Behind the scenes work.

I've revised a few things in the previous entries, changed some skills around, added some new ones, in part in preperation for some system ideas I'm planning.

The biggest issue I'm having right now is just slogging through the equipment section, as it's exactly the sort of list work I've never been great at or liked doing much.

But also giving some serious thought to what the combat system will look like, as I'm somewhat torn between a number of poles, as well as on how to implement the most important factor of the whole game in a mechanical way: Light and darkness.

The trouble of trying to design a combat system in which it's assumed to be pitch black most of the time, is something I'm still wrapping my head around.

The idea so far is actually to drop the tactical, hexmap and counter approach I'd originally considered, in keeping with my love of minatures play in D&D as well as the Fallout system which inspired a lot of my early conceptiosn of the game.

Instead, I'm thinking more of an abstract system based around acquiring and keeping targets in the darkness. The biggest difficulty in combat on post-Nightfall Earth is in actually being able to see your target, and various light sources will actually find themselves sharing a somewhat similar level of mechanical complexity as swords or guns.

The main decision is in what the base assumption is as to target acquisition. If I assume that the players cannot by default see the enemies, then I need rolls to see if they can spot them, and to factor in the quality of the light source when it comes to covering a given area easily. If I asusme they can see them by default, then instead it becomes a contest of source, with the target perhaps having maneuvers to try and evade being spotted, and thus making the light source a modifier to such a maneuver, as well as perhaps a modifier based on how much cover is present in the combat environment.

So far my thoughts have been leaning towards the latter solution, and I'm thinking I may know some ways to do it within the mechanics I already have arranged so far. The end result will be much, much more abstract that I had originally anticipated the combat system being, but dealing with this issues within the confines of the hexgrid just seems like it would be far too crunchy and slow in play.

I'm also moving away from the concept of hexgrid combat simply because my present rural living arrangement means that any playtesting will almost certainly occur online, likely via IRC, which means that a hex and counter approach would be even more cumbersome than usual, requiring a setup with something like OpenRPG or similar, which is potentially too much work, work that would distract from play preparation and design work.

It is possible that a future supplement composed of variant rules might introduce a more Fallout-y combat system, but for now, it will have to wait, sadly.