Alchemy Update 2
Progress is Being Made
Music, Skyrim soundtrack playlist. Beverage, Mountain Dew (it’s my cheat day, and only my second one. I can quit at any time). Project of focus, Alchemy a.k.a. The Practice.
In a previous post I was discussing the inspiration given me by this new game I am playing with my Thor’s Day group, Shadowdark. I continued on to explain that I am so inspired that I want to shift my alchemy system, or at the least a version of it, to work with it. I am planning on not only making a version for Shadowdark, but to make my own zine.
Dark Alchemy
Shadow Alchemy. Alchemy Light. Dark Practices. Shadows of Alchemy. Practicing in the Dark. I haven’t nailed down the name yet, which is really important to me (I have a thing about names), but it will arrive when it does. The zine will be an absolute ripoff of the Cursed Scrolls, which I am playing through number 1 with my group and absolutely loving, and I am not ashamed. Included will be a hex region, random encounter tables, a few new classes, some new monsters, a stripped-down alchemy system, and concoctions to boot.
The System So Far
For the last few weeks, this week especially, I have been ramping up my work to convert the alchemy system. I have been doing an overall redesign, aimed at the original target of 5e, but given the streamlined nature of this latest version, I have also been aiming at Shadowdark.
I have returned to the crafting rules given in the 5e books, including the SRD, and done away with a complex measurement and tedious inventory tracking system. The crafting rules involved adding up the total allotment of used ingredients and multiplying them by 5 minutes to determine the crafting time; making a check at the halfway point to determine whether you are proceeding as planned or the whole thing explodes; and then you finish out your time and have a concoction of some sort.
I was leaning on the properties given by the ingredients to allow for an open-ended crafting system, pushing players to focus on the properties they have rather than the recipes they want, and that lead to a whole list of ingredients, a whole list of properties, and a whole list of recipes. Cumbersome, no? So I did away with the properties, and instead I went with a bold word reference.
The new system is recipe focused. It will still have room for creative players, always my primary focus, but this new system is easier to deal with. There will be a list of included recipes, and in those recipes some words will appear in bold. Those words can be matched to the properties of ingredients to determine which ingredients can be used to craft that potion. An ingredient has keywords, and the recipe needs to match them, easy.
The recipes are based on the SRD, as well as some original ideas, and I am sure more will come as I put this whole thing together. But my first major push needed to bring the ingredient descriptions in line with the new format. The old format had each ingredient source, such as a yew tree, with a list of properties available. The new format has each source broken down: the yew tree has bits that can each have one or more properties: ash, bark, fruit, leaf, needle, nut, root, sap, skin, and wood. Not all of these will be used, and some may even have more than one property.
The properties are going to be the words I found that inspired my original property creations. Instead of changing these terms to suit a system, I am going to leave them intact and allow players and arbiters to interpret them as they wish when they create concoctions. I like this idea a lot more than prescribing them as I did before, and it will allow me creative freedom in the recipes I choose to include with the rules.
The Challenge
My greatest challenge with this whole project is the editing. Shadowdark is concise, inspiring while not being overly verbose, and hugely imaginative in its execution. I have been raised in the 3e, 3.5e, and 5e era of gaming books that go out of their way to include as many words as possible in an attempt to cover every possible variable and outcome. This exercise is going to help me develop the muscles to constrain my writing and reach the point in a way that both delivers the relevant information and leaves just enough interpretation that the players and arbiters will be inspired. Big shoes to fill for my amateur feet.
In the initial stages of design, I wanted the system to be open, so I created the properties, and detailed their workings. The healing property required so many ingredients with the Healing property, as well as 4x that amount of the base ingredient (water, oil, etc.), and then so many hours to create one or more potions. I thought by including detailed rules, as well as supplemental rules for mixing different properties, concentrating more powerful properties into smaller forms, and a host of other rules would allow the players and arbiters to create vast arrays of recipes.
What they would actually be doing is math. A lot of math. They would need to be spending hours either adding, subtracting, and multiplying, which is good practice, or devising a program to do all of that for them. Everyone else would just ignore the whole thing, maybe taking a potion or two and just adding them to the shops.
Shadowdark has a lot of delineation of progress and power established in tiers. This makes it easy to determine which recipes fall into which tier, and then have time and cost variables based on those tiers. One little table for each and every recipe of any tier. The only reason I am including ingredient and source descriptions is because I find them interesting, and as I reach further and further into the magical and strange to create new fantastic ingredients, I think there may be some want of appearance and details of the new fauna.
Aesthetics
The look and feel of a product, of a piece of art, is important to me. Not just me, many of the creators I have paid attention to have talked about this quite a lot. Gamers in this hobby lean toward books, articles, zines, anything with good aesthetics. Good aesthetics isn’t always flashy, expensive-looking colorful art. Shadowdark is one of the most focused games I have seen in a while, right next to BREAK! It is only black and white, and yet it still shines every time I open it. The artwork speaks to the atmosphere of the game, and I want my work to do the same.
As I have been moving forward with this project, reading more articles and watching more videos, I have been thinking about what I want my products to look like. For pieces I release for Shadowdark, I want them to capture that feel, but I want my own spin on it. I don’t want to exactly replicate the unique feel that Shadowdark has, but I do want people to look at my work and think “yes, this definitely goes with the Shadowdark game.” When I was designing for 5e I wanted the same, a similar look with unique twists that stood out as my own.
Black and white is easy, all of the old artwork I want to bring out of the past is black and white. Kelsey Dionne’s devotion to legibility and accessibility is amazing. Simple layouts and sleek rules sets made to fit on a single spread is so approachable, even for an old gamer like me that is used to flipping back and forth in an attempt to understand the 33 pages of rules on grappling. I want to follow in those foot steps, but I like a little more flair.
A lot of the inspiration for my layout design comes from the art in old books, especially medieval manuscripts. I love drop caps. I think it is so awesome to have the first letter of a paragraph be larger, fancier, and to just leap off the page. In keeping with the strictures though, it can’t be too fancy. I still want the reader to be able to understand that first word when they need the information, but when they look at the page I want it to feel old.
The ornamentation of medieval manuscripts is also something I really like. The only problem is that it is so easy for me to go overboard, so I am challenged once again. I figure that the first page of any chapter could afford to have a big fancy piece with ornaments and full page art, but the rest would need little pieces to tie the aesthetic into place. Fortunately they are easy to come by, as so many old books have been scanned and these designs are available. And I love that these were made by people long gone, who never would imagine that their work would end up in a gaming book people could print at home.
The Rough Draft
Below are a series of images I exported from my current rough draft. I am just getting the layout, as well as my new licensed fonts (big step from all the fonts I would just take from wherever), and some of the decorative elements in place. I still have editing to do, but part of the writing process for me is also seeing the final piece with art, probably because my largest mental reference is a bunch of finished game books.
Anyways, I hope you enjoy seeing what I have so far. If you have any comments or questions, feel free to let me know with a comment, and I always appreciate constructive criticism.
Mountain Dew, the drink of champions!