So recently, I was doing some self-playtesting.

Go ahead and laugh. I laughed too just typing that.

Anywho, I was running a few mock combat situations pitting full-fledged characters against a variety of different enemies in order to try and sniff out any balance issues that we may have missed so far. I took three very different characters, and pitted them up against a generic minion (with a staff!) in order to see how they fared. My hypothesis was simply that a full-fledged character should have no problem dealing with a generic, name tag-less minion (even one with a staff), especially since these minions were created using about 1/3 the points of a regular character.

Battle One
Leo, a highly dexterous and defense-oriented Kobold vs. Billy the Minion. Combat is over in three rounds, with Billy unable to land a shot on our nimble Kobold. Combat would have gone longer, but Leo managed to score several counterattacks due to his superior speed.

Conclusion: Perfectly Acceptable Result

Battle Two
Barnaby, a brawl-happy Dwarf in chain mail and a war hammer vs. Billy the Minion. Combat is over in three rounds, with Billy actually being able to land a shot on Barnaby. Of course it does jack for damage to our walking tank, who is able to take out Billy with two solid hits. Barnaby may or may not have begun drinking shortly thereafter.

Conclusion: Perfectly Acceptable Result

And now, that brings us to Abigail. Young Ms. Abigail Summers is primarily a healer, who, aside from her trusty quarterstaff, has only one offensive attack. The spell is called Ether Bolt, and to those of you familiar with D&D, has properties very similar to Magic Missile. Basically, a bolt of energy flies from the character’s hands, striking an enemy multiple times.

Battle Three
Abigail, a sweet and innocent healer with a staff vs. Billy the Minion. Combat is over in a single round, as Abby not only unleashes Ether Bolt but scores a Critical Hit as well, enabling her to deal enough damage to take out Billy.

TWICE.

Conclusion: WTF?

Realizing that the circumstances were somewhat flukey (she did score a Critical Hit after all), I ran another test with Abby and Billy. Combat went two rounds this time, but only because Abby missed with Ether Bolt the first time. While the damage was significantly less this time, it was still enough to obliterate poor Billy in one shot. This would have been acceptable if Ether Bolt was a high-cost spell, but with it only costing 3EP to cast it, Abigail could launch more than 20 of them bad-boys before even starting to break a sweat. This could be a problem.

The problem lied with an attribute that was on Ether Bolt called Multi-Hit. By adding this attribute to an attack, as the name implied, it allowed the attack to strike an opponent multiple times with a single action. Without getting into too many technical details, the number of hits that landed was based on the threshold that the attacker beat the target’s defense by. After heavy review and discussion, there were two things that stood out as being, well, dangerous.

1) There was no cap on the number of times a Multi-Hit attack could strike.

2) Adding Multi-Hit to an attack only cost ONE FREAKING MEASLY POINT.

I have yet to do the math on the damage a Multi-Hit Fireball would do, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to make me cry. Needless to say, Multi-Hit has been revamped a bit, and now costs for each additional hit that you want to land. It’s a reasonable compromise, and one that should prevent some level of abuse.

So, you want to become the magic-slinging equivalent of the commandos in Predator, looking to clear out an entire room of mother-Ogres? Sure, it’s still possible. But it’s certainly gonna cost you.

Now, it’s time for some nitty-gritty details. What are the races that inhabit the world of Illordia? As far as player characters go, we didn’t stray too far from your typical fantasy archetypes. Of course there are Humans, as well as Dwarves and Gnomes. A little more off the beaten path, we’ve got Kobolds, Elves of both the Light and Dark persuasion, and even Orcs.

Now, a few things you need to understand- we’ve made it so that these races can actually coexist with one another, and not be at each other’s throats simply because of your lineage. If you want to be a Dark Elf, you don’t have to be a brooding exile that shuns the evil ways of his people, and seeks redemption on the surface world. Our Dark Elves are not like other game’s Dark Elves- they’re simply more rural Elves that happen to be a bit darker in complexion than the norm. And just because you want to play as an Orc, you don’t have to be a belligerent, pillaging, socially-inept kill-machine. Of course you can if you want to, but you shouldn’t feel that you have to. Does this mean that everyone in the world of Illordia gets along, and lives in complete harmony with one another? Hell no, that’s just boring. But the bottom line is that years of peace, as well as living in close proximity with one another have made the races of the world more tolerant of each other. And yes, that even includes the Kobolds.

And while we’re on the subject, here’s another interesting note- there are no racial templates in Glenshire Abbey. None.

“What madness is this?” you may be asking yourself. “Surely there are differences that set Elves apart from Gnomes, and Orcs from Kobolds?” Truth be told, you are correct. Orcs are indeed taller than Kobolds, Elves live longer than Humans, and Dwarves have superior dark vision due to living underground.

But guess what? We don’t care.

Often times in a role playing game, we find ourselves picking the race for our character that provides the most bonuses. Either that or we find ourselves torn between two or three that offer something that we want, but in no way would be possible. Part of the design theory with ISys is that we’re all about building characters that you actually want to play with, rather than feeling forced into. We think that who you are is much more important that what you are in a game. You want to play as a Kobold knight-in-training, running amok with a Buster Sword that’s almost as big as he is? We’re not here to ask why- we’d much rather ask the question, “Why Not?”

You’ll notice that we ask “Why Not?” a lot around here. We think life’s a lot more interesting that way.

The world of Illordia is relatively small in scope compared to a lot of RPG’s, but it’s diverse enough to keep players from feeling too trapped. There are some games out there that can be intimidating to a player due to the scale of it all; there’s nothing worse than feeling like a slave to the history of a place, and that you need to read about 30+ tomes to truly understand what is going on. We’re fans of making things accessible to new players, but not at the expense of those who’ve been around the RPG block a time or two.

Illordia itself is a continent, consisting of seven provinces; Grand Kaleigh, Havenlorne North, Havenlorne South, Gaerloch, Crescent, Lorraine and Kelibran. Glenshire Abbey itself is located within Grand Kaleigh, but as you can see there is more to the world than just that. Between these locales we’ve got guild houses, a grand theater, a mountain with a sleeping dragon, a haunted asylum, an enchanted glade, pirate kings, dark fairies, and a guy wandering the countryside beating the crap out of bandits. Of course if you wanted to keep things inside of the school, there’s plenty to do there as well.

Glenshire Abbey- It’s n00b friendly, but open enough for seasoned players to not be bored either.

In Glenshire Abbey, we’ll be including little blurbs on some possible enemies/allies/NPC’s that a GM may want to include in their game. We’re still on the fence about whether or not we’ll have stats for them, since I think a GM knows who and what they need for their particular campaign and circumstances. They can stat them accordingly, depending on if they want him to be a minion, or the BBG (Big Bad Guy) of the campaign.

Which brings us to Harland ‘Woody’ Cole. Where to begin, where to begin?

Of course we all know the adage With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility. Well, ol’ Woody Cole is a prime example of the lesser-known adage of With Great Power Comes More Ways to Creatively Curb-Stomp My Enemies. He’s a guy that started off as a cantankerous pub-crawling, brawl-happy jerk, and suddenly discovered that he also had a talent for magic. Rather than civilize him though, it just made him a cantankerous, pub-crawling, brawl-happy fireball-tossing jerk. His personality puts me in the mindset of Stinkmeaner from The Boondocks, crossed with a bit of Toombs from Chronicles of Riddick; he’s a no-nonsense, trash-talking, living-and-breathing ass-whuppin’ waiting to happen. After being tossed out of the school for fighting with the headmaster some years ago, Cole makes his living as a merc, and is ready to be inserted into any campaign needing a brawling mage.