Can I get a critique of my game?

[Shades of Eternity]

I'm trying to get solid feedback for my free game in the hopes of making it better.

The game's name is Dark Revelations - the Role Playing game.

The Hodgepocalypse takes North America and the d20 system and makes it a diverse world filed with magical rites, modern technology and bizarre cultures.

Enjoy a fantastic, but familiar world of Necromantic Armies, Texan Witches, Newsie Faeries and Newfoundland Spellcasters.

here's my feeder links.
Dark Revelation - The Role Playing Game - Player's Guide
Dark Revelations - The Role Playing Game - Book of Magic: Guide to Faerily Living (Dead)
Dark Revelations - The Role Playing Game - The Book of Adventure: More Crunch, More Fluff, More Fun
Dark Revelations - The Role Playing Game - Monster Manual: & Book of Danger
Dark Revelations - The Role Playing Game - The Book of Arrogance

Blog (filled with tons of stuff)
http://drevrpg.blogspot.ca/

If I had to sum it up very concisely using other people's games, it is pathfinder/rifts (with a healthy dose of modern d20).

I just dropped the psychic book (inspired heavily by the animated movie Rock and Rule) and would love suggestions on how to make it better.

You guys seem to really know your stuff.


edit: If it's at the wrong forum, feel free to move it.

 

[Wicht]

Heh. I started to look over the first book for you, but, realizing that its 400+ pages, it'll take a while. So far seems to be an interesting setting. You have definitely put work into it.

One note - Copyright notices for works after 1989 are not strictly necessary, though they are still not a bad thing to do. But, when you include a copyright notice, it is standard to include the date (year) of the Copyright. So your copyright line would read: Dark Revelations - The Role Playing Game © 2015 Chris Constantin. It is also not necessary to put the © after the title each time you mention the title; besides which, I think you are conflating copyright and trademark when you include it after the title, and if you don't have the title trademarked then you don't need to put that you do.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I haven't had time to read more than 10% of the first book, but here are my initial impressions:

1) That's a lot of material. It's a significant barrier to entry for someone who might otherwise be interested in checking it out.

2) It seems to have decent layout, though the photography is a bit disconcerting. It kind of reminds me of a Driver's Handbook, rather than an RPG.

3) It takes a while to get into the mechanical stuff, but my quick overview didn't see anything that varied significantly from standard d20 modern or Pathfinder, almost like this could have been a setting book. I mean, I'm sure it's a new combination of those existing elements, but nothing really grabbed me right off the bat as exciting or innovative from the mechanical level.

Like I said, that's just a first glance. It looks neat, and I'd be willing to play a game of this if someone else wanted to run it. Definitely warrants further examination at a later point.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

What I'm getting so far is:
1. Put a spot light on any innovations that I've done.
2. A starter set of 30 pages or less will seriously help as a draw.

I'm going to post my blog entries on comparisons with d20 and rifts here to make it easier to quickly understand the differences.

http://drevrpg.blogspot.ca/2015/01/differences-from-d20-games.html

http://drevrpg.blogspot.ca/2015/01/rifting-back-through-time.html

As for the art, the reason it's photograph heavy is that the pictures are "holding pictures." All of them are public domain in order to have something to break up the text (because I can't draw and I wanted to see if there was interest before I crossed what I call "the pay line".)

It also explains the use of heromachine.

One note - Copyright notices for works after 1989 are not strictly necessary, though they are still not a bad thing to do. But, when you include a copyright notice, it is standard to include the date (year) of the Copyright. So your copyright line would read: Dark Revelations - The Role Playing Game © 2015 Chris Constantin. It is also not necessary to put the © after the title each time you mention the title; besides which, I think you are conflating copyright and trademark when you include it after the title, and if you don't have the title trademarked then you don't need to put that you do.

thanks for the info.

I'll update this weekend.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Some sort of limited product is bound to help, for everyone who gave up on D&D and Pathfinder and Rifts because they came out with too many products. Asking people to review one book will likely get you more feedback than asking them to review five books.

The posts you'd linked are useful guide posts, to quickly orienting a new reader. They tell me what, in particular, I should probably pay attention to. I'll be sure to check that out, later on. There are some points about which I am highly skeptical, but you've probably invested too much work to make major design changes now.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

I want to hear your skepticism, mainly because if I don't hear it, I'll never know.

besides, this is a work in progress.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

My initial concern, based on the blog entries, had to do with the degree to which NPCs were different from PCs. One of the major flaws with 4E, from the perspective of many critics, was the way that the too-different NPCs contrasted from PC-built rules to create a world where it was hard to understand how anything actually worked. There's just no way to reconcile an NPC wizard with 100HP and 1 Healing Surge and a (5-6) recharge Flame Barrage against a PC wizard that had 50HP and 7 Healing Surges and an Encounter-recharge Fireball spell.

So I was curious as to how you addressed this, and whether you could convey with similar-enough mechanics that an NPC wizard is supposed to represent the same sort of thing as a PC wizard, while somehow reducing the complexity to a level that was manageable for the GM to create half a dozen NPCs in less than an hour. I don't see rules for NPC creation anywhere, though, so I'm not sure what your solution was.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

You just selected the next blog post.

I'll let you know when it's posted.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

I have a strange issue.

I've been using google books as an aggregate.

I tested the books recently and realized the bookmarks aren't downloading with the book.

It seems to be working normally via tablet.

Are other people having this problem and if so, how the heck can I fix?

 

[GMMichael]

Is there a way to download a book without giving Google my credit card number? (nevermind that google probably knows everything anyway...)