Blog Posts on Binary Star Games

On Space And Cyberpunk (NULL_SPACE Devlog)

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

What is the intended vibe of NULL_SPACE?

“Cyberpunk-esque” #

Shannon at The Novel Gamemaster described NULL_SPACE on bluesky as having “a low-powered mothership feel but leaning towards more cyberpunk-esque rather than space horror”, and then I spent like twenty posts in a thread meandering on what I was trying to do with it. This is a paraphrase and extension of that thread.

I suppose cyberpunk-esque is not an incorrect description, really, but it wasn’t 100% my intent. So why does it feel cyberpunk-esque?

We Just Live There Now #

When going into writing NULL_SPACE, from the start, I was adamant about it not being 80s retrofuturistic. I didn’t want CRTs, switches, knobs, and levers. I wanted shitty touchscreens and computers that snitch on you and proprietary software that sucks because the corp went with the lowest bidder. Basically I wanted it to make something that feels like that kind of stuff might have felt in the 80s - like this is what we have now, just More and Worse.

And, well, a lot of things we have now that I’d extrapolate are kind of cyberpunk concepts, just not the cool ones like arm swords. A worrying number of things in everyday life are spying on you, corporations run rampant, everything’s always getting shittier. So if you’re extrapolating from now, that’s kind of where you end up.

SPACE! #

So why are we in space?

One thing I wanted to keep as a north star going into this was the famous observation (whoever you’d like to credit it to, in whatever form): It’s generally easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. My corollary is that things don’t tend to “end” dramatically. Rome didn’t fall overnight, it fell apart over centuries. (Not that I’d know anything about living in a decaying empire.) In my imagining of a shit future, space provides needed safety valves for the contradictions that build up around capitalist concepts infinite growth when there’s nowhere to grow.

So it continues on, just progressively worse. The frontier moves outward. The one place not corrupted by capitalism gets a big taste of the free market. And those less-than-fair planets and colonies where desperate workers are shoved into awful jobs and living conditions are where we set our scene.

Now let’s get back to cyberpunk.

Old vs New Ideas of Corporate Rule #

80s-style cyberpunk imagines corporations as basically being competent states. They have their own infrastructure, a unified, strong culture, leadership that’s evil but smart and in control, and so on. It’s basically the zaibatsu and/or keiretsu model, more or less, which makes sense given how weird everyone was about Japan back then.

Modern big companies don’t really play like that. Instead of being self-reliant, whenever they can, they sit on top of and drain public infrastructure. (You don’t really need to have armies of footsoldiers when you can just, y’know, get local cops to do your dirty work.) Any company of a certain size is a bureaucratic nightmare where every subdivision is pointing a gun (figuratively) at every other subdivision. Decisions flow from the top like proclamations of a mad emperor: nonsensical and likely to screw everything up, but do you want to be the one who says no?

This all leads to carelessness, sloppiness, wastefulness, and when something’s gotten the attention of upper leadership, gross overreaction.

Low Power, High Potential #

The vibe I wanted to bring is low power, high potential. Characters don’t really have any kind of superhuman ability and are pretty low on the totem pole, but they can do consequential things without necessarily being instantly screwed.

Filling in the Cracks #

Big, international companies are overextended as hell and fragmented into a million subdivisions that kick up to the top but act semi-independently until there’s a crisis. This fragmentation isn’t going to get particularly better when they become interplanetary instead. Those subdivisions will always be looking for freelancers because they’re short-handed; or their station is short-handed; or because their parent company gave them something impossible to do and they’re trying to make it happen anyway; or because the resources they do have wouldn’t be terribly willing to do it the way they want it done. (Or it’s just because you’re cheaper, more disposable, or more deniable than a “real” employee.) All kinds of people are desperate and companies won’t help them, even when they’re employees of said companies. Companies will often just cut them loose when they’re inconvenient!

When the powers that be are neglectful, various under-the-table services typically fill the void.

Retalitation #

So what happens when you act out against The Man?

Well, first, they have to find out. Unless it’s overt, it probably takes some time. Ideally you’re gone by then.
Let’s say they did figure out. How much does that local branch want to notify central corporate that they got punked? Probably not that much. They’ll try to stay local or at least quiet a lot of the time. They’ll likely go for local resources first - and maybe even hire some intrepid freelancers to go sniff the perpetrator out.
Now let’s say they do run home with their tail between their legs. How does central corporate management respond? Maybe slowly, but definitely strongly. Their incentive switches from “don’t let the suits know” to “now that the suits know, make it clear we’re dealing with it”.
A hard crackdown then leads to further ripples: beyond just potential backlash, if the company is pouring resources in to make an example of someone and it drags, what else is being neglected?

There’s a clear pattern of escalation here that provides ample fodder for a lot of different scenarios - not just for players but in fodder for how non-player characters interact with corporations to come up with jobs.

The goal was to paint this picture in the core book, but especially in various Jobs. (Of the four, 3/4 involve corporate neglect and 3/4 involve corporate retaliation. Two overlap.) As further supplements come out for the game, I’m hoping I can maintain that sense while characters live in that periphery.

2025 Year in Review (not by numbers)

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! It’s once again that time of the year. Every year I take stock of what I accomplished, go through my numbers, chart what I did and how well it did, and try to draw some conclusions. Here’s last year’s, for reference.

I have too much stuff for one post going on nowadays, and also I’m very tired, so I’m splitting this up into three posts: this one has a general overview, the next will get into numbers (aiming for next week/weekend, but don’t quote me on that) and the last one will have my called shots for 2026.

Crowdfund(s) #

There was only one, but it’s been most of my year, so y’know.

I guess I had a kickstarter or something, huh #

Celestial Bodies kickstarted in March, with great success. It got $51,873 with 713 backers, which is far more than I hoped. I’ve been absolutely gobsmacked by the response for months now, thanks for showing up!

Most of this year has been characterized by jamming on what’s left to write, puncutated by working on other things to not absolutely burn out on doing it. The biggest rewrite is done, so a lot of what’s left prior to editing is cleanup and insertion into the manuscript.

Releases #

I released a lot of things! Some as a distraction (see “bad year for a lot of things” and “working on other things” above), some because I just had a really good idea I couldn’t let go, some because it was the next logical move, and some swerves.

VOID_SHIFT #

I made a card game! Yeah, I’m as surprised as you are. Sometimes a form factor, a game concept, and an idea just align perfectly at the right time. It probably wasn’t a good idea, but it did come out great. The digital version came out first and works better than I would have expected, but in my mind the “real” version is the physical: 36 cards, 5 dice, and instructions in a cassette case.

I’ll talk about how it went financially/etc in the next post but I’m reasonably encouraged given it was indeed a terrible idea.

Death Has Come to This Town #

I always release something for Minimalist Jam, and this year was no exception. It’s something between a BOB thing biting at Pathologic and a long scream of frustration. I had a lot of fun writing it so that it reads like it was oddly translated. It needs tuning up to really pop but based on the playtest I did (thanks to the other two people who humored me!), the bones are mostly good.

I had half of an idea of doing a dual itchfund between this and NULL_SPACE in Zine Month but decided that didn’t really make sense with everything else I’m doing this year. Maybe one year I’ll do a double-header itchfund, but not this year. (Itchfunding has very few upsides but the ability to have two independent things contribute to the same funding bar is definitely one of them.)

HARDFACE #

Another supplement for HARDCASE! Or any semi-grounded sci-fi thing, probably, because it’s mostly a list of NPCs. It was a lot of fun to write, and good practice for doing more setting-oriented work.

Softback APOCALYPSE FRAMEs #

I have softback APOCALYPSE FRAME copies now! I didn’t just want to do perf-bound because I don’t think it’s very good for play at a table, so it took me finding a company that would do square-back binding at high pagecounts for cheap to commit to getting some. I really like how it turned out, I’d use a book like this at the table in a heartbeat.

Notable Events #

NULL_SPACE prelaunch is up! #

I’m cheating a little because this comes out next year, but I did all the work for it this year and it’s my roundup so deal. Smash that notify me button so I can email you when it comes out. I know it’s not a “real” prelaunch page but a. I’ve committed to this bit and b. everything’s fake until it isn’t.

Designed in the DMV Free RPG Day Zine #

I contributed a game to and laid out the Designed in the DMV Free RPG Day zine! We gave 20 copies each to 4 stores. The goal was to get our name out there and I think it was a rousing success. (We had Designed in the DMV folks at one store’s event but I wasn’t able to make it, unfortunately.) I’d love to do it again this year - ideally with a little more runway, time-wise, and if we can get more stores on board that’d be fantastic.

I have a store now #

It’s here! This was a logical next step once I got enough physicals to put up on one. Doing physicals through itch is fine but I can’t do things like set shipping dynamically or combine orders gracefully.

Having a store of my own also gives me way more options re: things like itchfunding physicals (because I can do things like run shipping through my store so I don’t have to bake it into the reward pricing and have two tiers).

Eventually I do want to try an on-store crowdfund, but that’s a later project.

I started a forum #

This was the year I finally started a forum after talking about it for quite awhile! I initially wanted to make one on Discourse, but it was expensive and I didn’t really have the scratch, so I’d postponed it. At the same time, Nova (Dinoberry Press) and Charlotte (co-author of Celestial Bodies, Dreamware Press, Big Hog Games, other shit in general) were also thinking about this, so we all joined forces! (This ended up being a better idea because it was way cheaper.) Since then, Paper Cult Club has been going strong. The worry for anything like this is that nobody’s going to show up, and nearly a year in, it’s not like wildly active but it’s chugging along.

Cons and fairs and events #

Gameface #

I tabled at GameFace Con last March, mid-crowdfund! First non-extremely-local con I’d been to. It was great! Met a lot of folks from the scene that I’d never met before, which was lovely, and sold quite a bit. Will definitely go again this year if I can (it’s a bit later in the year so I don’t know what else is competing, May is tougher).

Indie Tabletop Day @ Pure Panic #

A bunch of Designed in the DMV folks (including myself) organized a mini-convention to celebrate Designed in the DMV’s anniversary! It was a one-day event at Pure Panic Comics and Games, who were extremely accomodating in letting us do our thing and kind of do whatever. We had vendors, we had games running, and we even had a panel (which I was on!) I don’t think everything went 100% perfect but it was fun and I think we learned a lot about how to throw the next thing.

Indie & Local Tabletop Games Fair 2025 #

We did a repeat of the People’s Book Games Fair at People’s Book in Takoma Park as well! Also a good time, also worthwhile, if a bit smaller than last year’s. (I met a potential county councillor, which was fun.)

Game Kastle Goblin Market #

I helped with the booth at the goblin market! This ended up mostly being an excuse to hang out with other Designed in the DMV folks, but I did sell a few things too. It was a pretty good time.

Posts/Articles #

I’ve been writing a bunch of stuff that isn’t strictly game content this year! A good mix of general posts and devlogs. (I do still miss cohost dearly, but that’s the way it goes.)

Devlogs #

Staring into the (Liminal) Void, 2 years in: At the beginning of the year, I’d been poking at the game that was then called Liminal Void (though even then, I was thinking about changing the name). I laid down some ideas, most of which I stuck to, some of which I didn’t.
Devlog Has Come to This Town: Death Has Come to This Town would have probably been a game I just dumped out there, were it not for the fact that I was invited to playtest it a day after it released. I went into the game, the playtest results (for better and worse), and where I want to go from there.
VOID_SHIFT, part 1 and 2: I decided, in the runup to the physical release, to dive into my thought process in creating it, from beginning to end.
Celestial Bodies updates 2 and 3. I get into why this is taking forever to get to manuscript: it turns out completely redoing certain sections of the game in a way that’s way more verbose takes awhile.

General #

Combat Without Combat: The first glimpse at NULL_SPACE in its new form, but also generally a post about how you’d apply 1 HP Dragon-esque ideas to core resolution, combat and otherwise.
Conflict as Motivation and Resolution: A broader restating and combining of several points about combat.
Appendix N, in which I get into a lot of my influences, generally.
The Hole at the Center of the Mech, in which I explain one reason why you would omit social rules in a game.
Religion is too good for clerics, in which I hate on the D&D cleric conceptually.
Valiant Horizon, Magic, Nature, and the Elements, in which I get into some of the more subtle aspects of my Valiant Horizon worldbuilding.

So how did it go this year? #

This has been a bad year in a lot of ways (politically, economically, personally) but as far as games on my end, things are doing great! Of particular non-commercial note, I’ve been trying to join and build communities both online and locally. I’m hoping that’s a trend that continues next year.

Next time, numbers!

Conflict as Motivation and Resolution

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Or: Everyone always says what combat is doing, but nobody ever asks how combat is doing.

The TTRPG community (well, the blogging part of it) sure does love to define combat as one specific pithy thing. Sport, War, My Balls¹, there are others. Save for the last of those, I don’t really care for any of these definitions! For one, I think they very quickly lend themselves to being derisive - Sport vs War in particular feels like it was designed for posts rolling their eyes at people who like interfacing with capital-C capital-S Combat Systems. I would also say that it can also feel a bit thought-terminating in the ways that many labels can. As much as that can hit the broad strokes of why we might do something, I think we can go a bit deeper than that.

Combat’s probably the easiest version of this to pin down because, for better or worse, a lot of the hobby’s not that far from its wargame roots. I’m going to zoom it out to conflict in general, though - in part because I’m thinking/writing more about non-combat conflict in games lately², but in part because I don’t think what I’m writing here is unique to combat itself so much as the fact that it’s usually just the most developed expression of such. This is definitely for games that, well, care about resolving conflict as a game activity though, and generally the GM+player variety because that’s my background for the most part. It probably won’t map to everything and that’s fine.

Disclaimers out of the way, let’s start with why you’d set up a conflict in a game.

Why do we fight with each other? This is what it sounds like when blogs cry #

So “why does conflict happen” and “how do conflicts resolve” are two questions theoretically answered by the classification of “Combat as X”. They’re related but not 100%. The “why” is what I’m calling motivation.

As the aforementioned Combat as My Balls gets into (and as I’ve stated in previous pieces) I think there’s a couple of reasons why it happens. I’m going to try to break it down into the ternary I’d come up with for that quarterbacking post:

Game state expression: How the mechanical game state changes.
Character expression: Demonstration of something more narrative.
Personal expression: The personal preferences and predelictions of the player.

Game State Expression #

I would consider this a big one people are grasping at, intentionally or unintentionally, when they try to set out the aforementioned dichotomy. A classic breakdown here for conflict is if a game cares more about tactics in the moment or strategy on the whole. This isn’t the whole of the sport vs war dichotomy, but it’s at least a large portion of it: the two are certainly not strictly at odds but I would posit that they’re frequently in tension, as anyone who has strong opinions about combat balance/fairness in either direction will intentionally or unintentionally tell you.³

I don’t love the characterization of something as a “puzzle” for this kind of thing, but I’m going to choose to read it charitably in this case because I think there’s something I can pull from thinking of it as such (and because it’s useful for informing how people see this kind of thing, because it’s a common framing in this context). When something is described as a “puzzle”, it’s usually because you’re given certain inputs and are asked to figure out the best way (or the only way) to get a desired outcome. I would say that of the two varieties, a more tactics-focused game has conflict that’s more obviously closer to a “puzzle”. But I would posit that strategy-focused games are frequently also quite “puzzle-y”: it’s largely a question of the scale of conflict. The latter case is how it can get treated as a “fail state”: if you got there, it often means you didn’t do enough of the puzzle prior to the conflict in question or that you didn’t perceive the bounds of a puzzle sufficiently to properly address it.

