A little background: The Broken Hourglass uses a point-buy system for character creation and enhancement. Traits and skills in our system each have their own cost value--so a point of Strength can have a different price than a point of Agility. Because (by and large) the biggest, heaviest weapons inflict the most damage, and the biggest, heaviest armors absorb the most damage, the ability to equip heavy items was a prized characteristic. So it was not terribly surprising when the Carrying skill, which directly determines how much weight a character may have on his or her person without penalty, was deemed by our simulations to be among the most valuable (costly to buy) in the game. Carrying is a secondary skill, which means you can choose to buy points in the skill itself, or invest heavily in its parent skills (Strength and Toughness) which spread their benefits out over multiple secondary skills.

Much like a movie or TV show, games are not necessarily implemented in a straight line from beginning to end, and by definition most of the content represents the middle power levels in the game. So as we equipped various challenges in the game and played through combats with suitably equipped and experienced player characters, it took time for suspicions over the high cost of Carrying to develop.

We have discussed the magic system of The Broken Hourglass in previous articles: see here and here, for example. Recently, we were asked to explain how a caster might choose to manage mana in a step-by-step example. We have devised a simple hypothetical combat encounter to show how two opponents might choose to use their magical abilities in a fight to the death...

The fine folks at GameBanshee were good enough to check on our progress recently. We discuss the game's recently-revamped character creation system, the depth and breadth of the game's content, and unveil some new screenshots.

Read all about it here.

How a society believes in (and fears) a god or group of gods influences how that society develops. We offer a look at two of the Tolmiran pantheon's members--the detached and distant Arithaan, and the nebulous, nefarious Uulix.

ARITHAAN, AND THE ORIGINS OF TIME AND MAGIC: Before Fire and Water departed the world, Arithaan was the God of Knowledge. His interests were in uncovering the secrets of the cosmos left veiled even to the eyes of the Divine, for not even the gods were omniscient. This need to understand the unknown combined with his distaste for the company of the other gods led him to the very edge of creation, the outer boundary of the world. There he hoped to study the nature of the universe--and what might lie beyond it.

Now, it is important to understand that before the Sun and Moon began their chase across the sky, there was no time as we understand it. Things did not age, did not decay, did not change without the action of some outside influence. When the chase began, this all changed, and time ripped outward from the world like a wave.  The other gods were unable to react before time enveloped them, but Arithaan was different. Perched upon the edge of creation, he was able to sense the disturbance that was the origin of time, and ward himself against it, calling up an impenetrable barrier around his realm.

There he remained, for nothing could enter and nothing could leave so long as the barriers remained in place. As time went by on the outside and the other gods received no word from their lost brother, they assumed that he had been annihilated, smashed against the walls of creation by the great wave. From within his shell, Arithaan could not know the same had not happened to the rest of the cosmos. Unable to lower his protections without allowing the corrupting influence of time into his realm, and unable to contact the outside without lowering his protections, Arithaan became restless--and as the god of Knowledge his curiosity would not let him sit and wait forever. Unable to return to creation, he began to look in the other direction: To what lay beyond.