Another Update

The OSR seems to be losing no steam as a whole new wave of really stellar old school Dungeons and Dragons type games come out.  I have been playing and running OSE and its a refreshing blast.  I am excited to play Shadowdark soon, it looks really really good.  I have also downloaded the Grimwild book from DriveThruRPG so I can see how it might work with more narrative rules because I really love Scum and Villainy and Blades in the Dark.  If you notice something going on with all the linking you are right.  These are all great games you should check out if you like Beacon.  Its a great time to be into this hobby and there is really no shortage of good material out there.  

That's my cue to segue and say that I'm deciding to put Beacon on hold for an indefinite period.  I'm pretty proud of Beacon and may revisit it in the future to play with it a bit or steal ideas, but honestly I don't need to continue with pretending there will be updates, which have been pretty far between and unpublished anyway.

Even the name Beacon has been co-opted by some upstart young thugs fine people looking to build a new fantasy RPG system.  Good on them, its a great name and they are leaning into the aspirational aspect for a title which is also a theme in the game, and that's good design. I'm not taking the blog down or removing the roll20 character sheet for these hotdogs folks, but I am not going to muddy up the waters by posting any more helpful reminders to try my Beacon Classic.  Go check out Beacon TTRPG, it looks great.

I would still love to hear about it if anyone uses the Beacon rules to run a game, or if anyone out there is using the Roll20 character sheet. I love that sheet, it was a buttload of pain and fun making it.  It was also the biggest reason I wasn't pushing updates to the rules, because I was worried about changing the sheet on people mid-game.  I wish that there was a way to get sheet usage statistics on Roll20 to find these things out, but I also see how that could be a PITA for everyone too.  If you have landed here because of that sheet do check out the past posts to find out what Beacon is and how it came to be.  Also check out the blog roll to the right, some of these folks are still posting, and even the ones that aren't might have something interesting to you in their old archives.

So I might post here again at some point, I might not.  In the meanwhile we will play some games.  

An Update

hello world

I am still playing Beacon, I have a weekly game that's been running a number of years now and have had a chance to playtest things quite a bit.  It's not a proper playtest since I'm also trying to keep the players entertained and some rules I would like to change (and test), I have not since it would impact choices they have made.  Its been a great help running a long campaign and the rules are holding up mostly, some creaking as the levels approach double digits and also as the play shifts from delving to more heroic adventures.

I haven't posted much in the last few years but I'm still working things out and exploring the limits of d20 within my preferred styles of play.  I've also been playing and running other games, notably Old School Essentials and Blades in the Dark, both great games.

I think you can play Beacon as it is and it works for long term campaigns.  There is not a lot of support here for adventure material but you should be able to pull most D20 material into your game with a few tweaks.  I think you would be pretty safe with d20 materials for most characters up to 7-8th level but then I think the general power level of the game diverges from the 'baseline' d20s.  I think that's actually good for my personal requirements and I prefer Beacon advancement caps out at level 12. I'm more interested in focusing the game to that older 'OSR' level 1-10ish range than adding more 'oomph' to make Beacon cover those d20's later stages.  With that in mind, I still do need to beef up the rules to smooth out that progression curve and to provide some good spells and game features for the final levels of the game.  My eye now is on those 'domain level' rules, however like all the other changes I want try to thread a needle between detailed accounting and total abstraction.

There are a bunch of things I have changed since the last published update.  I think I will wait a bit before doing another update however, I'd like to finish out this current campaign and do some reflection.  I can say that I want to move the needles even more into the direction of  Old School play and do away with more fiddly mechanics, in particular how the movement/combat actions work and having so many subtypes of shield and armour.  I do want to continue to deflate the combat numbers, in this case on the AC side.  I think it would be much better overall to just have light/medium/heavy armour which would line up with leather/chain/plate but leave some space for custom and magic armors in the betweens.  That's an easy adjustment I think, although updating the roll20 sheets is its own concern.  I would like to know if anyone is using it so I don't disrupt their game(s).  I don't feel there is a lot of value in keeping the old version intact however.

I also want to work out a way to keep the current henchmen/hireling rules but not have it bog down play so much.  In my current game I have about half the players have a companion, and one often has a whole whack of hired men/trained animals.  I like this approach, however it really sidelines the player who only want to play their one PC.  Its a tricky issue because even if you sort out the impact of having some players with way more actions because of their NPC adjuncts, there is still a table focus issue to consider.  Players will want to leverage their many hands and sorting through that means other players do not have as much to do.  Also the problem is that simply so much time is taken up by players with lots of  character 'agents', even if they are doing simple tasks, that the turns and rounds get longer.  As the levels go up there seems to be more expectation of hiring large groups of guards or even small armies.  I want to encourage that but also keep it from impacting table time and stretching out encounters.  I know you can always do custom solutions for this based on your players but I would like to provide some mechanics mitigate or solve this issue and to make this an interesting part of the play. Ideally I would like to include mechanics that reward character choices for this kind of play without forcing it on other the players to stay invested or stretching the time required to manage it.

That's about it till next update. If you play Beacon and/or use the roll20 character sheet let me know, I'm pretty interested in anyone's experiences as I consider what to do to cap this game off.  Its been a really long process working on these rules and a lots changed in that time.  I'll keep plugin away but I'm also interested in other stuff.  There are a ton of great options for this kind of RPG these days but I still find myself coming back to the simplicity of Beacon and am happy to share my experiences with these rules.

Beacon is... a rules-lite fantasy game.

I prefer to spell this as "rules-lite" and not "rules-light" since using lite indicates this is a simpler variation of another object - in this case the standard d20 SRD.  Lite indicates something lacking a substance usually present like salt or fat, or in this case rules.  Rules-lite is tougher to define, it could mean that there are few rules, and some RPGs do go in that direction.  It can also mean that there are a few simple rules that can be applied in a common way across game concepts, and this is more the definition I have applied.  I use it also because Beacon is a derivation of Microlite so there is lineage implied in the term.  The Microlite system was an eye opener as it managed to boil down the basic d20 rules and present them in an incredibly compact way.  By adding skills to emulate most class based abilities a huge amount of class and level rules were condensed into a tiny rules space.  Much of the material I've added to Beacon is based on this one concept as I've tried to extrapolate the whole system out from that base.  

There are now currently a whole set of Microlite variations to emulate different styles of game from Microlite74 which emulates the original D&D, Microlite81 which mimics B/X and even M20 Fifth which tries to emulate 5th edition.  My first D&D was AD&D so that level of complexity is the pinned expectation I have for fantasy gaming.   So its not a surprise that the development of Beacon is my personal attempt to redevelop a level of rules similar in scope to first edition AD&D from the core Microlite rules, but not to mimic AD&D.  Like other Microlite variations I've tried to model a style of play by adding features or modifications to the core system while trying to keep that system consistent.  The main areas of customization in Beacon are:

• Finding formulas for game mechanics like penalties/bonuses, leveling costs and class abilities instead of relying on charts;
• Defining race and class abilities as Stat and Skill bonuses with fewer special rules;
• Simplifying base damage and damage bonuses to prevent monster hp inflation and long combats;
• dealing with spell effects vs spell casting costs in a point based system.

When 5th edition came out the bar moved slightly since it was a very good game and introduced many good ideas to streamline rules such as the Advantage mechanic.  Adopting the Advantage mechanic allowed for a lot of simplification for situational modifiers that were in the earlier rules.  Other popular modern d20 ideas like inspiration, talents and feats I didn't incorporate since in my opinion they didn't streamline the core rules but rather added additional tangential systems.

Not all the design has been towards simplified core mechanics, in some cases I have actually added complexity where I though it added value.  The removal of level based dice bonuses found in Microlite have been slowly phased out in favor of skill choices in order to add weight to the skill system.  You can see this in how physical skill now determines combat bonuses or in how some spells are more powerful if you have the appropriate skills.  Anytime I can add in interesting choices for player builds while keeping a simple rule I tried to do that.  There are also rules that were added that are more complex than their traditional equivalents, the initiative and morale systems are cases in point.  These systems I've made more complex than typical rules lite mechanics because I wanted to bring some additional tactical choices into the game for combat and also include a type of death spiral for NPC relationships.  Initial versions of Beacon opted for a stage or phase based approach to initiative while the current rules incorporate even more complexity by focusing on PC actions.

