For starters, I'm a big fan of the fairy tale / kid's story theme.
One of the first things I noticed as I was reading the doc is the simplification of the engine to make it less crunchy. I think it makes sense to remove some crunch, but I wonder if in play it would feel like there aren't enough decisions to make with your succes dice. It feels like the core gameplay loop for players is 1. Describe What you want to do 2. Roll Dice and see how many successes 3. Describe how successful you were based on the dice. What I like about the havoc engine is the ability to keep a bunch of plates spinning and competing for attention and I thnk some of the simplification of that here may have cut out a bit too much.
- quantified stats adding d6 equal to their value to qualitative stats that add a flat modifier of 1d6 to a base 2d6 to attempt
- Removing limited use items & situational bonuses
- Removing injuries & resources
- Removing adversaries threats and resilience & instead treating all adversaries as objectives
That's not to say that I disagree that crunch can be removed. I just think that maybe there's opportunity to add back in some of the competing priorities for the player at any given point between keeping themselves healthy, making progress on the objective, dealing with adversaries, etc. Maybe it's as simple as adding more side objectives or incorporating some environmental aspect.
Some pieces of this that I really like:
- I think my favorite thing you added were the list of Challenge Characteristics having different modifiers. That's a really clever way to make each challenge feel unique.
- Characters having different stats based on their skills feels like a great way to drive players to think in terms of "what would this character do" rather than just picking the highest value skill.
- The Reserve being designed to give you extra dice based on how far you push yourself. I think I'd like to see a different option to refill the reserve, rather than having to skip a turn because in a game of 6 people that feels like a heavy punishment.
- The missions being adaptations of classic stories is great, but I think the end credits press conference is hilarious and very fun.
- Predefined "Tension Rises" challenges for each scenario
Cool Submission!