We generally don't mess with CRPG tradition without a good reason. We're not SJWs. However, there is no place for the """problematic stereotypes""" of good old D&D in the modern, tolerant, pre-gamergate America of Crusaders of the Tinfoil Hat. We need another way to differentiate human characters.

Enter body archetypes.

Here we have our 8 standard archetypes, used for player characters and normal human NPCs. They can wear a wide array of gear and clothing, if it fits. Their hairstyles and coloring are customizable. On the far right are 3 specialized models. They all have unique art or skeleton animations, and the soldier has lower poly counts. There will be others, mostly trash mobs.

Like D&D races, body archetypes are visibly different. You can see their physical strengths and weaknesses. One's body type also affects one's social status. Those considered attractive tend to be friendly or charming, whereas fatties and manlets tend to be "based"; they don't give a damn what anyone else thinks of them.

I rebalanced the archetypes this week. Originally, all had equal points, but the physically weakest archetypes had their social stats maxed out (which makes no sense) and they were still too much alike. After rebalancing, most stats range from 3 to 9 on a scale from 1 (crippled) to 11 (exceptionally good). The female archetypes are physically weaker by default, but they can make up the difference by using their extra points for athletic traits. It's not exactly fair, but it's balanced.

Stats, Skills, and Traits

There are no character classes, professions, or skill trees. It's all up to you as a player to decide how to specialize your characters.

Stats are largely determined by one's body archetype, but can be improved somewhat during the month-or-so course of your adventure.  Tentatively, characters will gain 1 stat point every other level.

Skills are more flexible. It's possible to max out one or two skills in character creation, and you gain a few skill points every level. There are a dozen skills, evenly divided between combat, practical trades, and social skills.

Traits are preexisting personal characteristics that you can only select during character creation. These include professions, hobbies, athleticism, diseases, disabilities, LGBT, and even inceldom -- there's something for everyone! Many traits incur stat/skill bonuses or penalties. Bad traits give you extra points as compensation. Others are point-neutral tradeoffs. Some of the "best" traits, e.g. Rotorhead and Celebrity, only come into play at key moments -- but they have fringe benefits.

Clothing and equipment can alter your stats/skills in addition to providing armor.

Difficulty Options

I've resisted this on the grounds that novice players can simply create a bigger party or recruit NPCs if the combat too hard, but the problems with that are becoming apparent. One, managing 8 characters isn't easy. Two, we're writing quests where you can only bring one or two characters, resulting in a sudden difficulty spike if you have a large party.

No, we won't add Easy Mode and Hard Mode. We definitely won't add a Story Mode -- choosing between combat and alternate solutions is half the fun.

We WILL balance the game to be challenging for experienced CRPG players, and we'll add several combat difficulty options to increase or decrease your damage, chance to hit, etc. You can slide these to the left if you're weak in stats or tactical skills. For an extra tactical challenge, we might add an option to spawn extra enemies in hand-picked troublesome locations.

I don't think we'll mess with the AI; it's dumb enough as is.

There's not much we can do to make dialogue easier. You can bypass failed skillchecks if you hit F12 for test mode, but it's messy. Maybe we'll add an option to show choices with failed skillcheck, for players who just want to know what they're missing.