Character Expression #

So this is where we start to get away from that dichotomy into what is, in my opinion, more interesting territory with respect to the strengths of the medium. Why would we engage in conflicts that are either trivial or borderline unsolvable? Which is to say, why would we make a “bad” “puzzle” on purpose? And players don’t always just beeline for the answer - why do players solve a puzzle “badly”? One of those answers gets in to narrative concerns.

“Puzzles” as such are usually about the change in state through resolution: what’s the outcome, what resources got spent or mechanical states changed along the way, what’s the next course of action given how all that shook out. Conflict and resolution of it is usually a cornerstone of a narrative, either constructed authorially beforehand or in retrospect. But beyond actual tangible outcomes, we are interested in conflict because it tells us things about characters. This is one extremely useful outcome of an “inconsequential” conflict and choice: knowing how someone acts when something is on the line is only one facet of a person’s character, you know? I can guarantee that you, the reader, can think of several things about yourself that have nothing to do with anything that really matters in a life-or-death situation. Are those not also relevant? To Be Resolved notes (correctly, I think) that a lot of Character Vs Self style conflicts come from, for instance, self-imposed rules: if a character is never seen as in a position where they are easily following their self-imposed rules, you’re not going to see a proper contrast when they have to have a hard time not breaking them.

At the risk of making your eyes roll out of their sockets from the cliché, a setting can be a kind of character too in this regard: not in the sense of how something plays out, but what’s even considered a conflict or not. Is everything between combat kind of brushed over or is that where the real juice is? Is getting from place to place challenging, trivial, easy but expensive, a secret fourth thing? Are people generally helpful or do they require some kind of persuasion or quid pro quo to get anything? What is the “expected” mode for resolution - is violence accepted, unsavory, unacceptable?

Personal Expression #

Every player - and remember, a GM is a player too - has different “things” they do or don’t want to do in a game. My brain rebels against leaving obvious advantages on the table a lot of the time, for instance - my latent optimizer-brain wants every last crumb even when that’s kind of unnecessary or silly or it would obviously be better for the narrative if that weren’t true. Some folks are just absurdly stingy with resources, or risk-averse to a prohibitive degree.

And, as I stop burying the lede, this frequently makes people do stuff that doesn’t make sense either in a puzzle or a characterization sense. Sometimes people don’t want to engage in conflict because the nature of the conflict is something upsetting or unpleasant. Sometimes they do want to engage in it in a particular way, because it’s funny or cool or just something they want to do. Sometimes they start trouble because they’re bored. And sometimes they start trouble because they got Chekov’s Railgun in act 1 and by god they’re going to fire it in act 3.

In my opinion, from the GM side, this is also where conflict as a pacing mechanism lives - and for that matter, where conflict as “the fun minigame we all get to do” lives. Whether or not it makes narrative sense or whether or not it’s a properly good puzzle to solve, sometimes a trash encounter or a little roadblock is great to break up (or raise) tension, or just space out events. An underrated secondary aspect is that it’s good for teaching players what they like and what to do when shit hits the fan for real: you can’t expect people to run before they can walk unless they’re old hands at this kind of game, and they can sometimes come in with a complete misconception of what they actually want. The middle of a deadly car chase is a bad time to learn you hate driving.

Ok, so how do we resolve conflicts then? #

We’ve gotten into some root motivations thus far, but that’s not the whole picture. I believe the nature of the handling of said conflicts generally falls into three⁴ things. I’ll define this as resolution. These three are:

Preparation: Coming to a conflict with a resolution at the ready
Cleverness: Figuring out an unexpected way to resolve a conflict
Execution: Doing the “expected” thing or brute-forcing your way through a conflict

Preparation #

Sometimes, we want to have come into a conflict with the resolution in hand. This is what I’m calling preparation: you’ve got something going into a conflict that’s either going to solve it or heavily mitigate it and you’re using it for its intended purpose, or on the flipside you’re coming into a conflict underprepared and so you’re bound to lose. High-preparation games involve long planning sessions, plans, predetermined tactics, specific loadouts, etc. Low-preparation games live in the moment and often don’t track things from state to state nearly as much, or “retroactively” add in a kind of preparation in the narrative that practically manifests in some other way (such as quantum items, flashbacks, etc).

When expressed as a matter of changing the game state, this is often a matter of locks and keys, be those locks soft or hard. Sometimes players anticipate a particular kind of conflict and prepare something with the intent of defusing it, or they just bring something as a matter of course and it turns out to work. Or from the combat-game perspective, players frequently come up with a well-rounded party in anticipation of different kinds of enemy compositions.

In resepect to charater expression, this one can be simple: what does a given character bring or do in anticipation for kind of conflict? The obvious vectors of preparation are more tangible things like items or spells, but there are more “baked in” ones like skills - maybe this is the one time swimming actually counted, why did you take that instead of something else? You can also look at it from a matter of how willing your characters are to prepare: Are your characters willing to be diverted to solve something painlessly (e.g. take on a “sidequest” or similar) and is the nature of that diversion preferable to a more straightforward solution?

Some players are Preparation Sickos who will be absolutely thrilled to do this. (I’m absolutely like this for equipment loadouts…when they feel like they can actually matter and aren’t just D&D Magic Item Christmas Tree Modifier shit, anyway.) Others dread the thought of committing to anything beforehand and resist the concept. (I’m absolutely like this for stuff like D&D spells that trivially neutralize one very specific problem. I probably don’t need to remove diseases today, but what if I do?)

Cleverness #

Sometimes resolving a conflict can be done through quick thinking. This is very often a result of bouncing off something in the scene, but it could also be using something prepared in a more unexpected or unusual way than originally intended. Improv-heavy games are “high” in this category, for obvious reasons. “Low” is where you get things that veer more towards being extremely systems-based, probably. (Obviously there’s a lot of flex on both of those).

This is where hail-mary ideas and weird ways to avoid otherwise-certain consequences sit: positions that by “normal” play would have to be prepared for or endured, but because you were smart about it, you found an alternative. It’s also, because it’s my definition, where “mini-puzzles” live: stuff that’s definitely intended but requires more specific execution or consideration.

In respect to character expression, characters doing something in an interesting/unexpected way can definitely inform who they are as a character. Sometimes this is a revelation, but sometimes it’s just a reflection of who that character is. Given the nature of these things, this is often a “player thinks of something and then back-solves it for their character” situation. (Of course, sometimes it’s just not remarked upon as such and that’s fine.)

For a lot of players, this is what they come to the dance for. Thinking about tabletop games, in some ways it’s the biggest strength of the medium: things can go absolutely sideways or resolve fully unexpectedly in a way that, for instance, a video game can’t really handle.⁵ It’s not always what players want in every conflict, though - if someone came to a conflict to fight some stuff and another player short-circuits that, they might feel a bit deflated about it.

Execution #

I would posit that most conflicts presented in an RPG have varying degrees of a “default” answer to how they resolve. It’s the thing that preparation and cleverness are trying to get around (or make more favorable), but especially for more board-gamey stuff, sometimes it’s more or less the extent of the game. High-execution is where I think a lot of the aforementioned capital-C capital-S Combat System games live: sometimes it’s about what you bring to a given fight, but a lot of the time it’s just about doing the dang thing. Low-execution would be a game that doesn’t really have a “default” as such, or at least doesn’t emphasize it in the same way - games that do single-roll combat as opposed to an actual minigame kind of thing, for instance.

The game-state application of this is kind of apparent in the above framing. It might be described as a fail state, or it might be the thing you’re really here to do because that’s where 90% of the game lives. Or both!

Character-wise, if this isn’t most of the game, it can be interesting to see what kinds of things fall back to that “default”, especially when it’s combat. If it is, though, all kinds of expression can happen through it. This is the argument for trash fights: it’s the same as “pointless” action scenes in movies.

Player-wise, I think this is another big dividing point between the “sport” and “war” framing. I’m tired of talking about that so go read any of the other things I linked up there about it. What I will say is that the spectacle of Execution, for better AND for worse, is very frequently something that doesn’t particularly hit either of the other two metrics. When you’re locked in, you’re locked in, you know? Sometimes it’s just about watching the fun action scene play out.

What do we do with this? #

Shit, I don’t know. Make a coordinate grid about it or something. Put all your favorite and least favorite games on there and argue over what the best quadrant is.

My serious answer is that I hope this helps folks unravel a bit of what a conflict system can be designed to do, and what designers and players might want it to do. As with a lot of preference tools, everyone knowing what they want going into something is a useful act of focusing. I think it’s good when we think about what we want games to do and a lot of that does indeed comes down to the nature of why and how conflict plays out.

As a closing thought, I would also say that quite a few TTRPGs that care about conflict have some kind of mix of all of these motivations and resolutions. When a popular game feels kind of unfocused and not particularly good at any one kind of play and folks are confused why it’s popular, I would posit that sometimes that lack of focus is a kind of strength from this perspective. It means players who like different things can all find something to enjoy in the same game at the same time, and that’s pretty important to a lot of people when all is said and done.

It’s very funny to be in a position to cite something called Combat As My Balls as the reason I put this all in one place. It’s a good piece, give it a read. ↩︎
NULL_SPACE, VOID_SHIFT, Death Has Come to This Town, and Corpslayers are all games from the past year or so from me that care about conflict but don’t have explicit combat systems. It’s an interesting question to me: why do we focus so much on combat? What do games that don’t focus on it but still scratch a similar itch look like? Why do so many games who pretend not to be about fighting have a fucking combat system? And so on. It’s not to say I’m done with “combat system” games by any stretch but I’m trying to make more of a point of considering it as a question. ↩︎
“Boss RPGs vs level RPGs” has been on my backburner of “blogs to write” since I replayed Demon’s Souls earlier this year. One of these months. ↩︎
It’s always three things! Always! I’m not saying this post exists just so I can put things I came up with in multiple unrelated devlogs into one place and recontextualize them into a broader theory, but it sure doesn’t hurt. (As a bonus, that post has an Expression/Strategy split mentioned, which is much cruder version of that “why” section above.) ↩︎
When a video game DOES do this well - or gives the perception of doing this well, which is just as good - it usually stands out and attracts a devoted fanbase. Thinking of something like Deus Ex or Alpha Protocol. ↩︎

Devlog Has Come to This Town

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Content warning: This is a game about a plague. There’s basically no way I can’t talk about the current, ongoing one.

Every year I try to do a little something indulgent for Minimalist Jam, or at least try to stub something out that’s been on my mind. So last week, out of nowhere, I dropped Death Has Come to This Town. This was an idea I’ve had for awhile that I held ransom behind hitting milestones on other work, and when the time came to put it to paper it kind of forced itself out of my head and onto the page. I slapped that thing on itch and prepared to not think about it for like a month, and even then as more of an art piece than an actual playable thing.

Then two other devs noticed it, thought it sounded cool, and invited me to actually play it with them. So now I have an actual data point to expound upon. Thanks a lot, jeez!

Let’s talk about Death Has Come to This Town.

What even is this thing? #

(Or: what is this thing right now?)

Genesis #

So I’ve been sitting on this idea for a few months of taking a BOB-like thing where each character and pillar were intermingled: when the character is onscreen the pillar isn’t, they share a pool of tokens, and so on. They gain tokens by having their pillar do things to make everything worse for people and spend them to solve problems, but ultimately each character has the same goal.

This is already not the kind of game I make¹, and the more I thought about this, I figured this needed to be an extremely limited player space, which is also not really the kind of game I make. Thinking about the constraint of three players, my immediate thought was the cult classic Pathologic: three characters, each somewhat associated with something in the town that causes major, direct problems for the other two but not for them.² Each of them has their own background and way of doing things, and has their own agenda in addition to (theoretically) having some investment in curing this plague. I didn’t want to make a direct Pathologic rip, especially because I just don’t like making direct adaptation games, so I thought about a trio of characters that made sense. I came up with:

The Scholar, someone from outside who came here to write a dissertation about something else and gets drafted into being effectively the town’ doctor, but sees this as an opportunity to continue their research. Their adjoining pillar is The Disease, which can infect people in a scene or show neglect.
The Agent, a former local done good who had left to pursue a government position and has come back to help their town. However, they see this plague as an opportunity to gain a reputation and further their position. Their adjoining pillar is The Government, which can pass and enforce laws.
The Firebrand, a local rabble-rouser who had already been agitating for something and sees this as the right time to push. Their adjoining pillar is The Masses, which can agitate for whatever they desire.

Actually making the thing #

Finally, I hit those milestones and, ransom lifted, we were off to the races. I finished the minimalist jam version in about half a week. Here’s what I came up with along the way.

A chapter is 3 scenes, one for each player. You have 10 chapters to “win” via someone getting 10 tokens into their Agenda, everyone loses if those pass.
The BOB Token equivalent is Infuence. Each character and pillar as currently written is about a page of moves: neutral and “spend 1 Influence” for the characters, neutral and “gain 1 Influence” for pillars.
Things going wrong (and therefore scene starters) are Threats. At the beginning of each Chapter, each player puts one on the board. Whenever a player switches to a pillar mid-scene, they put one on the board. Threats can be mitigated or negated throughout a chapter.
This is the kind of GMless narrative game where a “win” condition kind of makes sense, which is a weird sentence. It’s already semi-competitive, so give ’em something to compete over. Each of them gets an agenda that they need to complete to “win”. Influence can be spent to further these.
How about a loss condition? Pathologic/2 has this idea of the local government getting effectively taken over, first by the inquisitor and then by the military; the disease getting worse over time; and desperate townsfolk sabotaging things like water. This felt very gameable AND thematic, and so I came up with some ideas for how to escalate those pillars: at a certain point, you lose access to both your character and a pillar and pick up an advanced pillar. That point tracking is weakness: it’s your fear of how the character loses prominence and the character’s check on that pillar disappears. The Disease becomes The Outbreak, The Government becomes The Occupation, and The Masses become The Mob.
- At the end of every chapter, you roll a d6: 1-2 means the Scientist’s weakness gets hit, 3-4 means the Agent gets hit, 5-6 means the Firebrand gets hit. Mitigated threats mean you can ignore 1 of those numbers, Negated threats mean you can ignore 2 of them.
- Once someone succumbs to weakness, it gets dicier: of the two left, one gets 1-3 and the other gets 4-6. Remember what I said about Negated ignoring 2? This is why I phrased it like that. You can’t be fully safe anymore. Once 2 are gone, the remaining one gets the whole 1-6 for every Threat.
- If everyone hits 3/3 Weakness, everyone loses.

So, how did that playtest go?

How the playtest went #

The good parts #

Setup was great: it took half an hour and by the end of it we had a pretty good picture of who we were and what was about to go down. Neither of the other two players had read it and they grasped it pretty quick. Everyone enjoyed themselves.

