Update ...

Working On Right Now

Some of the costs around "Does not take Injured and Hurt Condition" as well as extra Con and Armor-Blocks (blocks that provide extra Armor if the block itself fails). Armor Blocks (and blocks that provide negative Damage Modifiers) are interesting because the character has to decide whether or not to spend the REA for the extra defense.

Usually the character will have some REA that is usually devoted to a defensive move and so if the ability just augments that move it'll be "free." But if you have a block that, say, gives you a lot of armor, then you start having to figure out if it's worth an attack or not.

What Else Might Be Interesting To Talk About?

The Character Creator. We have a very, very cool java-based character creator that we use heavily when making characters for JAGS. It was created by Jeff Strazheim (who also did the online dice-roller) and it's awesome.

What are the current (new) needs for JAGS Archetypes Revised? Let's see:

1. Bug fixes. The character generator is written in Lisp (a JVM based version of it) and uses Jeff's Data-Log implementation as a database. It currently has code-based "data files" that essentially hard-code the elements of character creation. This makes it hard for me to edit since I (a) do not know Lisp and (b) do not know Data Log. It would be good to have it read from some kind of basic data file like, say, an Excel spreadsheet ...
2. It doesn't handle TAP costs (where the cost of a Trait is a % of your character cost). This is because when he wrote it, we weren't doing that. We hadn't worked that out yet.
3. It doesn't handle abilities that add +X to an attack where that attack can be of an arbitrary type Example: I have a General Archetype Trait--a GAT--that adds +8 to firearms damage. What if I have a Disintegration Beam? It should only add +2 to that--so how do I know? Well it's Advanced/Optional math in the book (multiply the + by the modifier for Disintegration Beam) but if I have a computer? It should do it auto-magically, shouldn't it?
4. I'd like breakdowns of points spent (negative Traits, skills, etc.)
5. I'd like as much auto-calculation of stuff as I can get. So if I have Karate and Cleave (ROF 1 extra HTH Damage) I'd like to have an option to get that on my character sheet without having to do the math myself.
6. Scale: one of the more interesting options is to take a character and multiply "all scalar values" by some number. This is an interesting way to make more (possibly much more) powerful characters without expanding the AP cost beyond all reason. It's math heavy so that'd be nice.
7. Track and publish A-Cost. If I know my A-Cost (points spent on Attacks) I know things like how much I should pay for back-up attacks and how other abilities get their points reduced. This is something best done by a computer.

So what are we doing? We're thinking on that. Expect an answer in this space soon-ish. ... I hope.

Making This Material Available

I intend to take a stab at revising the website when I am back in town. The purpose will be to make a lot of the stuff I have (old and new) more easily available as well as giving visitors navigation so they can understand what's what.

At this point a vistior interested in the NEW stuff would probably get:

1. The Revised book as available now.

2. J-Arch 1.7 (with a note that it's /really/ out of date)

3. Some PDF Excel files with the new stuff in it and some minimal explanation

4. Links to the character generator and online dice roller in one place.

5. A Pay-Pal donate button 

(Our award winning JAGS Wonderland cover art just got its rights purchased for an Australian skateboard company and I got 80 Euros out of it! So I'm happy to provide a PayPal donate button. It might even get point releases out faster since I'd be interested in providing more immediate value for the money).

-Marco