Announcing Cassiopeia

A new chapter begins.

Hello again friends! I have had all these marvelous ideas swirling about my head as of late and I thought I would share one of them with you. It is about one of my own projects in fact! It is called Cassiopeia. Yes, just like the constellation.

Cassiopeia is a pen and paper role playing game that has been in the making for a few years now. Granted there have been some long halts in the production during that time but things are finally coming together enough that I can see what it is going to become.

In this short announcement I want to first give a very brief description of the game and then finish with what is currently on the menu.

World

The human civilisation has fallen and the remaining humans have just about started to crawl back from the ruins. It is a new age of discovery and adventure. Cassiopeia is space opera at its finest.

The world is a mixture of the 16th century age of discovery, Treasure Planet and traditional Sci-Fi. The players will take up the role of explorers as humanity once again stretches for the stars. If you keep red-coats, muskets, native indians, unexplored wilderness, warring adventure companies and high-tech technology in mind you know the basics of the world.

I will write a lot more of the world in the future but seeing as this is just a first look I will stop here.

Rules

The rules are based on the traditional six sided die. The player rolls a certain number of dice depending on her level in various skills and/or abilites. Success is gained through rolling 5 or more on one of these rolled dice, with the result becoming even better if several dice land with success. Circumstance does of course factor into this. All in all it is a classical role playing system where you have your skills, abilites, equipment, experience and all that good stuff.

The two largest rule innovations are the melee mechanics and the diplomacy system.

Melee is played out as a duel, with both parts rolling dice and the one who rolls the most successes manages to land a blow. Instead of the classical turn-based "I hit you first then you hit me", in melee all players roll at the same time and your skill in relation with your opponents determine how well you manage to land your blows. Damage is also dependant on this roll. Melee weapons such as sabers do very little base damage, bonus damage is instead performed based on how much higher your opposed hit roll is. Meaning that a very skilled fighter will do a lot more damage against a novice fighter than a master, since the master will be able to mostly parry the strikes. All in all this creates a much higher reliance on skill than luck in melee, it will take much effort to become a skilled fencer but the payoff will be worth it.

Diplomacy and negotiation is played out like a card game where the participants play moves and counter moves with different effects until a winner emerges. The system is designed to offer the same level of complexity and customizability as the combat system. I am tired of combat always being the sole focus on role playing games and as such this system was created to give non-combatants as rich an experience as the combatants.

I will write more about the rules in the future but I hope this is sufficient as a proof of concept.

What to do now

Right now I am writing yet another iteration of the rules. Focusing on the character creation process, rules for creating equipment and starting to fill the rosters with interesting gear for the players to use. I will also start finalising the world description.

Basically the project is moving into the later stages, the concept is well iterated and solid. All that is needed now is to put the pen to paper.

That is it for this time, this will be one of the primary subjects for this blog and I hope that you will find it interesting to see how this project comes along and the thought processes behind it.