We used Miro as a VTT of sorts and that was perfect. Basically just need sticky notes or index cards, really.

I’m saying this first to preface all the negative shit I’m going to talk about it following. The bones are pretty good, I think, and we had a good time playing it. I think it largely works as-is. Unfortunately a game is a bit more than bones and I think I can aim for better than working.³

The less than good parts #

The pacing is weird. I’d envisioned this as a one-shot but we called time at like 4 hours, 3 chapters in. Scenes kind of meandered, which is not a bad thing as such because we all seemed to enjoy said meandering. This is at least partially because “is a threat actually negated” is a really interesting thing, here: the way it’s handled in game is that the player who wants to solve it asks the other two and if 3/3 of you agree that it is or 2/3 agree but the player spent Influence doing it, it’s negated; if 2/3 agree, it’s mitigated. Almost every threat got mitigated because 1 of the 3 of us (not even one person in particular, it went back and forth) was kind of iffy on the solution.

In most BOB-ish games, you can go back and forth with your tokens while playing the same character. Here we have a situation where your “gain” state (the pillar) is inherently different than your “loss” state (the character). This lead to a fascinating situation where in some cases, none of us wanted to be a character, so we had our three powers that be kind of going at each other, which was completely unexpected. For similar reasons, I didn’t feel like we had a great sense of character interaction: again, in most BOB this isn’t an issue.

One thing that was noted was that both the powers that be and the characters (but especially the former) have a bit of a limited palette. (The primary reason is less “intent” and more “I kind of ran out of time and juice.”) Spending influence felt like a very insular kind of thing - making problems for other people, then spending them on yourself or your priorities - but even that palette is only so big.

Finally, we definitely got comedic with the tone over time, if only because…well, it’s a game about a Familiar Situation, to some extent or another. This is partially because the other two people didn’t read the text to gain the vibe, but partially because that’s just who the third (me) is as a person. Some of the characterizations of the powers that be got through, but not all of them. This is proably the least important one because in theory a good and diligent group could fix this, but a game about a serious kind of thing that only hits the tone with a perfect group is not ideal, and as you can guess by the title, it’s not intended to be a goof-em-up.

What do I want to emphasize going forward? #

Let’s back up a bit. I don’t often come into development of something with fully formed Capital-T Themes. A game tells me, over time, what it’s about as I make it: certain things leap out of the brain-soup and put themselves onto the page, over time. Now that it’s a bit more crystallized and I’ve seen it played at least once, I can kind of solidify what I want out of it.

Gravity and Tone #

In replaying Pathologic 2, one thing I’ve noticed is that it’s quite funny at times. It’s especially aware that you likely played the original, of which it’s a partial remake; and that it’s a game, and gives you fourth-wall-breaking options occasionally. (I’m a huge fan of the part where the Changeling curses you to not be able to talk to someone and you can reply “yeah but the game usually does that anyway”, which…is correct lmao.) Despite this fact, it’s largely considered a bleak as fuck game where you basically have no choice but to get half of everyone killed because you don’t have the time to do anything else.

Right now, we don’t have things like its incredible visuals or the impeccable soundtrack to lean on. Layout will help a bit partially - I hope - but I want to try to solve problems without it first given that a. it’s a MinJam game and b. it’ll lead to a stronger product overall. (Forcing a soundtrack onto every game is beyond my paygrade, probably.)

Basically, I want players to kind of feel it a little. Black humor is somewhat inevitable - especially given that as a society I don’t think we’ve all really reckoned with what happened - but I want that to feel like a transgression against a straight tone rather than a built-in feature.

Does the current game accomplish this? #

100% of the games I’ve played with it didn’t succeed at this goal, admittedly with a sample size of 1, so I can’t confirm it really works. I think if you read the book you’ll get the idea but I’d bet 10 to 1 that 2/3rds of people whow play it will be taught by the last 1/3rd.

Impending Doom and Cooperation #

Even in situations where someone “wins”, this is inherently a game about a lot of people dying. Nobody really wins at the end of a disaster that’s finally been mitigated unless you’re only operating at a very high level. Every victory is inherently bittersweet. Something new and good might come of it but it’s going to be built on the backs of everyone debilitated or killed by it. And it’s very likely to end in total ruin.

Despite having their own agendas, the characters in question are intended to largely all want things to be better, just in their own separate ways. This frequently involves alliances of two against one, but it could also be, after one gets discredited or barred or whatever, the remaining two trying to hold everything together. Priorites shift when the situation does…if only for a time.

What I want is to have a sense of that mounting doom. Even if one player “wins”, I want it to be plenty pyrrhic once we zoom back in on the town and see what’s left.

Does the current game accomplish this? #

This one I think I kind of whiffed on, if I’m going to be perfectly honest. In an effort to try to bring some kind of closure, I think I made the “win” conditions a little too narratively easy, if not like difficulty easy. If you fill an agenda, everything’s fine. It needs to feel like an ending without feeling like everything’s fine now and being really selfish was good, actually. We had precious few scenes with multiple characters who meaningfully interacted, but when they did show up I enjoyed them quite a bit.

Speaking of…

Ambition and Rivalry #

In thinking about Pathologic’s setup in light of having been through (the most active parts of) a pandemic, I came to a terrifying conclusion: in many ways, it’s a little optimistic. Every doctor really is trying, in their own way, to actually solve the thing. The government actively listens to the most credentialed one of them. Various people and groups do shortsighted things but usually they at least feel bad about them or think they’re doing the right thing. As a citizen of the USA in 2025, it’s a little hard typing all of that out.

One thing I really want to tease out that the source material didn’t really have the focus or interest to get into is that most everyone with influence on a situation is either very single-minded or prioritizes different things than public health. It’s not that they’re strictly against solving the problem, mind you. But disaster capitalism (and disaster governance, generally) is a thing. Everyone’s got their eye on the prize, and the prize isn’t what’s happening now: it’s whatever comes afterwards and what this can do for them.

To that end, I want players to get into that mindset. Part of that is encouraging that kind of self-interest as opposed to purely cooperative problem-solving: this isn’t Pandemic and I don’t intend for it to be. I want everyone playing to feel like their character is in it for #1 first and foremost, with the town at #2 and possibly #3. Beyond that, I want them to feel a little of that rivalry. People don’t act like perfect rational beings, like, at all; especially not when they feel like they have a lot of power and are scared or stressed or mad. If someone screws them over, I want them to take it a little personally and hit back. This is extremely realistic as far as character actions, as well as the actions of the powers that be: when a person or force feels threatened by something, they frequently overreact and cause other problems in the process. If this ends up making them neglect their theoretical shared goal of stopping the plague, even better. Same situation as above, though: we didn’t have much direct character interaction.

Does the current game accomplish this? #

Half and half. I think it’s a little too easy to act self-interested. I built that in for sure but I think I both did a little too good of a job and think it needs to go further: there isn’t really a way to have something blow back on someone who isn’t you, for instance. I do think the nature of how “petty” certain decisions are well reflected in the plurality/consensus mechanics: if 2/3 people agree and 1/3 don’t, then that left out one builds resentment, and if someone gets knocked out because someone else didn’t solve a problem then they’re suddenly given the tools to enact revenge. In much the same way, though, I think they don’t quite go far enough and aren’t quite as pointed with it: it’s kind of hard to be nasty to someone or screw them over directly in a way that would really get their goat.

Takeaways and Tweaks #

Given that I listed 3 goals here and none of them were a rousing “yeah I nailed it” in addition to the various kinds of playtest feedback, I’m going back to the drawing board on a few things.

Mechanical/General Tweaks #

Powers-that-be is very Pathologic but is also extremely unwieldy to say. I need better terminology in general because what I’m doing is a little weird, most games like this don’t view playbooks as a package deal so to my knowledge there’s no real pre-existing word for like, a set of playbooks that go together.
Add more moves for each playbook/set of playbooks. Prior to this I’d viewed each of them as needing to fit on one half-letter/A4 panel: I think I need to expand each out to its own folded letter/A4 page.
- Maybe it makes sense to have each playbook have its own BOB-like +/neutral/- set as opposed to characters only being able to spend and powers-that-be only being able to gain. It probably makes this less mechanically distinct as such but I’d rather have it be good than distinct for distinct’s sake. Need to pull from Lures and “give an Influence to someone else”.
- Easy answers for powers-that-be moves that I can’t believe I didn’t think of earlier: at the beginning of the game you characterize some things about them, at least one move should be expressing that in the scene. I’m sure some will present themselves.
- I want at least one way for a character to confront their power-that-be.
Limit the number of times you can gain Influence off of “raise the stakes” style actions from powers that be.
Right now powers that be add a threat to the board if they join a scene mid-stream. Trigger this the first time they join a scene - which is to say, from the beginning as well as mid-stream - but also give players 1 influence the first time a character joins a scene.
Threats currently leave the board after being rolled and can become “mitigated” or “negated” prior to that. I think they need to start at the “mitigated” stage, and if un-negated, advance to the current “normal” state, either with random chance or reliably.
- Threats need to advance to something Worse occasionally. More on that in the next section.

General Process Tweaks #

Add in three Acts as a superstructure around Chapters, bookended by 1 of the 3 playbooks succumbing to their nastier power-that-be. This adds a few interesting shifts and incentivizes players to aim for different goals.
- The current pacing is a little too long in the tooth as a one-shot…but I think this would make a fantastic three-shot, so my goal with this is partially to provide easy bookends for a formalized 3-session game.
- Act transition could just be a number of chapters thing, a “how bad is the town getting” thing, or a “one character gets X weakness” thing.
- Threats that exist on Act transition should advance to something Worse: maybe something that acts like a Threat but can’t be actually resolved, it’s just a reality now.
Explicitly require some kind of motivation for scenes for powers that be, characters, etc. I think it’s interesting when you have something to specifically work with, one issue I had with scene pacing is that there was really no incentive for players as the various powers-that-be to be “fair” (e.g. accepting a solution) and I do think putting that on the table to some degree helps.
I want to experiment with types of scenes: solving a Threat, two characters meet, all three characters meet, etc. I don’t think this needs to be Firebrands level of specific but I’m glancing in that direction a bit.
Think about “unscene” style things: I didn’t hate the scene we had where every force in question got together without characters, is the thing! I just wish we did it with a little more intention.

Gravity and Tone Tweaks #

Add more ritual to the proceedings. You can certainly do all the black humor you want but
Make sure the layout sets the tone and that the writing continues to set that tone. I have a tendency to both insert humor into things and be extremely functional in my language and I need to hold back on those.

Impending Doom and Cooperation #

Add a measure of how much the town is deteriorating, much like Weakness for the playbooks. (I’m thinking “Ruin” or “Dissolution” or something like that. Goes up whenever)
Think about ways in which characters can explicitly help each other. Some of this comes down to moves and some comes down to scenes.
- Act transitions are a great way to inspire this: if every player involved doesn’t want to start the next act and one of them’s about to start it via Weakness, helping them not do so is to everyone’s benefit.

Ambition and Rivalry #

Think about ways I can make something blow back on certain characters and not others. Maybe the Threats established at the top of a Chapter are character/force-specific and go 1-4/5/6 or 1-3/4-5/6 (which would tie into rivalry too, if that player chooses who gets the 4-5 and who gets the 6).
Think about conflict resolution methods to foster rivalry between players. Expand upon the plurality/consensus stuff: like if two powers-that-be clash, the 3rd player decides who wins.
Think about other ways to foment rivalry. Regarding “help” or “cooperation” style scenes, maybe some of those can be “one player cuts the cake, the other person chooses” in the sense of “the first player makes an entreaty, depending on how the scene plays out (and how the other player wants it to play out) we decide if it was accepted for mutual benefit or rejected”.

When’s the next version coming? #

I don’t know. I have a lot of balls in the air, right now. Soon, maybe. Or maybe not. Who can say.

“What the fuck do I even make” is a topic for another post but I don’t feel like gazing that hard at my navel today. ↩︎
The Changeling is a little weaker of an analogy than the other two here, but the Changeling being a little half-baked should not be a surprise to anyone who’s familiar with Pathologic. ↩︎
Or at least it should be, in my opinion. Unless it’s about skeletons. ↩︎

An (incomplete) Appendix N

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Created as part of Prismatic Wasteland’s Appendicitis Blog Bandwagon.

Influence is a very hard thing for me to specifically quantify a lot of the time. I don’t usually think of an Appendix N - an explicit list of influences - going into a game. Sometimes I go into a game thinking I’m going to be influenced by one thing and then come out influenced by another thing by accident and have to piece it together after the fact. So a lot of my influences have to be kind of backed out after the fact by thinking about what I was thinking of to get to a certain point. Also most of them are other games because ~~I’m an uncultured cretin, but also~~ I’m trying to pull more directly game-influential stuff rather than stuff that generally gave me good vibes because otherwise we’d be here all day.

Non-Game Stuff #

The Expanse: A sci-fi series that has a firm grasp upon the scope of the size of space is a rare thing. Two planets and a handful of stations and colonies and that’s all you need, really. (I know more become a thing later but it’s rarely in focus and even then only like…one or two at a time matter.) I can probably peg my preference for more “grounded” sci-fi (especially NULL_SPACE/Liminal Void) to its (extremely relative) “hard”-ness.
Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans: IBO hit at the exact right time when I was thinking about mech TTRPG stuff originally (more on that later). It’s incredibly brutal and cynical about its subject matter and increasingly bleak as time goes on, but not fully so. One thing it really nails is its increasingly unsubtle pokes at dehumanization of everyone involved in war and what it takes from everyone. The ending is good, actually.
Various Fantasy-ish Genre Fiction: Catch-all because I read a lot of it. A lot of David/Leigh Eddings¹ and R.A Salvatore in particular, and a ton of awful Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms and Star Wars stuff. If I had to pull something out of it all, it’s that you don’t need to try to make everything into a masterpiece for it to be enjoyable or meaningful. It’s fine. Just have fun and make something that someone’s going to have fun with.
Capitalist Realism: Hard swerve. I’m a sucker for “it’s the future and things haven’t particularly gotten better” because, well, in many ways that’s largely been the trajectory of the past 25 years and a lot of the value of speculative fiction (interactive or otherwise) is exploring familiar things from a safe distance. In a lot of my future-y stuff in particular, I lean into the fact that we haven’t particularly improved socially; but instead it’s kind of more of the same, despite tech differences. One key part of that, though, is that its tagline of “Is There No Alternative?” is a challenge. I think that’s a throughline in a lot of my work, that idea of: “you are invested with some kind of agency and you are implicated in an unjust system, what do you do with that?” Even my more power-fantasy stuff has elements of that.

