This site will contain all the updates and additions to ARPLE, latest updates first. The months before October predate this site and are included for completeness.

The advancement system is up, I'm very proud of it, although it's highly exploitable. I'm guessing that people who play in the spirit of the thing won't mind and munchkins will be munchkins. Hence I've discarded traditional methods for experience gathering and put together a tutor-based system for skills, a limited advancement scheme for attributes (and I do mean limited, they shouldn't be very modifiable at all) and a GM reward system for traits. I'm finding that generaly, traits are what identifies the character and intergration of additional traits into the plot of the game seems a good way to reaffirm this function.

Also, new introduction and updated download files, a few new skills in the downloaded files that I haven't added to the website yet. I think that those are pretty much the basic rules, after I add a few GM sections I will be ready to dedicate more of my time to ARPLE supplements. I'm planning 1 adventure(call of the wild), 1 campagin setting (alexandria) and "Green ARPLE", the newbie guide to ARPLE, including 'quick rules' fact sheet and character archetypes for people unfamiliar with the fantasy genre. I'm also reallty hyped about "ARPLE in space", the Space Opera variant of ARPLE, comming sometime next year.

The magic system is up. I quote as my inspiration the excelent Death Gate cycle by Wies and Hickman. The probability thing is pretty much their idea, apendixed in the first novel of the series, but I've done a lot with the general principle. Actually, the system came about as one of my players died, reincarnated as a mage and I had to fudge a system, later I developed the probability engine. Campagin has sunk in priority, I will wrap it up in about a month and so will be free to put up otherwise 'sensetive' information on the site. The campagin will be divided into 'sessions' which each test a certain element. So farI've tested character creation(Session 1), skill execution(Session 1, 2, 3), Combat (Session 1, 3) Magic (session 3,4) and Clue hunt template (Session 4). Sadly, my players are miserable at maintaining a commited 'roleplaying' attitude, but they seem to be identifying well with their characters despite their light attitude, so the principle of a base on which to roleplay seems sound. Also, my project has become slighly more newbie focused, after I typed up the new introduction, I realised I was just as much about a 'basic' new roleplayer freindly system as I was about a simple version of the GROUPs character creation concept.

Other updates include the revised Attributes, the remodelled skill tests, slightly changed weapon tables (no more D12s or D4s) and the keys have been moved to the bottom of all tables. I'm planning on putting up Chapter 5; character advancement by the 1st of December. In addition, I'll be at Macquariecon for the 10-12th of december, if you're attending, say hi (look for the guy swearing about his GM not showing up, happens every con) and tell me what you think about the system so far.

As a result of extensive combat playtesting in my own group I've made some minor modifications to missile weapons (mostly in the form of increased dammage). The armour does tend to both slow down and unbalance the game quite severly. I recommed that armour values greater than 4 be alocated with extreme caution. Also note that while it is rare for a character to DIE, they are often quite severely battered after larger combats; DMs should allow time for rest between fierce combats. You'll also notice the new martial art trait and the close combat skill; these were done on player request, they open up a new venue for combat. I'm playing with the idea of providing traits for each weapon type, just to make things interesting. My magic system should be comming on in a few days time. Campagin pages are still in progress, I'm awaiting character animations to come through (we have an artist in our gaming group, he does illustrations for all the characters in his free time!)

Currently I'm raking my mind for an efficient and simple magic system (the one currently accompanying the system was cobbled together in short order just in case somebody wanted to play a mage, which no-body thankfully decided to do), as well as trying to define an easy negative modifier system for skill rolls. I have found it's a lot of hassle to come up with good modifiers on the spot, so I will be adding a guide to this sometime soon.

I balanced the availability of traits and skills for a while, until I thought I had a fairly good balance. I wanted there to be plenty of choice, but didn't want to get bogged down by un-nessecary details. The idea of hassle-free character creation was always at the forefront of my mind. I was catering for people who didn't have the patience for something like Vampire or Groups character creation. From early playtests, I found that people tended to stick with a maximum of 3-4 skills and 2-3 traits, so the list I have outlined in the online version of the system has provided quite efficient (more skills can be easily meshed into the system from other games, I just outlined the bare essentials).

Digging out my combat system, planning to use it as a base to work from, I went to work. The first thing to get an overhaul was the class system. I decided to operate a point poll engine(reusing already existing skills & traits, and adding new ones), partly so there would be no dice rolled in character creation (a big flaw of AD&D, in my opinion) and partly so my players could mix and match as they pleased. I tried to create an engine that gave players a fair idea what they were capable of, gave them an avenue for exploration of their individual character and let them create a persona in less than 5 minutes. I'm still exploring the balancing of this system. Currenly, I give 50 points to start with, and an additional 10 per level

Next I gave the combat system itself a few tweaks here and there, introducing the idea of weapon- based efficiency (in the early stages, players purchased Attack and Defence dice with their generation points) and allowing additional A & D dice to be gained from high skill levels in that weapon type. I stuck with relatively harmless weapons because I knew from previous experience that the combat in ARPLE seldom left it's winner unscratched. I also made weapons fairly expensive, I wanted people who wanted good weapons to dish out the cash. To give you some idea, characters started with 100-200 Pax (donated by P in the cost coloums) in the playtesting campagin. This left them money for a good weapon, poor armour, and a few dozen Paxs for casual spending.

Combat system first developed after my introduction to a board game called hero's quest. Missibe weapon system ripped off from warhammer setting because that works, it's quick and provides a solid base to build on (yeah, yeah, I have no integrety, go bite). Also, 4 basic character classes are constructed, along with skill and trait tables for each class. Lenghty pathenon of God's started.