octopath traveler

the merchant class

In a game where every character can participate in commerce, what is a merchant? Every character can pick up a sword or steal, but fighters and thieves are established archetypes. We could conclude, then, that a merchant is someone particularly skilled at business. This perspective is both reductive and conceptually boring: stories of business are the merchant class

weakness break mechanics: a case study

In the absence of position-based tactics, singleplayer turn-based RPGs have converged upon some similar mechanics. I want to look at how this works through a few case studies and talk about what it would look like for ttrpgs to adopt this design pattern. Rather than try to talk around this in the abstract, it’s easier weakness break mechanics: a case study