Video Games #

Dark Souls (the first one): Look, I like a lot in the whole series and all but nothing does it quite like the original. (Demon’s Souls is great too but for different reasons and I’m only putting one of these fuckin’ games on here.) It tells you what’s going on, but only just. The items tell you a lot, but most of it’s not anything you actually need to know. It’s so easy to go through some random door or head down a basement and just go into a wildly different place by accident and knowing that makes every new area feel exciting. They hadn’t tuned the game such that they expect everyone to be hitting I-frames yet so everything still feels meaty and deliberate. The second half of the game runs out of steam for me but that’s fine. I’m gonna stop here because the amount of digital ink spilled on this game, much less this series, has already fully saturated the idea space.
Armored Core 4/4A/6: As storytelling goes, the Armored Cores I’ve played (minus 5/Verdict Day, which I played but I just really don’t care for as much) do a lot with a little. A lot is told diegetically through dialogue (with some fantastic voice-only characterization in 6 particularly), through scenery, or via mission objectives or framing. Fast mechs are good and being powerful is good. It’s fine to just trash a bunch of useless enemies in your way, who fucking cares: that’s usually not the hard part, the hard part is doing it efficiently or whatever’s at the end. One thing I miss in 4A/6 that’s present in 4 is default blueprints/loadouts that include weaponry because those tell you a lot about a company/manufacturer and what they want in a mercenary: bring those back.
XCOM (the original and 2010’s reboot): Do we love extremely explicit game loops? (Detect a UFO, shoot it down), go to the crash/landing site in force, get what you can from them, build your base and upgrade your soldiers and their gear. Intersperse with harder/“Terror” missions and pre-built “progress” missions. At least some of that should sound familiar reading AF or Celestial Bodies.
Knights in the Nightmare: This game is like a bullet hell RTS where you summon the ghosts of soldiers and the game mostly attacks your cursor. Go look it up if you’ve never heard of it, it’s fucking wild. (Also the soundtrack is fantastic.) The big thing I pull from it is the way it does storytelling: it tells you very little, but switches between the current “what’s happening” and a flashback of how things got there, frequently involving characters whose spirits you’ll be recruiting. It’s the big thing I accidentally pulled from for ANOINTED: that concept of “not knowing something and gradually remembering things” is really convenient for a TTRPG format, or really any kind of game. A running theme that develops is “your character had power, screwed up badly, and it had consequences, can they make it right”. That hits in the sense that I tend to prefer to give player characters some kind of skin in the game rather than make them pure underdogs - you have some kind of privilege that someone else in the setting doesn’t have, so what do you do with it? - but this takes it and tacks a leading question onto the end. You had some kind of privilege and used it poorly, so where do you go from here? I love adding a little hint of pre-complicity to player characters.
Front Mission (probably 3): My favorite kinds of mechs are probably “increasingly more of a person than the pilot”, “you are basically an unkillable fighter jet ace”, and “basically just a story about being dragged into some kind of proxy war between two powers” and any given Front Mission is usually the third one. I appreciate something that makes a point of explaining why mechs are relevant and putting them in context with other kinds of mechanized units. 3’s the best Front Mission, probably, so I suppose we’ll go with that. (That remake looks like shit though.)
Xenoblade (X and 3): Xenoblade X has a very offline-MMO feeling in a lot of senses, and one of them is that much of it is an extremely coherent Mission Loop. A lot of the on-foot classes basically boil down to “combine two weapons/powersets” once you get far enough into all of them and that’s a really good way to do something that feels like a “job” system but isn’t actually. As for 3, I’m famously an Equipment Hater for fantasy games and Xenoblade 3 completely sidesteps it by making equipment nearly nonexistent. Instead, it puts the emphasis on jobs that you get by meeting and recruiting new people. 1’s good but not nearly as influential on me and I didn’t get far in 2.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Age of Decadence, Geneforge, Gothic: Lightning round. A lot of these have very good individual things to pull out but mostly I want to point out a lot of motifs that at least 3 of the 4 have in common that I use a lot: diegetically confined game spaces; structures and areas repurposed from older times that change in context as you learn more; a sense of inherent transgression to your presence; and (echoed before) an approach to morality of “nobody is forcing you to be a good person and you can basically do whatever you can get away with, so what manner of person are you if you can get away with it?”

Tabletop Games #

Lunar Reckoning 69: Reactions in order to this are probably a. “haha, the funny number, nice” and b. “ok but what the fuck IS that”. Well, I don’t blame you on either. It’s a tiny mech game from the early 2010s, so like a decade too early for the itch boom. I remember talking to the dev quite a bit in early forums/etc days about early versions and trying them out. I list it partially because it’s an early 3d6 thing I played that really got my brain in that headspace: it had a neat thing going on where a “straight” was a crit (or success, if it would fail) but triples were a crit fail (or failure, if it’d be a success) and it cares deeply about initiative. It’s not the first thing to get mechs in my headspace, but I mention it in particular because I tried to make some kind of complicated initiative system riffing off of it and accidentally backed into the core mechanic I’d discover like 6 years later and re-use for Total//Effect. I also list it because it’s one of the first time I had that kind of insight into the TTRPG development process ahead of time. I don’t know if the author is still doing anything in the TTRPG space.
13th Age: A lot of more “trad” oriented indie designers nowadays harken back to 4E D&D as a starting point. That’s fair, I suppose, but that’s not the one that brought me to the dance: it was 13th Age, which regardless of all of its faults in practice hit a much more approachable way to do D&D Fantasy for me. I’d played 3E/PF prior but 13A is where it really clicked in a way where I felt like I had a grasp on how it properly worked, because the game properly worked in play as well as being fun to make characters in. I appreciate that the classes feel distinct in structure while still having enough common customization elements that they don’t feel like you have to relearn the game with every new character, Escalation provides a nice pacing mechanism, Backgrounds are just absurdly cleaner than skill lists. It’s so clean that the less-clean bits really stick out: “death to ability scores” was a big thing when it came out and immediately people tried to take it out, including me! It should really not be news if you’re familiar with both it and Total//Effect that 13A wildly influenced T//E, but if you’re familiar with one and not the other, well, there you go. And I guess if you’re not familiar with either, you’re a real one and I appreciate you reading this far.
Fragged Empire: Another tactics game, but this one in particular caught my attention because it did really smart things with fragmenting actions into sub-actions. One thing it really taught me is that I really like it when games have fairly simple verbs that hit when used in combination: though not as composite actions like FE did, but individually, using more split out and much looser action economies.²
Apocalypse World: Aside from the billion things that everyone has already said about it, I can’t say enough nice things about the tone of the game. It’s a really easy game to just read from cover to cover. Trying to emphasize an authorial voice is something I’ve really leaned into of late, and a lot of that is gaining the confidence to try to take that kind of stylistic swing. It’s also a great example of the thing I say a lot: good design shines through, no matter how small your budget is.
LUMEN: I don’t think this one should be news given my biggest game is a LUMEN game. It bears digging into, though. It was recommended me in context of being a way lighter version to do something like Fragged Empire: I was introduced to the system tag-first, and read it in the context of playtesting my meticulously balanced 13th Age variant. A SRD that openly went “you know what, it IS good if powers Just Fucking Work” and “what if we just didn’t give a shit about balance” hit me at exactly the right time. Mostly taking existential failure off of the table makes me think differently about why we tell stories and what we get out of them, even for games where you CAN lose or die or both: when you can’t use the stakes of “will the party survive this”, you’re forced to think about what combat is³, or what an encounter means, or what stakes themselves you even want or need to set.

I’m sure I missed something. That’s the problem with the soup. Maybe I’ll follow this up or edit it if I remember any more. Hope you enjoyed.

Don’t look them up if you have fond memories of their writing and that’s all you know about them. Trust me on this one. ↩︎
It also taught me that I really want a game that spells out enemies and doesn’t make the GM make them from scratch, or at least makes them simple enough that it’s not a huge pain. But I’m trying to being positive on my list. There are a lot of “taught me not to do whatever the fuck that was” entries that got cut from this list. ↩︎
Consider this a preview of one of my drafts. ↩︎

The hole at the center of the mech, or: why isn't it about the people?

Wed, 16 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Created as part of Prismatic Wasteland’s Holes Blog Bandwagon, in which we all write about holes. Some holes are more literal than others, I suppose. And maybe one of these days I’ll get out of the hole that is “devlogs/retrospectives about my own games”, but not today.

“When you get right down to it, (mech game, show, etc etc etc) is about the people.” If you’ve done anything remotely adjacent to mecha stuff, you’ve read some variation on this. I roll it out as a halfway-joke every time someone brings mecha up because it’s such a combination of “cliche” and “John Madden statement-obvious”. Like, yes, it’s not literally about the walking war machine itself, it’s about the interactions of various people, much like every other story ever that involves people clashing against each other. And yet…APOCALYPSE FRAME is not “about the people”, at least not by focus. I barely touch upon the Aces at all, to the chagrin of a lot of people. What an oversight!

The obvious move is to add in more Ace stuff: if not explicit pilot systems, then at least relationships, bonds, something that ties characters together or to larger things. (Or at least it’s obvious to a lot of people who have suggested that I do it.) Relationship mechanics can be fun in games! I like them a lot. I have them in Valiant Horizon, for instance, and I think they’re great there. But I don’t have them in APOCALYPSE FRAME: mechanically, APOCALYPSE FRAME is pure LUMEN-esque combat and setup for LUMEN-esque combat and exceedingly little else. So what’s up with that?

For full disclosure, at one point I had considered adding in some kind of relationship system in an expansion or revision. I decided against it, however, because when I playtested, I noticed something very interesting happening. At the beginning of an APOCALYPSE FRAME game, players are invited to flesh out their characters not via some extensive character generation, but by creating NPCs who have opinions about them and vice versa: other pilots, maintenance staff, civilians, branch heads, the general members of their Collective. They end up being defined by who they know and why, with the expectation that between missions, they’d do more. Whenever we described what they would do between missions, sometimes a player would have a good idea about something or wanted to focus on a person, but a lot of times they wouldn’t, and we’d just move on to the tactical bits, characters left unfleshed. This, in turn, made me think harder about what I wanted the game to do and be.

When a rule isn’t present for something, one thing that can arise from it is that it gets talked through more because it can’t be reduced down.¹ There’s a second phenomenon, though, which is that when an aspect that’s conceptually very important isn’t present in an otherwise rule or procedure heavy game, it can get ignored. This is very frequently a bad thing, which is why those kinds of rules exist! But sometimes we can weaponize that fact to make a point, however subtle it may be.

As a preface to where I’m going with this, there are two relevant things I want to say about violence and war. First: war, even the most justified one possible, is a dehumanizing experience for everyone involved. Soldiers usually have to view their enemy as something lesser or really keep their eye on some greater goal to continually justify one of the most unspeakable acts a human being can do to another. Proper training to wage war “well” molds people into being reactive and following orders, acting less like a person and more like part of a greater force. Any kind of revolution can do this too, as the needs of the individual give way to the needs of the collective (capitalized or otherwise). Second, violence is also a great source of entertainment. There are a lot of game mechanics built around violence, and war, and eath. You typically kill a triple digit number of people in any given Armored Core mission within the space of a low single digit number of minutes and it feels great. Competition and violence are extremely gameable and gratifying and a LOT of the AAA video game industry is built around this fact. In APOCALYPSE FRAME, as with many power-fantasy games, you are empowered by violence and it feels very good to encase 30 goons in their metal coffins.

When someone feels like one part of their life is really rewarding and is what they SHOULD be doing, they’ll frequently neglect the rest. In APOCALYPSE FRAME, the lack of a social mechanic means that as a player has a lot of things driving them to focus on doing and preparing for violence; and no real drive towards social-anything, or towards thinking about character motivations, or even survival really. In that same way, the player is drawn away from further defining their character and their interactions with the people who surrounded them towards the mechanics, slowly becoming focused on the bit that feels good to the extent of fully losing the plot.

Now, you could just as easily mechanize this aspect as well, of course, and plenty of games do that: Delta Green, for instance, is all about snapping those bonds between characters over time. But here’s the conclusion I came to for this game: I feel like that’s a little too up-front and exculpatory for what I want to accomplish here. A mechanical acknowledgement and systemization brings the character to task for their neglect just fine. What it doesn’t do is indict the player. In contrast, I’m not so merciful. And a lot of players will never pick up on this, especially in short-term games, and that’s not only fine but good; but especially over time, my hope is that players will understand what incentives are pulling them towards, and decide how that makes them feel.

I think you might have guessed already if you read this far, but there’s not actually a hole at the center of the mech; this one’s about the people. It’s just also about the players.

If acknowledging/mentioning this is about to make you annoying in my mentions in any direction, please feel free to elide that particular impulse. ↩︎

Combat without Combat

Tue, 27 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

NULL_SPACE #

Liminal Void is has been consigned to the void. Well, the name has, anyway. Going forward, it will be called NULL_SPACE!

When I spoke about it last, I said both of the following:

(in the context of priorities for the game:) De-emphasize combat. Over each edition, the degree to which anyone can easily do combat has been relegated more fully to explicitly chosen weaponry and combat-ready outfits - which was the goal from the start, but at the time I’d been coming off of LUMEN so I was still kind of thinking in the combat-game sense.

This is a game with combat, but the idea is that it isn’t strictly a combat-focused game. (Basically any game I’ve made that a fair number of people have actually read or played is like this so I need to make this very clear. This one takes cues from Valiant Horizon for obvious reasons of “it’s the same engine” but it’s not intended to be exactly that.)

In thinking about it more, and thinking more about the goals of both the game and the modular booklet idea that I want to use for it, I had a funny thought: what if it just didn’t have combat? Not in the sense of “you can’t attack anyone or be attacked, but what if I made Capital-T-Capital-C Tactical Combat purely relegated to one of those sub-booklets? And what would it look like without that?

Prerequisite Reading #

There’s a few sources that helped me put together how I wanted to approach this.

Gila RPGs’s LUMEN 2.0 healthless ideas, as best exemplified by They Have a Cave Troll, are a big one. I really liked the LUMEN 2.0 approach from afar, but only really had a chance to play around with it fairly recently: the idea of enemies being “one hit kill” but sometimes have things that prevent that is an excellent way to approach things.
My own Devlog #1: Healthless* was written (along with Valiant Horizon Tactics mechanic in question) to riff off of LUMEN 2.0! I’ll get into a specific pull later but for now note that my exact approach to dealing with “healthless” LUMEN 2.0 ideas isn’t exactly the same as Spencer’s.
Explorer Design’s The 1 HP Dragon. At the time I instantly pinged the convergent-evolution similaries to LUMEN 2.0!
Explorer Design’s Why Combat Is a Fail State is kind of a sneaky semi-accidental prequel that sets up a question that The 1 HP Dragon answers. We’ll get back to it later.
As I was writing this Explorer Design put out yet another banger that aligns well with both the previous two AND with this article, Designing Locks With More Keys. I don’t want to rewrite this to get too far into it but it aligns really well with what I already wrote, especially with the section I pull out of Healthless* below.

Combat without Numbers #

So first off, the big thing I wanted to do was get rid of numbers on enemies. Get ’em out of here! The first move was to take a page from LUMEN 2.0: a lot of enemies take one “hit” to defeat. Nastier enemies have a few Qualities that make them harder and need to be removed or addressed before being defeated. Easy.

