Spellsword RPG Development Update #14 — September 8, 2026

Hello Reader, here are the latest Spellsword updates!

At the end of Update #13, we had three immediate objectives: finish the Spellpower rework, begin moving the Core Rules into Notion, and keep the 70 Monster Challenge moving.

All three made substantial progress. The Spellpower overhaul is complete, most of the Core Rules are now migrated and QA’d in Notion staging, and seven more monsters are public.

Snapshot / TL;DR

Most of the Core Rules are now in Notion staging. Chapters 0–9 and 11 are migrated, reconciled against their sources, and marked Ready. Chapter 10—Gods, Kings, and Nations—is intentionally on Hold.
Characteristics have been removed from the current character model. Character Creation was rebuilt around the new rules, published, and tested. The first test was significantly faster and did not produce the disjointed feeling we were concerned about.
Character Record Sheet V2.6.2 is public. The printable sheet has been updated for the new character model and is available for download.
The Spellpower and Rune overhaul is complete. The final website and TablePress verification went well, closing out the family-by-family rework.
Class Progression received substantial new rules. Class advancement and learning additional Classes now have explicit Progress and training requirements.
Seven more monsters are public: Flameridge Wyvern, Polar Wyvern, Scorpion Wyvern, Fanged Wyvern, Drake, FireMole, and Jumper. All of their related videos should be public by the time you get this email.

Major Progress This Cycle

Most of the Core Rules Are Now in Notion Staging

Two weeks ago, actually migrating the Core Rules into Notion was one of the next major jobs.

Now Chapters 0–9 and Chapter 11 have been migrated, reconciled against their source material, and marked Ready in staging. Chapter 10—Gods, Kings, and Nations—remains intentionally on Hold. It isn't complete anyway, and that is still a working title for the chapter.

The migration has required rebuilding structure as we went. Character Creation now has structured navigation and collapsible organization. Runes & Spells includes the full 93-entry Rune Compendium along with its referenced tables. The Bestiary has been reconstructed inside the new structure. We have also done major chapter-by-chapter QA comparing the Notion version against the existing source documents and tables.

That QA has already caught discrepancies that needed correction, which is exactly why we have kept migration and public publication separate.

The Notion Rulebook is not replacing the public website. WordPress will continue serving the public rules. Instead, we are building a publishing script that can pull maintained rules content from Notion and move it onto the WordPress site with far less manual work.

That is the real payoff of the migration: easier maintenance, cleaner organization, and a much better way to keep the public rules current as Spellsword continues to change.

Character Creation Was Rebuilt

The old Characteristic framework has now been removed from the current character model.

Essence handles the remaining spiritual-resource functions that previously lived under POW, representing the strength or quantity of a creature's spirit or soul. Martial Artist Qi has also been rebuilt around Skills and Essence rather than the old Characteristic structure.

Character Creation itself was reorganized around the new model and has now been published and tested.

The first result was considerably faster than the old process. We were also watching specifically for whether removing Characteristics would make character creation feel like a pile of disconnected choices. That problem did not show up. The process felt quick and coherent.

That is a good first result, but it is still early testing. We are continuing to watch how starting competency and Progress interact with the rebuilt process and will adjust those systems where testing gives us a reason to.

The printable Character Record Sheet V2.6.2 has also been released publicly to support the new character model.

The Spellpower Overhaul Is Complete

Update #13 still had Spellpower moving through the Rulebook family by family.

That overhaul is now complete.

Major work completed and published during this cycle included the Miscellaneous, Resistance, Restoration/Regeneration, Alteration, Evocation, Force, and Spiritual Rune Families.

Spiritual was one of the largest remaining pieces because several effects still depended on older assumptions about magical power and spiritual resistance.

The current model uses:

Spiritual EDR = Willpower EDR × Spiritual Modifier

Spellpower now handles the magical delivery and integrity of the effect rather than continuously determining the potency of the spiritual effect after it lands.

Binding, Conjuration, Domination, and Subjugation were rebuilt around that model and the new use of Essence.

The final website and TablePress verification pass also went well. At this point, the overhaul is closed out. If we find individual errors later, we'll fix them as we find them, but this is no longer an active system-wide rework.

Class Progression Got Explicit Requirements

We also did a substantial pass on Progress and advancement.

Class advancement now has explicit Class Progress requirements along with rules for tutoring and self-development. Learning an additional Class now has explicit requirements as well.

Specializations also received source work during the migration and reconciliation process. The latest revisions are current in Google Docs and Notion.

They are not yet current on WordPress, so the existing public Specializations pages still need to be brought into alignment.

Seven More Monsters Are Public

The 70 Monster Challenge continued through all of this.

Seven additional monsters went public during this cycle:

Flameridge Wyvern
Polar Wyvern
Scorpion Wyvern
Fanged Wyvern
Drake
FireMole
Jumper

The FireMole video went live Monday, September 7, and the Jumper video is scheduled for tonight. That should put all seven of this cycle's monsters and their videos out by the time this update reaches you.

The Crucible Boar is also mechanically complete and awaiting review. It has not been uploaded to the website yet, and its video is not complete.

