I lied.

Or rather, I changed my mind.

I didn't realise, until the playtest, just how much I enjoyed some of the more radical changes we'd made to the linear formula. Before, I think, I was content with just iterating. And whilst it would be false of me not to acknowledge the influence of other systems, seeing our baby in play filled me with joy, made me want to actualize this weird and wonderful thing that is Animus to its fullest extent. For the first time in a very long time, I stopped being so worried about pouring myself into something that ultimately might not succeed and just decided to give it my all.

Anyway, enough the self-indulgence. Let's talk design discoveries.

More than anything, the biggest change that I fell in love with was the blanket removal of calling damage by melee and the imposition of a 'silent' single.

It affected how combat played out in so many different ways. I was completely blown away. Here are a few of the changes that Mat, I, and our playtesters noticed.

Hearing effect calls is easier. Not calling damage means that the process of fighting is much, much quieter than it ever is in Memento Mundi, and that means that it's easier to hear / take notice when someone is making an effect call against you.

Calls feel more weighty. By the same token, calls pack more 'punch' when there's fewer of them in the air.

Tracking hits is simpler. I could never track my hits properly in MM. I would always need to approximate. But with just having one source of HP, and every blow being a -1 (or, in my head, a +1 to a growing damage number, as I find it easier to count that way), I found that for the first time I actually remembered my hits accurately without too much trouble.

Hardskill positioning becomes more important. With fewer effect calls in the system generally, and with BACKSTAB providing such a massive swing in terms of damage, position is given a greater focus. Unique movement options which exist (such as Stealth and Edificier) really made the fights feel fresh, and we've been building on that recently by trying to give a lot of classes their own way of affecting their position during combat.

Silent damage enables roleplay during combat. When you have less mental arithmetic, when you don't have to call damage yourself, and when the callspace is quieter, the ability to shout orders while being mobbed, or exchange quips with a villanous Paladin, or carry on an argument while fighting back-to-back with your bestie, is just much easier it ever was before. This was unexpected and beautiful and I love it.

However, capping damage to a silent single introduces some design challenges. Though, ultimately, I feel like this has led us to some creative and satisfying design choices, here are a few of the big ones I'm aware of.

Projecting threat. One of the easiest shorthands for 'this monster is dangerous' is when you hear them make a high damage call by melee. Then you're like: 'Oh shit, they do QUINT, I hope I don't get hit'. But also: 'That thing is hella strong'. In a system where all the monsters do SINGLE by melee, therefore, you need to find other ways of making the monster seeming powerful. DODGES and RESISTs and IMMUNEs make them seem physically tough, but for strength damage ouput is one of the easiest metaphors. This will be the subject of another blog post, but ultimately I think this is something that can be solved by giving out MASS calls, ranged damage, cool movement, and some special moves.

Feeling powerful. The flipside of the above point is that, when a player calls a large amount of damage, they feel powerful. Hitting a mook with a high damage call and felling them instantly (whilst unfun for the monster unless they have a few waves) is a simple way to achieve this. Again, a subject for another blog post, but one of the ways we've tried to tackle this is by giving each class access to a few one-shot abilities that give them massive buffs, and giving them access to calls that have a profound impact on the battlefield: GROUP ON ME and CULL THE WEAK being two of my favourites.

A sense of progression A related but different point to above, but: someone's base damage call increasing is also a good shorthand for showing that they've become stronger, too. Whilst I don't actually buy that this materially affects the game that much (someone coined this phenomena as the 'tyranny of DOUBLE', where, once it is assumed that a player's base damage is DOUBLE, the monsters are simply given twice as many hits to compensate), it make the player feel like they've gotten stronger, and this is vitally important. As such, we've been very careful when designing skills so that there are some big-ticket items that players get access to at higher levels that radically change the way they play and the scope of the options available to them.

Anyhow. That's probably enough for now. I'm really excited to see how the additional classes impact the feeling of combat and play in the next playtest.

-Seb