Here is a link to a pdf of my in-development RPG, Tower of Adamant. If the description below sounds interesting to you, please read the document and give me whatever feedback you can. Thanks in advance.

- Tower of Adamant is a d20 RPG based on the notion that dramatic things should happen at dramatic moments. To that end, there are two types of scene: standard and climactic. Standard scenes are faster and simpler, and the results of your dice rolls are more predictable. In climatic scenes, the stakes get higher, but your character can accomplish the type of actions and levels of heroism you read about and see in movies. There is an emphasis on last-second heroics, achieving great acts when you are closest to defeat, and so on. Many special abilities become available or are augmented during climactic scenes.

- Each class/race combination is very distinct. Elven warriors are very different to human or dwarf warriors, while each race practices a type of magic entirely different than their human/elf/dwarf counterpart. Humans practice a form of wizardry similar to 4e's AW/E/D/U tradition, except that each spell has its own AW/E/D variant, meaning you can choose to prepare the AW version of magic missile one day and the encounter version the next, and so on. Elves practice a form of spirit magic with nature, and dwarves burn magical runes onto their bodies.

- There are five roles, defining your function at a given moment: leader, expert, stalwart, protector, and guide. You have one primary role and one secondary role. Each lends you specific talents and responsibilities.

- each character is assumed to be competent at most things; you won't 'suck' with certain skills.

There is a lot more to it than just these aspects, but those are the primary elements. Again, if this sounds of interest to you and you are willing to take a look and help me out, I would be grateful.

UPDATE: Okay, here it is. Please feel free to PM me with your thoughts or leave feedback here. Right now I'm looking for basic feedback:
- does this look interesting?
- does it seem like it would be fun to play?
- do you like the classes?
- do you like the standard scene/climactic scene dichotomy?
- is it easy to understand?

If you have the time, please generate a character or two and give me your thoughts. Thanks!

Below is a look at the cover. The logo and subtitle are just placeholders. "Drama when it counts" will  not be used. The other image is an interior finished piece.

Updated with file link, above.

Anyone? What if I promise to name my next child after you?

I have minimal interest in a "OGL/d20"-game, so I haven't checked out that link, nor do I intend to.
The cover is very nice, though. Good luck!

Quote from: vivsavage;791210Anyone?

Normally I'll critique anything anyone dumps here, but if you can't be bothered replying to PMs, I can't be bothered reading your storygame.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;791248Normally I'll critique anything anyone dumps here, but if you can't be bothered replying to PMs, I can't be bothered reading your storygame.

Yikes, sorry about that. I didn't know I had received a PM. Does this site not email notifications? I'll go check my mail.

Ah. It may depend on your settings.
Nevermind, I'll read it.

OK, sorry about that. I've had a read through.

Calling it OGL/D20 seems something of a misnomer since its a D6 dice pool game - I realize OGL is applied to a number of e.g. FATE games as well, but the majority of OGL works being d20 is likely to confuse people here. The core mechanic's OK. I don't like the Bane/Boon terminology much - AFAIK 'banes' (failures) don't seem to do anything additional (and shouldn't, since these will tend to increase only as dice pools increase, though there was something under "selective cancellation" that seemed to refer to # banes?). On using "boons" there is I guess some case for having a term to distinguish between success on one die vs. overall success for an action, though.

In terms of overall design goals I think whether people are going to like it is very playstyle dependent. There have been any number of different arguments on this site about the value of immersion in play (i.e. about aligning player POV and character POV to the maximum extent). The idea of 'moments happening when it makes dramatic sense' also seems to me to suggest that you're playing with a preconceived idea of 'what the story should be like' in advance, whereas many players (old schoolers especially) want to generate a "story" at best organically as a result of play. Trying to generate "heroes winning the day" fiction-style is essentially copying a problem from literature - with a story in a novel we know that the hero is going to win, so, the best literature is one where the author poses a seemingly unsolvable dilemma, and then its solved in a surprising or interesting way, perhaps with setbacks or complications to the PCs. RPGs often manage to make interesting things that actually aren't that interesting in novels - e.g. fights vs. a bunch of guys - can actually involve genuine risk, or at least what looks like risk to a player. For myself I'd find having PCs be unkillable and having rules that give out a bunch of auto-successes on 'climactic' scenes sort of anticlimactic.
To a degree the design goals are already met by say, FATE, where you pay to invoke Aspects already (the magical sword can then only be used at a dramatic time as it costs a fate point), without needing climactic scenes as a specific thing. Tower of Adamant may be a bit more understandable than FATE though. "Momentum" as narrative hit points may be simpler than its wound boxes and is fairly interesting.

