You had me at Conan-style and LOTR like.  I think that I would like to nerf the doom that is shield and sword combinations and I think I might have it.    Basically I thought, "what's the best way to get things looking like they do in Conan and LOTR" and ran with that.  Your skill sets make me happy. 

Grand, I'll ignore it.  I'm not very good with magic.

Oh absolutely I hear what you're saying.  However: I note that you don't appear to be aiming for huge fest size.  Therefore, in the interest of encouraging heroic play (since the healing rules are quite cool and it'd be good for them to be used more) I recommend 4 hits base because Conan liked to get stuck in and it will have BIG effects on player psychology especially if you're expecting a "drift" from another system.  The lack of magical healing means people will still die but there's less scope for "accidentally" loccing your players with your monster crew.  Also, you have a 4 point healing roleplaying guide. 

I'm sending you a spreadsheet (check your pm's for details of how to receive) and I think you'll find my philosophy and yours on new characters mesh.  I _really_ like the idea that level 3 characters should be cool BUT not immeasurably and undefeatably cooler than starting characters.  I've taken your tier 3 class and your apprentice, journeyman, master system and done some stuff. 

e.g. 4 hits base, body dev 1 + body dev 2 + endurance 1 +2 let's you have as your Master skill "The Way of the Crashing Celestial Dragon" where you get crush (but only with a 2 h/w of 4 ft plus, (superior or MC)) and your body dev 3 and endurance 3.  That's a base 11 hits with fair regeneration.  However, The player can't take any more Master classes and c.f.

"The way of the Spinning Jade Monkey" pre-req (combined constitution PR? L1+2 I'd probably recommend Constitution = L1 PR then L2 = Poison Res. ) gives strikedown with a polearm of 5ft+ and Res. Dis. and L2 PR 

I think that and others would be fairly matched and worth aspiring to BUT aren't completely unbeatable by new players.

Sweet.  The economy's going to be the hardest part to get right.  By a long way.  You don't have enough sinks.  ;-)

Here's an idea, you can make the bushcraft more interesting by having the option of exploring outside the known world.

1. level 3 skills are intended to be very very good. I'm also a strong advocate of the school which says starting characters should be not far removed from long term characters - in fact this is one of the points in our vision. We might not agree on this

Nope, I'm completely happy with this.  The experience in game and lesser skills should offer character progression whilst the Master classes are pretty exciting.  Don't forget that if someone lapses their training then they could retrain in a different skill. 

Mmm... true, but you need to have tools and you'll like where I put it better.  ;-)

Because invisible ninjas in broad daylight are always broken, and ruin suspension of disbelief.  Sneaking should mostly be a hard skill (but see combined tracking stalking on spreadsheet) where cover of night gives a boost.

10 minute death count.  In a game where the standard is 2 minutes.  Plus skill learning is possible and easier than CP.  Trust me, it's a bit too good at the mo'. 

I like the name "Apothecary" don't you? 

How times change.  ;-)  I think it's important to have a statement because some people beleive 2/3 speed fighting is always right and proper and others that if you have a rapier you should be able to fight as such.  It's not my game it's your game so if you have a preferred style state it.  Save grief and hard feeling later.

It _is_ free to use and wear at the moment.  I'd also recommend nice pictures in your rule book (just drawings will do) of what you consider "armour" and "covered locations" trust me, a picture will help LOTS.

Currently at level 3, I effectively would have "Wood Walk" (assuming you're not going to be in the middle of a field, but, if I understand correctly, in the middle of some woods.)  I'm all for soft skills to boost hard skills, but they should be complimentary not exclusive.

Yes, I thought it might be.  That's why I have a funny looking tree for it.  ;-) 

*shrugs* You don't have to take me up on any point, but I love to see potential developed. 

