ANOINTED23, 1/1

January 1, 2023

For my first Region I’m making the swamp.

The idea I have is basically a downriver swamp that was enough of a crossroads to build walkways over it. Over time, it’s been clogged with the detritus of centuries of war from upstream: materiel, corpses, undying warriors left as waste. The near-constant flow had attracted scavengers, making it hard to maintain; and eventually there was nobody left to maintain the walkways.

The first thing I wrote for it was a simple region clock mechanic. Given that it’s constantly raining and water and materials are filling it, the swamp gradually fills over time. ANOINTED has this idea of encumbrance in the Souls sense, which based on equipment weight increases stamina spent to move and makes dodging harder: in this, swamp hexes add a penalty to current Encumbrance based on water height (including 0, for things that only start penalizing if too much time is spent), and this clock increases that penalty further until you rest or die. (Eventually it overfills and comes crashing through, but it clogs again soon enough.) So combat maps should have that concept to play with.

(Read the original on cohost here!)