oh, irony ~

In contemplating various ways to reskin the Therion basic ruleset, I think -- when I finish smoothing out and collecting the first draft into one document -- that the entire flavour of the game will change.

I like the idea of the human-therion interaction, I really do. But what I have written looks to work even better as a little game of people in power armour ~

So that, I think, might be my first semi-polished version. Time will tell.

What can I say? I love mecha ~

inspirations

Arguably I'm drawing inspiration for this little project from all over than damn place -- from novels to manga to video games to other rpgs.

There's an echo of the 3e druid and ranger and their animal companions; over in Final Fantasy-land there's Rinoa and Angelo in VIII and Shadow and Interceptor in VI, not to mention the Mediators, Beastmasters and their hordes in the Tactics games.

In fiction of all stripes, the trope of the traveler and their companion animal, often mystically linked, is so engrained that it's become a stereotype. It's even worse in certain strains of manga, if the companion in question is small and has Mysterious Powers [tm] --

But the overwhelming inspiration for the human-beast meshing in TherionRPG is to be found in the novel Tomorrow's Sphinx, written by Clare Bell. The mental bonding between Asu-Kheknemt and his young king, the two functioning as one individual, is a perfect example of what I'm trying to reflect in the mechanics for Therion.

>startup

There's something amusing about the fact that, while I'm taking a break from D&D more or less to graze the pastures of Shadowrun, Anima and Pathfinder (among others), I find myself tinkering with an idea for a little game of my own.

On a certain website I've been tasked with offering suggestions for a "battle system"; whether I'll actually manage to make useful suggestions -- let alone have any of them come to fruition -- I have no idea; but pondering the one scrap I think I have (a human and an animal working together in combat, much like the animal companion of a druid or ranger in (A)D&D), I've felt the inklings of a roleplayable little game.

(hell, it could be even be reskinned as something Pokemon-like ;3)

By the time I'm finished, the Therion Project will probably be a substantial little brute. I'd like something as compact and slick as, say, Microlite d20 but I know myself too well for that *grins* What I'll actually do with the Project when finished, who can say ...