The thing is that LUMEN 2.0 is very much still built in that LUMEN vibe of “pretty competent heroes”. It’s also built for explicitly, nearly exclusively puzzle-y resolution. As I noted in Devlog #1: Healthless* (with asides omitted):

My goal is to make a TTRPG, not a board game. I think one major step towards securing it as a TTRPG is that expression needs to be encouraged to some degree. Puzzle-y approaches are very strategic in nature: they have one basic answer, in this case sometimes with a “skip” granted by pre-preparation. For what I’m doing here I don’t want to force that layer on anyone. I’d like them to not feel like they have to do one of two very specific things to win a fight. They’re going to still have to figure out how to achieve extra offense within the context of what they want to do, but that’s something that almost any playstyle can spec into eventually, albeit with some risk - and it’s easy enough to swap between the three methods of dealing with it based on your enemies. Basically:

If you’re prepared, you bring the tools to deal with it; or

If you’re tactical, you solve it; or

If you’re determined, you push through it.

I think that 3-layer approach is where I still land on things for this iteration too, for the most part. In one way, this gets addressed in the same way as it does for Valiant Horizon Tactics: you’re presented with a meaningful threat’s qualities.

If they have armor and you have a gun with armor-piercing, you can just skip that and aim to take them out without having to address it. OR if they have armor and you have something that’s precise, you can probably argue that you can aim for an unarmored spot, as long as that seems reasonable in-fiction. You get it.
Alternatively, you can use a situational thing to deal with it. For example, if you can flank them in the environment, then you’ll have a clearer shot.
If you don’t do any of those, you probably have to do it the hard way: first take out the armor, then take out the enemy.

But how do we encourage NOT just bashing your head against every problem? We make it risky to do that.

Combat with Non-Combat #

I’d set up non-combat actions prior to this as essentially doing one of three things:

You just kind of do something that doesn’t involve risk, meaningful resource expenditure, or increase in threat profile. There’s no roll needed here.
You do something that involves no risk, but does spend time, advance a Threat (basically a Bad Clock), or risks resource expenditure. This is called a Steady Action: There is a roll, but it’s just to see how much advancement/expenditure there is.
You do something risky. This is called, appropriately, a Risky Action: There is a roll to see whether or not it works, splitting on that now-familiar success/success with a twist/failure with a twist ternary.¹

Combat is largely a series of Risky Actions, if you’re not savvy about it. (Sometimes it can be Steady if there’s something that’s unlikely to be interfered with.) Unlike LUMEN 2.0, you don’t just succeed: you have to roll for it to see what ELSE happens. This means that you can take multiple risky combat actions to do something - for example from above, removing armor and then taking the enemy out. But a Risky Action is using the Total//Effect base roll at 8-, 9-12, and 13+ thresholds for the classic ternary, so the default is about a 25/50/25% fail/mixed success/unqualified success². This means that each of those actions puts you at 75% chance of blowback, and each one might not work, but as a baseline you’ve got a 75% chance of success as well. You’ll probably get you want unless you’ve got active penalties, but you’ll likely pay for it.

You can improve your odds by spending resources, gaining little advantages, and so on: 1 Adv makes it about 10/40/50%, for instance, 2 Adv brings that to 5/30/65%, and 3 brings it to about 1/19/80%. As an example of something everyone can do, each Attribute spent on a roll gets you 1 Advantage and you can blow multiple on one roll to get multiple Advantage if you’re dedicated. BUT: those are resources you can’t spend later! So there’s a do-you-try-to-ensure-this aspect to it.
The major suggested Twist for combat is that the character takes Harm! Characters still have 4 Endurance and 6 Health, and getting hit to Health is bad and running out of it is worse. Average suggested Harm is Mid Die (average of 3.5) so characters without +Endurance equipment or equipment that gives them Resistance (making it Low Die, so average 2) usually get one freebie, then the second hit brutally injures them, then the third hit kills them. The Narrator is encouraged to just have those things happen to you if you don’t address a problem, too, so it avoids being a matter of “I only get hit when I try to attack so I’m not going to do that”.
You’re going to be better off thinking about what you can bring to the situation to fully remove risk. A weapon’s quality can also remove certain kinds of risk even if it doesn’t remove a quality: for example, a weapon with “hull-safe” explicitly means that it can’t be used to poke a hole in the side of the ship, which is great when you miss with it inside. A risk-free situational change could just as easily negate something on an enemy as a spent resource, though, so it pays to think laterally and do smart stuff!
We can introduce qualities that are sticky: they HAVE to be specifically negated or bypassed, they can’t just be brute-forced. And we can introduce qualities that don’t have to be bypassed or dealt with, but actively cause a problem if unaddressed (like a guaranteed twist or a penalty to do something else). And we can add in qualities that change based on what they do: like if an enemy ducks into cover or pops a smoke grenade, that’s now a new thing you have to deal with or figure out a way to bypass!

Non-Combat with…Combat? #

Let’s jump back to one of Combat as a Fail State³’s final few paragraphs for a second:

Outside of combat, doors don’t have HP, poisoned food doesn’t care about THAC0, and players don’t roll saves for diplomacy, but in combat, the rulings have to follow the rules. Stats, rolls, and rounds become a crucial part of the conversation and often negate it or lead it.

Up until this point, we’ve talked about Combat minus the Tactical bit. For meaningful challenges, we’ve established a means by which you outline complications for defeating enemies: either you do something smart that removes those qualities, or you just have to deal with them one by one. Noncombat’s usually not that engaging, though. Either stuff works or it doesn’t. So what we gave a door HP, so to speak? Not actual HP, of course, but the kind of HP we established.

NULL_SPACE defines both combat and noncombat problems as Challenges, and the various qualities that make them harder and more complex are Complications. For example:

A big, nasty security door in your way is closed, and you would really prefer it to be open. It’s got a standard access scan.

If you’ve got the right data for its scanner - badge, retinal scan, the security chief’s microchipped severed hand - open sesame, no frills. Challenge accepted and bypassed.

If you want to hack it, it has two Complications: Anti-Tamper Alarms and Access Control Encryption. The latter needs to be untangled to open it, the former is more of a floating threat of “someone will find out that you would rather not if you ignore this”.

If you want to physically pull or rip it open, Anti-Tamper Alarms probably still apply in much the same way, but now you have to care about Heavy Reinforced Metal rather than the specifics of access control. That last one is probably stickier: you’re going to need some kind of major equipment to deal with it, like a big drill or extra strength from an exoskeleton.

If you just use a mining charge to blow past it, it almost certainly just works! No real roll needed, a big boom is a big boom. (What that does to the rest of the ship is another story that usually involves “rapid depressurization”, but sometimes you have to burn that bridge when you come to it.)

So we’ve now taken our combat tech and ported it BACK to non-combat. This means we end up with something that has a little chew to it outside combat that uses a similar language. This is important, because as noted up top, this isn’t just a combat game. For noncombat stuff, it’s very likely solutions will be more on the Steady Action/no action side of things unless you’re on a tight clock or there’s some kind of actively complicating risky circumstance, which then makes choosing between those two meaningful: Do It Fast vs Do It Reliably is a tough choice sometimes, both strategically and characteristically!

Combat WITH Combat? #

In a game where we don’t want combat to be the default, I think it’s a reasonable choice to not put it out there. But what if we still WANT to have proper combat? What if your particular game is more about getting into fights? This is important because NULL_SPACE is supposed to be flexible and cater to several kinds of crews who can specialize in certain kinds of jobs, should they want to, and is going to be designed to be more extensible in parts where you want that.

Combat is definitely something where I’ve been kind of lazy in the past with respect to NULL_SPACE (in its Liminal Void incarnations) in particular, and have tried to become less lazy. I have a lot of personal preferences for combat systems…but a lot of them are for more Power Fantasyish things. My initial idea for Total//Effect was a kind of low-fantasy Combat Game based on my previous work (betraying its original-original origin as “what if I really stripped down 13th Age -> 36th Way even further” as well as my personal inclinations) and a lot of my initial approaches to the game that would become NULL_SPACE come from that: Each piece of equipment, tool or weapon, had two Combat Powers that corresponded to one of the roles and subroles of the SRD I’m currently rewriting. It wasn’t a GOOD idea to get into combat because Health/Endurance still worked the same way but it was still basically that 4Eish Combat Powers thing that Valiant Horizon is, you know?

In that vein I think what I’ve come up with here is more true to the game I have been trying to write, but given my intent to break the game up into core + modules, I think we can still make it a little more complicated for people who want that in their life without sacrificing that. But that’s going to take some care AND that’s going to be a later problem. For now, I’m happy with where it’s landed.

Yeah, yeah, I can hear the standard annoyed comments about being tired of this setup already. Feel free to miss me with that, honestly. I think in this case I’ve given the Narrator a lot of levers to pull re: what those should be: and if all else fails, well, I have a d66 table of Quick Ideas for you in the book too. Especially where it comes to combat, the simple answer is “whoever you’re fighting also gets a shot at you” but you should be able to figure out SOMETHING regardless. ↩︎
We’re ignoring Escalation here: every action is associated with a given Attribute to indicate what you can spend for bonuses, but also how it interacts with Escalation. Escalation in NULL_SPACE adds to actions associated with Toughness, subtracts from abilities associated with Focus, and is neutral for Reflexes abilities. Numerically it’s not precisely as cut and dried as I’m about to say but on a 0 Dis/advantage roll, +/-2 from Escalation is similar to 1 Dis/advantage, +/-3 is like 2 Dis/advantage, and +/-4 is like 3 Dis/advantage. ↩︎
I wrote a big tangent about how the phrasing of this maxim annoys the piss out of me and deleted it. This is growth, or something. ↩︎

Religion is too good for Clerics.

Wed, 07 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Created as part of Prismatic Wasteland’s Blogclave 2025, in which we all write about clerics during the papal conclave.

I don’t love almost any of the “core four” D&D classes - Fighter/Fighting Man, Rogue/Thief, Cleric, Wizard/Magic-User - if I’m going to be honest. Each of them feels simultaneously too vague and too specific, kind of thrown in there based on an initial reference that quickly became a reference to itself. But if I had to rank them with that caveat, I’d say cleric probably comes out 2nd to last.¹

There’s a few reasons. I’m pretty negative on “screw that particular kind of enemy” class features, for one, and they have the first and most prominent one. I don’t love how their spells feel so focused on emulating one particular family of real-life religion. I’m not fond of classes that inherently presume you have a particular affiliation or job. I think the thing that gets me about them the most, though, is that their presence warps religion around them by nature of its existence.

The nature of a class focused on a particular thing means that they’re likely to be The Only One Who Is Qualified, to the point of exclusion. You could have a non-Wizard character focus on arcane studies² but they don’t get half as much out of it, so if you want to be that character you’re probably just going to be a Wizard. And you could have a non-Cleric be really into religion, but like, if you want that to reflect beyond externalities you’re probably just gonna go for The Class What Cares About It.

Now, I’m not opposed to this, in theory. Like if you must have classes (the D&D kind, not the social kind (but that too)), having each of them handle A Particular Thing is probably good for role protection. My biggest issue here is that the social aspect of religion as a concept is varied and interesting and involves a lot of people. There’s a lot of meat on those bones! Schisms and conversion are really interesting and a lot of European history is shaped by them and their relations to politics!

The presence of The Religion Guy What Does Miracles³ makes it specific to a few people and less flexible. As soon as the presence of A Guy That Proves It’s All Real is felt, you have way less flex to just have people follow some wild-eyed prophet. It feels different having a nerd nail a bunch of complaints to the door of Pelor’s church when the big man directly gives people powers for doing what he wants, you know? Or you can, but you then have to come up with some narrative that makes that all still make sense, which then still focuses that on individual people instead of social currents. (As with a lot of magic, I’d probably prefer it to be less explained rather than more - or a matter of tradition rather than divine gift.) And this doesn’t get into basically any other non-Christian religion, which shouldn’t always work the same way or have the same strictures - and doesn’t always in real life! - but the presence of a Proper Cleric implies a certain structure of investiture that borderline requires religions to fall into that mold.

So basically: religion is way too interesting to be confined to one class. slaps the roof of the game You can fit so many antipopes (and other fun things!) in this bad boy if you free yourself from this class. Ditch the cleric and let’s get weird with it.

I dislike the Wizard more, but that’s a conversation for a different day and another Bandwagon. I try not to think about D&D enough to put these kinds of things out normally. ↩︎
A reasonable thing to do given that it underpins like, everything in the setting! Again, though, I am not making a similar post about The Damn D&D Wizard. Right now. Yet. ↩︎
Paladins also exist, I guess, but frankly they’re not meaningfully that different from clerics in concept. Also basically all of this holds for them too, so whatever. ↩︎

Staring into the (Liminal) Void, 2 years in

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Liminal Void received another update, somehow, bringing it to its 4th distinct iteration (not counting sub-iterations and tiny fixes). It’s a neat little subset of a game about how much it sucks to live in space under capitalism, largely at this point in its development through the lens of “what if your employer just sucked at keeping you alive”. It’s also been kicking for more than 2 years, periodically updated, never completed. Honestly even the name is a work in progress, if I get a better one I might change the name.¹

So what do I see in this one?

The Story So Far #

In late 2022 I released the first version of the quickstart, along with CICP-1. It was the first Total//Effect thing I ever made, and I kind of figured I’d finish it first! But then I started Valiant Horizon instead² and carried that to the finish line that summer. Throughout early 2023 I continued to write a more complete version of Liminal Void, largely based on those early versions. It got pretty far! Like 100 or so pages in. It’s got some neat ideas in there, like a kind of achievement-based “experience”. I wasn’t wildly satisfied with it, though. I thought it was still way too combat-oriented and way too resource-fiddly. (I wrote the 2nd quickstart scenario soon after releasing a quickstart v2 with some playtest feedback around that time.)

Later in 2023 I would start a Minimalist Jam project that was intended to be a STALKER-ish thing based on Total//Effect and LOOT, EXPLOIT. It didn’t get too-too far but it had some neat ideas: chief among them, a weird marriage of spending LUMEN 2.0 attributes and Total//Effect rolls that observant developers might call “a kind of middle ground” and “wait is this just Cypher but good?”³. After that game got hit by the bus that was Celestial Bodies⁴ (and I also just decided the project was kind of petering out anyway), I decided to harvest that tech to make Liminal Void v3. (I wrote the 3rd quickstart scenario soon after that alongside v3.1.)

v4 came out this month, along with one of the earliest ideas for its setting. The most obvious change is the layout - I changed the font from mono to sans and leaned in harder to make the black-color 100K instead of RGB #000, for instance - but a big thing beyond that is that I changed how ammo/weapon charges worked. Instead of tracking individual ammo/charges on a per-weapon basis, using one makes you check against its discharge rate to see if the clip/battery will run dry. Additionally, combat got even more de-emphasized by removal of Prime enemies. (This was something I realized should happen while writing Total//Effect v2.0 to further de-emphasize that kind of combat.)

