After a considerable amount of playtesting, editing and whatnot, I’m beyond excited to announce the full release of Block, Dodge, Parry – A Levelless, Classless Expansion of Cairn!
The itch.io page contains all the details, but to reiterate: It’s a 33 page document, featuring
- Time, Gear & Skill; a system for ‘skill checks’ without requiring a whole list of skills, that rewards the character’s background and preparation.
- Fantasy Species; a simple framework to play as non-humans with unique properties.
- Extended rest rules, rewarding more comfortable places of rest with more rejuvenation.
- Social Conflict; an alternative to physical combat, allowing for tense negotiations. It straddles the line between “complete abstraction” and “having the players actually argue with the Warden” by using dice rolls as prompts.
- Blocking, Dodging & Parrying, the namesake of the system, giving players more tactical options during combat while maintaining its overall flow and simplicity.
- Location-based critical damage; an optional system to add a bit of impact to your blows.
- Weapons; wherein each weapon can deal one of three types of damage, combined with fast, balanced, and heavy attacks and different special properties, which characters master by using.
- Careers: 16 careers, each with a description, related skills, and “common knowledge” (things any person of that career would know)
- Skills: 97 skills, which give you tangible new options during play. These skills can be picked at character creation, or learned along your travels.
- Training: A system to learn new skills by studying, doing, or finding the right trainer.
- Magic; a free-form magic system inspired by GLOG, allowing you to freely sculpt energy, hinder opponents or alter reality. To inspire the free-form system, 12 common magic effects are expanded upon, and the offensive magic section has more than 15 tags to start with.
- Miracles; divine magic allowing you to banish your foes or aid allies. Compose your own Higher Power using one of the 100 domains, and dedicate your actions to your Higher Power to receive healing and bonuses.