Well, guys. After working long and hard on my tabletop, I can finally share information on it since it's progressed so far. Some basics on what I've designed, then the concept of the world. Title of the game is Fables of Faerieheim. I can safely say the game has reached over half-way finished and is nearing 100 pages written - and may be more than that.
1. This is not D&D or any other Tabletop's system. It's my own custom system.
2. Monster creation is simple and, at my fastest, you can create any creature in 2 minutes or less from the real world or fiction - with unique abilities, spells, and so on.
3. It's a mixture of things familiar to D20 system, D6 systems, and Dice Pool systems some players may be familiar with different aspects of.
4. The system is classless and your character design and choice is entirely up to you. Different races allow builds not normally possible. Being a Winter Sidhe who fights with weapons generated from their ice magic can fight on par with human males who specialize in using two-handed weapons (having to get the equipment) for instance.
5. Introducing the concept of Team Turns - where you can work with another ally who has a Talent that the fastest delays himself to the turn of his Team partner. Such actions can include lifting and carrying an ally away, while having them cast while you're running with them. Others include jumping into the air and running foot-to-foot using your auras to anchor you together until you run upward as high as your Movement Squares allow. The two may, then, jump in opposite directions, and choose an enemy on that jumping path to deliver their falling damage (and weapon damage) to simultaneously (if they hit).
6. Utilizing Dice Pools to determine your amount of abilities / capabilities per round.
7. While utilizing Dice Pools, they're separated into action types, similarly to Pathfinder or D&D, but they're much more flexible. A 'full attack' as it's called in D&D is a Primary Action in general. Your character has a set number of Movement Squares available to them. These Movement Squares are expended based off your actions - such as drawing a weapon costs a Movement Square, opening a door costs a Movement Square, closing a door, and so on. That way someone's entire turn isn't just messed over by a door of some kind as it happens in many systems.
8. All actions in some way cost Dice - and it's sometimes a good idea to save Dice as they can be used to reroll attacks, damage, or even parry incoming spells or attacks. In essence, as someone attacks more, it costs more of their dice. Expending 1 Die of your own to negate an attack costing your enemy 2 or even 3 Die can be rewarding.
9. Levels amplify the character you start out with, rather than turning them into something different. For instance, if you start out as a wandering Warrior Blacksmith, you become a better Warrior Blacksmith. Swapping your attributes while leveling is a bit more costly as you're making sacrifices to change what made you great to begin with.
10. Saving throws are gone. Period. Attacker must roll against you and the Defenses you've invested points into. That way it feels less like the Dice fucking you on the receiving end.
11. The way points, Defenses, Attacks, Ranks, and Spells work are it is in your best interests to find out what you're fighting. Not everything has high Defenses in everything.
12. Everything in the world has levels. However, everything has Qualities to them. Qualities denote how hard of a fight it'll be and are easy to adjust for the Monsters made. Rather than, like some games, there's this level 1 creature who can kill level 5 players out of the blue.
13. Stats are gone. Period. You are your weapon ranks, weapon tricks, armor worn, and spells in combat.
14. The closest relation to stats are the Skill Systems which you can invest points in to show how strong, smart, personable, and so on your character is. If you invest more points into the base "Attributes" you gain more ranks to be placed in specific skills and a bonus that can be added to each D6 rolled. Each Rank is a D6 die in the dice pool of that skill. For instance, if you have 2 Ranks in Hide and you have 5 points in Agility, if you roll 2, 2 for a 4 total, you can add points from your Agility Attribute to make that 6 and 3 respectively - or any combination of five that could be shifted between them.
15. In regard to HP bloat, it's still being tested. But the HP is pretty limited to Race + Level + Survival Dice. Which means Maximum 25-ish? At 0 HP, someone dies and they can go to negative, but for a number of rounds equal to their level, they can be healed up above zero and be brought back from death. Other plan is Race + Survival Die every level.
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Concept of the World and the setting:
As the world began to modernize and the Industrial Revolution began to take off, magic began to be cut off from Earth. Beings that had been around in Earth's history had slowly been fleeing to areas where the Old Ways were still believed until almost none remained. Though the world of Faerieheim was always accessible and, indeed, was as ancient as Earth's history itself, it was always a sister to Earth and always affected it. With magic dying on Earth, that meant portals to the world had begun failing. Any creatures with bits of magic or those who wanted to retain magic fled through the remaining portals to Earth's Sister.
Faerieheim is a place ruled by Mab - Queen of Winter and Darkness, Titania - Queen of Spring and Light, and, formerly, Oberon - The King of Earth and Fire. Currently, Oberon's place has been taken by a mysterious figure known as the Erlking after Oberon fell in battle to the Queens. Though many do not know how an unknown being took this place, they know that the Erlking is fulfilling Oberon's duties, but only thus. Oberon was well-beloved as King and often went above and beyond his duty, nipping problems in the bud before they took root. Unfortunately, the Erlking only seems to take action when necessary, rather than at-will as the former King did.
Now, monsters roam the land and tread where they never dared before and new monsters altogether have arisen and are growing stronger, taking lives, and razing entire villages, tribes, and hollows. The most notable of which are the horrifying Fomoires that have twisted resemblances to Faeries that some survivors seem to know. These new creatures seem almost utterly impervious to magic, feel no pain, and can infect other Faeries, turning them into more of their twisted visage. Luckily, the humans who have come to Faerieheim are unaffected by this curse and have been doing their best to help keep the Fomoire at bay, but something seems strange about these monsters - they seem too organized. The fact the Erlking has done nothing about any of these problems seems to be a sign he is not going to act.
Out of desperation, the races of the world have agreed on a mutual pact to create a world-wide group of Adventurers to try and curb some of the threats. Though, this has had mixed results. Though everyone in Faerieheim knows of the concepts of leveling and leveling up, they also know there's no way to know the levels of the creatures they send Adventurers against. Due to these results, almost everyone in the world believes Adventurers to be insane and that anyone taking on the profession is either brave, stupid, insane, or some mixture of the three. Even if the results are mixed, notable adventurers have pushed back tides and hordes of enemies once thought impossible. Will you take up the mantle of Adventurer and one day rise to the rank of a Legend to where Fables are told about you - or will you die like the rest? Roll your dice, hero, your life may depend on it.
**(Bit here is a throwback to older games, if you recall them) Out of Book, flavor note.**
Will you be the strong-armed male humans that Faerieheim has mutated men into? A cunning female human spellcaster, perhaps?
The honorable and stalwart Svartalfr?
The gold and gem obsessed Trowe?
The industrious, inventive Gnomes?
A kind-hearted Summer Sidhe, perhaps?
A deviously wicked Winter Sidhe?
Maybe you wish to join the ranks of the Half-Fae like Goblins, Elves, Dark Elves, and Dwarves.
Either way, from humble beginnings to heroism await you.
Front Cover
Back Cover
Also, for those curious - I do have art for the game besides the covers. I have race art, Monster Art, currency, equipment (still being worked on), and a map coming soon.
