Seas of Ash

Seas of Ash is a table top role playing game that I built with the following priorities in mind:

Complex Character Builder

In making Seas of Ash, I wanted character creation to be complex and meaningful, where putting in time and effort into learning the systems and finding synergies would mean having a character who was more effective. I also wanted to make sure that characters would be mechanically distinct from each other. In order to accomplish this, I made the system highly modular, with as many of the mechanics based on feats chosen by the players during character building. That way, two characters with the same stats and the same class can be completely different mechanically. Another choice that was made to make characters varied is, as a design principle, every class should have a use for every stat.

Base Building

Something that I have always liked the idea of is allowing players to control a portion of the battle map. In order to accommodate this, I added ship building mechanics. Before a game, or between game sessions, a DM may allow the players to custom make and/or buy a ship that they can fly across the tops of the clouds. The ship they build can be its own portion of the battle map when they have aerial battles. 

Original Setting

The ship building element of the game necessitated a setting where ships were a significant part of the world. The first temptation was to make the setting a classic romantic pirate setting, but there are already successful pirate rpgs. I decided to make an original setting because it would allow more freedom for me to make new mechanics that wouldn’t make sense in other established settings. It also allows new players the ability to go into the setting without knowing much about it so they can discover things along the way. I also left a lot of the world undefined to allow DMs and/or people who want to write modules the freedom to take liberties in order to make a better story.

Non abstract

There are many great TTRPGs where the main priorities are having fun and telling a good story. As a result, the rules for combat are fast, lightweight, and easy to learn. While those systems are great, that was not the kind of system that I wanted to build. Seas of Ash was built to have long combat encounters where learning the ins and outs of the game can be the difference between victory and defeat.