B Design Principles

Terra System’s mechanics were designed as they are with the following set of principles in mind.

• Collaborative narrative between GM and Players, with story meta currency (Ego). The meta currency is generic enough to be adapted for different game themes (e.g. panic, mutation, corruption).
• Unified mechanics for all kinds of actions: combat, travel or persuasion are executed similarly, for example.
• Partial successes.
• Gambling: Ego usage and recovery
• Simple statblocks for Challenges: enemies, journeys, etc.
• Double duty rolls: one single roll defines precision, effect and presence of any consequence of an action.
• Character development mechanics includes positive and negative aspects.
• Players can decide how fast they ride their characters, but faster progression comes with a cost.
• Character survivability includes body and mental aspects.
• Black swan effects are possible (e.g. a hobbit might just kill a dragon in one single blow).
• No difficulty class setting, but different levels of consequence of failures - that are explicit.
• Optional skills, if game of interests would benefit from detailed character’s expertises.

Issues that I’ve found with developing the Terra System.

• Crawls (hex, point, dungeon) are abstracted and bi-parted, whereas when something nice happens (through a success), the mechanics are different than when something bad happens. This goes against my map-based exploration preference, and fixing it adds abstraction on top of structure - which is not great.
• Spellcasting is still a hassle to design for.
• Vehicle combat (and domain-like play) will require a different subsystem.