The other aspect of rules-lite is determining what you need the rules for.  Some RPG have rules for every situation that might come up, and others barely have more than a pass/fail rule.  There are some really great games available that have super streamlined rules that will let you quickly resolve anything that might come up in an RPG.  I really admire a lot of the rules-lite Old School games for their simplified and interesting take on the game but find that most of them leave out a lot of things I like to see in my games, particularly in the areas of level advancement and spells.  I tried to include rules that  codified aspects of the game so that players can make informed decisions or interesting choices.  I like to have players choose which skill to invest in based on how it will impact their melee combat bonus vs. how it will impact particular spells, or how many companions they can manage at one time.  That adds interest and customization without requiring a whole feat system.  Also I wanted to reinforce some types of game activity over others by including rules for those activities, so I added in rules for encumbrance, travel, exploration and learning spells.

But this leads into the next design statement:

Beacon is..  an Old School fantasy game.

But I will leave that for next time.

Beacon is... a d20 fantasy game.

Beacon was designed to be light and simple while still feeling like D&D and to remain essentially compatible with (in 2010) modern d20 materials.  There are lots of interesting fantasy games, that use other systems or even rebuild classic D&D.  Some use dice pools, point economies or player and GM playbooks.  Tempting as it can be to play with these however, the core design of Beacon is the d20 system.  

Using the standard D20 mechanics you resolve most challenges using a DC or difficulty class.  The DC is assigned by the game master is determined by how hard the described action is vs the method used to attempt it.  A DC of 5 is for simple things, 10 for normal risk, 15 for hard stuff and 20 for really challenging things.  You can even go higher; DCs like 25 or 30 should be used for truly heroic tasks. There are additional rules but unlike older versions of D&D, with their many tables and charts, d20 really does try to standardize challenge resolution on this simple mechanic.  Even combat uses armour class (AC) as a special version of DC with its associated combat modifiers.

The best reason to use d20 is the amount of material that is available for it.  With very little effort you can adjust materials on the fly between sources.  I do remember the days when the most interesting modules were written for fantasy systems MERP or Role Master and converting these on the fly to d20 took some effort.  Years later, when the d20 Open Game License, came out it seemed that this was going to become the standard for a vast library of sourcebooks and games.  Now there are always going to be published materials that need tweaking for your campaign, adjustments to monsters, treasure, spells, the desired tone etc., however I wanted people to be able to use as much of the existing d20 material in Beacon with as little work as possible.

After 12 years has this paid off?

Well yes and no.  Using a simple d20 system has been great for running games and for tweaking rules.  Its a great baseline.  As for using other material, its not come up as much as I expected and to be honest most of the material I personally use for games is scaled and compatible with the older pre-d20 rules and so needs a lot of adjustment anyway.  The d20 materials I have read don't fit the tone I like, although the power levels are closer to Beacon (up to the point where they aren't).

I have had a constant tug of war trying to find that balance to maintain compatibility between the low values often seen in old AD&D style games and the higher values seen in modern D&D.  My preference for campaign materials seems to land in the older material - mostly the pre-d20 or more modern OSR stuff, however I am first to admin that Beacon which has d20 in its core tracks much closer to d20 monster manuals than it does to the old school monster stats I enjoy.  I have a simple monster stat system in the rules, but you can still easily pull 5th edition monsters right into your Beacon game for use at their intended threat level, where say Labyrinth Lord monsters would generally be too low powered and take a bit of adjustment.  I have mostly relied on generating simplified Beacon monster stats based on creature HD; type x number, and then adding special abilities from the source material.

I have many times lamented this and thought about making changes to down-shift this towards the old materials, but it would come at the expense of this initial design statement.  Twelve years ago that seemed like crazy talk to throw away d20 sources, but today with so many niche d20 experiences its not as wild a prospect.  The market keeps changing however, especially with digital VTT products coming out.  To be useful Beacon needs to be usable and so maybe its not so bad a novice GM can drop in their favorite 5e dungeons and monsters while still benefiting from the other streamlined features in Beacon.  As for my preferences, I can always adjust my favorite adventures on the fly.

As I was writing this post, The Alexandrian posted a thing about the difference in skill resolution between different editions of D&D which is a pretty good read and very relevant to this topic.  Beacon ties skills to leveling and already bounds 20 and 1 rolls with a critical hits and fumbles but that bounded accuracy does not apply to rolls outside of combat.  Its possible to roll a natural 20 and succeed a non-combat challenge but roll a 19+3 and fail one.  He does have some good discussion in that article why the different versions feel so different power wise.

The next design choice I want to talk about is related to how these d20 core mechanics are leveraged.

Beacon is... a rules-lite fantasy game.

So that's next time.

Beacon is... 12 years old

Where does the time go?  It was September 2010 when I started posting about Beacon.  There have been big stops and starts in that time, but I have been pushing my thoughts for my fantasy heartbreaker RPG out onto these pages for quite some time.  

I'll be the first to admin that this blog is not a very good ambassador for fantasy role playing, or OSR games, or even for Beacon.  I post rarely and when I do its usually a rambling kind of post that references rules and obscure details.  The Beacon blog seems to be more of a navel gaze and not a really a repository of comprehensive ideas.  The purpose of this blog is to represent the game and document the design choices I make.  That said, the most useful thing a general audience will find on this site is the page where you can download the rules and maybe a notification of a new or upcoming update.  I did write a 'sticky' page to help players navigate character generation.  I should do more of that kind of thing.  I find that when I have time to work on the game its generally fixing rules that are not working and trying to do layout changes to the PDF or updates to the Roll20 character sheet.  That's important stuff certainly, but I think it may all be for nothing if I don't occasionally communicate what Beacon is about and why you might want to play it.  

So what the hell is Beacon anyway?

Beacon is my take on the Dungeons and Dragons game by way of D20, Microlite and OSR content.  

I realized I haven't come back to the Beacon mission statement in quite a while. Over two years ago I laid out a bunch of changes I wanted to make to the game, and I've made most of those changes.  Then I went on to make many more changes based on running the game over a longer period of time. Once that rabbit hole was opened I've dived right in and I have been updating and playtesting and re-updating the rules.   I've pushed past the fairly minor tweaks and polish and have been really making a lot of additional changes I didn't foresee.  Part of this is just catching up with ideas in gaming over the last 5-6 years, but there have been some bigger changes as well.  Playtesting has been a real boon and I'm lucky I have some players who are pushing the rules and making me think about the how and why of Beacon vs other systems and/or their expectations of how the rules should work, what works online and what suits the kind of games I like to run.  

I think that the game has been improved tremendously over the years, the last 3 years especially.  In my opinion it is just overall cleaner, simpler, and better designed for the kind of play I want to be doing.  But, as I've alluded to already, my thoughts lately are trying to sort out if its all just a stack of home rules or if Beacon is its own game and following an actual design. Certainly I have an internal idea - more of a feeling - of what rules I want in the game.  I've had many discussions with players on why a rule works a particular way in Beacon as opposed to other d20 systems.  I think I have a design, but I'm not sure I've communicated it out.  Also Beacon has some rules or systems that are clunky or that seem inelegant but have been kept for compatibility with other d20 games and I have done a lot of back and forth over if I should 'fix' these or leave them.  I've had some large back and forth swings on how to deal with some aspects of the game over the years.  For these situations sometimes I need to swoop out and look at the bigger picture of what the game is supposed to be doing.

So what is the mission statement - the design?  What separates Beacon from basic D20 (and the hundreds of other fantasy RPGs)?  

Next post I'll start with the first one:

Beacon is... a d20 fantasy game.  

