As the title suggests, we'll be getting the Printer Friendly version of Ample Basic Rules Book ready as an additional download for anyone who buys the pdf. We'll most likely add it to the standard download as multiple files that purchasers can simply choose to download once their purchase has gone through on RPGNow.com/DriveThruStuff.com
Was going to have it done this weekend, except I got smashed by a particularly nasty bout of food poisoning, missed my regular gaming session and spent pretty much all weekend with either my face or my arse in a toilet bowl. Good times!
Stay tuned, fans!
---<Jim fails Saving Throw vs. Poison>---
Monday, 24 November 2014
Wednesday, 5 November 2014
Ample is LIVE!
Well, the Ample System RPG is now officially LIVE! The first week of release saw an excellent slew of sales, all thanks to RPGNow.com and we even hit the Hottest Titles list. I think we got as high as number 4 for about a day, but we held onto #6 for the better part of the week!
For a small indy developer I think that's bloody awesome, even if I say so myself :)
As it is, we also released the first Campaign Setting for the system, the Atlas City Almanac, and work has already started on two more settings; one Sci Fi, one Fantasy.
Stay tuned for more info regarding these two beauts!
Wednesday, 1 October 2014
Impending Release!
This month, our newest product range is about to EXPLODE onto the RPG scene! The Ample Basic Rules Book, along with the first Campaign Setting of Atlas City Almanac will be released sometime this month. We'll be selling them exclusively from RPGNow.com and the sister site of DrivethruStuff.com. We envision the Basic Rules Book to sell for around US$4 and the Atlas City Almanac for about US$3.
This month has seen a few key changes to Ample, most notably the way the Wealth System works. We weren't happy with our play test results, it got too clumsy to book keep and players ended up preferring to use a coin based system instead. So, in order to make the system a bit more appealing (although still completely optional) we simplified it and made it clearer how the Advantage fluctuates with purchases and injections of cash.
Now, buying things and paying for services incurs a Slide on future Wealth Checks equal to the Cost -1. These Slides are cumulative, and last for a week of game time. Should you gain enough Slides to make it so you drop a die from a Wealth Advantage Check, you lose your Slides and instead lose a whole point of Wealth.
Increasing Wealth is easier now, when you gain Bumps you can store them up. When you have enough Bumps to increase ALL dice in a Wealth check, plus enough to gain another die and increase that to d6 (which is another 2 Bumps), you can instead cash the lot in to gain a permanent increase to Wealth. Bumps can also be traded for Tips if short term gain is desired over long term financial growth.
On another note, we've nearly finished a beaut campaign companion for a Science Fiction setting we'd like to run for the local gaming store to celebrate the release of Ample Basic Rules Book. We're using a familiar setting; the universe of Exile's End, but set smack in the middle of the Epoch period before the Collapse.
We're very excited about gaming in a new area, and hope to meet lots of great new gaming mates!
Stay tuned for the impending release, and stay sharp!
Saturday, 20 September 2014
Rules Lite vs. Rules Heavy
Today I'm going to talk about the differences between a rules lite RPG vs. a rules heavy RPG. The reason for this is to highlight a very important way that Ample gets played that differs from many mainstream RPGs such as D&D.
In a rules heavy game, character generation produces a complex, detailed list of abilities, skills and capabilities. During play, all a character needs to do when considering their chances of success in a particular pursuit is to look down at their sheet. Many nuances of their character are nutted out in stat form, leaving little to misinterpretation. You have a definitive list of skills that tells a player exactly what that character is capable of. This allows a player and GM to know very precisely what a character can and can't do. The downside to rules heavy characters, for me at least, is that you end up with pages and pages of statistics and points that become easily forgotten, easily looked over. A player needs to constantly refer to their sheet to get an idea of what that character has. Bonuses, penalties and other modifiers from difference sources become forgotten. The game becomes more of a maths exercise than a story telling session.
Rules lite attempts to strip back a character to it's bare bones. Trimming the fat, if you will. The appeal that many old school gamers find with the older editions of D&D is that there were so few rules. The idea was that you had a character, with basic stats, and the rest was implied in your Character Concept. You made a story and this was your character; more than the collection of dots or numbers on a sheet. Sure, you can have a story about your rules heavy character too, but more often than not that story needs to follow what the points say on the sheet, not the other way around.
This, above all else, is what we want in a game of Ample. With 4 basic Attributes, and 9 Core Skills that encompass any number of skill and attribute combinations we can cover pretty much every action imaginable that a character may attempt. The rest is pure story. As we talked about in the Character Concept post, a skill can be expanded upon through tying it to the characters background. So a character has 3 points in the Communication Skill? How did they get so good at communicating? What role did their background or upbringing have in gaining this level of expertise? Did they go through some trial or hardship to gain these skills? Did they spend long hours and nights studying and practicing? These questions tell a story, and they add flavour to a character that can be used during play.
