Brainstorming about content is an important stage to go through, in my book, because preparation is half of the battle. Knowing where I want to put things allows me the structure that I need to write. With that in mind, I figure that watching my process unfold could be useful and so I’ve decided to try to make weekly blogs about it. Today, we have a chapters list;
1. The world of Quint: This chapter explains the lore of the world provided with the game, which can be used as a basis for your story or modified how you see fit. In this section you’ll find world history, a primer on the cultures of the nations of Quint as well as factions both heroic and villainous and explanations for the circumstances that see the people of the flotilla living in vast domes above a sea of souls.
2. How to play: This chapter will describe the mechanics of the game that are universal. Rolling dice, roles, roleplaying and table safety tools will be included in this introductory chapter. Furthermore, the three ability scores and how they are used to calculate your Vital Essence, your Initiative and your Movement are described here.
3. Player character creation: This chapter will describe how you create a character, but also how to use the archetype and personality systems to help you create your own path forward. Archetype and personality are both aesthetic and theatric choices that don’t have any mechanical influence but are important to roleplay.
4. Storyteller’s tools: This chapter is designed to help guide the storyteller through their creation. Tips on narrative, charts of random details and ways to utilize a player’s backstory are all included in this chapter as well as rules you might need to help adjudicate tests or challenges.
5. Trees of Life: This chapter contains all of the trees of life as well as the associated information regarding the skills and abilities you unlock by investing points in them. Starting with the 12 skills, each skill is described in relation to how the skill can be used to interact with the world, followed by a description of each ability granted by investing in the tree.
6. Equipment and items: Armor, weapons, totems and more, as well as their effects are included here. In addition to spellcasting and the trees, many people on Quint augment themselves either to adjust for an injury or increase their power. Arcanomechanical gear that augments the body’s natural abilities are quite frequent for soldiers of fortune, for example. Also in this chapter will be our weapons system, which sees you create statistics for weapons individually. It will be possible to make yourself everything from a heavy two handed axe to a light and silenced pistol with this system.
7. Magic and Cosmology: This section details the qualities of the Aetherworld, a world adjacent to ours but entirely different, where space and time are less relevant than feelings and understanding. While the first chapter will describe this place and its connection to the lore of the game, this section will dive into the details of the places, energies and beings that exist in the Aetherworld. Magic is also detailed here; on Quint our magic system is going to see you write every spell you know from scratch, though some examples will be prevented here. We’re hoping to make this system relatively simple in comparison to how much freedom and creativity it would give a spellcaster.
8. Archetypes: These are characters built with a set amount of points, with brief descriptions for their abilities to make them aesthetically succinct. The purpose of this chapter is to provide examples to players regarding how they might choose to plan their character. While the system is classless, an archetype represents a plan that you have for the character’s future progress as well as aesthetic choices you might make for your abilities. Each archetype is unique and powers are described in accordance to the theme presented. For example, an archetype might be described as a bruiser, with 30 points. These points are spent in Athletics and Coordination, and abilities are described individually; perhaps for this character, their unarmed strikes are very obviously bare knuckle boxing. An illustration of the bruiser would accompany the example as well as a list of equipment.
9. Foes and enemy Factions: Enemies, creatures, and enemy factions are listed here. Similar to Archetypes, enemies and creatures use the same Trees of Life as the players but also include some more esoteric powers gleaned from trees hidden about the world. A manual of monsters so to speak, this chapter is primarily useful for a storyteller for quick reference. There should also be information on particular factions that can be useful both to storytellers who embody them but also players who want to immerse themselves in the minutia of lore.
Kickstarter Chapters
The nine chapters above are what we are hoping to offer with the Quint TTRPG manual. But with Kickstarter the option always exists to write more. If we have a significant amount of funding over our goal, we’re hoping to include entire other chapters. One that we are very interested in including is a homebrew guide that will lay out the rationale and function of our balance and playtesting to help you create your own worlds with our system.