Beacon 7.5

I've updated the current PDF of the Beacon rules, it's the 7.5 draft now.  This version of the rules lines up with the changes I made to the Roll20 character sheet in February.  As always I wanted to fix more things then I had time for and I had to weigh the need to have the new rules available against fixing unfinished items or formatting.  You will see some stuff in red that is under revision along side the stuff in purple which is highlighting new content or changes.  The Pdf isn't as pretty as I'd like, but its usable.

This version of Beacon has a lot of changes and includes new rules or tools that I've been using for some time in my playtesting.  This release is really the 'Skill' release and many changes involve the skill system.  During playtesting I noticed that the power creep was starting to become very noticeable around levels 6 and 7.  I tried to address this by halving the dice bonus from skills.  At the same time I was able to make skills more important in all aspects of the game.  In most cases I am trying to give players choices in how they can progress their character builds by choosing where to put their skill points.  I also had noticed a problem with the way spending coin to add experience points was causing some players to outpace others as well as generally making leveling up too rapid.  Changing the level requirements from instead of "XP plus treasure equals the level target" to "XP and treasure both equal the level target" allows for a lot more treasure in the game in general, and doing this means that I don't need to put any arbitrary limits on how much a player spends on their advancement.

Other important tweaks to the game were reworking the attack bonuses to utilize the physical skill, adding the rogue's ability to have a 'special' skill and changing the hunter environment bonus to apply to any non-combat skill checks instead of just survival rolls.  Any place I could take out a lookup table or special class rule related to a particular skill I tried to do that.  I did wind up making a new class of 'small' weapons which are the same as light weapons but have less encumbrance.  This change primarily serves the character sheet, but is necessary in the game because of the way weapons are abstracted.  I balanced this out somewhat by removing the special rules for two-handed heavy weapons and codifying how bonuses are applied to these (now three) categories of weapon.  Small weapons get no bonus for STR, light weapons get an attack bonus and heavy weapons get an attack and a damage bonus.  I do like having weapon damage being set instead of rolled but at the same time I've added back in some complexity like weapon damage types blunt, slashing and piercing.  Damage types are good fun in combat I think and give reasons for PCs to carry specific weapons again.  

I've removed the monster section for now, I plan on replacing it with more of a 'monster builder' section instead.  I still use the basic idea of 'everything based on hit dice' when running monsters, but I have found that having large monsters always using large dice for initiative does take away from combat.  I still rely heavily on number and type of HD for coming up with monster stats, but I've gravitated toward having monsters with multiple HD types per attack and special abilities which I want to reflect in the rules.

The direction of Beacon for a while has been to abstract many of the game processes while still retaining meaningful resource management to support the expedition style play I want to encourage.  This release finally has the table for making camp while on an expedition, and lifestyle chart for cost of living between adventures.    The goal of these changes was to make the fun bits more fun and the bookkeeping more streamlined.

Finally I am still working on fixing the spells, something that is taking longer than I ever imagined.  I like a lot of the newer spells I've put up which are more quirky and less generic than the original spells I brought over from the d20 SRD.  There are still a lot of spells that are not suited for point spend still, but that number is dropping.  Next release I hope to have most of the spells out of the red and adapted for microlite style magic.

Introducing the Skill Bonus

I wrote this post a while back but got caught up in other things and didn't post it.  Since this I've gone and made a bunch of changes to Beacon and the Roll20 sheet.  Consider this post #1 of the new changes for the next release*.

Skill Bonuses vs Skill Points

I've been doing lots of hemming and hawing over skill points and damage etc.  The basic Microlite mechanic is to add skill and your attribute bonus to your d20 roll and classes are defined by which skill they can use, and which ones they advance in.  Its a great mechanic and gets rid of so many special rules.  Coming up with  simple but robust skill advancement for longer campaigns is what started me writing Beacon.  However as I am playtesting higher level play I am starting to see some issues with Beacon and how it plays.

Playtesting is a big deal, especially when you start to see the trends to the way a game changes as players get more skills and abilities.  Elegant rules at low levels can start to really change as the players progress.

The problem I am seeing is I don't like seeing +10 bonuses to dice rolls before magic or other effects at mid level.  Mid level players getting that much of a dice bonus seems fun to them now, but sets of warning bells in my mind when I extrapolate that trend to the second half of the level ladder.  Given the current rules, its very likely players at the highest levels would be getting +15 or even +20 to their dice rolls at which point so many of the other rules become irrelevant or washed out by that one calculation.  Magic swords need to be +5 or more to make any noticeable difference at that level.  Since armour does not scale to match all those high numbers become wasted unless you start ramping up the opponents.  You can just keep scaling up the monsters, but then you have inflated the numbers to no purpose.

Also I don't like seeing higher damage bonuses flatten out all the differences between weapon types and attribute bonuses.  There is already a problem where clerics and magic users do such low damage in comparison to the martial classes that they cannot participate in combat.  This is by design when the certain classes are doing two or three times the baseline damage of others, but when it becomes 4 or 6 times greater, then its a problem.  The root issue is the core mechanic of adding skill number to the dice roll.  Having such a big component of the bonus come from skills flattens out the dice rolls and either washes out or causes inflation to everything else. 

I tooled around with making it harder to get skills, like one every couple levels or limiting how much a skill could be raised per level etc.  However this just makes it harder to level up, and less fun.  Skill is such a core differentiator to class in the system that it made progression more complex and harder to manage.  You really do need to give a new skill point each level and the classes getting extra additional skill at different levels helps balance and define their progression.  Also I found any time I limited total skill points it caused issues somewhere, either there was not enough of an effect or there was too much effect from the skill, in and I was fiddling around with each case.

I think I have the answer though.  Making the skill BONUS equal to half the skill number.  This is the same as how stats work where every second point gives a point (except skills have no negative mods).  It also has the effect of letting skills operate on two scales, the skill Bonus can be used for die rolls and the skill NUMBER can be used for other things.

This seems to me that it may resolve the issue and a downstream of this change is that I can simplify a lot of other calculates to use skills.  I can change base attack bonuses calculation from a table to use the physical skill bonus.  I can give fighters a damage bonus based on physical as well and also the sneak attack and hunter damage now will be seen to work in a similar manner.  Casters would use knowledge or commune BONUS instead of caster level which makes sense however the spell effects can still use the skill NUMBER.

 It also makes leveling up more interesting since you have to balance long term point gain vs immediate effects and I can also do away with the hard to track level caps on skills.

*Actually a Morale system would be the first change I made to the sheet and the rules, so it should be post #1.  Consider it Bonus Content.

Morale System

I think I have the basics for an pretty simple morale system for Beacon.  I like the idea of morale and especially the idea of  having to coax hired NPCs or companion animals to do dangerous things.  I'd really like to give more mechanical weight to charisma, and also more things or PCs to spend money on that have both narrative and game weight.  I was toying with different ideas but think I've settled on the simplest.  The base 'Morale' score for NPCs, henchmen, pets, etc. is 10 and can be modified plus/minus depending on game events and interactions.  When there is a situation that would call for a morale check then the GM just sets a DC for it and the player most involved makes a d20 roll just like any other check.  Send your war dog up against a bear might be a DC of 12, sending them to fight undead however might be a different story.  The higher their bonus and the more loyal they are, the more likely to pass that morale check.  And the other side as well.

SO pretty simple but what makes it work for me is the idea that this score is constantly tested and changes.  Certain situations should automatically modify morale, just like sanity in a Cthulhu game, so say every time the NPC fails a morale check they get -1 to morale.  If a party member dies the NPCs get -1 to morale from the shock.  Maybe its -2 if its a PC who dies, their confidence falters.  If they are mistreated or have to endure unpleasant treks or long boring waits, that's more -1s.  On the other side if the PCs treat them well, or they have a decisive victory, or if the PCs give them a share of loot then their morale would go up.  It would cap out at -10 (miserable) and +10 (fanatical) just to keep a lid on it, but the trend would be over time adventure situations should whittle away at morale and players will have to take remedial actions to woo back loyalty from long-term hirelings and henchmen.

