Player's Book, Incoming Updates

PreRelease GM Book 2.0 DONE!

Ok, the Game Master's 2.0 book is now up on DriveThru RPG.  This has been a HUGE improvement to the early GMs book and it no longer appears to be the scattered compilation of notes that it once was.

Returning back to the Player's Book, we still have a bit of work to do. This fits into two categories:

First, are gameplay and 'balance' issues. Second are organization and editing issues.

SoapBox about MMORPG design vs TTRPG design concerns.
Now before I start with balance issues. Let me address that our primary design concern is not how well PCs perform metrically in combat vs one another. Those concerns are very important when developing a video game with rigid mechanics in which the ONLY contributions and player can make are through fight mechanics. That also includes traditional video game tropes of party makeup (tank, damage, healer, etc).

A tabletop RPG offers the players and game master more ways in which to contribute than pure fight mechanics. Even combat can be creatively solved and not all solutions require combat.

For this reason, our focus has been on making each class feel unique and fun and given the ability to contribute. We much prefer that the GM is in a position to be able to easily customize encounters and situations to appropriately challenge any party composition.

Alright, what are the nerfs already?

1. We plan to adjust attack roll bonuses down. Some classes were simply scaling up too rapidly with the bonuses and added advancement points and abilities. 
2. Spell Skills really had little to no difficulty in casting. Because of this, we intend to remove the intellect requirements for some spells and add a difficulty modifier to cast to all spells. Less powerful spells and spells of different types of magic will have different modifiers.
3. Shamans Healing totem will no longer be turn based. The original idea was interesting, but this was simply too strong and recovery times were way too rapid.
4. The experience requirements for advancement are being increased in order to slow progression slightly and give players an opportunity for more adventuring at all levels.

Ok so organizational stuff

1. We're reviewing Chapter 5, character creation. We want to be sure that the instructions are clear and easy to follow.
2. We're moving the Character Advancement section into its own chapter and providing better instructions.
3. Chapter 9, Magic and Spells will have the spell lists reorganized under each magic type alphabetically.  Each spell will have a new listing for it's level and will still appear in the Spell table list under level, however when looking up divine spells for example, they will all be in one alphabetical list.

Moving forward we want to let the Game Master's book stand on its own hopefully until it can be revisited for final publication in 2020.  In the meantime, we're putting everything back into the Player's Book and will do our best to have what we consider an official version by early 2020.