We're not going to compromise the game just to get more people in but it does depend on how well it works with the plot delivery/rules mechanics we've got so we're going to aim for this figure and let it grow organically until it reaches a point that we think the game would be less successful if we took more bookings

The reason we'll keep it at 1 hits basic is that lower numbers = easier to count = easier to ref = less accidental cheating. I see your point but I think you can still get the heroic Conan damage taking - you just need to buy constitution (which seriously limits what else you can then do - giving us the character differentiation we wanted - the last thing I want is a big bunch of homogenous characters with little difference between them, in the same way that in CP once you get past a certain point, you have to take magic as there's nothing else to buy. This leads to a very high fantasy, magic heavy game which we're trying to avoid)

I'd like to see your spreadsheet - send it through and I'll go through it with the others. Avoid using the term "master" though...its the term we're using for people who've gone beyond expert to as far as you can take a skill (and the effects of that are firmly find out in play)

re your take on Master skills (way of the crashing dragon) - I'm interested in the combination possibilities so will discuss it with the others involved. I'm not certain its what we're aiming for, although there is the possibility of getting rid of skill groups entirely - we'll talk it through anyway.

re the economy - it IS a lot of work and we're only partway through it at the mo - more on that when we've got a bit further

Skills are intentionally designed so you can lapse your training and switch character focus

re stalking - we'll discuss it again and bear your points in mind

re 10 min death count - its not as good as you think. We recently trialled this at an event and still had 35% player deaths. Skill learning is possible but its a long term thing - plus the limits on how many skills you can take at this level restricts things somewhat..

Apothecary is a good name!

We will have a statement about fighting and about such things as drum rolling

We will have lots of nice pictures (incidentally if anyone is interested in producing artwork for this please drop me a line at mandalalrp@gmail.com)

thanks again

Ahh... with you.  Your p/t is for 50 odd so I got that wrong.  You're probably right about the lower hits although that does change the dynamic on what I sent you.  Through for instance should no longer be unlimited at higher levels, although that does make pistol crossbows truly, truly fearsome.  :-/  Still, body dev being cheap and buyable past character creation is a Good Thing (TM).  Perhaps _MC_ armour should resist bow fire?

The areas that needs the most work are thus going to be Artisan and general stuff (and considering interactions with evaluate which was erm... a bit rubbish, so I poked it a bit).

I just wanted to try and get "the way of the spinning jade monkey" into common parlance.  I rather like the idea of "warrior schools" who teach promising students their particular brand of 'Fu.  I also feel very strongly that "crush" "strikedown" "disarm" and "through" should not be on the same character.  I liked the idea of disarm but felt it should be broken into lesser disarm (for 1hw weapons) and greater disarm (at expert level) for 2 h/w (and polearms?)

Essentially I feel that if you had a fight between experts in 2h/w, polearm and sword and shield the outcome should be in doubt rather than favouring the sword and shield.  In fact, I was hoping to downgrade shield a lot, because I remember that place where you can go.  You, know, when you fight real slow.  ;-)

I've attempted to address the possibilities for traders in Artisan and general, it seems like a place you weren't sure about, so I thought I'd throw in something cool so that people other than fighters could froth and be happy.   The more I think about it, the more it seems like you _don't_ want money in your game.  Barter and trade sound more like the way forwards.  (of course, if your players want to switch the game to a monetary economy, let them.  But let them do the work of convincing other players that this "money" thing is worth something)

OK, with the addition of layers above "expert" then I'm a lot happier.

Yah, but currently it's broken and at the 100-300 player level... well, you have a fight and 50 players go down, say 5 have advanced constitution and you have 10 apothecaries arrive.  Assuming it takes say 30 seconds to apply a bandage to stop the bleeding (medicinal bandage should add +1 hit btw, sorry, I should have written that down) and move onto the next one then (allow a minute for a fight this size to definitely be over and the apothecaries to get in there) then you have 2 lots of 30 seconds left.  If your apothecaries move with perfect skill then 10 apothecaries can save 20 people.  Assuming that they _didn't_ preferentially avoid players with adv. const. then:

50 characters go down, 45 have 1 min on death count

Apothecaries save 20. 25 die. 

5 Characters with 10 min death count now have 8 minutes left and 10 apothecaries.  That's a 50% death count.  Note who lives.  A 5 minute death count with expert synergy is still a long time and still pretty good.