Oh and I forgot, if an NPC misses 3 morale checks in a row they are done.  They leave, or run away with the players map, or something fun.  This is kind of like the 5th Edition death save except only on the failure end, one success will clear the tally but three strikes in a row and that NPC has had enough.

So now I need to make a table of morale changing events and put it into the rules in along with explanations for how it impacts hiring henchmen etc.  I already have a good idea how this would work with character expenses and have made a table for the lifestyle expenses PCs can choose from while in town.  Having PCs spend coin on keeping up a level of wealth will also sweeten the morale of their hirelings, the rich command more respect.  When PCs return to civilization they can choose how long they stay and what level or wealth they maintain, and this will impact their relations with NPCs as well as determine healing, access to training etc.  The morale modifier and Charisma bonus would be factored in to the starting morale of hirelings, everyone admires the rich man and wants to ride their coattails, but who wants to face danger for a slob in the gutter?

Living Expenses

When not exploring, characters will be in civilized or semi-civilized areas which will require daily expenses.  The lifestyle a PC choses will have an impact on how fast they can recover from their adventures, and also how the local NPCs will react to them.

Lifestyle	Cost/day	Description	Recovery	Social Modifier	Morale Modifier
Squalid	1 sp	Sleeping in stables.	Gain HP = level	Disadvantage	-2
Poor	5 sp	Cheap food, Shared common rooms and common houses	Gain 1/2 Hit Dice	Disadvantage	-1
Fair	10 sp	Good food and drink, private accommodation.	Gain all HP and 1 STAT point	None	0
Good	50 sp	Fine food and drink, clean private accommodation, access to facilities	Gain full HP, 1 STAT point, research and training allowed	Advantage	+1
Aristocrat	100 sp	Finest foods and drink, access to facilities, social opportunity, luxury accommodation	Gain full HP, 2 STAT, research and training.  Audience with notables.	Advantage	+2

I see this as an optional rule and it can be used when its useful and waved when its not interesting.  Maybe you only want to use it for hired hands and not for important NPCs like animal companions or apprentices.  Maybe you want to do the opposite and only track morale for important NPCs.  Or maybe use it for player characters who want to have reasons for interparty conflicts.  I am going to put the morale tracker on the Beacon character sheets primarily for when making more detailed NPCs, however I see no reason it couldn't be used for PCs as well as NPCs.  think it makes a good optional rule since some players might like to have a morale score as well to guide their roleplaying and others would just ignore it.  You could even have some players use it and others not use it in the same game, from a PC side it would just inform play, so the perfect optional rule.

Summer Update

I'm not positng much but I am running games and am still working on the 7.5 version of the Beacon rules and feel like I'm in the home stretch.  I've felt that before though and soon found out some big issue that needed to be sorted out.  So hopefully I'm in some kind of stretch anyway. The players in my weekly game are at level 7 and starting to use 4th level spells and also needing more complicated monsters and situations to keep things interesting.  The longer we play, the more the rules get tested so its been a much more productive process than I had in the past when I was running short one offs or just thinking about the game.

I'm mostly working on fixing the spells from levels 4-6, some of which I haven't touched since I originally put them in the book.  I did clean up the level 1-3 spells quite a bit, but the have not really worked over the higher level ones.  Some of these spells are not worth the casting cost, others are overpowered.   There are even references to systems and terms that don't exist in the game any longer.  I have decided that I want to do more to 'fix' or pin the spell effects and get rid of effects that get bigger based on caster level.  This is all to make it easier to understand the cost/value when you make the change from slot based to point based magic.  Slot based magic you can have powerful spells limited by per day use or just toss out some special effect as a novelty, but hit point based casting needs to be more balanced vs the cost in player survivability.   If you can cast fireball for 7 points a pop, it does not need to scale with your level, the scaling comes with the additional hit points you get.

The rate of character advancement seems very on point to me and the characters in the weekly game have gone from level 1 to level 7 in about a year of playing, although I am starting to see some issues with the amount of treasure they are accumulating and how much they can spend on equipment and leveling up.  I really need to add more big ticket items to the game since once you have plate mail or a couple hundred gold for transcribing spells there is little else to spend on except leveling up.  Beacon XP requirements to level are pretty simple line plots compared to the class based tables of BX/OSE or the sliding tiers of 5th edition.

My original thought on was two fold; to keep the formula dead simple so you always knew what was needed for the next level, and every level should take a little bit longer to get to than the last one.  I think that gives things a certain gravity and lets players get used to each step up in the game.  I am not sure the effort should be doubling,  but certainly a few more adventures than the last time.  I don't think this is happening even factoring in each level is 1000XP more than the last, its a pretty shallow rise.  Also it seems that by spending treasure and carrying over treasure from the last level, players are leveling up at a constant pace, or even having the level up rate accelerate as they run out of things to spend silver on.  

I've also noticed that I have to be very careful about how much treasure I am giving out even though the amount is already very low compared to most D20 fantasy campaigns.  As an example, in an adventure that took three sessions, the party rescued a bunch of dwarves and were rewarded 10,000sp (split 6 ways) by the King, which would be a laughable amount of treasure in 5th edition or even OSE, even accounting for the comparatively higher value of silver and gold in Beacon.  It would be nice to have some more things to buy and mechanisms to handle players with more inspiring amounts of treasure without breaking the game economy.

One thought on this was instead of spending silver to buy XP, I could separate the level experience point and silver piece requirements so that players would need to have the required 1000XP/level to advance and also spend silver equal to 1000 x their current level.  This would would increase the leveling curve from a 1/2/3/4... to a 2/4/6/8... and it would also make sure players couldn't just buy a level with silver they had lying around.  I like the idea and especially having the PC collect enough coin to level up making it an even bigger deal.   Right now PCs will toss a few coins at their XP like an investment account, or use them to top up after an adventure.  If they had to save up the cash and then drop it all on their next level, then its more memorable.   Narratively it is as if the PC was training and carousing, researching and otherwise spending money on improving their adventuring life.  I also think that having it split this way it would let GMs have two levers to control the leveling speed instead of just one.  You can adjust treasure and encounters to suit the pace you want to keep.

Other than this I am still tinkering with the rogue sneak attacks and trying to sort out how to make combat have interesting choices while streaming the crap out of it where I can.  I don't think anyone is really missing the rolls for damage and the Cinematic Advantage works really well.  I would like to lean into the initiative system so that Rogues and Hunters leverage a maneuver roll for their special attacks.  I like the idea of Rogues using a d6 for sneak attack and having a one round cool down, the choice here when to use this and when to try for Cinematic Advantage seems interesting to me and, more balanced than either making them roll to hide or giving them additional damage every round.  I would like to give the Hunter an option to roll a d10 maneuver which would let them choose between aiming (for automatic advantage), or doing a double shot which would give them double the weapon damage (and use up ammo twice as fast).

I'll try to get all this in to a usable state soon and push out the update this fall.  I did notice that the 2020 Microlite omnibus still has the version 6 rules for Beacon which seem so clunky now compared to what's been changed this last year and a half.  It would be good to get to a point where I would be happy to get them to go with the newer one.

Quick update for May

This is just a short update as I've been pretty bad at keeping the blog updated.  I'm still playtesting, running a weekly and a bi-weekly game, and that is going very well.  Players are creeping up to level 6 in the longest running game and I think that the advancement/experience rate is holding up pretty well.  Having the players run through levels 1-6 in about a year seems like a good pace and it gives time for all of us to feel out each new rise in capability.

The Communication skill is being re-labeled as Communion.  I think that this is a broader term and so it is more suitable as a skill.  Communication already was prime skill for clerics and enchanters and doing the work for things like leadership tasks, praying, noticing details etc. and Communion fits that role a lot better.  So now you are meditating with a magic orb? Communion check.  Trying to keep an angry mob calm - Communion check.  The leopard king is raving and you need to figure out what he wants?  Communion check.  All that and the short form COMM doesn't change, so I consider that a nice bonus.

