F|nDers Keepers: Inside F|nD (Pre 1.4)

Hi all,

Sorry for not being able to post so regularly. I have been diligently working on the Core Book, and I am proud to announce that I am doing up Version 1.4 now. Work on 1.3 began after the discussion with Shane and Pong on Saturday; with the emphasis on explanation and  flow of sections, and glaring play balance issues.

If you don't already know by now, I will usually write up a version and then send it to my play-testers who will read it and then feedback to me on what they find off-putting. It can range from silly English typos and garbled standardization; all the way to not agreeing with the concept of the Ancients being a Lesser Deity of the World.

• There were many questions I asked about 1.0  last week, as I mulled on various core concepts of the game, including Combat DVs and Action Resolution, finding them a bit too clunky.
• 1.1 was the big Official update earlier in the week with the Magic and Piety Rules, and a new Initiative System. Races were also added. Combat and Actions were revamped, and Skills tabulated. The Character Sheet was redesigned and given a new look.
• 1.2 was a small update that I sent over to my guys on Saturday, a day after 1.1 was released. There was more formatting done, and sections were place held on pages to reserve the slot necessary for the final flow of information to the reader. Also, some DVs were changed and terms more clearly defined.

The latest version that I sent Vek to print was Version 1.1, which was F|nD in a more complete but still raw form. I arranged the printed pages in a file, and headed to discuss the contents with the guys.

By the time we met up, Pong and Shane already had Version 1.2 loaded in their iPads. Pong was visibly distracted as he had wanted to play test the game. He had roughly seen the system evolve over the past two weeks and did not realize that many rules have either been changed or added. Not looking at the new version much, he started to comment on the lack of standardized formatting. I agree with that but as said, for those two weeks, the main idea of them going through my Core Book was to look for issues with the understanding of the game terms, the specific location and flow of the relevant sections (so that new players can easily get into F|nD) etc.

Formatting and Fonts etc would be given higher priority in at a later date. But I do have to say that I have done some formatting and worked the information in various table forms now, giving better visualization and ultimately, ease of understanding the new system.

1.1 looking unpolished.

So no worries about that. It was the first time Shane has seen F|nD, and he pored over it meticulously, raising many relevant questions, and discovering typos and boo-boos that I have left in the Core Book. I noted down the changes that I need to make, and circled out the common complaints raised by both Shane and Pong regarding the flow of the sections and what was preventing them from understanding the game easily etc.

Shane commented that the Construct race looked gimped while the generic Humans looked strongest with their Versatile Racial Ability and the added Attribute Die. He also asked me about the relevance of the Running Skill, which I deleted in Version 1.3. Pong talked about Spell Drain being too harsh, which I agreed on too.

At the end of the day, I went home happy. Armed with lots of notes and to-be-changed chunks, Version 1.3 was underway.

1.3 looking better with tables and shading.

Shaded tables came in to highlight important paragraphs rather than a crazy amount of bullets that littered the page during previous versions. Keywords were being italic-ed, and redundant lines deleted.

I also realized that the players particularly wanted a certain flow of information, and that included Summaries to give the players an idea of the concept I was about to preach in F|nD, rather than them having to always look ahead to find out about new terms.

Boom! In came Summaries for Version 1.3.

That was not all. I enlarged the size of the Skills Section to make it clearer to the reader, and added illustrations to the Core Book so as to alleviate the boredom of seeing text line after text line.

By Tuesday night, most of 1.3 was in place. Seeing everything so neat and the information being presented in a better light, I decided to embark on another big plan --

The Perks Section!

C'yall on the flip side, where I show you the illustrations of Version 1.3 and discuss about Version 1.4, where the massive Perks Update is taking place in!