By Gavin Dady
We are pleased to announce the public availability of the draft version of The Elder Scrolls: Call to Arms Revised Rulebook May 2023. Over a year ago we committed to taking on feedback about the core rules to provide an updated rulebook. The project has taken a long time to bring to fruition, but we are very pleased to release the draft version of the updated rulebook for public review and feedback. You can find a link to download the PDF of the revised rules here.
What has changed?
We’ve made many small changes throughout the rules. The first thing we did was check our Errata list and fixed any typos or simple errors in rules – we made sure the icons list was updated so that the Master, Elite and Minion icons were labelled correctly, for instance. The other thing we did is have our team look at the structure and try to reduce the page flipping.
There are also two new chapters. Firstly, there is an expanded introduction at the start of the book that introduces some key concepts straight away, like rolling all your dice as a pool. This is intended to highlight some concepts straight away and give a quick overview of how gameplay works. Plus, new pictures, which is always good (and has one of our known issues – The Orc Barbarian rolled a 5, not an X).
We’ve also added Chapter 14: Scenario Rules, which moves the scenario setup rules and special rules from the Quests book into the main rulebook. This should help reduce flipping between the two books.
We’ve also made some changes to Chapter 11: Adversaries. We’ve folded in some of the text from the Quests book and tweaked some of the behaviours. The biggest addition to this chapter is Adversaries may sometimes now use a Ready Action if they can’t do anything else.
Finally, we also added the extra rules from the Card Packs, so things like the Blood Magic have been included from Chapter 3 and a few rules from the forthcoming Chapter 4 card pack too.
It’s also important to restate that none of the changes invalidate any published material.
Your Histories of the Empire, Into the Dark, Card Packs, PDF Scenarios and any other material like magazine scenarios are still valid with the revised rules.
Feedback
With the release of the revised rulebook, we are seeking feedback from the community on the rules before we go to print. There’s a link below to a Google form where you can note issues and errors that you spot (we’ve been over the rulebook many, many times, but the best way to spot an error in a document is to publish it…)
The kind of thing we are looking for are simple typos we missed, Page XX’s, areas where rules could do with further clarification, errata items we have missed off or contradictory rulings in two places.
We’re not anticipating changing any of the core rule structures at this stage, so suggesting we switch from a D20 to a D12 for the Skill Dice is not going to be implemented, for instance. We are looking at the rules revision as refinement and clarification of the rules, not wholesale change.
We’re also happy for discussion on Facebook, Discord, or our Forums, but the only place we’ll be taking feedback suggestions will be via the Google form. We look forward to spirited (but polite and respectful) discussions on the changes and suggestions for tweaks to the rules.
Next Steps
The feedback form will be available for one month from today. That means we’ll close it down Friday 2nd June and begin the process of review. After that we’ll review the suggestions and look at making any further corrections, edits, and changes to the manuscript. Depending on the volume this could take up to a month before we submit the final manuscript to a rapid review by Bethesda (if needed). Then it’s off to print. Printing may take a few months, so our estimate is that the revised rules hardcopy should be available late summer.
We committed to providing free hardcopies of the rulebook to anybody who purchased a core rulebook, and that hasn’t changed. We will still provide a FREE revised rulebook and will only charge shipping and any relevant taxes. We’ll be announcing how to get your free copy closer to the time, but if you purchased via the webstore, we should already have your details. If you purchased from an online retailer, at a show or from a FLGS expect to see another Google form in your future.
We’ll also be updating retailers on how to support sales of existing stock by providing copies of the rulebook to give away at point of sale, or stickers for the boxes to direct purchasers to us for copies.
The updated PDF will be available free of charge from our downloads page, but we’ll also be adding it to Drivethru RPG as a Pay What You Want option as well, as some of you have suggested that you would like to make a small payment for it – which is unnecessary but very, very appreciated.
We’ll also then update the quick reference sheets that have all the perks and keywords in alphabetical order, as by then we’ll know the final page numbers for everything.
In Conclusion
We’ve always been proud of The Elder Scrolls: Call to Arms rules. They were released at a difficult time and we were really gratified by the response they received. We hope that this revised rulebook is a refinement of what we think is a great ruleset, to make it easier to use for experienced players and more accessible for new players. There might also, perhaps, be one or two experienced players who spot a rule that has been clarified or explained better that could change the way you have played the game up until now. We’re also interested to see how some of the changes to the Adversary behaviour alter your games.
We look forward to hearing your feedback and taking The Elder Scrolls: Call to Arms into Chapter 4: Rise of the Dragon Priests and beyond.