On some specifics:
*Augmenting: maybe consider this with how "themes" are purchased. If cost is 1 point per rank (plus an additional rank for free) the fairest way to add two themes is if rating = (sum of themes, minus 1).
An alternative system might be to roll the secondary theme (getting a 'Boon' on, say, only 6s) rather than adding 1/2 value. Suggest you could also use whatever the 'augment' mechanic for multiple characters working on one task (e.g. Travel rules?)

*Tokens: in the text, the Token rules are referenced several times before Tokens are explained.
Tokens as a group resource is an interesting wrinkle. Having number of Tokens = number of Players, however, means that even though the pool is theoretically communal everyone "knows" how much of the cake belongs to them - might be better to blur this more.
Another wrinkle I thought is that "Sacrifice" is meant to be an act of noble heroism, but since it costs Tokens its also at least burning other player's resources in the metagame -could even (for a Conflicted Hero) involve shafting the other players at a meta-game level.

*Comparative Superlative rule good.

*"Destined Hero" as a role may be problematic - as its the central Protagonist role in fiction. The mechanical side of this doesn't look too bad maybe (extra token) but its slightly a worry it also gets privileged through extra backstory.

*Conflicted Hero looks rather complicated.

*In terms of literary archetypes, the list leaves off the "old master" (Obi Wan-Kenobi, Belgarath, Gandalf, etc.) type - may these guys should be NPCs, but in plot importance these are the only guys comparable to the "Destined Hero" since they start out stronger and then generally fade in importance.

* Spotlight Actions - I think I touched on this above already but if a character can automatically Bring The Awesome in a time of need...is it actually awesome? What is interesting here is that, actually there's a few requirements a character needs (enough tokens left and other player approval, relevant themes, virtues) to pull these off, so actually it isn't guaranteed. Quite often I would imagine players will burn tokens to not be taken out, in effect deliberately avoiding "climactic scenes" via half the party being incapitated for instance (Although that's only one condition).

*Travel rules are interesting.

Hope this helps. Overall I think it looks quite playable, though completely not my thing.

Okay, this is really bizarre… somehow you managed to download an older version of the game. It was a d6 dice pool "hippy dippy" version that I abandoned. The current version is a more traditional d20 class and level based game without the hippy elements. I have no idea how this happened. My HUGE apologies for this, especially since the version you read is not what was advertised. I'm not sure how it happened. I checked the link and it appears to work. Here it is again, if you're not completely pissed off at this point! If you do read the new version, I really owe you big time.

With that in mind, I read through your comments and found them thoroughly insightful, and many of them still apply to the game.

One change I'm going to make: changing to climactic action will now be in the hands of the players.

Oops. I clicked on what I thought was the file on my desktop (I thought from the download link you'd put up earlier), but it must've actually been sitting there from the first run.
I'll have a reread thru and get back to you.

Sorry have been busy but hopefully later today.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;791836Sorry have been busy but hopefully later today.

Whenever you get around to it is greatly appreciated.

OK had a look.
General thoughts: as you'd noted there's a lot of similarities, so a few thoughts from my d6 system review still apply, particularly where concerning overarching design goals and the like.
Apart from that, I'm not sure about the conversion to a D20 framework. I can see there's alot of work here, but it still feels...unfinished, maybe..anyway.

Core Mechanics: IDK about including both Take10/Take15 and the advantage/disadvantage rules and a 2d10/d20 conflict scene core mechanic change. If you can have double advantage, I'd maybe eliminate 'advantage' and 'double advantage' as specific terms and have advantage called 'extra dice' or something, which can then come in multiple levels. I'm not sure about having Take-10 if you also having nonconflict scenes - if your probability would increase on a nonconflict roll, you're also better off taking 10.
The point-buy table looks like a 16 should have a cost of 13, rather than 12.

Roles: these are an interesting idea, I think, I like the idea that these change also though they have enough mechanical moving parts that this could be tricky for players. I think trying to codify how these change more and build mechanics for that into the game could be interesting: a character might change to Leader when they start pursuing a subplot relating to their Hook, for instance. Or if a PC goes back to visit their homeland, they might know more about it and become a Guide; in that case the shared narrative abilities to concoct terrain would be a good way to help the GM, since the area would is one that maybe half-player-designed anyway.
The Stalwart ability to duplicate secondary abilities might be OP (particularly if you can copy the expert's per-day limited abilities + other ongoing abilities).

Skills: I thought these might be too broad. They're good for a utility POV - for actual use on adventures - but the very generic Craft, Perform and Lore don't define the characters' backgrounds much - if the blacksmith can also weave and bake bread with their blacksmithing skill.

