My group got through the Quickstart adventure (well, not really, the TPKd at the boss) and it was an absolute blast!
The relatively freeform way of creating characters, building them up from lists of traits is pretty unique these days and gives a lot of flexiblity to get creative with builds.
The setting is evocative and the art in the Quickstart is sublime. Really can't wait for the full release of this - feels like the devs really hit a homerun with Chains of Gaelia
It's a neat hack of the old BX stuff. I was originally very confused by what a "Burger" is supposed to be as a player character until it clicked that it's someone from a town.
I like how you've managed to distill things down to d6 rolls - it plays fast and is easy to keep track of. I'm in general not a big fan of having players, not player characters, solve problems, but to be fair, that's just the way that these OSR/BX type games are. Although, it raises the question of stuff like traps - you state that anyone can disarm a trap narratively if they say the right things, but then the Thief also has a specific skill that allows to disarm traps on a roll of 6. There's a couple other dissonances like this in the book in my opinion.
The faction based advancement system is something I've only encountered in a few other games - it's really inspired and I think you've managed to differentiate the factions enough to make it interesting and a worthwhile choice for players.
Combat seems pretty straightforward, but I really wish it wasn't at the end of the book, way after settlement, wilderness, dungeons, underworld and foes. While reading the weapons and armour section, I'd want to know how combat works so I can know what choices to make.
The general sandbox nature of the game is apparent and I'm surprised by how much useful tips and info you've managed to cram into a 49 page book.
I read through the Clutch google doc version you provided so excuse me if there's any differences between that and what's uploaded here.
I have a litany of thoughts about the system and I'm gonna warn you that not all of them are nice, but I tried to be as constructive as possible. The questions are more meant to be rhetorical to maybe help come up with ideas to further develop your game - I don't expect you to answer them for me:
• You claim that Clutch can play in any setting. However, having magic, psionics and guns as entwined in the rules as you do gives it an implied setting. I think you're doing your game a disservice by marketing it as a generic system instead of developing out a world to go along with it. Most of it is already there, obfuscated in the rules. (This seems to be explained in the itch actually, but not in the version of the text I was provided)
• The chapter order makes it so that I have to do a lot of flipping back and forth through the book. Consider making a consolidated table for Edges and Bonds, since especially with Edges, quite a few of them have prerequisites that need to be chosen earlier on in the character creation
• XP as a temporary boost us a cool idea, but from similar rules I've seen in other games I've played it will almost always be too good to use.
• XP on failure is very luck based and also could result in players farming rolls
• Speaking of farming - XP on friendly fire. Two PCs can just spar non-lethally and essentially farm XP this way
• Bonds - why are they named bonds? The word "Bonds" rather conjures the image of people and places you are emotionally attached to. This may be more of a stylistic gripe though.
• Big mentions size, but nothing else before it does
• Some Bonds are significantly better than others. Shapeshifting vs +1d4 to fishing for example
• Hyde/Jekyll - very, very strong. Maybe consider switching to be involuntariy instead?
• Mutant being a magic bond is unexpected - it's another example of there actually being an implied setting that just isn't spelled out
• Some Edge specific things:
• They are wildly unbalanced between each other. Chef at rank 2 gives 1d4 to one roll per rest for example. It's near useless. Same with Motivational Speech.
• Gorilla Grip - What actual benefit does rank 2 give? What benefit is there for losing the two-handed property give that isn't already covered by rank 1 giving the weapon the one-handed property?
• Sneak Attack - why wouldn't this work with a gun for the first round of combat? If I ambush someone can it work then?
• Why name Shield quality with this word? It conjures a completely different image than what the quality actually seems to do.
• Arcane Aptitude table - consider adding "+ATR" to the mana column - when looking for info, eyes will naturally be drawn to tables and it would be better if I didn't have to go looking for what else is added to the mana pool besides Arcane Aptitude Rank
• Wording for upscaling spells could be more clear - if I want to target just myself with a rank 2 spell I would pay two mana. But then many of the specific spells claim that I get to cast it on as many targets as mana spent when first casting. I spent 2 mana, according to the spell description I should be able to cast it on two targets.
• Spells have no duration for the most part. Is this on purpose? If so, it's pretty cool - as long as I don't regenerate my mana I could just keep Arcane Eyes going 24/7
• On to Psionics - the amount of talents you can have active at any one time is extremely unpredictable - this can be a good or a bad thing depending on the design goal you set for yourself with Psionics. Although, once again, that kind of implies a setting where Psionics are unstable, not a generic setting. Right now, from just reading and some napkin math it seems like Psionics is a great deal more powerful for less investment than Magic. Even with the unpredictability.
• There's generally a lot of number juggling in the Magic and Psionic Talents - as an example, Slow demands that you roll your Focus Die, then substract enemy Grit (Foes don't have a Grit stat it seems, so what am I substracting actually?) and then substract that difference from enemy Speed for an amount of rounds equal to the difference. Is this based in balance reasons? If not, why not streamline it?