What do I want from this? #

Picking up on themes, my general priorities from the above fixes have been:

Streamline. No points for guessing this correctly.
Figure out a visual identity. HARDPLACE helped me nail down IBM Plex Sans as a suitable body font and the rest backed into the fonts I’d already been using (Monomania, IBM Plex Mono, and JetBrains Mono). I’ve also grown a soft spot for 100K as the black portion of B&W - it’s got a warmth to it that gets the point across without feeling so stark. I don’t think that’s the extent of it and there’s way more room for embellishment but I like where it landed so far.
De-emphasize combat. Over each edition, the degree to which anyone can easily do combat has been relegated more fully to explicitly chosen weaponry and combat-ready outfits - which was the goal from the start, but at the time I’d been coming off of LUMEN so I was still kind of thinking in the combat-game sense.
Ground that sci-fi. This goes along with the above to some extent, but the goal of the game isn’t to be a set of extremely competent heroes: it’s to be normal people thrust into a bizarre economic situation and having to figure out what that means over time. This means all of it has to be kind of plausible and to some degree, “harder” sci-fi to hit what I want it to.

The last two especially are important thinking about the question: where does it go from here?

I’m going to lay out some pillars that from the start have affected how I approach this. Part of these are some of the source material, but part of these are intentional influences from sources I’m intentionally stretching a little towards because I think they thematically fit (especially more OSR-adjacent stuff).

Grounded (And Not Just Cassette Futurism) #

I like laser guns and lightsabers and space horror and space psionic bullshit as much as anyone else - I mean a major influence is System Shock 2 and boy howdy are all of those present there. But that’s not what I’m trying to make here.

Part of my intent is also to not tie the game to a very specific retrofuture defined 40 years ago. If you want Alien or whatever, go play that. Instead I’m influenced by a more modern technopessimist vibe. Everything isn’t cool dials and awesome physical switches: everything is touchscreens that barely work or voice commands that do the wrong thing, half your shit is phoning analytics home and fucking up your bandwidth, and you’re drowing in debt all the time. It sucks in a more familiar way of “we know a better way to do this and the powers that be will do everything in their power to make sure it never happens”.

Another big part of my intent is that the setting is just the solar system. And that’s enough, frankly! If it’s good enough for The Expanse (well, the start of it anyway) it’s good enough for you. Most of it from Jupiter inward is pretty well explored but it’s also huge, full of space trash dumped by unscrupulous corporations, and easy to conceal anything - prime territory for the kinds of stories I want to tell. There are 3 major powers - Earth, Mars, Ganymede - but they’re pretty loose and have mostly settled into a “free trade makes all of us more money, we’re fine with a kind of cold corporate war rather than hot war” equilibrium. (For now, anyway.)

Layers of Tension, Inequality, and Lopsided Incentives #

The idea is for the moment-to-moment to be tense on several levels, and only a few of them “direct”. At the lowest level the day to day life-risking tension: it sure sucks doing odd jobs in space! It’s not good! I wrote a lot of games where dying is explicitly opt-in only and this isn’t one of them. If you survive that, you have the less direct, just as real short-term economic tension: how do we make ends meet? What does it mean if we can’t? If you manage to do all of that, you have longer-term philosophical tension: is it feasible to NOT become the problem while thriving under space turbo-capitalism?

I had been hoping to introduce a few subsystems/procedures/whatever you want to call them that, among other things, emphasize these pressures as well as emphasize the unfairness of the situation with the aforementioned achievement-based “experience”. Doing things that make you a weird corporate stooge give you little bennies alongside them while doing cool-guy things like starting a union or making a station independent get hits put out on you, that kind of thing. (You can do either, of course, your choice.) I also want to similarly force the issue by having achievements that come with things like having a large crew come with Threats like “your large crew wants a say in everything”.

I could just do something like CY_BORG’s rule zero⁵ and leave it at that, but that’s too emotionally easy, honestly. I think it’s way more interesting that if the gravity of the game’s upward progression pulls you towards being just as much of an asshole as your former employers if you just go with the flow. Ideally it’s hard to pretend that it was the only option: my goal is that you have to look at the road not taken every time you interact with advancement. I want the game to somewhat force you to reckon with the fact that you had a choice.

How successful will this be? Well, we’ll see. But I want to make an attempt.

I make a lot of Combat As Sport Games and this isn’t one of them #

This is a game with combat, but the idea is that it isn’t strictly a combat-focused game. (Basically any game I’ve made that a fair number of people have actually read or played is like this so I need to make this very clear. This one takes cues from Valiant Horizon for obvious reasons of “it’s the same engine” but it’s not intended to be exactly that.)

The biggest idea I have for this is the equipment system. Being kitted out for combat a very opt-in thing by making it very tied to equipment. Bringing a gun and coming kitted out in a bulletproof vest or something similar is a statement of intent because of how limited inventory is: both of those are significant sacrifices of other resources or opportunities.

Speaking of, this isn’t purely a game about being gritty space mercenaries or whatever! You should be able to take jobs that don’t involve fighting (though of course, this doesn’t strictly exclude violence). If someone wants this to purely be a Citizen Sleeper-ish game about disassembling wrecks, dealing with specific problems related to those, and having to deal with various other pressures at the same time: that should be doable. Categories of types of tasks I identified for it that it should support:

Extraction: Salvage, mining, and retrieval.
Mercenary: Anything that involves sending an armed squad or ship to either do or imply violence.
Delivery: Escorting VIPs, general cargo delivery, smuggling.
Investigation: Solving mysteries, digging up dirt.

Of those, only one really directly necessitates combat-as-such, and even then not strictly and not always.

Now, it could be weird to have a tactical combat system still exist in a game that’s explicitly just not about that; but frankly, this game IS intentionally about the violence suffered by everyone under capitalism even if it’s not the direct/physical kind. So having that be a prominent feature in the back of your mind is relevant even if it’s not being directly used.⁶

Multi-Domain Play #

It would be really easy to make this just a one-shot system where the Level 0 quickstart is the whole of the game and I just make a Trophy Dark thing where the rest of my energy goes towards scenarios. People love those games. But I think the concept deserves a little more flex than that. Ideally the scope expands over time if you let it progress: you start with immediate survival, figure out what kind of crew you’re becoming, develop a network and reputation, start making Power Moves.

I like focused games with one extremely tight loop. I mean that’s APOCALYPSE FRAME to a T. But this feels like one that can stand to stretch out a little: the key is never being able to be fully free of strings pulling at you, but instead to make sure they change over time. Start with debt, exchange that for favors and reputation, exchange that for reputation in a political sense.

So what’s the approach going forward? #

So I think we’re in a situation here where I have a lot of very modular ideas that can be fit together. Thinking about the excellent HARDCASE (which has slowly leaked into my influences for Liminal Void), I can lean way further into that and treat it all as mostly separable. If only there were some kind of physical model I could potentially use for this…

I like the idea of aiming for both booklets and a hardback - I could probably manage both if I’m smart about it, especially by leveraging POD resources to avoid having a lot of lesser-book stock.

I could easily split this into divisions like:

Core:
- Basics: Quickstart but without tactical combat, explicitly statted weapons, or explicit equipment. The game should technically be playable with this first half and not anything from the second half.
- Advanced: Include all the stuff I omitted from the quickstart plus Level 1 chargen, advancement, debt economy.
The First Step: The existing 3 level 0 scenarios, maybe a little guide to writing your own.
Work: Some Extraction, Delivery, Mercenary, and Investigative tasks/jobs/scenarios, hooks for slotting ’em in, maybe some guides to writing your own.
Ships: What it says on the tin: getting further into everything to do with ships and living on them, outfitting, ship combat/pursuit.
The Solar System: The solar system of the 24th century, its points of interest, and some more specific jobs, backgrounds, and hooks related to it.
Politics: Changing the debt economy into favor/reputation economy over time as you advance.

I think the plan might be to do a gradual-rollout digitally once I have at least Core done (which isn’t too far off from the current quickstart). A good model is something like Wolves Upon the Coast or a season pass: start cheapish, raise the price with every extra bit added, and at the end combine it all into one product.

Or it’ll just be my white whale forever as yet another project hits it with the bus. Seems about as likely at this point! Who can say.

SEO for that is shit and it keeps getting tagged on itch as being related to Liminal Horror when it’s…not, at all. It’s simply not the same game. I don’t know a good way to tell people this. ↩︎
Mostly because my home group wanted to play a fantasy game and not a sci-fi thing. ↩︎
It wasn’t that by intention, but in practice, it’s not not that. ↩︎
What’s that, you might ask? Well, ↩︎
Which is to say, player characters cannot be loyal to or have sympathy for corps, cops, or capitalism. It’s a hard “you simply can’t do that”. I want it to be more of a “you can love them just fine but the second you’re inconvenient, they’ll stab you in the back”. ↩︎
I am thinking, as often, about Happy Little Life. ↩︎

Valiant Horizon, Magic, Nature, and the Elements

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In Valiant Horizon, crystals and the magic from them are a big part. Drilling further into that, though, magic itself is further expressed through the 4 -Magus classes. Each of those represents one of the 4 elements. Why is it like that and where did I go with this?

Crystals and Magic #

Crystals in Valiant Horizon hold the souls of ancient heroes. This is one of the handful of setting elements explicitly expressed that the game is written around: it serves as the foundation for player characters. Crucially, a crystal is the source of all magic in the game, as lesser magic is intended to come from the souls of less prominent but still powerful heroes.

So the 12 classes are different kinds of heroes. Many of these are pretty standard martial fare: Berserker, Knight, etc. There are 4 classes specifically designated as -Magus. In my first drafts, these 4 held some very familiar-looking elemental names:

Airmagus
Earthmagus
Firemagus
Watermagus

3/4 of those have different names in the current version. So where did they end up and why?

Magic and Nature #

One thing I wanted to emphasize, for fantasy and gameplay purposes, was a distinction between magic and martial. General vibe aside, there’s two kinds of damage in the game, Weapon and Magical. The distinction is going to be noticed a round into combat. But whenever you make that distinction, you have to ask “why” and “what are you saying with this”.

I feel like a lot of standard “adventure” fantasy (yeah ok I mostly mean D&D but you know the type in general) posits martial as the default/natural outcome, with magic as a secondary/unnatural thing. Given the prominence of crystals in the setting, that seemed backwards. So one of my goals here is that I want to emphasize their connection to the world and nature. This is why I started with elements: those have some concept of being…well, elemental! And especially fundamental

So as a starting point most got renames. Earthmagus stayed as-is because it works well for these purposes: it’s the magus who cares best about soil. But Airmagus, Firemagus, and Watermagus became Windmagus, Blazemagus, and Frostmagus. Each of these has a little more specificity that brings it to some kind of natural phenomenon.¹

Part of each class’s entry is the Tale you tell when you choose them. In Valiant Horizon, each player defines their character’s patron hero’s defining moment, and then unravels more about them over time. As such, each class has a few sample Tales - both so people can riff on them and to help convey what I’m describing. Each -magus class has at least one that portrays that character as someone in context of nature:

The reluctant miner who grew to respect the wonder of the caves.
A flame-wounded forest staunched and healed by its reluctant warden.
The farmer who used their knowledge of soil to save the village’s crop.
The friendly loner who joined a flock of birds and became their leader.

Nature and Community #

Beyond that, I wanted to emphasize that this isn’t a situation where nature and society are at odds. Crystals are supposed to be passed-down heroes: this is inherently a social thing that assumes a culture of passing down wisdom from one generation to the next. So not only are these magi intended to be natural, nature is more in tune with community than not. If anything, not using normal² magic is less natural and social!

So to emphasize this, I threaded a few of those same Tales in with regards to community as well, protecting it from direct or indirect threat or trying to help someone in particular:

The encroaching darkness, and the bold magus who held it back.
The stern sage who kept their village’s hearth lit, no matter the cost.
The kindhearted recluse who diverted a mountain rockslide to save a town.
The farmer who used their knowledge of soil to save the village’s crop.
The traveler who sailed to the farthest north shore to heal their beloved.
The far-ranging nomad who eventually found a place to call home.

The “martial” classes (Berserker, Knight, Champion, et al) typically have more martial-oriented tales. But these elemental magi are intentionally closer to both the populace and to nature.

Community and Anti-Crystals #

These magi need to also be put in context of things that explicitly oppose both nature and community.

Fragmented souls are the idea of souls not engaged in this act of ancestral trade and community, but intentionally or unintentionally split apart and merged together into something more dangerous. Only one Class touches these, the Dark Knight: as you can guess by the title, they’re meant to be a little “off” or slightly compromised. Crucially, two of the three kinds of listed threats involve them:

Fragmented horrors are either natural things twisted by fragmented souls or things brought to life in confusing, angry form - basically undead in the standard fantasy formulation. This puts them both in opposition to nature and in opposition to community.
The Empire³ explicitly manufactures synthetic crystals using fragmented souls, threatening both nature and community by continuing to perpetuate them and engaging in expansionism by using those mishandled resources.

Therefore, the elemental theme tying in with nature and community is reinforced by everything those magi aren’t.

Conclusion #

Even something as simple as elements can have deeper resonance if you’re trying. Think about what you introduce into a game, setting, etc and what it says - and what it leaves quiet.

Written for Prismatic Wasteland’s Blog Bandwagon, Feb 2025.

Maybe less so Blazemagus, though it does make me think about wildfires a bit. They get a little more burn (that one’s for free) in the next section. ↩︎
Put a pin in that for the next section. ↩︎
There’s always an Empire. ↩︎

2024 Year in Review (by numbers)

Thu, 02 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This also went out on my newsletter, by the way! Sign up if you want periodic digests of posts, updates, musings, and so on.

Hi there! It’s once again that time of the year. Every year I take stock of what I accomplished, go through my numbers, chart what I did and how well it did, and try to draw some conclusions.

WARNING: I do go into money stuff in the middle of the article. I include a large header like this before it starts in earnest, so if you don’t want to read it, you can skip to “Overview/Meandering” at that time.

2021-2022’s summary is here.
2023’s summary is here.

What I did this year #

I’m trying to be a little more organized about this than previous years now that I have more and more kinds of things to go into. So:

Major Game Releases #

These are releases to my big current games! Or at least related-enough.

Valiant Horizon v1.0 in January. One of the two games I itchfunded in 2023!
Valiant Horizon: Ages of Heroism, the season pass for Valiant Horizon, in March, April, May, and June. I released a compiled version that put it all in one document in November.
Valiant Horizon Tactics, a RUNE hack heavily influenced by VH, in April (and again in November and onward).
Celestial Bodies Titan Edition in September! This is an update big enough to count as a major release - the update was larger than several other games I’ve written put together.
- Also we announced our upcoming kickstarter!
Liminal Void Quickstart Scenario 3 is out!¹ This was my submission to the Sci-Fi One-Shot jam and the Indie NASA TTRPG Adventures jam. I would call this the weakest of the 3 quickstart scenarios but the bones are definitely there.

Minor Game/Supplement Releases #

Tiny little things because I guess I wasn’t doing enough when I was writing a fucking 200 page update to a big game!

