{"id":10006,"date":"2011-06-25T22:10:52","date_gmt":"2011-06-26T03:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/?p=10006"},"modified":"2012-01-06T07:49:25","modified_gmt":"2012-01-06T13:49:25","slug":"designers-diary-sacrosanct-games-altus-adventum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/?p=10006","title":{"rendered":"Designer’s Diary: Sacrosanct Games – Altus Adventum"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Altus Adventum<\/strong>
\nAltus Adventum is a complete role-playing game powered by a unique system and published by Sacrosanct Games<\/a>.
\nBy Roderic Waibel<\/em>
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\nWelcome to the twelfth Designer\u2019s Diary, a regular column where designers are given the opportunity to take readers on an in-depth ride through the design and development process of their system, setting, or product.<\/p>\n

Designer’s Description<\/strong>
\nAltus Adventum is your typical high fantasy tabletop RPG \u00a0with a lot of the traditional literary references and myth that you find in the genre today.\u00a0 It is a skill-based game that utilizes a dice pool mechanic that is not what you would find in most other RPGs that utilize dice pools.\u00a0 In fact, the mechanic is much more similar to RISK than other more common systems (counting successes, tally\u2019s, etc)\u00a0 Specifics and details will be answered in greater detail below.<\/p>\n

Purpose<\/strong>
\nLike most game designers, the initial purpose of creating Altus Adventum was because there wasn\u2019t a system out there that really fit my gaming group\u2019s needs.\u00a0 As the gaming industry was growing in the 1980s and what I call “rulebook bloat” was taking place, we wanted a gaming system that captured the atmosphere we preferred, but with a system that moved very quickly.\u00a0 What I mean by “rulebook bloat” is that by the time the late 80s came around, there were dozens of rulebooks out there for the same game.\u00a0 This really took off in the 1990s with the addition of splat books.\u00a0 This made it really hard for the Game Masters (GMs) because your players could have expansions, books, etc, that you might not have read.\u00a0 It just became too much.\u00a0 I am of the philosophy that you shouldn\u2019t have to have a dump truck to bring your gaming aids to a session because there are so many of them.<\/p>\n

That was one of the reasons.\u00a0 The other was from my experiences at the gaming table.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure we\u2019ve all been there when during a combat encounter, you may be waiting 5, 10, or even 30 or more minutes before your turn.\u00a0 How many of us have seen players build dice towers out of boredom?\u00a0 I\u2019m willing to bet all of us at some point.\u00a0 So that was another reason for designing Altus Adventum.\u00a0 I wanted a combat system that kept a lot of the flexibility but moved a lot more quickly during those encounters.<\/p>\n

And the third reason?\u00a0 As our games became more advanced and the rulebook bloat I talked about became more prevalent, we saw a rise in the number of rules lawyers out there.\u00a0 That isn\u2019t to say we didn\u2019t have rules lawyers in the late 70s or early 80s, but I think the Gygaxian prose of that era was such that for most gamers, we just made the rules up on the fly or ignored the ones we didn\u2019t like rather than try to interpret Gary.\u00a0 With the rise of rulebook bloat, and having a lot more people do the writing that was easier to follow, I noticed a lot more rules lawyers come about.\u00a0 Of course, this is all anecdotal, so I want to caution that my observations don\u2019t necessarily mean it was objective truth for most gamers.\u00a0 So I make it very clear in Altus that every rule is optional.\u00a0 I state right up front that if there is a rule you want to change, want to ignore, or want to follow, go for it.\u00a0 The goal is to have fun, not bicker over a rules interpretation.<\/p>\n

Influences<\/strong>
\nMy biggest influences were those folks from the late 70s and early 80s: Gygax, Arneson, Moldvay, Mentzer, etc.\u00a0 I.e., pretty much everyone who was involved in early D&D.\u00a0 Call it nostalgia, but that was my favorite era of gaming, and my favorite editions of D&D to this day.\u00a0 That\u2019s something I definitely wanted to capture with Altus.\u00a0 Not the mechanics or rules per se, but the atmosphere and feel.<\/p>\n

Research<\/strong>
\nMost of my research was around the monsters.\u00a0 What I wanted to do was bring the monster descriptions back to the way they were in original myth and folklore.
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\nArt Direction<\/strong>
\nThis was a big one for me since my goal was to emulate the atmosphere of early gaming.\u00a0 I wanted to focus on an art style that was reminiscent of the 70s and 80s.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t have to be the most technically accurate work, but it had to help portray the feel of the artists of that era.\u00a0 It\u2019s all about atmosphere.\u00a0 In that vein, I lucked out and Larry Elmore was kind enough to grant me rights to use some of his full page illustrations for the 2nd<\/sup> edition rulebook.\u00a0 Additionally, you may or\u00a0 may not recall that in the AD&D Dungeon Master\u2019s Guide, there is a scrolling continuous set of art that depicts a party of adventurers dungeon crawling.\u00a0 As a bit of an homage, I have something very similar to that as well in Altus.<\/p>\n

