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.