I haven’t had much to say about Microlite74 Swords & Sorcery in the last month because my Sunday group ran a three week playtest of the D&D 5e rules. After three weeks, no one in the group liked this initial version of 5e enough to believe that they would want to ever convert our Microlite74 Wilderlands campaign to 5e when 5e comes out. While this opinion might change by the time 5e is released, if WOTC continues in the direction they seem to be headed with 5e I don’t expect it to change.

We are back to running our Microlite74 Swords & Sorcery playtest. I expect to wind this up over the next couple of weeks (so we can return to our suspended M74 Wilderlands campaign. This means that the draft rules for Microlite74 Swords & Sorcery are nearly complete. If all goes well — and real life does not bite me in the rear — “release candidate 1” should be available around the end of the month.

We will be testing some new combat rules over the next couple of weeks.

First, improved critical chances for 5th and 6th level adventurers. We will be testing 5th level adventures scoring a critical hit on a natural roll of 19 or 20 (that would otherwise hit) and 6th level Adventurers scoring a critical hit on a natural roll of 18, 19 or 20 (that would otherwise hit). I hope this will help high level Adventurers feel a bit more “Conan” or “Kane” live.

Second, we will be continuing to test some new “special effect” hit rules. These rules give Adventurers who select a Active or Full Attack combat stance the opportunity to do a special effect (like push their opponent back) when they critical hit in melee combat. Adventurers who select a Active of Full Defense combat stance likewise have opportunity to do a special effect (like make their opponent drop their weapon) when their opponent rolls an attack roll of 1 in melee combat. These options are intended to make using combat stances more interesting and make combat itself more interesting. We tried them today, but the jury is still out on them. More testing is needed.

Anyhow, progress on M74 Swords and Sorcery is being made, even if real life has cut into my available time to post about it.