Gaming Experience<\/strong>
\nOld school kill them and take their stuff.\u00a0 That really sums it up.
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\nComparison<\/strong>
\nAltus is similar to most high fantasy RPGs insofar as the theme goes.\u00a0 Humans, elves, dwarves, etc.\u00a0 But where it is different is in the mechanics.\u00a0 As I mentioned, it is a skill based system.\u00a0 That\u2019s hardly unique, but what it allows is for players to completely mold their characters how they want, and it\u2019s never too late to move in a different archetype.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure we\u2019ve all been there when you made up your character (based on party need perhaps?) and after a few adventures or so, you wished you went a different route.\u00a0 But it\u2019s too late now, without having to start a new character.\u00a0 Altus addresses that by not having any traditional “classes” so-to-speak.\u00a0 As you gain experience, you use that to purchase new skills.\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing stopping a character who was built for melee combat to switch and start learning magic.<\/p>\n

But what really sets Altus apart from other RPGs are the combat mechanics.\u00a0 As I mentioned above, it is somewhat similar to RISK.\u00a0 And as I also mentioned, I wanted to include players in the act of combat even if they weren\u2019t performing an action themselves.\u00a0 What this means is that players are actively engaged when they are being attacked, rather than just waiting to see how many hp their character suffers.\u00a0 Essentially all participants have an attacking dice pool, and a defending dice pool.\u00a0 These pools are determined by factors such as player skill, magic item bonuses, and attribute bonuses.\u00a0 The pool level tells the player how many and what type of dice are in his or her pool.\u00a0 For example, if you have a dice pool level of 6, you might have 1d8 and 2d6 in your pool.\u00a0 Because modifiers that impact your dice pool level are typically handled outside of combat, the pool level rarely is affected in the heat of battle so you don\u2019t need to keep referencing which dice you roll every time you attack and defend\u2014the dice stay pretty much the same.<\/p>\n

So how is this like RISK?\u00a0 Well, each attacker has his or her dice pool, and each defender has his or her dice pool.\u00a0 Both parties roll their dice pool and compare the highest number showing.\u00a0 Whoever has the highest number wins.\u00a0 There are additional rules for ties, etc, but that\u2019s the gist of it.\u00a0 Based on this system, there is no adding, subtracting, or whatever during combat itself.\u00a0 You don\u2019t roll a d20 and then take a few seconds adding all of your modifiers to see if you hit for example.\u00a0 It makes everyone\u2019s turn go by much faster that way.<\/p>\n

Development Process<\/strong>
\nThe initial game concept was done in 1986 with a group of 4 friends of mine.\u00a0 Originally it was a game designed to be generic of all genres: post-apocalyptic, fantasy, wild west, sci-fi, etc.\u00a0 However, in the early 2000s it was determined that to really get what I wanted from a gameplay perspective, I\u2019d need to separate them out.\u00a0 Fantasy is mostly melee & magic, while most everything else was mostly about firearms.\u00a0 Two completely different ways players resolve combat if you will.\u00a0 Therefore I felt that in order to really give each genre it\u2019s due process, I\u2019d need to separate them.\u00a0 Altus was the first to be completed because as a high fantasy game, it was easiest to do.\u00a0 Bleeding Sky (a game that focuses on more modern combat) is still in progress.<\/p>\n

Additionally, as mentioned above one of my goals was to emulate early 80s gaming.\u00a0 With Bleeding Sky, it worked best to take a more modern approach to art direction and layout, whereas with Altus, I wanted to go the more old school route.\u00a0 In fact, in order to help achieve this, I made a focus to pay attention to the little things as well, such as font styles, map styles, layout styles, etc.\u00a0 The font used for Altus is TW Cent, which is almost exactly like that in the early AD&D books.\u00a0 And the font for most of the adventures is Souvenir, which is what was used in the Moldvay B\/X games.\u00a0 I think these little things help achieve the goal I was going after.<\/p>\n

The 2nd edition of Altus was actually finalized last year.\u00a0 The first edition came out in 2002 as a rules-lite free RPG, but it was clear that a refined, expanded ruleset would be needed.\u00a0 Not only for game balance issues, but to really expand the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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