• Item degradation is kind of just bookkeeping busy work with how it's written right now. If I just say that I am maintaining my gear is that enough? If there is no cost involved, then it's kind of pointless as a rule
• I understand the rules/balance reasoning behind not letting a mage just keep swapping out Wands for infinite mana, but the in universe reasoning needs some expanding on. It's another case of there being an implied setting which, if you made it explicit, could give a lot of flavour to this specific rule too
• Tempered Armour and Fortified Armour descriptions are swapped in the document
• Armour not affecting carry weight is an extremely odd choice that left me scratching my head. It doesn't weigh anything when worn but then suddenly weighs roughly half of my max carry weight when I take it off? This needs a rewrite or at least a better explanation.
• I like that you've rolled "To Hit" and damage rolls into one roll instead. Should speed up combat nicely
• I think the general combat section should be earlier in the book - reading through Bonds, Edges, Magic, Psionics and Gear, I kept thinking that I don't really have much of a clue how any of these things interact with each other
• Why do NPCs move without using a Basic Action in their first turn of combat? It's such an odd distinction to make that puts more bookkeeping on the GM
• Losing Edges as you lose health is a really interesting mechanic!
• It's a little unclear what you mean by "negative health reaches their total max health"? If I have 10HP and 3 Edges do I die at -10 or -30? Could be clarified a bit in the text
• Stress and Damage being tracked seperately is cool, but they affect the same HP pool, so it's a lot of seperate bookkeeping. It can work though, if the character sheet is clear enough to track these things easily
• Love the combat maneuver mechanic! Tactical actions in general are a cool idea and I really like how you've managed to discourage spamming by reducing the effect of consecutively using the same maneuver
• Ambushes feel needlessly complicated. The rolls involced for a theoretically simple thing is weird. Gaining an amount of Basic Actions based on the difference of rolls and then revealing enemies in order from Left to Right is a really odd mechanic that introduces a lot of extra bookkeeping for the GM. It also seems to clash with the general Sneak rules and gaining the Hidden condition. Also what happens if the PCs are the ones doing the Ambush? Does the GM just take the same steps, just from the NPC point of view? Also why is it that the Lookout could potentially gain a significantly higher amount of Basic Actions than is allowed usually? Why differentiate here? This whole mechanic could and probably should be significantly streamlined
• Rest encounters - why is it automatically an ambush when it to do with creatures? Kind of defeats the purpose of having someone on Watch. Also if there is a 25% chance for a rest encounter when changing Watch then what's the chance of it occuring if there is no watch? Since if it's not 100%, then there is basically no mechanical benefit to keeping watch - especially since you're gonna be ambushed anyways.
• Travel actions - Entertain - there's no mechanic tied to this besides a punishment/negative reinforcement for players not roleplaying a travel scene. If no roleplay is forced, then a player could just say that they did it and it becomes just another box to tick in the bookkeeping
• Fishing as a travel action is a little strange - it's not usually an activity that you would realistically have time to engage in while travelling 20 miles a day.
• Different fish having extra buffs when eaten is really cool!
• Hunting - Harvesting - it's weird that smoking meat is considered to be the only option to preserve meat in a world of magic and psionics. You're kind of writing yourself into a corner by drawing a hard line here instead of just saying that things need to be preserved and then letting the GM and players decide how exactly that is to be done. Also you immediately contradict yourself in the next section by now claiming that making meat into jerky over a 48h period is the only way to preserve it. Smoking meat and making jerky are two different techniques for food preservation.
• Navigation is a seperate paragraph twice, in different spots with essentially the same text and rules
• It's cool that you've tried to make random encounter chances easier to calculate, but you've created another potential bookkeeping point for the GM (+25% for each 5 miles travelled). Also why not give players an option to do something (scout, move slower) to mitigate the chance of a random encounter
• Heat and Cold rules are so far down, while they're already mentioned as being kind of significant all the way back in Bonds (and later in travelling and survival). You should at least reference the page these rules are on in the earlier sections.
• And finally, why are the Talk, Crowd and Charm rules all the way in the back of the book after Foes?
In general, I feel like you have a good core here, but it needs a lot of work due to the fact that you've chosen to make a more tactically minded game. It's very rough right now, but I do hope you keep working on it and ironing out the wrinkles to make a cool game!
This is a really charming game!
The dice step mechanic is really nice and gives a nice little bit of optimizing opportunity for those who like that kind of stuff (me, it's me). The vibe is also great - right amount of taking itself seriously and being silly.
The cultural aspect of the game is really cool, but I kinda wish it was a bit more closely entwined with the rest of the game. Right now it feels a little "background-y".
I promised to leave some thoughts on the game once I'd read through it:
In general, I love the concept! The art is great, but the layout could do with some work to really make it shine.
I'm usually more of a crunchy RPG player, so I'll approach it maybe from a more mechanical point of view. I'll go in order of what I had questions/ideas about:
I'm sorry if my questions/critisism sounds too harsh. You have a really cool system here in the making! It just feels like the math needs some tweaking and mechanics need clarification and expanding on.
