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Laying Waste is an essential addition to every gamer's table. It brings simple, flavorful, balanced and intuitive combat design to your d20 based games.
By Brian Berg of TPK Games
Additional Content by Adam Meyers, Jason Nelson, Tom Phillips, Clinton Boomer, Hal Greenberg, Creighton Broadhurst, Matt Everhart, Ed Greenwood, Mike Welham, Frank Mentzer, Jim "Drawmij" Ward and more! We even have some fun social goals featuring the likes of Rachel Ventura, John Reyst, Endzeitgeist and Alyssa Faden!
Everything you know about critical hits is wrong.
There, I said it. In days past, critical hits were a simple doubling of damage for scoring a well-placed blow upon an enemy. As games evolved, the notions of critical hits did too. Soon, there were expansions to the rules and critical hits could dish out even more damage and a multitude of charts were crafted so that you could die from an arrow to the eye, ad infinitum, until the whole system became so convoluted that it actually stopped adding value to the game. The scythe-wielding fighter that deals 180 points of damage on a critical hit really diminishes the fun of the game for the other players and the GM as well.
Paizo introduced their critical hit and fumble deck in 2009. The cards added a lot of flavor to the game, but the mechanics and effects for criticals and fumbles were necessarily limited by card space. What they did though was introduce official mechanics that reduced the sheer amount of hit point damage output in games, and gave critical hits and fumbles a more condition-based effect.
It was a great start...
Laying Waste is built upon the foundation of those critical hit and fumble decks, but goes much further. Laying Waste is an entire modular rules set that replaces the existing critical hit system, and is suitable for any d20-based game. Its mechanics are intuitive and simple, yet allow for a wide array of effects and conditions that are designed to be balanced and enhance your game's combat scenarios.
Our Philosophy.
Never again waste a critical threat roll...
Critical hits are not sheer hit point destruction...
Increased skill at arms means increased critical effects...
Critical hit and fumble effects have saving throws...
Immediately upon completion of the kickstarter, playtest backers will receive a beta copy, allowing them to playtest the rules and offer their feedback as we finalize the book. This has been under wraps for a year already and playtested by a number of players at conventions. All of whom loved it and were able to learn the system in about 3 turns!
So get your crit together and check out this epic Kickstarter!
Pledged.
My only semi-gripe is that by pledging, we get the Feats Reforged pdf, and I had already bought it. I say "semi", because it was very much worth buying.
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@Shadowcat - We just communicated all of that in recent updates. The gist of which being that 'The Reaping Stone' was much larger and more epic than anticipated, plus we reworked a lot of art and cartography for 'The Bleeding Hollow.' The date is set for backer PDFs (next week) and now we are just waiting on proofs before we ship.
Consequently, we chose to go ahead with this project that we've been holding onto for a year (waiting for the BH KS to wrap up). I do understand your thoughts on the matter though. I may have filled up a swear jar or two during the course of the project myself.
The good news though is that it transformed our operation into a real publishing company and we were wise enough to have this new project pre-written (aside from stretch goals). We also won't be adding any additional books to this kickstarter like the BH. If you have the Reaping Stone, you know the level of quality we've been publishing now, and I hope the wait was worth it. You can keep up with our updates on our Facebook page.
While I understand the use of Facebook for keeping people informed it somewhat aggravates me as one of the few who chooses to not have a Facebook account.
I wish there was a way to accomplish the same thing without the hassle of joining Facebook.
Just wanted to chime in and say that Brian is not kidding when he says that this project is quite advanced -as a stretch-goal, I already have the Beta in my hands and it already looks VERY professional, in fact more professional than quite a few finished products I've reviewed. So yeah, I'd be surprised if this was haunted by delays.
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Eh I'll have to chew on this one a bit. I for one am not a fan of starting another KS when the previous one isn't yet fulfilled. Still I'll keep an eye on it I am intrigued...
Honestly I gotta say though I do like that Henry Lopez at Paradigm (the Arcanis folks!) delayed his Arcanis KS because he wanted to wait for the previous KS he did to ship to backers first. There was a little disappointment but also respect for that. =)
Having said that, if End is vouching for how far along this is that outta alleviate a lotta concerns. He's top notch and certainly knows a thing or two about products ;p
The gist of which being that 'The Reaping Stone' was much larger and more epic than anticipated,
My bad. When you asked for 5,000 words, I totally misread it as 50,000. ;-)
Personally, I do not see a problem with working on more than one product at a time. I mean, it CAN be a problem, but sometimes you end up waiting for something/someone to do something and you cannot progress until that is taken care of. You might as well work on something else in the meantime.
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The Bleeding Hollow PDF will be in backers hands Tuesday. I didn't want to sit around resting on my laurels while we had a production schedule to maintain. ShadowcatX is right though, that doesn't inspire confidence and looks shady. I take full responsibility for that. Our playtesters were chomping at the bit to be able to talk about Laying Waste, so I let loose the flood gates.
As End mentions, Laying Waste really is quite good. It does change combat and really makes it more fun. I don't want to let all the cats out of the bag, but definitely go check out the video. I'll also be doing a much less formal video podcast this afternoon that should go online this week.
Thanks for all the support thus far, we have funded and are now going to start tearing down the walls of our stretch goals!
Interesting!
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Here's the link to my *very* candid interview on 'Refresh & Reload' about Laying Waste. It's pretty entertaining, that's for sure and goes more in-depth into the system mechanics and design philosophies. Check it out!
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3 days down, and 5k in! This project is funded, so jumping in now let's you help knock down the walls of some amazing stretch goals. Next up, we'll be having the backers help determine the details of our mysterious cover swordsman, who will later be authored by none other than Ed Greenwood!
http://kck.st/17Ttogr
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You can grab a free preview of Laying Waste here! If you like it, consider backing the Kickstarter. Thanks!
Only $325 to unlock mythical and 50 likes to unlock me! Yay!
Hey, TPK! Can you answer some questions over in this thread?
Guess who's been unlocked? Yeah, I'll be contributing some material to this book. :)
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Awesome Enz!
I am REALLY hoping for the second book!!!
The sequel's unlocked and only $31 to the next stretch-goal! Awesome!
So what news about this?
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Thanael, I think I'll post an update on Kickstarter in the next day or so. The playtesters have the latest version, and the print playtest book is shipping very soon. We have a few of their suggestions to work on and then we'll be getting this baby rolling.
In all though, it's going great. The playtesters are loving it and all the extra content from other writers has been tested and added. It's going to be a lot of fun. Currently, the main book is sitting at 150 pages.