Dynamic D100: how to make it more accessible?

[RosenMcStern]

We are in the process of writing additional materials for the next reprint of Dynamic D100. I was thinking that we could also take advantage of the opportunity to make minor corrections and clarifications.

The target of the game is clearly defined as "fans of vintage mecha anime", who will appreciate it in any case out of nostalgy. However, the robot combat rules require a certain amount of system mastery. Your average anime fan is probably more willing to enjoy a "sit down and play" kind of game, while Dynamic D100 requires some study of the rules that a casual gamer may not appreciate.

We have already removed the character creation phase, as the players will play the classic heroes, so you can in fact grab a character sheet and start playing. How can we present the rules in a simpler format?

My first idea is to split robot combat rules into basic and advanced and let players learn gradually. Basic rules would include only:

• ground movement
• ranged attacks and their combat effects
• punching and grappling
• battlecries

The amount of rules to memorize would be halved, but this would be enough to run a simple combat including Mazinger Z (without Scrander), Venus (without Scrander and enhanced weapons) and Jeeg (without Mach Drills and with the Big Shooter not joining the fight). The players would then move on to the full rules and the remaining robots.

What do you think? What else woul you do to make the game experience simpler?

 

[soltakss]

I love the way that skills are treated in Revolution D100 and have used the same concept elsewhere, it really simplifies the game.

Personally, I would do the same to other areas, so I would have a list of Powers and would simply have them accessed by the various spells systems to give the same results. That makes a lot of things very simple and easy to use. So, a Divine Spell and a Common Magic spell would access the same Power, but the Divine Spell version might be more powerful or might give more points of the Power, and a Science version would use the same Power but might be a fixed value or a variable value depending on the Science item used.

I don't want really complex combat, as too many options really slow the game down. My Players only really used a few combat options anyway, as they didn't see the point of the others.