Some thoughts about characters:

One of the best and hardest things about role playing games are the characters.  They often drive the story as much, if not more so, than the events.  I'm not an accredited expert on the subject, so take this for what it's worth.  I find that characters can come from anything and anywhere if you do one thing: shut up your inner critic.

That was the first thing my high school teacher told us when writing any creative piece.  "Shut off your editor and just write."  I have more than a few silly ideas that, honestly, will most likely never be seen by eyes that aren't mine.  Among the literally over a hundred names and notes I have jotted down, two characters truly stick out to me that feel... separate, of their own mind, and yes, alive.

I've looked up what makes a good character online and asked teachers when I've written creative pieces for classes.  Most of their answers can be summarized by 'don't stereotype'.  Extremely helpful, isn't it?  It's difficult to explain how one comes up with character ideas or goes about creating a character.  I'll post in the player's section a more detailed way of creating a character using my first for FO:E, Silverlight, as an example here.  Hopefully that will let you see what I'm thinking when I create a character/how I go about refining an idea.

Session 7/25 and Session 8/1 wrap up:

Our heroes relaxed for a day around town to let Grace heal after using the drill.  The local sheriff, Copper Shield, contacted the party to send them off north and investigate the source of the storms damaging the crops.  After serving the town for the night with Dares on tap, Nopony cooking, Grace serving/bouncing [yes, I mean she is the bar's guard.  Crit on a magic throw and suddenly everyone's afraid of her] with Jack "serving" the guests.  Given the public nature of the net, that's about all I'm saying on the subject.

Afterward, Nopony gathered the group together, and in a touching scene that I won't copy out here, told the party that he is, in fact: a zebra who's name is Xin.  This has a slightly mixed reaction only because Grace doesn't care at all while Dares and Jack were at least surprised.

During the night a storm from the north ever-present storm rolls in and almost washes a colt out with it, but Dares, Jack and Xin are able to rescue the colt.  Yes, Grace completely slept through the storm.  Inconvenient ones are annoying.

The next day the party sets everything up to be able to go exploring.  They need food for the week journey so the party goes by the farms to collect food for the bar as well as themselves.  As they make their rounds they learn that the previous owner threatened to turn the ponies who didn't give her food over to the slavers for the monthly tribute.  Not surprising to most of the party, but is still aggravating to deal with.  Once that's all done the party heads out, dodging sand devils, rain radiation and guard bots.  Who do manage to get lucky aims and nearly killed Xin, causing Grace to make a flying medical check to save the zebra while Jack and Dares shot the rest of the bots.

Behind the Screen, 8/10/2012

It is my job to talk about boring rules stuff but this week's session is light on mechanics testing, bless and curse the role players in the test group, leaving me no rule changes to document or new mechanics to present. After staring at a screen trying to write something about nothing, we'll do something a little different: a look at the design philosophy that goes into adapting a rules set to a new setting.

Click too see a discussion on how easy it is to make rules that go horribly right after the break.
 

Rules Change Log, 8/3/2012

FO:E - APMRPG continues to mutate as the testing feedback rolls in and the design team learns again that no rule survives first contact with players.

In addition, some new mechanics are presented, ranging from the debut of APMRPG's first attempt at represent alchemy to a forgotten perk to help characters visit Miss Fortune on their foes.

This week's changes and a collection of grammar edits have already been incorporated into the rules so they are all set to download and go. You can find a highlight of the big changes after the break.

The Journey towards Completion, 7/26/2012 

 

FO:E - APMRPG is a work in progress, so there are many parts of the book that are missing. Much of the current designed process is filling in these missing pages so the rules can be called a complete first draft.

Some of these gaps are due to the lack of time. The perk list in Chapter 5 has a number of mid-level perks without description, waiting their turn while low level perks get proof read. Some gaps you find only after play testing, like when you find out the rules do not put a cap on a character's carrying weight as the players loot everything that is not nailed down!  

In this week's update the perk list and encumbrance rules are little less incomplete. To see the new additions to the rules you can either click the link to the rules on the side or check them out after the break. 

Session 7/25/12

Session 7/25/12 notes:

Nopony and Dares were able to sneak in and steal the special junction talisman out of the drill, allowing Grace to place it in the reactor.  As she goes to do this, she is surrounded by rad roaches falling from the ceiling.  This doesn't prove to be a problem as she takes out most of them.

The Junction talisman fits and allows Grace to power the reactor.  Needing a second one to replace what the party removed from the drill, everypony has to travel through the robot's maintenance area that Grace manged to fill with enemies by critically failing a repair check.  Gentlecolt Jack proves to be an asset as he takes most of the robots down to one.  The party clears the room, gives Grace time to whip out a second junction talisman and sets up the robots she was able to hack to protect the drill.  She sets the second junction talisman in and uses her horn to power the drill.