I'm still tweaking combat actions, especially how maneuvering can give advantage.  For a long while players were taking a lot of time to roll both an attack and a maneuver for every round of combat in order to maximize their attack dice, and this was starting to bog down the game.  I think I cracked it when I heard about Cinematic Advantage which I thought I was doing, but wasn't exactly.  I had players making rolls to maneuver around and use the environment to get advantage yes, but there was no cost to it and so they were spending too much time doing it and it was bogging things down.  Cinematic Advantage is clever because if you fail you get disadvantage, and that's the part I was missing.  My more tactically minded players were ALWAYS trying to get advantage since there was no risk.  This was bogging things down as some players were making 3-4 rolls every round trying to get that extra dice and monopolizing the combats.  When they failed they just got a regular action.  With that risk of disadvantage in place now they seem to be more cautious and use that mechanic less often.  It also immediately made for more exciting fights as players got into trouble more often when they tried to be fancy and instead found themselves down on one knee or surrounded by opponents. 

Last thing I want to mention is adding rituals for Druids.  Since Druids came back into the Divine Magic fold I've been trying to rework their spell list and also sort out how they should manage animal companions which I decided they should get at level 3.  I've decided to make some rituals for them, similar to the cleric rituals.  Level 2 ritual is summon animal companion and the Druid has to go vision quest for while in the wilderness and then gets to roll for a bunny or an ostrich or whatever animal choses them.  Real high rolls and they could get a magic creature or an elemental maybe.  None of this spirit horse comes back from the dead, fits in your pocket crap from 5th edition either, these guys need food and places to sleep and die if they are killed.  Also if you treat them poorly or as cannon fodder then the next vision quest is going to go sour.  I highly recommend tossing karma into that ritual.

Roll20 Sheet updated

The new version of the Roll20 character sheet is up, I pushed the code to github and thought it might take a couple weeks but they pushed it right away and so I haven't had a lot of time to write up a good blog post on the subject.  My idea to publish something on the Beacon Blog weekly is not going to happen and although I am hoping to meet a monthly schedule, honestly I'm pretty happy with the pace of the playtesting and the recent changes to the sheet.  No reason to complain about that.

The new sheet has a bunch of changes.  It looks prettier with a less crowded layout and more colour.  I incorporated the Beacon logo colours into the page headers and the repeating list controls.  I cleaned up the fonts, added a new Notes tab and moved spellboox to the end of the sheet. I put in a minimum and maximum width for the sheet so it doesn't compress or expand and throw off the labeling. 

I added in a lot more fields for notes. I found personally that one or two large text boxes on a roll20 sheet does not work like a paper sheet where you can write little notes everywhere.  Having more smaller boxes lets you organize better and keep smaller bits of info easier to read.  I also put in some boxes for tracking conditions like a sickness or if your character is encumbered.

Aside from those cosmetic type changes I fixed an issue where chainmail was not the right AC and where wearing heavy armour would remove dexterity penalties and not just dexterity bonuses.  I also fixed some of the weapon damage calculations and separated out attack bonuses and damage bonuses so you could model a spear that gives damage bonus but actually have an attack penalty.  This makes customizing weapons much more flexible.  I moved a lot of the weapons and armour detail into expandable sections that players can hide away most of the time, and I added note fields.  I also fixed the maximum range calculations on ranged weapons so they display now.  I also added in a repeating section for companions and henchmen where players can note many common attributes for a hired hand or their apprentice or animal companion.  I also rebranded/recalculated the coin totals to be in silver as well as companion wages.  Beacon is a Silver standard game so that fits better with the theme and reminds everyone to scale down appropriately.

The biggest change was adding encumbrance/inventory system.  The encumbrance system was hard to sort out because it has to be both simple and flexible but also contain a good amount of automation or it will never get used.  The last version of the sheet had a simple spot for players to keep track of their carried load and did the strength calculation for them.  This NEVER got used.  Players just won't use a system that requires even this level of manual bookkeeping and I get that.  Either its just not their thing or they do like to do it but get caught up in something else and then the tally gets messed up over time anyway.  I decided what I would try was to do as much as possible in the sheet, but not sweat the small stuff which resulted in a hybrid system where I automated as much as I could but added in namable 'container' items with a load value that would store all the odds and ends.

What that resulted in was four interworking systems to track encumbrance: consumables, combat, coins and item/containers. Encumbrance for weapons and armour is calculated from equipped types, as are the most common consumables like rations and torches, tracking coin weights was already implemented, and finally these large items/containers would manage everything else.  My view of this is that the more opt-in you automate the more likely the system will get used so having players just focused on keeping track of large items and packs and sacks in a little widget was the perfect level of interaction.  You can always ignore the whole encumbrance system but I'm finding more and more that it powers that exploration vibe I like. 

The weapons and armour opt-in to the encumbrance system by default when you add the item row and you can uncheck them if you need to drop them.  Armour has different encumbrance if its work vs carried and the sheet can track that.  You can add as many items and containers as you like and they have both inventory and note text boxes as well as a checkbox if you decide to drop one somewhere.  The rows of small item trackers have a location field so you can list what container they are in etc.  All in all I think it adds a lot to the game having this in the sheet.

I'm pretty excited to see how this will work in game, it seems like the right handshake between automation and player participation in the system.  Its also a lot prettier than it was before.

Updates for the Character Sheet

I've been thinking of some updates to the Roll20 character sheet and finally got my butt in gear to make the changes. A big part of this Beacon renaissance I've embarked upon is to make Beacon very friendly for online play over Roll20 (for now) and I want to leverage the online sheets for tracking anything a player might want to track for their character.  The new character sheets have been a great facilitator to play so far and so I'm trying to build on that success.  I spend some time cleaning things up and refactoring some of the code from the last couple updates. I made the labels bigger in general and tried to clean up any bugs.  I fixed an issue with level 5 spells not expanding properly and also updated the AC bonus on chainmail.  I did update the page section headers to make them more colourful as well as apply a similar colour scheme to the repeating item buttons.

One bigger addition was to add was a section for companions, be they hired goons, apprentices or animal companions.  Players are using companions a lot and also there is some work I want to do to beef up animal companions for Druids so I like having this on the online sheet and not on a notepad or google docs somewhere. 

I wanted to make it simple and leverage the spellbook idea of tucking away the details when not needed. I inherited some pretty good examples for this code from the original sheet designers so it was pretty simple to add it in.  I originally tried to fit this onto the Inventory page but after seeing how busy that section was getting I added it to the Combat tab.  Hopefully there is enough meat in this section to handle anything a player might want to track about a hireling or their pet owlbear.

Now players have a handy list of their companions and can track their HP and check the box off when they get killed by a norker right on the sheet, but if you click the notes button there is plenty of room for all sorts of inventory and comments.  It will even track how much you owe them.

While doing this I liked having two smaller text boxes instead of the one large textbox the spell section used, so I also updated the spellbook section to split descriptions and notes into two text boxes.

The next change was similar and revolves around the ongoing war I have with encumbrance. I also wanted to automatically calculate encumbrance to make it easier for players to manage, but not to the point of getting down to item weights etc.  I can't see tracking statistics of  every item on the sheet like the 5e sheet does, and I also didn't want to have to have players add the weight of every item by hand because they would never do it.  They didn't even always do the estimated total weight carried in the rules very often.  I settled on a meet in the middle approach.  I want to try using a weight input box on various containers and large items and calculate the totals on that instead.  I figure a player can say I put x in a sack and it weighs 2 or this backpack carries 5 weight.  I also wanted to give the ability to drop things so that when player run or loose something it can stay on the sheet but not be totaled into the encumbrance.

In order to do this I had to add in containers in the inventory section that could be named and have toggles like armour does.  This would let us easily track if they were being carried or not so I could calculate carried encumbrance.  These containers, like the companions tuck away on the sheet so you don't have to deal with a wall of text.  I also added in the weight of coins and the weights of common consumables like rations.  I think this will enable some easy and fun gameplay around dropping off caches of items while exploring or modeling how a sack of loot could be dropped in a chase scenario.

