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13 January 2014

Magic Trappings made more magical

Arcane Backgrounds in Savage Worlds have done a great job in standardizing all kinds of supernatural powers within their system. Unfortunately, by doing so, the different kinds of powers lost a bit of their "magic" for lack of a better word. To make Arcane Backgrounds (especially magic) a little more "magical" I have added a small Narrative rule to go with Savage Worlds' Trappings. This rule is somehow inspired by FATE's aspects and I am planning on incorporating it into the upcomming Savage Witcher pdf.

A spellcaster chooses one Trapping per their rank. You should can treat it as a domain for the Spells/Powers. Each spell you have should be expressed by one of the trappings you posses. Trappings have don't have any mechanical rules attached to them, so Fire and Ice spells work exactly the same mechanically.
You can use a Benny to invoke a Trapping. By invoking it you can narrate a small detail in the world, that your magic would allow you to make (starting fires for  Fire trapping for example, freezing a puddle on the ground with Ice). Gamemaster has the right to veto your narration, but apart from that, whatever you narrate is true in the game world and you can use it to your advantage. GM will incorporate effects of your narration and give modifiers to tests for the players or the NPCs if needed.

This rule gives players the opportunity to use their powers in more creative way and make them feel like the magic is more magical than just a list of different Powers. The key to this rule is to keep to small details when narrating the effects, and making the results interesting. This way, the GM will award the invoking player a Benny for a fun idea. The GM can also give the Benny back to the player, if the effect was invoked purely for flavor.
This rule takes a bit to get used to, and requires a level of trust between players and the GM, but in a long run can be very rewarding.

01 January 2014

Heist Aces is now an Award Winning game!


My Happy New Year just got happier! After I properly woke up today, I found out, that my 24h story heist game was recognized as the winner of 1KM1KT Harder than Granite competition. Whoa?!
I can say how big of a motivation and ego boost it is for someone who never had the nerve to finish any of his designs in the past. I would like to thank Rob Lang and the esteemed panel of 1KM1KT judges, not only for recognizing my efforts, but also for creating a competition  that forced me out of my comfort zone, and made me motivated enough to finally finish the thing (forcing of the 24h time limit and making the final product small enough to fit in a pocketmod helped a lot). Thanks guys, I tip my hat to you!

What's the future of HEIST_ACES?
I will revise and expand the game in the near future. Now, without the clock ticking, I can spend more time on creating more evocative layout, and art and, what's most important, I will create an GM_OPERATOR's manual to go with the pocketmod. The manual will be a letter/a4 size document explaining the game in more detail and giving advice to both the players and the GM. So stay tuned, and if you have any feedback - send it my way.