Sunday Morning Playtests for Saturday Morning Mysteries

So got to try out the new player-facing rules for Saturday Morning Mysteries for the first time since I overhauled them in November, and while I may still screw around with dice mechanics (right now, they're a mashup of ItO and Troika and I might make them closer to Down We Go), I'm pretty happy with how they're working.

The previous version used something like Lumen across the board, and I tried to use playbooks and asymmetrical stats, but floundered. Hanna-Barbera may have had some clear archetypes in its mystery-format shows, those don't gamify clearly or well without stretching.

So instead, I swapped in a "feat" system that captured some of what people might want to do to get the vibe or aesthetic of the archetypes, created three core stats, and replaced ItO's Hit Protection with Escape Points. It's worked well as we've gone through a Darkly Mature Scooby-Dooish take on Goblin Archives' The Mall.

EXCEPT, I also added asymmetry.

While meddling-kids-style PCs use those rules with Troika-style 2d6 rolls (high for a contest, equal or under for a save), the Curious Cats and Prying Pups (Thanks to playtester Dylan for that) of the adventuring crew use Lasers & Feelings-style dice pools, rolling with Lumen/24XX-style probabilities.

As noted, I'm contemplating doing a couple of other small shifts before we leave the Mall and head to Logan Dean's Demon-Fucked Cleveland, but I'm loving the way the two sets of rules work together.

So the next area that really needs my attention is GM procedures and the sample adventures (including Count Dracutron's Haunted Pizza Parlor).

Thanks to Bill Roundy for the cover and interior art (that's the final cover art, but the cover design is just a mock-up).