For backwards compatibility I had to leave the old inventory sections at the bottom.  I would hate to roll out an updated sheet and have Beacon players in the wild loose their items!  These sections are at the bottom of the sheet and don't really take up much room though.  I'm still testing these changes but I think its pretty good chance that this will be pushed up soon.

Happy Beaconing.

2021 resolutions

Last year I resolved to take Beacon out and polish it up a bit.  I think I managed to do that and I'm pretty happy with what I managed to get done.  Initially I was hoping to fix some outstanding things and build the game out a bit for online play.  Over the year I ran two playtesting groups through numerous wilderness and dungeon crawls taking them from level 1 up to around level 4.  I took some notes and get player feedback on what they did and didn't like.  I wound up making a lot more changes than I expected but I think that these changes were pretty good and took the game up a notch.  With the direction I got from this experiment I have a better idea of what works and what does not and for 2021 I want to double down on this direction and really polish the game up.  I'm still running games weekly and I even added a new biweekly group for a short term playtest and I'm hoping to get even more feedback.

There are still a lot of things to do and the main groups are now coming into the middle levels 5-8 which will expose more issues and illuminate more interesting designs to keep play fast and fun.  I got pretty busy at the tail end of 2020 and wasn't able to keep the blog up to date or push out many rules updates in the last couple months.  I do want to keep track of how the design has evolved, so here is a brief synopsis of the some of the things I figured out from the 2020 playtesting:

Character death and HP economy:

There were some character deaths but not a large number.  Initially there was a problem where using STR points to soak damage and low level players had way too much tanking ability - even more than 5e.  This skewed the game difficulty way down.  This was solved by taking out that option and adding condition penalties for loosing too many STR points in one shot.  PCs still have a bigger life buffer than in systems like OSE or Labyrinth Lord but its now more comparable with 5th edition if you consider that systems taking HD and the death saves.  Moving caster emergency spending away from STR and into their primary Stat also cleaned that up a bit.  The feedback I got on this topic was that players liked the way STR damage became the resource governing how long they could continue exploring.

Spell casting:

Players most always don't like the HP spend to cast spells even when its pointed out that Beacon casters get more HP to start and spell use is more available at lower levels than in most OSR systems (not even going to argue about 5th edition's overpowered cantrips).  One of the big positive changes to spells was adding way more skill influence to spell effects and beefing up many spells that work under a Vancian magic system but not when using spell points.  I also removed HP loss when a spell fails (except for fumbles) which I think helped balance things a lot more.  Players requested I lower the cost of transcribing spells from 50gp to 10gp and that seems to have been good move, incentivizing that activity.  Spell casters generally seem to play very conservative on casting and I do want to keep that feeling of magic being risky, although I also want them to take on the additional risk when its warranted.   I believe originally there was a big double dip effect where casters would feel it too risky to burn STR points for emergency spell casting but changing this to use the casters primary Stat I think solves this problem.  Hopefully this bears out, but the players really haven't used this option yet, possibly since so few are playing spell casters.  Aside from this I'm interested in watching and fixing the middle level game for spell casters.  I have a number of players playing clerics but I think I need more play testing of spell casters, especially at these higher levels.  

Encumbrance:

This is never popular but having players truck 3 suits of armor, 5 swords, 30 days of rations and 15 flasks of oil into the field really does make the game suffer.   In exploration games you need to have resource management to force players to problem solve, take risks and interact with the environment.  I put in a simple tally system to track items and it was not popular even with players who agreed it was desirable.  I think some players are coming around but I need to fine tune this, likely by increasing the base carry amount slightly and adding better tools in the character sheet.  I want to expand the inventory page so that players can label and equip containers and note the weight of items in the containers.  I don't want to totally automate it because it would be near impossible, but I can facilitate it better.

Hirelings, pets and companions:

Some of the players really jumped on this and it did make the game interesting.  The purpose of this is to beef up parties, drain away some coin and to provide interesting logistics.  However players were really leveraging this, some having whole packs of war dogs or hiring 3-4 body guards.  I don't want to discourage this but I did see that limiting it by cost alone wasn't going to work.  I raised prices on hirelings and especially skilled fighters.  I've also decided to link the number of companions a PC can manage to the PCs communication skill.  This I think is a great idea since it beefs up the skill, making it much more desirable, as well as shift the advantage of having larger retune to Clerics, Druids and Enchanters.  Shifting the combat benefits of companions to these classes is good I think.  I can even see developing some spells that might multiply those benefits.   I also saw a lack of support for managing pets and hirelings in the online character sheet and want to add a section to the inventory page for companions and pets.

Using modules and adventures:

Note to my play-testers: here be spoilers.

Its no surprise that found a number of really good resources and adventures in the OSR community.  You certainly could run Beacon in a save the world campaign or in a court intrigue setting, but really its built for gritty fantasy, treasure hunting and exploration type games.  I found it really easy to translate most OSR adventures to Beacon either by just matching up simple monster stats in Beacon or by converting the monsters into ascending AC and beacon HD based initiative and damage on the fly.  I do think that the power level of monsters in Beacon should be closer to 5e than OSE/Labyrinth Lord stats as the players have generally had too easy a time on most monsters.  My favorite resources for Beacon adventuring would have to be the stuff by Michael Prescott, which I find super well done and evocative.  The quality of the stuff he's putting out is humbling.  However for a more complete toolkit I have been using Greg Gillespie's Barrowmaze and Forbidden Caverns of Archaia.  I bought the Labyrinth Lord versions of these books as PDF and adjust the monster stat blocks on the fly, but I think that the 5th edition versions of the books may be more suitable to run Beacon games out of the box.  Running these modules had a lot of influence on my standardizing Beacon travel and rest systems around a 4 hour watch as well as how I do random encounters.  They are really really great resources.

How to Play - Create a character

Creating a character in Beacon is a quick process whether you use the Roll20 character sheet or use paper sheets for tabletop games.  The basics are pretty simple and the same for both online and at table.  The online sheet will summarize many of the starting skills and bonuses for the different races and classes you can choose from, but the character creation section in the rulebook is still essential as it contains more this information in detail and also has some helpful tables for reference.  It also contains all the items and equipment.

Creating a Character:

First roll for your character's core abilities/statistics.

• Roll and total 3 six sided dice to determine your character's Strength (STR)
• Strength is important as it effects how much damage you can withstand and gives bonuses for melee combat.
• Roll and total 3 six sided dice to determine your character's Dexterity (DEX)
• Dexterity is important as it can make you harder to hit and gives bonuses for missile attacks and challenges requiring accuracy.
• Roll and total 3 six sided dice to determine your character's Mind (MIND)
• Mind is important as it is the gives bonuses for arcane magic and intellectual challenges.
• Roll and total 3 six sided dice to determine your character's Charisma (CHA)
• Charisma is important as it gives bonuses for divine magic and personality challenges.

Next based on your rolls, examine the class and race modifiers and determine what kind of class and character race you might want to play.  

Its helpful to get an idea of a class and then choose a race that will compliment that class by adding additional points to your starting abilities and skills.  

• Fighters do well with high STR as they will be able to take and deal more damage.
• Rogues do well with good DEX score as it is compliments their combat ability and is useful for many skill challenges.
• Hunters do well with high DEX as it compliments their special combat abilities.
• Mages and Enchanters do well with a good MIND skill.
• Clerics and Druids do well with higher CHA.

Skills represent the learning and training your character has, your starting skills come from your character race and the class you choose but you will also get more skills every level.  Skills are used to modify your rolls in challenges and also can be requirements for certain actions  The skills are:

• Physical
• Physical skill helps with physical challenges like jumping or climbing.  This skill also determined if you can use heavier weapons and armours.  Good for fighters, clerics and hunters.
• Subterfuge
• Subterfuge skill helps with being sneaky, tricky and things like hiding.  Rogues and other sneaky people.
• Knowledge
• Knowledge skill helps with research, lore, and similar challenges.  It's also very useful for reading scrolls and impacts many spells.  Important for mages and enchanters but also good for rogues.
• Communication
• Communication skill helps with understanding or persuading challenges.  This skill impacts managing your hirelings or companions.  Clerics and druids leverage this but it is helpful for others too.
• Survival
• Survival skills are things like tracking, finding resources etc.  The hunter, druid and the rogue benefit most from this skill.
• Crafting
• Crafting skills are used to assess, repair or build things.  Higher crafting allows for repairing heavier armour and weapons.  Fighters, mages and rogues will find this useful.

