Wednesday, October 31, 2018

This week, I sat down finally thought through and wrote some rules for using Essence. I’ve had the Essence page up since the beginning, the concept being something I came up with years ago, but beyond it being simply a concept for magic, I hadn’t put much thought into how to actually utilize it in-game. I had alluded to the fact that a skilled Essence user could perform more traditional “magic”, but there were no examples of what that actually meant.

Now, I’ve finally updated the Grimoire book to include pages for how to use Essence in GUTS+ as well as 3 different skill levels and skills for each level. I also fleshed out the concept of an Essence running “hotter” or “colder” into the concept of an Essence’s Aura, which is a randomly-selected trait that allows your character’s Essence to do different things. For example, after growing strong enough, a Hot Essence will allow its user to set things on fire. There is a page for each skill level, Basic, Honed, and Master, and each of those pages lists all the skills possible for each Aura.

I still need to test out these skills in a real GUTS+ game, so I’m sure there will be changes in the future, but for now, I’m happy with what I’ve come up with. Essence is by far the most complicated thing in the GUTS+ system. If you read through the Grimoire and have any feedback or ideas at all, please share them with me! I really want to make sure this is something that will be interesting and fun and not frustrating or difficult.