A page of Design Goals I decided I wanted. May have spawned some of pilgrimage LRP.

Numbers and Capabilities

• If there are “Ultimate Faith” style switches they should be widely available, not limited, and of equal potential.

• No massive amount of attrition. Sometimes I’ll watch a linear and think they’re steamrolling everything but it’s just because they’ve used their grenades, and have 1 hit + armour on all locs.
  • This means that I want “obvious” daily abilities, and I don’t want subtle daily abilities. Therefore hit points should belong to one group or the other, and although I personally use THROUGH damage I feel that it’s a flawed system wrt balance.

• Sneaky characters should have two types: those who are dodgy and hit things and those who are dodgy and subtle. The first are indistinguishable from Warriors, the second are indistinguishable from scholars.

• The system should be easy to use, and having to remember any numbers bigger than 9 is bad.

• Head should be ignored in favour of better targets.

• There should be a distinct difference between being a starting and a finishing character, although it shouldn’t make it undesirable to ever stop or start.

• People should want to poke "holes" in the system’s fluff, not take the piss

• In order to balance melee, ranged and “magic”, there should be a unified list of choices- functionally all magic should be of the same quality

• Everyone should be forced to have a non-com ability, some com abilities, and then some wild cards (which everyone will spend on combat anyway)

• Things which completely NIX a PC/encounter shouldn’t happen. As such, there should be ways to bypass status effects so there is a 0-sum, or slight advantage.
  • (FREEZE is boring because it either wins a fight or gets resisted, sometimes with further resists being easy- it either trivializes combat or gives you no bonus)
  • (BREAK is supposed to be interesting because using it is nontrivial, but can halve effect duration upon yourself)
  • (May include Ablative resists at higher level- no blanket immunities means that one can rest assured that by using your status effect you have achieved *something)
  • (Incorporeal enemies can reduce a combat to “one of us versus the monsters”)

• Character Death should be meaningful and nontrivial.

Gods

• All Gods should have the same rules but be different.

• PCs following the same God should be able to argue: All PCs should have 3 they must follow. Even though this means some bookkeeping and paying attention on the part of the refs.

• Because in general all the Strictures should be written to support positive, active, play, there should be a reward for good service as well as getting smote for breaking strictures.

• There should be some lay rituals possible for pretty much anyone. These shouldn’t necessarily always work and should be mostly nonmechanical but fluffy.

Magics

• There should be a difference between two mages who want to be different, besides the spells they choose to use.
• Mundanes or mages should be able to go into Priesty stuff and vice versa
• TT style Metal-limits are not appropriate. This system is supposed to not care what physrep you use for a weapon (because there being a difference between a spear and a staff means that physreps matter)
• Magic should not step on the toes of the Gods, but should not necessarily be available to both.
• Magic as pseudoscience should be possible but not necessary.