Smaller Rules Cleanup Continued

Several smaller rules problems also got dealt with while the larger projects were moving.

Charge Attacks and Momentum were rebuilt, mundane equipment repair received an actual procedure, Wind Pressure received a ruling, exploding critical d100s were clarified, and Miraculous Prayer received additional clarification.

None of those needed a major overhaul of its own, but together they cleaned up several places where the rules were incomplete or no longer matched the systems around them.

Systems Under Active Refinement

What We’re Iterating On

Building and testing the Notion-to-WordPress publishing workflow.
Continuing to test the rebuilt Character Creation process and Character Record Sheet V2.6.2.
Watching starting Skill competency and Progress as the new Character Creation model gets more testing.
Reviewing the Crucible Boar and continuing the monster and video queue.
Bringing the public Specializations material back into alignment with the current source rules.

Problems We’re Solving

The biggest immediate problem is still publication maintenance.

We now have most of the Core Rules reconciled and organized in Notion while WordPress continues to serve the public rules. Moving changes between the development material and the public website manually is exactly the sort of maintenance burden the migration is supposed to eliminate.

The publisher script is intended to make that handoff much faster and less error-prone without giving up the existing WordPress rules site.

Character Creation also needs more table time. The first test was strong, but we still need to see where starting Skill levels and Progress put a new character's actual competency in play.

What’s Still Uncertain

The main technical question is how cleanly the publisher workflow will handle the variety of material in the Rulebook, particularly tables and other structured content.

Character Creation may also receive further adjustments as we get more testing, especially around starting competency and Progress.

Those are now much narrower questions than they were two weeks ago.

Design Insight

Understand the Fence Before You Tear It Down

Removing Characteristics was uncomfortable for a reason that had less and less to do with what they were actually doing in Spellsword.

Characteristics are familiar. They are one of those pieces of RPG structure that feel like they are supposed to be there. Strength, intelligence, constitution, or some equivalent sits underneath the character and helps define everything else.

Spellsword had good reasons for using them too. They were not originally pointless. Different Characteristics fed other mechanics and built skills, POW carried important spiritual functions, and the rest of the character was built with those relationships in mind.

But the game changed.

Skills gradually became the more important measure of what a character could actually do, untethered from Characteristics. Martial Artist Qi could be derived directly from Skills and Essence. Other systems that once depended on Characteristics had either changed or disappeared.

Eventually I had to ask a much less comfortable question than "How do we work with Characteristics?"

Why are they still here?

There's an idea called Chesterton's Fence. Simplified, if you find a fence and don't understand why someone built it, don't tear it down until you do.

That is good design advice, among other things.

But the lesson isn't that the fence has to stay forever.

The point is to understand what problem it was solving before you remove it. Once you can explain why it existed, what depended on it, and where those functions live now, tradition by itself is no longer a good reason to keep it.

That was where Characteristics had gotten in Spellsword.

We understood what they used to do. We could account for the jobs that still mattered. And once we did that, the remaining Characteristic layer was mostly something players had to calculate and move through because the game had historically been built that way.

So we removed it.

The first Character Creation test afterward was significantly faster. More importantly, it didn't feel like something was missing. The choices still connected to one another, the character still made sense, and we got through the process with less machinery standing between the player and the character they were trying to build.

That is the payoff I care about.

There is still a real question around how competent a new character should be and how starting Skill levels should interact with Progress. We are watching that closely. But that is a problem for the starting Skill and Progress systems to solve. It isn't a reason to put Characteristics back into the game.

I don't want to remove a traditional mechanic just because it is traditional. That would be as thoughtless as keeping it for the same reason. Tradition is about preserving the flame, not guarding ashes.

Understand why the fence was built. Make sure you know what happens when it comes down. Then, if the game no longer needs it, take it down.

—Christian

What Members and Testers Should Test

Build a character using the current Character Creation rules and Record Sheet V2.6.2. Time the process and note anywhere you have to backtrack, recalculate something unexpectedly, or stop because the order is unclear.
Put the revised Spiritual rules under pressure. Binding, Conjuration, Domination, and Subjugation are particularly useful places to look for unclear interactions under the new Spiritual EDR and Essence model.
Try the new Class Progress rules in actual advancement. Let us know if tutor requirements, self-development, or the process for learning an additional Class leaves obvious unanswered questions.
Use the new monsters. Flameridge, Polar, Scorpion, and Fanged Wyverns, the Drake, FireMole, and Jumper are all public and ready to get thrown into encounters.
Call out rules-page or table mismatches when you find them. We have just completed several large revisions, so exact page and table references are especially useful if something slipped through.

What’s Next—2-Week Objective

Build and validate the Notion-to-WordPress publishing workflow so maintaining the public rules requires substantially less manual work.
Continue testing the rebuilt Character Creation process, particularly starting competency and its interaction with Progress.
Bring the latest Specializations revisions onto WordPress so the current public rules match the reconciled source material.
Continue the 70 Monster Challenge, beginning with Crucible Boar review and continuing the monster and video queue.