Starfinder and Dragon Heresy
Reading an article on the differences between Pathfinder and Starfinder.
Well, I guess I was on to something with the Dragon Heresy Wounds/Vigor split.
I’m sure Starfinder has been in development for a long, long time. And I’m also sure I came up with Wounds/Vigor independently, though someone later pointed it out that Wounds and Vitality had long been tucked into an optional rule in the PFRPG Core book.
Still: let me echo that I think it’s absolutely the right call. Differentiating between “stuff that makes you bleed” and “reserve of skill, stamina, luck, and divine favor” as hit points were described on p. 82 of the original Dungeon Masters’ Guide by Gygax is, to me, incredibly useful and helps solve some real problems, especially when you push the game engine into the firearm era.
For now: yay, parallel evolution.
Also: Clearly Starfinder came out first, because, well, Paizo has resources and staff and I’ve got me. But Dragon Heresy, that rough beast, continues to move forward, slouching towards Bethlehem to be born, etc.
The first time I recall seeing a similar rule was in Tagmar, a Brazilian fantasy RPG that came out in the 90s, where you had “Physical Energy” (Wounds) and “Heroic Energy” (Vitality), with different spells and potions for both.
I think the d20 Star Wars games also did something similar, though they were generally not considered very good in other aspects. I agree with you that it’s absolutely the right call to make and I like that Dragon Heresy makes it :).
Yeah, d20 Star Wars had Vitality Points (equal to HP) and Wound Points (equal to CON score) where critical hits applied directly to WP. You could also improve the Wound Point score via a feat … and now that I think about it, I think d20 Modern had something similar (but I could be wrong.)
That’s basically what Dragon Heresy does, with some tweaks as to how you can turn potential wounds to vigor (vitality). There really are only so many ways to do something, so I’m not surprised my efforts were not unique.
When are we going to be able to buy Dragon Heresy?
It’s in editing right now, and that’s taking a while. It’s also a MASSIVE project, and to bring it to fruition with the kind of production values I want will require something like a minimum of $50,000 and as high as $100,000. I don’t think I have the Kickstarter gravitas to pull in that sort of money just yet. The smaller Kickstarters I’m running (like Lost Hall, right now) are, in addition to real products, trial balloons to see how many backers I can bring in. I will probably need north of 625 just to make the book happen, and 800 or more to get to color interior, which is what I want to give you.
In short: I’ll launch Dragon Heresy when I think it can be successful; trust me – I want it out there very badly.
I have a better answer to this now. I will be releasing a lower cost Level 1-4 or 1-5 basic set that will get things rolling within the first half of 2018.