Saturday, March 31, 2012

Resolute: Legacy Now Available

The wind billows your cape. It's truly beautiful up here above the sky. You rarely get to notice anymore. The lush cloud tops spread out before you. The sun warms your face. You wish it could stay this way forever... or even for a few hours. But it cannot. Squaring your jaw, you turn downward, falling to earth. Under the clouds, the city waits. A fire burns in the north ward. The bank's familiar alarm chimes in the east. Far off on the water, something rises from the deep.

Your legacy calls.


Resolute: Legacy is the latest version of the Resolute game system. The little game of big adventure gives you all you need to create supers ranging from street-level brawlers to earth-shaking titans, and everything in between.

This revised, streamlined and intuitive superhero system features:
• A single D12 (or optional 2D6) dice mechanic for all action resolution.
• Complete rules for building all types of superhero characters, including detailed listings of over 60 abilities, and rules for customizing your abilities to fit your character concept.
• Rules for superhero-scale combat. If you want to pick up a car and throw it at a foe, project a force field, or crush your opponent in your bare hands, Resolute allows you to do it.
• A simple bonus system that scales all the way from characters who can barely lift 50 lbs. to those who can lift in excess of 500 tons.
• An evocative backdrop that provides seeds for ongoing campaigns, 12 adventure hooks, and rules for character advancement and refereeing the game.
• Rules for vehicles the supers can purchase and use.

Resolute's 1st and 2nd Editions were named a Popular Copper Picks on RPGNow, and both won praise from a number of reviewers. This new, streamlined version is the most elegant and versatile superhero system available.

Friday, March 30, 2012

Last Call

As I've been going through and preparing for the launch of Resolute: Legacy (April 1 PDF/ April 15 print), I've been looking over the big catalog of stuff I've published and I've reached a threshold moment...

It's all coming down.

If my goal is 'one game to rule them all' (and it is), then I need to make sure that everything I offer is completely compatible. I've left previous materials out there because much of it is cross-compatible, but with some key changes coming (i.e. the basic dice mechanic), this older material only creates confusion on the player end of things. Rather than try to figure out how to help people convert it all (rather counter-intuitive for a 'simple' game system), I'm going to take everything in the back catalog down, and then re-build from the ground up over the next few months.

I'm not only launching a new game edition, but basically re-launching my entire publishing company as well. You can expect the blog and forum to undergo a bit of a facelift as well to align with the new rules. Let me know what you think.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Final Editing Stages

Resolute: Legacy has come along nicely, and I'm wrapping up the final editing... here's the cover.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Losing XP

One of the changes in play from previous editions of Resolute is the concept of losing XP; if you perform an action that is especially cowardly - or if you fail spectacularly in serving the greater good - you can actually lose XP. For example, if you allow a civilian to die, expect to lose 1 XP for it. This is really a throwback to the MSH system from TSR that penalized your karma for failing to live up to your heroic standards. I like the dramatic effect of this; you want to save that planeload of travelers because, well sure, it's the right thing to do, but also because you have 27 XP banked right now, and there are at least 30 people on that plane, and if they all die, you are going to have to work your tail off to get those XPs back!

It leads to some metagame decisions that are appropriate for characters in supers gaming, and increases the level of threat in situations that don't necessarily put the life of the super in jeopardy.

Monday, March 19, 2012

Showing My Work

I realized today that I've been doing a good job drafting the next version of Resolute, but I've been doing a pretty poor job of talking about it! I'm here to rectify that... this is what I expect to be the first in a series of posts giving you some windows into the newest edition of the game. Some quick things:

1. It's going to be called "Resolute: Legacy". I feel like the new edition of D+D should be called "Dungeons and Dragons: Legacy Edition", so I stole the name before they used it! The idea is that the game world has continued on, and all of the great heroes in the world have fallen during the final messari invasion. It went poorly for everyone, and heroes have to rise from the ashes to fight the onslaught of chaos.

2. As of today (and this is subject to change- I waffle on this about once a week), I'm planning on releasing the book as a 40-ish page digest-sized version in both print and pdf options. I have been using an iPad for the last few days, and I have learned to see how useful a tablet-sized version could be.

3. I've made some substantial changes to the basic rules, and I think these are both more flexible and cleaner in play. Here's a sample power from the new rules (again, subject to change) that shows how the new rules play out with a power I've traditionally struggled to solve to my liking:

Growth (Ability)
You can use 1 turn to grow. When you grow, you take a -1 shift to evade. You boost both your might and fortitude, based on your growth rating. You must use 1 turn to return to your normal size, or you automatically return to normal size when incapacitated. You can choose to grow to any scale up to your maximum available scale, but you only get the benefits of the selected height rating when you do this.
For example, with growth +4, your fortitude +2 boosts to fortitude +5 (a +3 shift since your growth rating is more than 2 points better than your fortitude rating), and your might +7 boosts to might +8 (a +1 shift since your growth rating is more than 2 points lower than your might rating).
You grow to your rating multiplied by your normal height; a 6’ tall super with growth +5 can grow to as tall as 30’; the same super with growth +12 can top out at 72’ tall.

Descriptor (Ratings) Growth Results
Exceptional (+1 to +3) Large; 1x to 3x your normal height.
Heroic (+4 to +6) Huge; 4x to 6x your normal height.
Superior (+7 to +9) Gigantic; 7x to 9x your normal height.
Titanic (+10 to +12) Gargantuan; 10x to 12x your normal height.