Infinite, by INFINITY was a menu I made for the Celestial Bodies Jam. It’s fun to make menus. Hire me to make you a menu. You will certainly not regret me making you a menu.
Corpslayers was this year’s Minimalist Jam project. Cyberpunk heist game designed to fit in a home-printed half-letter zine. It’s 18 pages long and free. This was born from a few things: wanting to hack Slayers into something barely recognizable that still hits the core beats, wanting to create something smaller, and especially wanting something that’s more of a proper-zine than most everything else I make.
HARDPLACE is a supplement for the excellent HARDCASE. I really love the original game, both content and layout, and I wanted to work within the bounds of that incredibly terse one-to-two-page-per-item vibe so I figured this’d be a fun little end-of-year project.

Physical Releases #

I got into physicals this year! More on that later but the big summary:

APOCALYPSE FRAME hardbacks are available at IPR, Tabletop Bookshelf, and itch!
Valiant Horizon softbacks are available at IPR and itch.

Other #

Other things I did!

I’m on DTRPG now! Adding VH and Ages of Heroism there soon.
I started blogging in earnest after the death of cohost! Including one of my best pieces of writing to date.
I tabled at a local tabletop games fair. It was fun! I got to meet a bunch of locals which was great.
I am included in and helped with the layout for the “Designed in the DMV” booklet to give to local retailers. This is a neat little effort and I was glad I could help out! Good to create local inroads.
I started getting into home zine production with Corpslayers! I won’t do this for like most things but I think it’s neat to try.

Itch Views and Downloads #

Itch is still my primary platform so I care about that more than others! So we’ll start with that until getting into the true bottom line.

Unlike previous years I’m going to do something a little different, which is include deltas. This is how much more or less a project got in the appropriate stat! (It’s generally less, which is very much to be expected, so understand that I’m not discouraged by negatives and you shouldn’t be either. An older project is inherently going to get less year by year.) I’m also going to tag things that came out near the end of the year because they’re going to get more of a bump!

So without further ado:

Major Project Lines #

Things that have proper releases, basically.

Celestial Bodies: 11,883 views, 2,454 downloads (2023 delta: +1,868 views, +277 downloads)
- Infinite, by INFINITY: 641 views, 138 downloads
APOCALYPSE FRAME: 31,820 views, 17,450 downloads (2023 delta: +10,568 views, +7,110 downloads)
- The Infected World: 1,298 views, 189 downloads (2023 delta: -986 views, -250 downloads)
- Ballad of Industrial Gods: 859 views, 170 downloads (2023 delta: -43 views, +13 downloads)
- ReFRAMEd: 1,466 views, 587 downloads (2023 delta: +790 views, +372 downloads)
- APOCALYPSE FRAME grouping total: 35,443 views, 18,396 downloads (2023 delta: +10,329 views, +7,245 downloads)
Valiant Horizon: 7,191 views, 3,083 downloads (2023 delta: +2,528 views, +2,778 downloads)
- Ages of Heroism: 1735 views, 192 downloads
- Tactics: 1773 views, 173 downloads
- Valiant Horizon grouping total: 10699 views, 3448 downloads (2023 delta: +2528 views, +2778 downloads)
Liminal Void Quickstart: 551 views, 260 downloads (2023 delta: +161 views, +119 downloads)
- Quickstart Scenario 3: 207 views, 119 downloads

Bigger Things #

$10+ things that are standalone or third-party.

We’ll get to The Binary Atlas later in sales. Just keep that name in your back pocket.

ANOINTED: 237 views, 38 downloads (2023 delta: -110 views, -26 downloads)
The Binary Atlas (RUNE Realm Collection): 2030 views, 274 downloads (2023 delta: +690 views, -148 downloads)
NOVA: BURNOUT (NOVA supplement): 362 views, 90 downloads (2023 delta: -28 views, +26 downloads)

Tiny Things #

Free, pay-what-you-want, or cheap things that are standalone or third-party.

Machinations of Amirus (VN): 227 views, 96 plays in browser (2023 delta: -129 views, -59 plays in browser)
NANO: 379 views, 22 downloads (2023 delta: -354 views, -19 downloads)
Corpslayers: 573 views, 169 downloads
Trespasser: 380 views, 56 downloads (2023 delta: -39 views, -27 downloads)
Residential Registration Form: 83 views, 25 downloads (2023 delta: -163 views, -52 downloads)
The City Breathes: 62 views, 17 downloads (2023 delta: -142 views, -26 downloads)
HARDPLACE (HARDCASE supplement): 399 views, 74 downloads
The Dormant Sentinel (HUNT supplement): 174 views, 21 downloads (2023 delta: -262 views, -6 downloads)

SRDs #

36th Way SRD: 291 views, 165 downloads (2023 delta: -377 views, -470 downloads)
Total//Effect SRD: 347 views, 85 downloads (2023 delta: -226 views, -49 downloads)

Total #

53085 views, 23493 downloads (2023 delta: +17206 views, +10151 downloads)

Huge! A huge year.

WARNING: This is where money data starts. Everything I have to say from now on is inextricable from the act of selling things. Stop reading now or skip to “Overview/Meandering” if that’s a problem for you.

Itch Sales #

Same as above, I’m going to add in deltas where they make sense.

Major Project Lines #

Celestial Bodies funding outside of crowdfunding (ahem) goes to Charlotte, as per agreements we made when we started it (we plan to have the opposite arrangement for a subsequent project). So nothing to report there on my end, but it’s doing great.
- Infinite, by INFINITY: $2, 1 payments (2023 delta: $, payments)
APOCALYPSE FRAME: $5208.3, 147 payments (2023 delta: $+1855.64, -43 payments)
- Ballad of Industrial Gods: $84, 17 payments (2023 delta: $-41.50, -8 payments)
- The Infected World: $326.05, 22 payments (2023 delta: $-391.95, -26 payments)
- ReFRAMEd: $75, 15 payments (2023 delta: $+50, +9 payments)
- APOCALYPSE FRAME grouping total: $5693.35, 201 payments (2023 delta: $+1472.19, -68 payments)

We will get to why that huge spike makes sense for an older game in the next section. (Hint: it’s physical sales.)

Valiant Horizon: $1146, 47 payments (2023 delta: $-1739, -55 payments)
- VH: Ages of Heroism: $404, 21 payments
- VH Tactics: $201, 25 payments
- Valiant Horizon grouping total: $1751, 93 payments (2023 delta: $-1134, -9 payments)

We will, errrr, also get to why there wasn’t a similar spike in the next section. (Hint: it’s unfortunately not physical sales.)

Liminal Void Quickstart: $21, 3 payments (2023 delta: $-29, -2 payments)
- Liminal Void Scenario 3: $2, 1 payment

Not much to report here, but thanks very much to folks paying for PWYW games!

Bigger Things #

ANOINTED: $0, 0 payments (2023 delta: $-30, -3 payments)
The Binary Atlas: $398.5, 38 payments (2023 delta: $+206, +21 payments)
NOVA: BURNOUT: $90, 9 payments (2023 delta: $-60, -7 payments)

For some reason The Binary Atlas was EXTREMELY in the black this year compared to last. RUNE is pretty popular, folks!

Tiny Things #

Machinations of Amirus: $0, 0 payments (2023 delta: $0, 0 payments)
NANO: $0, 0 payments (2023 delta: $-6, -1 payments)
Corpslayers: $37, 5 payments
Trespasser: $20, 4 payments (2023 delta: $-1, 0 payments)
HARDPLACE: $12, 3 payments
The Dormant Sentinel: $0, 0 payments (2023 delta: $-30, -6 payments)

Not much to say here aside from general appreciation (Corpslayers and HARDPLACE are PWYW and the fact that they made anything is absolutely fantastic).

SRDs #

36th Way SRD: $0, 0 payments (2023 delta: $-59.69, -7 payments)
Total//Effect SRD: $0, 0 payments (2023 delta: $0, 0 payments)

People going hog-wild and paying for an SRD did not in fact continue, which is fine.

Itch Total Sales #

$8026.85, 358 payments (2023 delta: $+381.45, -72 payments)

Now bear in mind…that delta is not counting Celestial Bodies, which was $4605.50 and 269 payments. If we count that it’s actually…

$8026.85, 358 payments (2023 delta: -$4,224.00, -341 payments)

This number isn’t as far off as it seems because there’s more coming in this article.

(after itch’s cut + payouts that’s more like $6,662.29)

Counting Celestial Bodies or not: either way, it stands: how did I make that much money while having that many fewer payments? Well…

Itch Physical Sale Breakout and General Printing Chat #

So this year I started physical sales on itch. For anyone who’s not familiar, you just add a reward that costs more and include a field for an address. Put a big warning on your thing saying “put an address down or you won’t get a book”. Include shipping in the cost (I use media mail in the US and pirateship simple export outside of the US, so $5 and $15 added on).

Can this work? Yes, absolutely. Let’s break down those itch APOCALYPSE FRAME and Valiant Horizon sales:

APOCALYPSE FRAME: $5,208.30, 147 payments
- Physical: $3,965.00, 94 payments
- Digital and tips: $1,243.30, 53 payments
Valiant Horizon: $1146, 47 payments
- Physical: $440, 14 payments
- Digital and tips: $706, 33 payments

As was alluded to, that huge APOCALYPSE FRAME spike was because of physicals! So there you have it.

In comparison, Valiant Horizon physicals…did not sell very well. APOCALYPSE FRAME sold well enough to do a reprint but Valiant Horizon hasn’t yet broken even. As with many things in this ecosystem, it’s a mystery why. Could be the pitch, could be the genre, maybe the price was off, could be anything.

Existential Worry Unlocked: Do I need to make games with mechs in them for them to sell well? Do I just live there now exclusively? I sure hope not.

I did also pay more for VH’s printing job than I had to, which, maybe I needed to eat crow on at least once to learn this. I’m not hurting for it, nothing I wagered was money I was going to miss, but it’s gonna sting a little existentially nonetheless - I know it’ll sell eventually and I’m not gonna lose my shirt but I wanted it to do better and it didn’t. (For what it’s worth, I sold more than that off of itch. It still didn’t break even though. Spoilers I guess)

Now, how much of that do I get off of an itch sale and how does it compare to wholesale? I give itch their 10%, paypal’s payout system takes about 5-7%, and I have to pay for packaging, so I get about 80-85% of any given MSRP. This is pretty good! Wholesale is like…40-50%. But I do have to do work: this does involve exporting addresses from itch to pirateship, bugging people to send me an address when they don’t put one down, printing postage, bringing them to the post office myself, and so on and so forth - it’s still more of a cut than like almost any ecommerce platform takes and itch is way less flexible than an actual store with like, a cart where I can set shipping so ultimately I’ll aim to transition to a proper storefront next year. If you’re just getting set up and don’t want to mess around outside itch’s ecosystem though? Give it a shot. You might be surprised by the results.

DTRPG #

Unlike previous years, I had way more going on than just itch! This is the first and least weird one because it’s the same kind of thing. I joined DTRPG in July and put the (paid) APOCALYPSE FRAME catalog up. After their cut (35%) and accounting for a sale or two²:

APOCALYPSE FRAME: $204.10, 16 payments
- Infected World: $65.53, 7 payments
- Ballad of Industrial Gods: $18.53, 6 payments
Total: $288.66, 29 payments.

Is it much to write home about? Not really in the grand scheme of things. Do I regret it? Absolutely not, I’ll be putting Valiant Horizon and Ages of Heroism up there in the new year at the very least. I didn’t have to work hard for it given I already had everything I needed to get set up, so it’s free real estate. Can’t hurt to do it!

Non-Itch Physical Sales #

The bigger leap I took this year was not only selling physicals, but selling them via means I hadn’t done yet. Aside from itch, I sold in 4 ways:

IPR. If you’re in this space you probably know ’em, you probably love ’em. They sell primarily at conventions and to retailers. I made $774.40 off of sales of 44 APOCALYPSE FRAMEs (mostly from them to retailers) after the cut.
- Crucially this is via consignment: this is all from the October payout and reflects copies sold to stores, not wholesale purchase. By their quarterly schedule, I’ll be paid out soon for the past 3 months.
Tabletop Bookshelf. They’re a recent up-and-comer! They bought some APOCALYPSE FRAMES and bought some more not too long after. Take note, retailers! Buy some books! I made $400 from this after the wholesale cut.
- In comparison to IPR, this WAS a wholesale purchase, so I got the money up front for the books.
Mixam PrintLink ( here and here). This is a service Mixam runs for POD stuff! Basically they print off one copy of something, send it to someone, and bill you the difference between their print costs and a markup you set. I made PrintLink entries for APOCALYPSE ReFRAMEd and Infected World. The quality’s decent and while you can’t do any fancy options (no soft-touch covers, sadly) it does the trick. I made $82 off of 2 Infected World and 7 ReFRAMEd sales after their cut. Their cut is $3 and $3.50 respectively, so I made $7 per ReFRAMEd and $16.50 per Infected World, which is frankly not inspiring compared to a proper print run - but neither of those would have gotten a proper print run because…well, you can see it: a single digit number of people bought these ones so it wouldn’t have been worth it.
In person. This is an avenue I want to explore more. A big thing I found out is that a lot of my presence as a developer makes a bunch of sense online but less sense at an in-person booth, where I don’t really have “lower-end” products to buffer bigger purchases. Nevertheless, at the event I attended, I made $250 from this (4 APOCALYPSE FRAMEs and 4 Valiant Horizons).

In total, this comes out to $1,506.40. A tidy addition to the itch amount! But there’s also one last piece of the puzzle…

Commissions #

This was the first year I was hired to do stuff for someone else’s game! (I don’t advertise it enough but I do have freelancer rates posted, by the way.) This was fun! I don’t know that I want to do it more than my own work but it’s a nice break between things.

I wrote:

A set of enemies for Gila RPG’s LOOT! I came up with enemies that act as traps: impossible or hard to kill directly but are defeated when everything else is defeated, have a very strict way of “acting”, and add an extremely puzzle-y vibe to combat.
A set of spells for Trepallium, a game in development! The assignment was to use the spell creation mechanics to come up with 32 “pre-made” spells to act as default ideas and give players more ideas to make their own. I came up with a bunch of ’em and helped kick the tires of the system a bit!

In total, these two earned $713.80. It was fun! I want to do more commissions! Hire me, I’m worth it!

Revenue Total #

This all brings my total revenue to about $9,170.65 after expenses. Last year my itch revenue was $12,556.99 before itch’s cut: that means it was about $10,600 practically.

But revenue’s not the whole story, is it?

Expenses #

So my big expenses were:

Printing. This is the big hit. Turns out printing books is expensive! Between prototypes (including an upcoming one for Celestial Bodies 👀) and two 250-copy print runs, this set me back $3,408.90. Ouch! (100% worth it eventually but damn it sucks seeing that on the balance sheet.)
Postage. This cost me about $625.84 through the year. I shipped a lot of books, it turns out!
Event expenses and packaging. This was about $300 and includes things like a nice table cover, a few kinds of envelopes (I had a few bum purchases because things were just a little too big for an envelope. Womp womp, live and learn), table fees, etc.
Crowdfund prep. We didn’t buy ads yet for Celestial Bodies, but we DID commission two writers for supplements. My half of that came out to $625.

In total, expenses came out to $4,959.74. This seems like a lot, but my 2023 expenses came out to about $6200 between business setup costs, Valiant Horizon art and editing, the initial APOCALYPSE FRAME print run, and various other expenses.