Class abilities: Whereas in the first game you could have fairly freeform traits, letting players design their own, the increase in complexity to have classes in particular means writing alot of specific content, after which players are pretty tightly limited to playing the options that've been designed.
Maybe feats are specific enough that you need more than two to begin with. Possibly it'd be better to have a few more generic options for merits, backgrounds, advantages/disadvantages that are reskinnable to classes - rather than building it all into the class design: e.g. instead of one class specifically getting a band of merry men, have separate 'wanted' and 'followers' options anyone can have.

Spirit: this is again an interesting idea. It again reads as maybe incomplete, at least its very GM-ruling dependent though maybe that's the idea. A lot of things that possibly boost spirit ('portents') seem like things the GM basically pulls out of their hat: those might be good as a random roll which lets the GM describe a particular success or failure as 'you see a white stag' or 'faeries dancing' or whatnot. It does depend a bit on what you see the role of GM as - driving the plot or not. Failing that, maybe some sort of dramatic structure to the adventure where Scene IV: Denouement always has a Negative Portent. I don't know, but ATM it has moderately significant mechanical effects which are largely capricious.

I hope that helps. If you have any more specific questions on what I liked or didn't like, fire away.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;792097OK had a look.
General thoughts: as you'd noted there's a lot of similarities, so a few thoughts from my d6 system review still apply, particularly where concerning overarching design goals and the like.
Apart from that, I'm not sure about the conversion to a D20 framework. I can see there's alot of work here, but it still feels...unfinished, maybe..anyway.

Core Mechanics: IDK about including both Take10/Take15 and the advantage/disadvantage rules and a 2d10/d20 conflict scene core mechanic change. If you can have double advantage, I'd maybe eliminate 'advantage' and 'double advantage' as specific terms and have advantage called 'extra dice' or something, which can then come in multiple levels. I'm not sure about having Take-10 if you also having nonconflict scenes - if your probability would increase on a nonconflict roll, you're also better off taking 10.
The point-buy table looks like a 16 should have a cost of 13, rather than 12.

Roles: these are an interesting idea, I think, I like the idea that these change also though they have enough mechanical moving parts that this could be tricky for players. I think trying to codify how these change more and build mechanics for that into the game could be interesting: a character might change to Leader when they start pursuing a subplot relating to their Hook, for instance. Or if a PC goes back to visit their homeland, they might know more about it and become a Guide; in that case the shared narrative abilities to concoct terrain would be a good way to help the GM, since the area would is one that maybe half-player-designed anyway.
The Stalwart ability to duplicate secondary abilities might be OP (particularly if you can copy the expert's per-day limited abilities + other ongoing abilities).

Skills: I thought these might be too broad. They're good for a utility POV - for actual use on adventures - but the very generic Craft, Perform and Lore don't define the characters' backgrounds much - if the blacksmith can also weave and bake bread with their blacksmithing skill.

Class abilities: Whereas in the first game you could have fairly freeform traits, letting players design their own, the increase in complexity to have classes in particular means writing alot of specific content, after which players are pretty tightly limited to playing the options that've been designed.
Maybe feats are specific enough that you need more than two to begin with. Possibly it'd be better to have a few more generic options for merits, backgrounds, advantages/disadvantages that are reskinnable to classes - rather than building it all into the class design: e.g. instead of one class specifically getting a band of merry men, have separate 'wanted' and 'followers' options anyone can have.

Spirit: this is again an interesting idea. It again reads as maybe incomplete, at least its very GM-ruling dependent though maybe that's the idea. A lot of things that possibly boost spirit ('portents') seem like things the GM basically pulls out of their hat: those might be good as a random roll which lets the GM describe a particular success or failure as 'you see a white stag' or 'faeries dancing' or whatnot. It does depend a bit on what you see the role of GM as - driving the plot or not. Failing that, maybe some sort of dramatic structure to the adventure where Scene IV: Denouement always has a Negative Portent. I don't know, but ATM it has moderately significant mechanical effects which are largely capricious.

I hope that helps. If you have any more specific questions on what I liked or didn't like, fire away.

That was a big help, thank you. A lot of the stuff you mentioned is stuff I agree with and have begun to change. The game is only half done. There is a lot more to come, especially by way of a GM chapter.

Are you familiar with other d20 based games like D&D, Pathfinder, or 13th Age? If so, does my game look at once both familiar and unique?

I've played a lot of 3.0/3.5, and a bit of Pathfinder (as well as Blue Rose, Mongoose Conan, DCC, 13th Age and Fantasycraft). The abilities reminded me slightly of Fantasycraft though I couldn't tell you why exactly. Monsters having average damage rather than rolling seemed 13th Age, I guess the fairly abstract weapon damage ranges likewise. I suppose 'hook' is slightly reminiscent of their 'one special thing' too, but a bit less ostentateous. Otherwise I'd say its largely its own thing where its not classic D20 system, I guess. So yes, bit of both of those.