Skills aren't really cheap - you can develop them but they're slow to do so. I'm not sure at this point how much we want to release about timescales involved so I'll gloss over it for now. The point is you create your character at startup and can refine over time - rather than creating your character by playing the game if that makes sense.

game style is really low fantasy in my eyes - Conan/Gemmell rather than Elric of Melnibone with LOTR falling somewhere in the middle. Not as low as George RR Martin though. But it depends on the playerbase and what direction they take it.

re crafting - there's more detail to come on that so I'm going to hold off on doing much until we've got it all up.

With the gaps so far - it doesn't mean that we haven't thought about these areas in depth, it just means they're probably quite complicated and haven't pulled it all together yet.

Disarm, Through and Crush - whilst (deliberately) wellknown calls work slightly differently in the game as a whole. Disarm is essentially a basic skill which differentiates warriors from non warriors, and helps soften the hard/soft skill barrier. Ie you have John who has been LRPing for 20 years and is a bit of a ninja with a sword but in this game is playing a crafter who barely knows one end from the other. Ellen is playing a warrior but this is her first LRP game so whilst her character is skilled, she's a bit rubbish. As Ellen has bought the weapon use skill she can - after 10 seconds of combat - call disarm and nimbly flick John's sword from his hand. John has not bought the weapons use skill so must drop his sword. Through and Crush are set up to balance warriors with the idea that armour is free (as we didn't like the idea that you had to be skilled to strap a bit of metal to yourself) - a skilled warrior can deliberately strike to injure an opponent regardless of armour with Through, and Crush is really an advanced form of that - think of it as like Strike to Injure or Mighty Blow in Warhammer terms. Each requires 10 seconds of preamble and can be parried. So I'm happy with the idea that a warrior actually has some skills which are quite nice at higher levels (particularly as they are comparatively expensive for 3 calls per day)

Money will exist in the game but not in the quantities that it is there in CP and LT - its intended to be used for its early historical intentions - to pay mercenaries - but we'd like to encourage the idea of using barter goods instead as much as possible. We have thought a lot about artisans, traders and evaluate - we just haven't given you all the information to go on yet!

hold off on the healing critique until we've told you how it works - I will say that it should work out more lethal than LT/CP but not as lethal as you describe

Good good.

I think I follow you.  Not entirely sure.  I sent that spreadsheet (which looks much like work muahahaha), I'm sorry if I sound too critical, I think there's a lot of positive in there, for instance the power that you're entrusting players with is absolutely fantastic!  I'm just a bit worried that it's gone off the scale in places (stalking based on experience at CP, death counts based on PD experience).

Heheh.  From actual incidences of observed magic in book I'd say LOTR was actually lowest and GoT was pretty high (not Elric high) what with that army of undead wot?  But yes, I'm hoping that magic will be mysterious and magicy. 

Seems fair, I'm sure I've just sent you what you thought of already, it's all fairly obvious. 

Well so long as you've thought about it.  ;-)  Again, I'm only throwing stuff at the gaps that I'm fairly sure will work, something new and better could be good too.

Erm... I've just noticed you've got a "stun" call in there.  May I make a suggestion?  Go through the rules with your team and pick out each and every call that you've got in there.  Then define it for all instances in which you expect it to be used.  For instance, I broke disarm into "lesser" and "greater" because of the issues with 2 h/w and pole arms.  If you don't do this it _will_ come up in play and be a big pain in the arse, c.f. Fumble vs polearms at CP.  Also, remove reference to CP from the opening paragraph of the thing.  That way litigation lies.

Using armour is I suspect a little more complex than that, but this is fest larp not re-enactment so is an acceptable simplification.  Please god, don't do PAC and DAC or "reductive" armour.  It's more "realistic" but the extra complication in a fight isn't what you need.  (I also tried to address repair of armour with leather worker and blacksmith, I felt that you'd probably want non-combatant support staff who could also do useful things in downtime and whilst the times are complete rubbish, they're more fun.  You like fun, right?  ).  If I turned up in full gothic plate what's the IC advantage for me?  If you like the idea of uber clankies than how about:

A1 (leather. cuir bouille, padded jacks) =1/location covered (and what about hitting people where the armour doesn't cover?  Official sta