Welcome back for another Development Log for The Beast Within, today we will be talking about character-building archetypes and the challenge rating system that the game will be utilizing. 

As mentioned in Development Log #1, the human-animal dichotomy is a key concept that I want to explore. Although the animal forms and archetypes are central to The Beast Within (it’s in the name and everything!), the human element is just as important. To account for the other 50% of the character-building experience, I settled on a two-tiered character archetype system to account for both the human and animal archetypes. 

Upon great reflection, I decided to use the term ‘humanoid’ rather than ‘human’ to accommodate the plethora of settings, genres and playstyles that folks may want to opt into using this system. So if folks want to be a Tiefling that can shift into an opalescent tiger or an Orc that can shift into a fennec fox, they can! The Humanoid Archetype will act as a class-like archetype. It will help inform the players and GM as to the background, experience and skillsets of the character and flesh them out as a fully realized person. 

The Beast Archetype will inform the animal form that the players will be able to shift into. These archetypes will have their own unique abilities (both in and out of combat). Instead of being extremely prescriptive with specific animal forms (e.g. wolf, tiger, mole, beetle), the archetypes will be groups of animals instead,  such as grouping wolves, coyotes, jackals and foxes as Canis. This will hopefully make character building more approachable and allows freedom for the players to be creative on the specific choice of animal and aesthetic for their beast archetype. There will be a core release of humanoid archetypes and beast archetypes with future supplements for more variety. 

While researching different TTRPGs both published and indie, I learned that the framing of difficulty and challenge is important in uplifting and highlighting key mechanics of your TTRPG system. In The Beast Within, the difficulty in accomplishing a task is called Adversity. The GM will be the one typically setting the Adversity for the task and the player will make their roll, adding applicable bonuses to see if they meet or exceed the Adversity put before them. However, failing a roll in The Beast Within will not be a wholly negative experience, that is where Wrath comes in. An expendable resource you can use to fuel your character’s future approach. But that is for a future Development Log! 

Thanks so much for reading and being so excited about this game! Writing these logs gives me the right amount of push and motivation to keep making forward progress in this game’s development. As always, please feel free to let me know your thoughts whether in the comments, on Twitter or TikTok!