Felltower Reflections: 5 years later

Five and a half years ago I posted some reflections on what I'd do differently in my DF Felltower game, given another chance to do it all over again.

Let's go through that list, and add and subtract to it.

"Definitely Change"

Some of these, I did.

Uniform Enchantment Costs

I flattened the cost of magic items out to $20/point . . . mostly. Spell stones and other consumables are still $1/point, which is low compared to scrolls and potions. Ideally I'd have changes those, too, but it was too difficult to do so without seriously compromising existing play.

So I'd keep or expand this.

Gameworld Coupled Enchantment Maxima

I linked magic items to prefixes. In a flat "must have a positive prefix" approach that is much simpler than what I proposed.

I'd keep this as-is.

More Loot From Day One

I'd still do this. I put in more loot in every place since, and honestly, I still feel like it's not enough sometimes.

Heavier Money

This for sure. I'd definitely still do this, changing my 250/pound system to 50/pound.

That would allow for serious amounts of money - the kind you read about and the kind in fantasy artwork - instead of the small-but portable hoards you tend to actually find.

I'd also add in a related change to all of the above: much more expensive magic items.

I'd literally add in 10x as much loot. Weight would make it 5x as heavy for coins but that would just add to the fun challenge of hauling away big loot (so you'd need mules, henchmen, wagons, etc.) and you'd generally get 10x as much of it as now. Instead of a big haul being 20,000 silver pieces ($20K) at 80 pounds, it would be more like 200,000 silver pieces ($200K) at 4,000 pounds. Woohoo! Two tons of loot! Get hauling. You won't blink at spending a few $K to help haul it away.

Technical Grappling

We eventually put in my own version. Fantastic Dungeon Grappling is excellent, too, but my version does what I want. Using CP had made the game easier in most cases.


So yes, I'd do all of those.

"Maybe"

Revised Talent Costs

Nah. Just because it adds another step to character generation. I've found it's useful to just let talents work more broadly and generally apply the bonuses.

Wildcard Skills

I still like the idea of allow "Melee Weapons" as a skill, but the staggering cost (24 points for IQ or DX in the skill, 12 points for every +1) and the huge breadth (it's not just the skills, it's everything tied to it) makes these too expensive and too broad. I'd need to revise the costs and create my own cost structure. I'm not sure I'd like that. But I do still like the basic idea of someone taking a broad but expensive skill covering all of a category of skills, so I could have more guys who were excellent at all weapons instead of obscenely good at one.

I would use a shorter list of weapon skills, but that's its own post for the future.

More Characters Per Player

Making people make 125-point guys would be fun but I'd pass on that for a new campaign. 250s are fine.


I might consider others, like:

- Fixed Deceptive Attack and Feint, to reduce the actual value of high defenses.

- Defense caps, to reduce the tendency to push everyone up to Dodge 16+ with Haste and Shield, which feeds into monsters needing high skills for Deceptive Attack and thus the PCs needing high skills to overcome their defenses. Either that or cumulative Dodge penalties. I have no issues with high skill or high defenses, and I don't want to make it too easy to get hit and killed, but the escalation is entirely arms-racey and not as fun as it could be.

- I'd have done No Limits on Spell Purchases right away.

- I'd have limited maximum numbers of rumors right away, too. That would save a lot of my time and keep the players from being overwhelmed with hundreds and hundreds of rumors to make sense of.


I'm sure I could come up with a few more . . . but looking back, I had some good ideas about what needed improvement in my game.