Happy new year! Hopefully 2023 will be the year of Pugmire! I’m really excited about this new chapter in the realms of Pugmire, and some of that comes from some of the changes we’ve made to the core rules system to smooth out some of the rough edges.
When I say “core rules,” I’m talking about those rules that touch most of the game. Yes, I also changed a lot of rules like how certain tricks work and the math behind enemies and whatnot, but that’s a long list of changes, and it’s honestly better to just review the manuscript once you back the crowdfunding campaign. (So, by implication, yes there will be a crowdfunding campaign, and yes, you’ll get access to the edited manuscript once you back it.)
I cover much of this in the appendix, so the information is handy inside the book itself, but this is a good opportunity to show off some of the text! This is all before editing and playtesting, though, so some of it may change.
Saving Throws: Instead of adding your proficiency bonus to your preferred ability modifier before making a saving throw, you instead roll with advantage (to better integrate with the rest of the system). If you have an ability that gives you advantage to a preferred saving throw, nothing happens, as you can’t have advantage more than once.
Fortune: Rolling a botch adds a Fortune to the bowl, although characters can still choose to botch according to their personality traits to force that addition. Also, there is a cap to Fortune: three times the number of players.
Sleeping: It’s now called “napping” to better reflect that it’s not a solid eight hours of sleep. Also, if you fail your Constitution saving throw while napping outdoors, you gain the Exhausted condition in addition to the other “benefits” of your rough night of napping.
Heat Damage: It’s now called “fire” damage. It works the same, though.
Falling Damage: If you fall from a great height, it now hurts! We added falling damage to the rules.
Healing: Characters now have the option to bind the wounds of characters that are injured but not dying. A Wisdom (Heal) check at difficulty 15 restores 1d4 stamina points once per scene without spending a stamina die.
Conditions: We’ve added new conditions to this game: Cursed, Exhausted, and Mesmerized.
Advancement: This works differently from the original game. Here are the two big changes:
• Proficiency bonus starts at +1 instead of +2 but increases at level 2. It increases every two levels after that, as usual.
• You don’t need to take an improvement to increase abilities or get new skills. Instead, you get +1 to an ability and a new skill every odd level (3, 5, 7, and 9). Improvements now are just taking a new trick or refining an existing trick.
So that’s a peek at some of the rules changes. What about the realms themselves? I’ll cover some of the canonical changes next week!
Generally looks good patches – However, I have one big worry – If not new Saving Throws rules are too much outside of 5E-ish resemblance? Realms of Pugmire are often sold as ‘D&D 5E light/more narrative’ – and those Savings from blog post seems like something not in way of most of core 5E rule
My concerns are the opposite: are these changes going to make the ruleset different _enough_ to legally avoid claims that it’s a D&D knock-off? With Hasbro’s rumored OGL 1.1, I won’t be surprised if their lawyer division starts coming down like a ton of bricks on anything even vaguely resembling D&D; and I’m hoping Realms of Pugmire will change things further in order to avoid even the appearance of copyright infringement.
What I’m seeing here is “rearranging the deck chairs” when recent developments might require a radical course change.
I am not worried about Hasbro coming down on anything “even resembling D&D.” There are far, far, FAR too many games that resemble D&D to make that an even remotely viable legal strategy, and many of those games have far similar features than Realms of Pugmire will.