This does kill the hydra, but Grace suffers severely from using the jack [IE she drops down to -5 on the condition track] and requires Nopony's special brews to be able to recover, but she is left very weak from the fight.  Once the party all knows that Grace will live, they load her into the cart that brought everypony to go back to town.

And naturally greeted by Miracle, who's minding Jack's saloon, wielding a frying pan to all the ponies other than Jack.  He is able to talk her down, so the party goes to sleep for the night.

Session 7/19/12

Notes for 7/19/12 session:

In our previous session, the party was journeying through a diamond mine when they encountered a hydra who managed to critical it's sneak check.  When Dares flew down to check out the mine he was surprised by a hydra who used him for batting practice.  Grace used her telekinesis to try and remove him from the hydra she was attacked and dropped to zero.  Jack, our resident earth pony gambler and Nopony, sniper and melee expert desert/waste wanderer worked together to distract the hydra so Nopony could safely move Dares and Grace into a side room that the hydra couldn't reach.

Today Grace checked out the reactor to discover one of two things.  One, the reactor itself isn't going to be powering anything since the junction was burned out leaving her no means of creating a new one and two, pony power is used as a back up power source.  That's right, the medic got her work out trying to power up the robots that she could reprogram to be able to aid the party against the hydra.  It took her almost running her heart out, but she was able to get that much powered back on and key'ed in to only fighting the hydra.  While she was running, Dares and Nopony scouted the mines to try and find a safer way of accessing the drill and avoiding the 'roaches that are down there.  This was a partial success.  They were able to find a safer way, but were not able to avoid all of the roaches.  However this did result in a spectacular show of melee inaction from Dares who competed in heroic level slap fighting with a roach.  I'm sure he would have won in time, but Nopony grew bored waiting and squashed both the 'roach and Dares's chance of winning.

This leaves the hydra battle for next week.
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Rule changes/tweaks: we're going to shift flanking to plus two rather than loosing your agility score to defense.  That will be surprise round only "half-hoofed" that a pony looses their score to defense.

Wow, get a posting on Pon-E3 and in the following days you get page views. Thanks to Equestria Gaming for organizing the event and to everyone who visited the site.

To celebrate, here is a early look at the first attempt to bring vehicles to working order in APMRPG. Vehicles are rare in the wastes but make an impact when they appear. And what self respecting band of players doesn't want to cruise the tracks between Ponyville and Manehattan in their own Chrysalis Highwaymare?

See the full discussion after the break.

Thank you every pony who has visited out site : )

In our play testers last session, Grace and Dares got to test the increased damage threshold.  At least from them it's a two hooves up.  Rather than the four hooves up Silverlight gave the previous rule design.

A little background for everyone reading, as well as a picture.  Silverlight, the grey mare with a sea foam and white mane was the groups first doctor.  A wandering medic originally from Tenpony Tower, she met an early end thanks to a raider rifle and is the final reason we all agreed to make it harder for ponies to be out right killed in combat.

Who-Dares-Wins or just Dares, is the resident pegasus.  He's a generally good pony and currently leader by default.  Though he does get teased by the other ponies endlessly as no other pegasus will even talk to him.

Amazing Grace, the group's unicorn and stable dweller.  She had an even less stellar introduction to the wastleland than Littlepip.  Being vented out through her stable's incinerator(which was fortunately off) and immediately captured by raiders has caused Grace to be very leery around strangers and unlikely to part with the group.  She's the groups second medic, though she's far more comfortable treating sprains and bruises than the bullet wounds she's been exposed to.

After months of testing, the core rules are finally being updated so that the posted rules now resemble the rules being tested. See the full change log after the break.

Stay tuned for further updates. Testing has just begun so these are not going to be the last changes!

Rule Changes for 6/27/2012:

Damage thresh hold limit increased: The reason we decided to up the limit by ten because Dares and Jack nearly died and Silverlight did die.  While normally we would not consider upping the limit, Silverlight avoided one critical with her earth pony grit and was still dropped from over half to dead.

After a fight between Dares, Jack, Stuka(level 3) verses Splash and Mr. Buck(level 6), we've decided to limit players to spending one luck point per roll rather than up to all of them on one roll.  80% of the rolls for that combat were criticals thanks to good rolling and spending a lot of luck points.  That fight lasted all of three rounds, ending with both Splash and Mr. Buck dead despite raising the damage thresh hold.  We do have a proposed perk that would allow one pony to spend up to two points per roll.  It is on probation, as it may still be too good.