You can also just choose your character race and class based on what you want to play instead of looking for the most optimal choices.  Beacon is designed to be focused on player actions and character progression, and in the longer term the skills you choose and the class benefits will outweigh the initial character bonuses.  Also it can be fun to play a clumsy but clever rogue or a un-personable druid with great physical strength.  Your character will be your in game persona so think about more than just how many points of damage you can do and choose something you will enjoy playing.

Your starting hit points will be the maximum hit die for your character race.  Elves and Halflings start with 6 hp, Humans and Dwarves 8hp, and Beastmen start with 10hp.  Remember fighters get a bonus of 1hp per level.

Once you have chosen a race and class apply the appropriate bonuses and starting skills to your character sheet.  The Roll 20 sheet will calculate many of the class and level bonuses for you, otherwise figure out your starting to hit and damage bonuses etc.

Lastly you need to roll your starting money so you can buy equipment.  Roll 2 six sided dice and that is how many gold coins you start with.   1 gold coin is worth 10 silver pennies and most common goods are priced in silver at the shops.

The most important purchases will be weapons, armour and a little food.  If your using the online sheet your armour class, weapon statistics etc. will be calculated for you as you add them.  Otherwise update your character sheet with your armour class and the weapon information from the rule book.  Don't forget to calculate you encumbrance based on how much you are carrying.

The roll20 character sheet has two modes, play mode and update mode.  The update mode is where you will set your skills and character base stats, choose you race and class and set your hit points.  While play mode is where you will track your current status, your experience points, log weapons and armour and where you will keep your inventory.

update mode

play mode (tabbed)

Creating higher level characters:

To start with a higher level character you do the above as well as add an additional skill point for each level as well as any skills for that class at the desired level.  E.g. a third level fighter would get two skill points to add as they wish as well as 1 additional Physical. 

Roll your race specific hit die (e.g. D6, D8) for each level and add this to your HP total.  Remember again fighters get a bonus of 1hp per level.

Roll 1d6 of additional starting gold coins per level.

Version 7.4

I just pushed up version 7.4 of the Beacon rules.  A lot of changes to the layout this time.  Druids are divine again.  I'll post more on the specific changes soon as I think there are some interesting design choices in this one.  Items in RED text are suspect and the stuff in PURPLE is the new bits.

Grab it here.

November update

Still running twice weekly games and having a good time.  Roll20 is working well for this kind of campaign and the sheets are working as is keeping various maps in play for overland travel, dungeon exploration and managing handouts.

In the playtest some players are starting to hit level 4 as they explore and fight their way across the wilds.  I think that the rate of advancement is about perfect, combats are averaging about 3-4 encounters and around 250-300XP per six player session and they are spending a good amount of treasure to top up to next level when they return to town.  It will be interesting to see how this shapes up as they hit the mid levels 5-7 and see if it still seems to track.  

The overland map is expanding outward as they explore and looks like this now:

The northern wilds

Using the VTT features in roll20 is great although I wish I could use a tablet or something to do the live drawing part since using a mouse with their tools is very obtuse.  The players are able to add annotations to the maps and I am using copy/paste to lay out the terrain icons which works well.  In Roll20 the DM needs to manage the map I think although I would love if the players did take on more mapping and notetaking.

I'm currently working on the 7.4 rule update which is a bunch of minor tweaks and fixes more than any big changes.  Still slowly updating the spell descriptions to make them more skill facing and still working on more challenging monsters.  One player bought a bunch of war dogs and we quickly realized that adding 2HD for trained animals was too much, so that buff got scaled back to 1HD.

I'm tightening up the language around combat round actions a bit, each round you get an attack action and a maneuver or two maneuvers.  

Attack actions are: 

• weapon attacks;
• aiming;
• casting spells;
• defense.  

I specifically listed Aim as an attack action since PCs with multiple attacks could then use an attack to take aim if they wanted.  I also called out the Defense action here which makes it more clear how that works to provide AC bonus.   

Maneuver actions are: 

• movement of various kinds;
• manipulating items;
• swapping gear;
• assist;
• or other miscellaneous actions.  

The assist action is new here and I see this as a replacement for things like flanking or other ways to give another player advantage and still leverage the initiative system.  The way announcing actions and movement happens it is too hard for players to rely on combat positions for bonuses so having this action will mitigate that I hope.  It also lets other players set up surprise attacks for rogues which would let them act sooner in the round than if they had to set themselves up.  These are not really changes so much as clarifications to existing mechanics and hopefully its all a lot more clear for those reading the rules now.

I also formalized overland travel and rest around the 4 hour "watch" period, generally rolling for an encounter and giving a travel description for each 4 hour period.  I standardized the journey encounter rolls to a d6 where 1 is an encounter on the relevant table and 6 is a 'character moment' where a PC will give some information about themselves either in a story or in interaction.  I like that idea since it gives some sense of time and getting to know one another on overland treks.  Players were kind of hesitant at first but since they know its coming up they are starting to warm to the idea and prepare things for it.  I like it a lot, especially since its an exploration game and I am discouraging long backstories at character creation.  I also added a petite rest because I noticed when they are resting players fall into the idea of first and second watch pretty quickly but it was a bit hard on PCs who only had minor wounds as they usually got tapped to keep watch.  I decided to give PCs who only rest for 4 hours a small HP recovery equal to their level.  I also want to make sure that PCs who didn't get at least 4 hours rest in a day would have disadvantage until they did.

No firm date on when I push this latest update out, but it will be soon.

Big Scary Monsters

Still running playtests and getting a lot of good feedback from the players.  The fixed weapon damage seems to be going well although I have toyed with having monsters roll damage vs having them do half HD damage on regular hits and full damage on critical hits.  Having the monsters do fixed damage seems to take away some of the excitement but that might be my baggage talking.  When a HD12 skeleton hits with 6 or 12 point of damage every time it really changes the tone of the encounter.

I have been thinking about monsters in general.  A problem in Beacon (and in d20 systems generally) is that big bad monsters are usually not as effective as bunches of smaller monsters.  Players will quickly gang up on a big monster and quickly chip it down with their attacks or lock it up so it can’t attack.  TO deal with this for your big nasty monsters you either have to make them so powerful that if they connect they wreck the PCs, or you have to make them so hard to kill they become a slog.  This isn’t ideal from a narrative perspective.  I've had multiple instances already where the party will take out a Orge or an Ettin with minimal fuss but be totally overwhelmed by 3-4 small creatures with high AC.

For a while now I have used the monster HD for their initiative and one the surface it seems like a good idea, bigger monsters are usually slower and it fits well in many cases.  One place it doesn’t fit is when you want a powerful monster to be fast.  You could make it have a small HD type but with lots of dice, like 5d4.  You could also just override the HD for initiative for that particular monster.  Both those ideas would work I think, but I think there’s another way to do this that might take care of the other problem of players dogpiling your set piece monster.

Why not have monsters with multiple HD?  The idea comes from this post by AngryGM which posits making big monsters with multiple stat blocks so they function more like a group of creatures.  It’s a pretty interesting idea and honestly we were already giving monsters multiple attacks in a round so giving them additional HD associated to that doesn’t seem out of line.  This would also be useful for initiative since you could have a monster with a fast and a slow attack.

You can do this two ways; either have a monster with two HD types use both at the same time, e.g. a creature with a body and a tail attacking each round, or you can have the monster evolve/devolve so that it uses up an initial HD first and when this is gone the second HD kicks in.  The idea of having a big nasty monster with multiple ‘parts’ that can attack and be targeted independently seems to solve a lot of problems.  First it’s tactically interesting if you have a dragon with a head and a tail and claws and the Wizard immobilizes the tail with a web.  Also if the monster has sequential HD and two HP pools you can have it start out quick with small HD initiative then once that pool is gone it becomes slower with larger HD giving bigger damage and slower initiative.  Or reverse that and that a ponderous monster become quicker and more desperate when it’s D12 pool is gone and now it’s rolling D4s.  You can even do the 'Hydra' idea where you lop off a head and the monster grows new ones which increase in HD each turn.  This whole component monster concept bakes in some flavour as well which is very nice.

