You may have heard of custom mechanics in DK, you may have seen some players who have custom mechanics in game. Before you get terribly excited about this notion, please understand a few things about custom mechanics: due to the large amount of work on staff’s shoulders, if you want a special or custom mechanic for your character, you will need to expect to wait six months to a year at the very least to have that written for you if at all. Unfortunately, we can not promise that every special ability someone would like to have will get explored, or properly written and play tested within the game. If you do get custom mechanics written for you, understand that we are play testing them with you and may nerf the mechanics or throw them out altogether.
However! There is a silver lining! After your first Dying Kingdoms character’s retirement, the Marshall’s Guide Abilities and Secret Heritages or Magical Powers are open to you, and there’s tons of good stuff in there you might not know about, and that probably fits some sort of special ability you had been wanting to play. Please consider trying something like that first, before you explore even really awesome ideas for custom mechanics. These skills are only available after retirement, however, as we want you to have a really good grasp on the basic setting of the game before you plow into weird parts of the DK universe.
If you’re just dying to play something super special that no one has ever played before you will need to work VERY closely with plot to make that happen at every step of the way and you must understand that you might get told “yes, but” or “yes, and” or (very, very rarely) “no”.
Some people have expressed dissatisfaction at the recent update that DK will be slowing the inclusion of customized rule sets. This is primarily because writing and reviewing such material takes a lot of work, and it usually winds up on Jesse’s desk at some point. Jesse will still be making rules updates, and he will still be reviewing and adding new rule sets as time permits. Be aware that he is currently working on a tight schedule as his job has some big projects in the works. The recent policy update is not because the staff hates YOU. It’s because the DK Marshal’s Guide is already huge and the staffers like to pass stuff by Jesse before including new rules, especially if they are tied in to parts of the “Sekrit History” of the setting.
