Fourth Edition?

I’ve casually kicked around the idea of a fourth edition for The Artifact. My first instinct is to convert the whole game over to my Energy System (ES) that’s been getting more and more capable of handling the game world. I’m currently veering away from that though, not because I wouldn’t like the result, but more because of the history the game has. Converting to ES  would massively streamline the rules since it does all the things that the current Fraction Column system does, but with fewer moving parts. The downside is that it would make all the system knowledge that players have built up over decades invalid.

So if I’m not looking at moving to ES, what would a fourth edition do that would make it worth the effort? Let’s look at the things I would like in a new edition.

I would like to clarify and possibly simplify the tech  and survival challenge system.

I’d like to make the infantry system more organic to the system. It’s functional but still requires the player to absorb a very different mindset to employ.

I want to change the role of sensors in vehicle combat. Currently NPCs have a really hard time properly locking on targets and using ECMs. They can take stress to make sure they get the sensor lock but that severely limits them later. We’ve hammered out something of what the new sensor rules should look like and I’ll do a post later on what they’d look like in case anyone wants to use them. As it is, the role of sensors is a little murky in the current rules.

A big maybe

There are a huge number of moving parts in the current game. I know some players really like that, but no one uses everything that’s built into the game. That means there’s a lot that can be trimmed. I’m thinking that some of the in play complications could be helped by reducing the number of attributes, something along the lines of the Physical, Functional, Mental categories becoming the actual attributes. That would be sacrilege to many players though. Maybe characters could specialize in one of those categories and they’d get the attributes in that category broken out for them? That would require a lot of other moving parts to implement, but in play it might make things more streamlined, or it could just swap one level of complexity with another.

Is that enough?

Looking at the list, I’d say no, the third edition is standing up pretty well. That’s never stopped me before though. I think I should approach this the same way I’ve always handled things. I’ll post ideas here on what might work and when I feel like I’ve built up enough changes, I’ll want to rebuild the whole thing into a fourth edition.