You might say why even tie HD to so many monster mechanics if your going to do something like this?
Well, the idea of basing all the mechanics off HD still simplifies a lot of things and for most monsters it works well.  All we are doing here is breaking a mighty monster into easily manageable smaller parts.  In fact the rules say monsters shouldn’t just be stat blocks and should be unique monster-y things and so mashing some simple monsters together into a big monster seems to fit that design philosophy.

I think I'm going to winnow down the Beacon monster list and remove the larger and more complex monsters, and putting in  a few examples of these complex monsters instead. Maybe I'll add a short section on designing more interesting larger monsters along with that.  I've also decided to pare down the sections on Poison and Disease and just have a few examples instead.  As with the monsters its better to have an idea of how it could work and how to customize it for your adventure than to have a large list of easily derived items.

Changes to the Rogue and to Spells

Updated beacon rules posted.  This is version 7.3 and has a bunch of changes.

Quick summary of some changes:

• Add reactions,
• Static weapon damage,
• Dwarves get an initiative penalty, 
• Halflings can't use heavy weapons,
• Added some weapon and armour limits directly to the classes,

OK that last one needs some explanation.  Ten years ago I thought it was cool to allow all classes to use all kinds of armour and weapons and then build in complex feedback systems to balance the classes so you didn't have plate mail enchanters running around waving dual great axes.  So one hand gives and the other takes it away.  Now I think its way better to just limit the classes. Its a lite rules game, so there's no time for this kind of backroom shenanigans.  This stuff should be as clear and simple as possible.  So going forward you will see even more of a shift away from some of the old mechanics to use more streamlined stuff.  Keep this in mind when I redo movement and range in the future.  I'll probably do a whole post on how I think its time to relax some of the design that is there just for compatibility with 'standard' D20 material.  There's just so much out there now its not really needed anymore.  

• Merged the Rogue and the Non-class class,

One of my players in the play-test said, "Rogues should have the most skills".  I thought about that and I decided that they were probably right.  Instead of having the unclassed character option, I should just give rogues more skills that they can spend on doing tricky stuff.  Climbing-  physical skill, sneaking - subterfuge, disarm traps - crafting etc.  This solves a long standing problem of what to do with the horrible "non - classed" class which was always needed but never used.  Merging these two classes means you can now be a sneaky merchant or a backstabbing assassin, or even a tricky sage type pretty easily in the game by choosing a rogue class.  In return I've also changed the equally terrible rogue surprise attack mechanic to be a simple "if you have advantage add your subterfuge to the damage", a blend of 5th edition and Microlight mechanics.  Hopefully this works as well as it looks on paper.   Its too bad really because I had finally resolved to rename the non-classed class to "Journeyman".  This does leave room for a third non magic class.  I was thinking of a ranger type but, Druids might become jealous and recently I had the idea some kind of Tinker might be more appropriate.

• Arcane casters get a new spell every level,
• Reworked a lot of the level 1-3 spells.

The other thing I've decided to do is to rework all the spells and bring skill points into a more prominent role for spell effect.  One of the big changes is that many of the spells with scaling effects are based on caster level and I am working on making these rather be skill based instead.  This means there is actually a reason for a cleric to pump points into Communication and for Enchanters to increase their Subterfuge or Knowledge skills.  I will try to base these changes on the nature of the spells themselves but obviously the classes will have more spells that use their 'primary' skills than others.  All arcane casters will benefit from having higher Knowledge, but Druids will benefit from having higher Survival as well.  I think the effect of this will be casters will be more diverse, even within the same class, and it will really add value to the skills.

There's a bunch of other stuff too.  Yes I am changing a lot more than I intended to change at the beginning of this year.  The old game was pretty crap actually... huzzah!

Initiative and Damage Changes

So the play testing has been going very well and the players seem to agree that the new initiative system is very good and makes for some interesting and dynamic combats.  Using the Mike Mearls "Greyhawk" system of declaring actions and using that to roll lowest on different dice creates interesting scenarios where players weigh their need to act faster or take more time to move into advantage.  Having initiative every round makes the combats more dynamic and players are reacting to the events rather than just waiting out their turns.  Monsters have fled battle and been caught fleeing or fled successfully based on their initiative rolls over a couple rounds.  Its all been pretty good.

There are a couple things I want to add to lean into this concept even more.  I want to add a rule that if you are holding your action you can REACT to an opponents attack if they are later in initiative order.  You roll a 3 to cast a spell and the opposing wizard rolls a 6, you can cast your spell and hope to stop them or you can hold your action and try to counter their spell.  This is a more interesting choice I think.  Same as blocking, if your quick enough you can move to intercept an opponents attack and block it, saving the poor halfling rogue from being impaled on the bad guys spear.

The block and counter-spell actions have been in the Beacon rules since the beginning but are rarely used.  I think because they required you state your intention at the start of the round and forgo your attack, players thought they were both less fun and harder to execute.  In any system where you have to choose to attack or try some mitigating action, you are usually going to attack since its the simpler option and it has a net effect of taking out your opponents and ending the combat.  However in a specific instance it may be better to react to mitigate damage and so when you see those situations and can react to them its pretty fun.  You are now PLAYING the game.  I think it much more likely you will choose a block or counter-spell to interrupt an opponents action than it would be to declare that as your action at start of a round.  It also means that blocking or countering a spell cannot happen unless you have initiative, which I think is a good limiter to those actions and so they can be a bit more powerful than they might otherwise be if they were just regular actions.  I might look for other reactions to add as well, things to make the combat flow more fun, it seems to be a natural fit for this initiative system to have these type of reactions.

However not all is sweet in our delicious candy-land.  The other side of this initiative system is that it means that you are rolling three times in combat for every attack and this is causing things to go slower.  Rolling lots of dice is fun but also slows down the game.  Picking out dice and adding up the results is slow and so usually games will try to get rid of as many rolls as possible.  They usually start with initiative and I get that, but I think that's the wrong approach since initiative is such a great tool for modeling combat.  Why get rid of the good and interesting rolls where luck really does play a huge part?  I would rather get rid of the other side of things and get rid of the damage rolls, and in fact that's what I'm going to do.  

Beacon already has simplified damage for weapons, based on if they are light or heavy, and I think its time to go even further and just set the damage for those weapon types.  My initial thought is you would take the middle number and say its 3 points for light weapon and 4 for a heavy weapon and critical hits will always do double that, so 6 and 8 respectively (and +1 for two handed heavy weapons).  This takes out a whole roll and makes things resolve faster, and you still add all the STR and fighter damage bonuses etc. so the numbers will work out the same as they do now.  I'm not sure what to do with monsters at this point, although the obvious thing is to take half their HD type as the base damage amount.  Monsters in combat need some other attention in any case.

I might in the future look at trying some kind of system where I'd lower the amount of set damage and use the value on the to-hit roll to determine how much damage is done.  For example you roll 3 points higher than the target AC so you would do 3 with a light weapon and 3+1 with a heavy weapon (plus all the other damage bonuses).  This might work but it would need some thought to model that out without breaking the game, since you can roll a LOT higher than the required to hit in some cases, and that number goes up the higher the character levels so it would have a real scaling effect.  It would also really impact low AC monsters (and PCs) disproportionately which would be bad.  Also it would be a lot of adding stuff up which is doable, but again takes time.  If you know your hit is going to do 3+2 damage unless you crit that's easy to keep track of.  If you need to ask the GM the specific AC and calculate it multiple times in a fight, or Hermes for-fend, make the poor GM do all the damage calculations for the combat, then obviously not so much joy.

So just the fixed damage for now.