “big hit” over the past iteration, but it’s gone on so long that I’ve lost track of what worked and what didn’t, so I’ll just offer a few callouts. The Psi-Wars Primer came out this Iteration, to address the fact that I often saw and I’ve a cycle of people starting at the beginning and working their way forward. It’s not the highest rated of my post, but by far the most viewed, suggesting that it’s highly valuable (I also see a lot of traffic directed from it, meaning people are using it). Interestingly, some people have even complained about it: I wanted to keep it trimmed and focused, but some people would rather have a single place where they can just find everything. Thus, I’ve revised the primer based on their suggestions.
More highlights based on views: Building Minions, Criminal Minions, Robots Revised, Anti-Psi Styles, and Optional Combat rules were all exceedingly popular, judging from views, and usually people are more interested in sample characters than templates, but this time, templates, especially the Spy 4.0, had an overwhelmingly more views than characters or playtests. While some of this (Building Minions, Optional Combat Rules) are fairly generic indications of how to go about doing something, a lot of the highly viewed material is very specific, which suggests to me that people are either using them as inspiration, borrowing them for their own games, or actually trying to play Psi-Wars. That is, this iteration, especially towards the end, my audience is increasingly interested in things they can use rather than more theoretical discussions.
When it comes to likes, the most liked of my actual Psi-Wars posts is, by far, the Luke vs Darth Vader duel on Bespin, which (as of this writing) is at a staggering +12. Starfighter Tactics and Military Tactics earned a lot of commentary, much if it critical, namely in that commenters wanted more. This suggests to me that there exists a great deal of interest in the more military aspects of Psi-Wars. My analysis of Force Swordsmanship earned a lot of attention, which surprised me. The specifics of Psionic Powers or Communion didn’t earn as many views as others, though if someone hunts me down on the internet to tell me that they liked a thing from my blog, it’s usually the Paths. The two that stood out to me for views or likes were from my discussion of possible Psi-Wars powers, which suggests it was a well-received series. The most intriguing (based on views and likes) seemed to be the Mysterious Power of Psi-Wars and the Force as Space Magic.
My blog hit all time highs, reaching nearly 8000 views in July, over 9000 this month, and consistently hit over 7000 throughout the iteration.
Writing Psi-Wars 1: Heroes
Character Creation
Character Creation Cheat Sheet
Powers
Communion
I’ve clarified some of Broken Communion’s corruption rules and, while doing so, noted that Hite allowed characters to accrue corruption to gain energy points, so I’ve allowed that too, though at a smaller amount than they can get from Communion or Dark Communion, to keep the emphasis on the “power” of those two.
Martial Arts
Gear
Weapons and Armor
For armor, our alliance troopers have tactical vests, so we can easily make that a standard option. The pirates present an interesting option as we wanted “older” hardsuits. Of course, what we should really use is space armor, but for simplicity (because vacuum just doesn’t play enough of a role in Psi-Wars), we’ve declared that sealed is “good enough” for vacuum. Still, we could still make something that’s conceptually similar, though, which we’ll call “blast armor” and “old hardsuit.” Since the current hardsuits have the advanced option (lower weight for higher cost), we can simply remove that to find what our armor should be.
I conceive of a blast suit as very heavy armor that’s forward facing only. The idea is that if you’re working with something dangerous, such as a torch or explosives, you need armor facing the source of danger, not something else. Low tech says to “halve” the weight of a hit location that protects only half a location. In practice, we’ll just work out the normal DR 60 version and apply half the upgrade to the full DR 100, which means we multiply final values by 1.25 rather than 1.5. The result is an armor that weighs a full 50 lbs, but provides DR 100 to all attacks from the front, and costs a mere $5500. If we want to create a “blast helmet,” then the front of the helmet (the face) needs extra protection and the skull needs less, which is counter-intuitive for a combatant, but works fine for a non-combatant. The result are already existing helmets, but with their DR reversed. I’m just not sure if this feels “too gimmicky,” but it should be no different than any other suit.
The old hardsuit is simple enough: the same armor as the standard combat hardsuit, but without the “advanced” option. The result is a 40 lbs set of armor that costs $5000. However, there’s a rule in the Environmental Suit rules that requires characters to cap their skill at Vacuum Suit skill (typical for real-world space suits) and suggests that particularly cumbersome suits might apply a further -1 to DX regardless of skill. UT suits are sufficiently well-built that they don’t have this problem, but I’d like something like that for my “older” armor. I suggest a flat -10% to the cost (thereabouts), with the option of a perk or skill 15+ in vacuum suit automatically removing the penalty. This makes old hardsuits cost $4500. If we go ahead and give it a +1 to reaction modifiers, that gives is a total cost of $9500. If we further add, say, 10% to the cost DR, following the standard trajectory, that adds 10% to the cost and weight. So, if we wanted, we could make this “even heavier” for +$240 and +5 lbs. Let’s split the difference and give it +500 for no weight. Not entirely fair, but we’re fudging here. And then, we have shiny, glossy, ornate, old-school armor that’s a little cumbersome if you don’t know how to use it.
For weapons, I see no need to make substantial changes except, perhaps, to incorporate theRyujin’s thoughts here. In short, I’ve noticed a trend towards using “beam submachine guns” and a desire for “beam shotguns.” The burst fire technique is probably a bit much, but we could move the “shotguns” to Beam Weapons (Projector), which isn’t much of a strength, and gives the lonely flamer some company. We can also make everything default to each other at -2. This, surprisingly, didn’t require much reworking of the templates (or martial arts)!
For grenades, I’ve done some shifting around, adding HEMP, an “explosive” that’s thermobarics mixed with actual shrapnel to make it competitive with the plasma grenade, and I’ve added EMP. I’ve also expanded out to mines, after looking at commandos (which are basically smart limpet grenades using 100mm warheads).
Melee weapons have been heavily adapted after martial arts, and I’ve included those changes here too.
Personal Vehicles
Robots
Writing Psi-Wars 2: Adventures
The Documents
If you read these documents and have some feedback, you can drop me a mail (the address is in the document). I’d love to hear from you. Also, feel free to share the documents! I wrote these for people to use.
Mailanka's Musing 