Currently hard at work at condensing the Hingsajagra TTRPG. I've mostly moved a tad bit away from the D&D 4e trappings and embraced the major RPG that started it all for me: Exalted. Taking on the ideas and mechanics that worked for me with Exalted, I retrofitted them into mechanics that are easier and a bit more modern, with a narrative-focused gamer more in mind.
More importantly, I wanted to lean into the one design goal that I had: Non-Combat Buildcrafting. This was one of my favorite parts of Exalted: that one can make a "Social Build" or a "Doctor Build" or a "Crafter Build." I like that "builds" weren't a pure combat thing in Exalted, but I had a problem with the narrative framing of it.
Of course, ultimately, I would not imagine Exalted as a particularly proletarian game. It is, in my mind, the ultimate individualist bourgeois fantasy, with all that entails. To be chosen because of an individual "greatness" and to exert your own will into the world and to revel in the fabrication of the Great Man is both peak Exalted and, I would say, peak bourgeois liberal ideology.
I looked deep into wuxia and xianxia traditions to break this in SAH. The solution was pretty simple: make every sentient being ever be capable of Cultivation, but make many of the Cultivations jealously guarded by reactionary Sects, Masters, and by threat of force by the United Union of Peace.
The Battle system, now known as the Slashing Dragon Cutting Tiger Battle System, is mostly intact from the latest version. The Turn is now the nomenclature for Round. Each Turn is 3 seconds long. And 'initiative' is seized by sides rolling off against each other. The winning side seizes the initiative first, and then they pass it on to any other combatant, even an enemy, after they've Moved and Done Something.
I've revamped the Health System a bit more to interact with the Healing Systems better, as well as to do some thematic reinforcements. It is now called the Wound Wheel and one can suffer three kinds of Wounds: Withering, Decisive, and Ardent Wounds. You track the Wheel very similarly to Exalted and other World of Darkness games, with upgrading Wounds and such. This bridges the fictional gap between the Health mechanics and the Health fiction.
Casting Magick, creating medicines, creating potions, and so on are all fit under the Four Core Cultivations: Martial Arts, Magick Arts, Rhetoric Arts (which interfaces with the deeper social system titled "Make The Whirlwind Heed The Ant") and Esoterica (specialized knowledges and lore like surgery, medicines, acupuncture, weightlifting, and so on).
Hexes stay as an in-lore unit of measurement. Around 6 feet long or so. Moving around and positioning is still important. One can use a hex grid, gridless, tape measure like a wargame, and even theater of the mind.
Much of the spirit of Dungeons and Dragons 4e is still here in the grid combat and the clearer language and the inspirational base, but it definitely feels much farther from it. In a sense, I'm particularly proud of that. This is now finally more than just Maoist Wuxia D&D4e or Maoist Xianxia Exalted 3e.
Anyway, over on the Discord (join if you haven't already!) I'll be running online playtests over the week.
Some spoilers!