Lets say that the character earned their Communications Skill 3 by being a salesman, an up and coming sales rep of a successful company before the zombie apocalypse occurred. During play the GM knows that this character is comfortable convincing people to see their way of thinking; they're great at talking to small groups of people. Lets take that same character and face them off against a large crowd. Even though the character has an excellent Communications Skill, they've never had to do public speaking like this before. The GM is well within their rights to make this kind of encounter very difficult for the character. On the other hand, the player can mention that their character regularly had to give sales reports to a board of directors, or at the very least a whole department. Already this gives us more story and more character information that we can use. Perhaps the character has a decent foundation of leadership potential to build upon, something highly valued in a post apocalyptic world looking to rebuild society.
These concepts can still be applied to a rules heavy game, but by their very nature the rigidity of a character prevents embellishments that are not supported by character generation or development.
In a rules heavy game, character generation produces a complex, detailed list of abilities, skills and capabilities. During play, all a character needs to do when considering their chances of success in a particular pursuit is to look down at their sheet. Many nuances of their character are nutted out in stat form, leaving little to misinterpretation. You have a definitive list of skills that tells a player exactly what that character is capable of. This allows a player and GM to know very precisely what a character can and can't do. The downside to rules heavy characters, for me at least, is that you end up with pages and pages of statistics and points that become easily forgotten, easily looked over. A player needs to constantly refer to their sheet to get an idea of what that character has. Bonuses, penalties and other modifiers from difference sources become forgotten. The game becomes more of a maths exercise than a story telling session.
Rules lite attempts to strip back a character to it's bare bones. Trimming the fat, if you will. The appeal that many old school gamers find with the older editions of D&D is that there were so few rules. The idea was that you had a character, with basic stats, and the rest was implied in your Character Concept. You made a story and this was your character; more than the collection of dots or numbers on a sheet. Sure, you can have a story about your rules heavy character too, but more often than not that story needs to follow what the points say on the sheet, not the other way around.
This, above all else, is what we want in a game of Ample. With 4 basic Attributes, and 9 Core Skills that encompass any number of skill and attribute combinations we can cover pretty much every action imaginable that a character may attempt. The rest is pure story. As we talked about in the Character Concept post, a skill can be expanded upon through tying it to the characters background. So a character has 3 points in the Communication Skill? How did they get so good at communicating? What role did their background or upbringing have in gaining this level of expertise? Did they go through some trial or hardship to gain these skills? Did they spend long hours and nights studying and practicing? These questions tell a story, and they add flavour to a character that can be used during play.
Lets say that the character earned their Communications Skill 3 by being a salesman, an up and coming sales rep of a successful company before the zombie apocalypse occurred. During play the GM knows that this character is comfortable convincing people to see their way of thinking; they're great at talking to small groups of people. Lets take that same character and face them off against a large crowd. Even though the character has an excellent Communications Skill, they've never had to do public speaking like this before. The GM is well within their rights to make this kind of encounter very difficult for the character. On the other hand, the player can mention that their character regularly had to give sales reports to a board of directors, or at the very least a whole department. Already this gives us more story and more character information that we can use. Perhaps the character has a decent foundation of leadership potential to build upon, something highly valued in a post apocalyptic world looking to rebuild society.
These concepts can still be applied to a rules heavy game, but by their very nature the rigidity of a character prevents embellishments that are not supported by character generation or development.
Monday, 15 September 2014
House Moving
Just an update for you all, I've recently moved house and we don't yet have the net connected. The blog is still running and we're still working on Ample and on schedule for an October release :)
Stay tuned, folks!
Stay tuned, folks!
Wednesday, 20 August 2014
Preview Live on RPGNow.com!
The Ample RPG is now live on the store, so head on over and pick it up, already!!
GO!!
Click here, now!!
GO!!
Click here, now!!
Tuesday, 19 August 2014
Latest changes
Change Log 19 Aug 14
- Changed the Moving in Combat section of the Combat Chapter; new artwork, better explanation (read – simpler)
- Defined the ranges more solidly; 5, 15, 50 and 50+ metres respectively.
- Removed old warehouse line art Diagram for Movement, replaced with lush colour Diagram using tokens for VTT
- Re-worked Critical Success mechanic; Crit Success is performed on a roll of a 4, as opposed to maximum die roll, and maximum amount of re-rolls possible reduced by 1 per die.
- Critical Successes achieved with different die types now only apply to the lowest die rolled, not the highest; EG a d6 and d8 both rolling a Crit Success will only apply to the d6.
- Modified the way First Aid and Healing works; this was more just a clean up of terms and clarifying that it requires a Primary Action to perform.
- Minor grammatical fixes and typos
The biggest change this version is the Diagram for Movement, we thought that the colour image of the orcs and PC suited our needs better, and better illustrated what we we thinking about when we wrote the movement rules. Also, this version has now been Optimized and had Preflight checks completed and is ready for fast web view.
The Preview version of the Basic Rules Book is also ready for release, and will be uploaded to RPGNow shortly :)
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