Hi,
In the last year I've done some work on a Cyberpunk RPG. I even managed to do a little playtest too, but now I'm shored.
There's things I'd like to do to make the game even simpler, things I'd like to change or add but I'm torn.
At the same time I'm wondering if DA is enough of its own thing or just a mess of ideas from different games pasted together.
I think I've reached the point where I need an external eye, care to share an opinion?
Dark Arts pdf on Google Drive
Cheers
L

PS: maybe a little introduction is in order? DA is a fairly traditional game: It's a rules-lite "simulationist" game.
However, it includes some ideas from the more recent waves of game design, both classic and indie.

First off - congrats! You put out a book, not all of us who want to be game designers have accomplished that yet.

2nd, I love your beginning section. Lots of cool info in here, reading list, etc. Well researched!

The flow of the text is a little halted. If I had to guess English is not your first language? You may benefit from a grammar checker, especially to smooth out some of the text to read smoother.  I would need to dig into the system a little more, but it's piqued my interest. Haven't seen a d12 dice pool before, and your advantage/disadvantage system looks quick and fun. I will poke through it some more when I have more time.

Thanks, and yes, English is a second language to me.

So, a consistent number of people seems to have had a look at my game's Beta.
You may wonder what are the changes I'd like to see in the game.

Well, the first one is getting rid of Body and Psyche, possibly Contacts.
That is any personal resource that is already tracked by skills.
By bringing the skill ranges from 1 to 5 instead of 0 to 4, and applying damage or effort directly to Hard and Cold skill scores, I would further simplify the character sheet.
At what cost? flattening the differences between weapons and armors.
This would make the game simpler, more abstract, probably a lot deadlier and less of a simulation.
Let's say a Weapon would deal 1 damage point and be heavy, medium or light, armor would stop 1 point and affect weapons of its "calibre" or less.

Contacts could be handled in a similar way.
Instead of having a list of fixed contacts, the characters would have a number of contact calls per adventure or session equal to the skill rank in Face, Concrete Jungle or Shark. One of the big issues of the game, IMHO, is that characters potentially have a very big list of contacts.
The con here is that specific Contacts are usually used as a reward and that would be lost if I started using "Contact points".

I'd also like to get rid of the effect of Vocation Specialty on the number of Body, Psyche and Contacts.


PS: once the game is done, in 3 or 5 years time (joking) my current intent is to do a decent layout, graphic, illustrations and set it as PWYW pdf and Softcover book on DTRPG and Lulu. But I'm open to suggestions on this as well

No further comments, anyone?