Profit and final year-to-year comparison #

A little subtraction will get you:

2024 profit: $4,210.94
2023 profit: $4,400.00

So about $190 less than 2023.

That result above is bad, theoretically! Lower profit year to year bad! Higher profit year to year good! Growth forever, baby!

Because I’m not publically traded - and crucially, not trying too hard to make personal income off of this, something I need to stress every time I write something like this - this is a great result given I spent a ton of this year just writing Celestial Bodies Titan Edition (or recovering from writing Celestial Bodies Titan Edition).

~$6000ish of that 2023 revenue was from crowdfunding. In contrast, none of the 2024 revenue was: that was mostly physical sales carrying me. This is, in the longer term, way more sustainable. Since I joined the scene and well before, the topic of the crowdfund churn has been percolating, to say the least. Having a source of revenue that continues to turn a profit while working on bigger things³ is a huge boon: it lets you not be tied to crowdfunding for that cash, which then lets you invest money in future projects, invest time into making things instead of being on essentially a marketing grind, and in general just care less about raising funds and more about, y’know.

The art and the hobby, not the business. This is an art and hobby.

Right?

Spacer for people who don’t want to see money stuff but DO want to see my final thoughts.

Overview/Meandering #

A lot of what I’ve said in previous years still stands. Just go re-read that if straight bullet-pointed advice is what you’re looking for. Links are at the top of the article. I’m not really in my explicit-advice period, I’m in my meandering/navel-gazing period, so let’s take a meander and gaze at some navels.

Getting Physical #

It’s pretty neat to hold a book in your hands, isn’t it? Especially when it’s your own book. Strongly recommend.

I’m the strongest soldier of digital-first. Costs you nothing and that’s how most people are going to be playing with it anyway. Make it fancy digital but y’know, charge accordingly - especially if you’re starting out and have no social or actual capital! But I also do like a physical book for reading, and I’m going to stubbornly hold onto the idea that this hobby is intended to be at least somewhat analog until my dying fucking day, so I like an idea of physicals.

On the opposite end of the digital-first spectrum is shelf-stuffers: you know, fancy editions that nobody would ever play because they’re too lovely and expensive and premium. Designed to go straight onto a shelf and Not Leave. With all respect to folks who make those - and there ARE some lovely ones, and I certainly can’t say I’ll never do it, it kind of is what sells after all and I’m sure some of my books are going onto a shelf, never to return - my goal isn’t to make museum pieces! I believe this hobby is about play and I want to make things that facilitate it. I want people to use my books to death. I want it to be like, a practical product.

At the same time, if I AM making physical products, I do care about the physical presentation and what it tells you in addition to just the practical Function Over Form style aspects. I’m trying to pick physical forms that make sense for that. APOCALYPSE FRAME is a mech game: that feels like a hardback with slick pages, so I made that. Valiant Horizon is a fantasy game about friendship and reputation and legacy: it felt feels a softback with a soft-touch cover and uncoated pages because that feels more welcoming to me, so I made that. It’s a hard balance to strike for sure - Celestial Bodies will be both hardback and softback, for instance, and at that many pages we have fewer options that make sense - but in general I want to try to keep making things that people can actually use at a real table AND make them as fitting to the product as possible.

And I want to be able to keep making them! Printing something that doesn’t make any economic sense runs the risk of tanking other projects. I want everything I make in my hands in an ideal form but at the same time we have to be a bit realistic here. I’m successful by TTRPG standards, which is to say I’m still in a niche of a niche when we’re not grading on the absurd curve of what that phrase entails. Knowing my time and financial limits is important. This was the hardest barrier for me to break because any expense like this is a risk and takes time and energy, but I’m glad I did.

My sincere belief is that this hobby is about making art that inspires art; it’s about playing such that your play inspires art; it’s about making art that inspires play; and it’s about playing such that you invite other people to play.⁴ I feel like as long as you’re doing your best to keep all of that in mind you’ll probably be in good shape. Physical books are riskier, but great reward is usually gated behind great risk.

But don’t bankrupt yourself doing it, please. I have a day job, y’know. I want you to put yourself out there but also not burn yourself out.

Show Up #

I was originally going to just write about Just Making Something (there’s a little bit of that in here too) but the 1E manifesto covered most of what I wanted to say so I’m going to talk about various kinds of community instead. This one gazes way more into my navel, but you’re already this far into this post so I’m going to have to assume you really want to gaze with me. So get that telescope out, or something.

I have a discord server! Following Celestial Bodies’s terrifyingly better-than-expected itchfund, it’s huge beyond my wildest expectations. It’s mostly delightful but also terrifying because people can have opinions about my work at me at any time. Even worse, sometimes those opinions are substantive and make me think about my own work differently! How dare you cause warranted introspection into my own work by giving it your time and attention! Augh!

I generally feel like a discord’s better than most Social Media (derogatory) just because it’s less “everyone in the world can see my post and put me on blast” but a chat program like discord also really sucks for long-form thoughts and catching up on conversations and really makes you feel like you need to be on it all the time to not miss anything. (Not as bad as IRC on that front, but not great.) I have mixed feelings about it but the biggest one is that I miss forums so fucking much. It was the right answer all along and I’m so annoyed that we decided to move to the much more brain-melting options of Current Social Media (and I’m not excluding Discord from this). I’m mildly considering starting a Discourse forum or something - I’ve noticed a few popping up, specifically this one Yochai Gal linked on his post about why he left bluesky and one founded by former cohost-adjacent folks that I feel weird linking because it’s tiny and not particularly TTRPG related - but my main reservation is that if I start one and nobody shows up I’m going to feel like an enormous tool. So we’ll see!

I don’t know. I guess what I’m saying is don’t let the gravity of any given social media pull you under: it gives you way less than you give it, generally, and I don’t think it’s fully possible to be healthy with it in any manner that isn’t just shooting the shit. Put your cards on the table for better opportunities if you truly hate social media and show up. I’m gonna try to make those opportunities happen more and show up for them more too.

I run Minimalist Jam every year and helped run Celestial Bodies Jam earlier in the year. It’s fun! I do like joining jams here and there but facilitating them is also a good time. I want to run more other than MinJam - it’s something I’ve faltered on, I think, for my stuff (and for my community, frankly). I think sometimes people get too caught up in them and burn themselves out trying to do all of them and that sucks. But I heard from several people that MinJam got them to Fucking Make Something and broke at least one person out of a design rut and that’s the dream, you know? If I want my legacy to be anything I hope it’s something like that.

In addition to MinJam 4, I’m aiming to run a Total//Effect jam in 2025 when I release the updated SRD. If you’re interested and want me to do more of these, submit something to it. Anything (well, not anything but y’know). As noted above, I have a constant anxiety of “I start it and then nobody comes”. Prove me wrong please and show up.

As I’ve mentioned a few times, I’ve been trying to get more involved in local stuff. It’s slow-going because it’s a lot harder to make things happen in person when I have to be somewhere at a specific time vs. online which is largely asynchronous, but at the same time, in-roads are being made. We’re contacting stores, we’re making catalogs, we’re getting little “designed in the DMV” kiosks set up in stores, we’re trying to organize events.

I say “we” but I’m not particularly spearheading the efforts - that’s a few people who are frankly putting in much more effort than I could hope to. But I am trying to put my abilities out there where I can, volunteer where it makes sense, and try to actually meet and be in community with people in real life. It’s certainly tough to do more than that - I’m a very reserved person and I have very real anxiety about a lot of stuff like this. But I think it’s good and even the little bit I have done has helped, I think. “In-person” and “retail” are things I have way less experience with and as a result I’ve learned and will continue to learn quite a bit. Always more to learn, and “understanding when this just isn’t your field of expertise” is up there.

Once again, “I put myself out there and nobody else follows” is a constant anxiety I have. It’s way less constant when I know other people are also in it for real and in person, though. This kind of thing works best when a lot of people believe in the same thing and are working, at their capacity, to make it happen.

If you want a community (or a kind of community) to exist, it won’t do that on its own. Someone’s gotta get it going and other people have to agree to it continuing. Every crappy structure online, in person, etc. can give way to a sustained number of people deciding to do something different. If we all act like, as someone put it, 100 people all pretending to be businesses then nothing’s gonna change; if we act in unison to try to do things differently, then something can happen. No guarantee it’s going to work or go anywhere or be there forever but I think you’ll get something out of it no matter what. Nothing can happen without the first step.

If you can: show up.

I’m going to call Liminal Void “big” and “current” even though it’s neither of those because I’m stubborn and in denial. ↩︎
DTRPG is opt-out for global sales by the way, not opt-in. Fair warning, or something. I was certainly not expecting it! ↩︎
I am not fucking kidding, follow this thing. This will be the last time I say this in this article, I promise. Don’t make me regret doing the thing I just spent a paragraph complaining about to make this thing happen. ↩︎
Maybe I’ll make a manifesto out of it like the cool kids are doing eventually. ↩︎

Process Optimization in TTRPGs, or How I Learned To Start Worrying and Love the Operation

Fri, 08 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

So one thing where I feel like I don’t have like…authority in but at the very least have thought about is the concept of performance loss (and specifically avoiding it through process optimization) in TTRPGs: the kinds of things that bog down a situation in a process.

WARNING: This post started as me making a little comment on a great, concise post on Fool’s Pyrite. Then I decided to make it a fun little post on its own. Then I thought about it some more. Then I drilled down and kept drilling. This starts simple enough but quickly becomes a True Sicko Post. You have been warned.

Dropping Frames #

So anyone who plays AAA-ish video games regularly probably understands the concept of framerates.¹ In case that’s not you, this is how frequently the graphical state refreshes. Typically a game aims for a particular target, like 30fps (refreshing 30 times a second) and 60fps (refreshing 60 times a second). Faster is obviously going to feel more responsive but that means the code needs to be able to refresh everything that quickly, meaning it needs to be much more performant: when the computer is expecting to spend 33ms vs 17ms, it can fit a lot more calculations in there. So the tradeoff for a developer is understanding what the hardware can do as far as visual fidelity, physics work, and so on.

Now, what happens if you try to cram too much in there, or the processor isn’t good enough? Well, it starts dropping frames - it skips around a bit or slows down, and both of them make the game not feel good or work half as well.

TTRPGs work the same way. There’s a million posts about optimizing video game processes; this is a post about optimizing your TTRPG process. I don’t have any profiler stats or anything half as objective as that, I just have my own observations and hot takes.

Overhead #

So I reckon the big first step to thinking about this is: what are you willing to put up with? Continuing that analogy, this is the answer to things like: Does this game only run on a proper, current desktop computer or can it run on some shitty chromebook from 5 years ago? Are we making a 30fps, 60fps, or 120fps kind of game?

Obviously we’re not talking about computing in the technical-specs sense here. But we can be talking about very similar things, such as:

How accessible do you want this to be to someone who’s never played a TTRPG and doesn’t know the ins and outs of how to act socially in that kind of space?
How accessible do you want this to be to someone who just flatly doesn’t play like, most games at all and just flat doesn’t know what “common” terminology means?
How easily do you want this to be playable without a specialized program, auto-fill sheet, VTT, etc?
How easily do you want this to be playable without a computer of any kind?

Instead of CPU cycles and RAM and GPU output, people have cognitive load, which is similar conceptually but not as good at the same things: for instance, computers are really good at math and drawing triangles and holding things in memory. Nobody is that quick at that kind of stuff. But they’re quite bad at synchronous, “close enough” style approximated communication, which people are VERY good at. Part of any design discipline is understanding the strengths of the field in which you are working: art and design are flexible enough that certainly can jam a square peg into a round hole if you’re trying hard enough, but there are best practices to keep in mind that can make things go better in the design process. So overhead is the bucket you can reasonably fill with process: how much performance loss from any given mechanic are we willing to tolerate? It might be ok if a game is just intended for Hardcore Gamers only and/or you basically intend to ship it with a VTT module as the primary way in which you play it - in that case, your overhead is very high because either the intended audience is expecting that so it’s not a problem or you have a mitigating factor. But if you want something to be more accessible and flexible with regards to platform, etc. then your overhead is going to need to go down.

Generally speaking, I will assume that if you’re reading this, you want to aim at least more towards the “runs on a potato” end of things, if not fully there. If you just want to make something fully indulgent that only caters to the most hardcore of hardcore people who already know what they’re all about, godspeed, go in peace. (If you just wanna do what you wanna do in general, then yeah I’m not gonna stop you.) I’m not going to get into how the sausage is made because frankly, how it’s made isn’t remotely rigorous enough to examine and a lot of folks just kinda wing it. I’m going to get into what the sausage IS. I’m going to attempt to break that sausage down at the molecular level.

So let’s talk about operations.

Operations #

I’m going to outline a traditional extremely basic D&D “damage on hit, nothing on miss” attack roll:

The attacker rolls a d20. They add several kinds of default bonuses to it depending on the edition: stat, proficiency, weapon, etc. They often add conditional bonuses or penalties to this roll: temporary effects, buffs, penalties, conditions, etc.
They tell the sum to a the defender, who checks against their AC value. While usually static, this can often fluctuate depending on similar conditional bonuses or penalties.
If that hits, then the attacker rolls damage. There’s a default amount based on weapon di(c)e + attribute. Often it has conditional bonuses or penalties to this as well. Sometimes abilities will have effects on a miss as well that are distinct from hit effects.
The enemy subtracts that damage from their HP. Sometimes there’s a resistance, vulnerability, etc that changes this.

Simple, right? Well. Let’s get more granular and break it down into several operations.

Roll dice and get a value from them. (Includes similar operations like drawing cards, etc.)
Look up numbers from varying places.
Calculate values.
Compare values.
Determine qualitative results.
Transmit information between players.
Record information.

(Everyone will probably have a different taxonomy for these, this is all just from my observation. We’ll get into them in more detail later but there’s a lot of overlap.)

Using this taxonomy, let’s break that D&D² attack roll down in the most excruciating way possible:

Attacker looks up the attack die.
Attacker looks up permanent bonuses/penalties to that roll.
Attacker looks up (and maybe rolls) temporary bonuses/penalties to that roll.
Attacker calculates attack roll modifier.
Attacker rolls to attack.
Attacker transmits the result of that attack roll to Defender.
Defender looks up permanent AC.
Defender looks up temporary AC bonuses/penalties.
Defender calculates modified AC.
Defender compares modified attack roll to modified AC.
Defender transmits if this is a hit/miss to the Attacker.
- Process ends here on a miss.
Attacker looks up default damage.
Attacker looks up (and maybe rolls) modifiers to damage.
Attacker calculates modified damage.
Attacker rolls damage.
Attacker transmits modified damage.
Defender looks up modifiers to incoming damage.
Defender calculates modified damage.
Defender calculates change in HP based on modified damage.
Defender records change to HP.
Defender determines if they are down based on this change.

This is for a basic attack. It doesn’t account for:

What if the attack does something on a miss?
What if the attack adds a non-damage effect to either the attacker or the defender on a hit or miss?
What if the attack uses a consumable resource (spell slots, inspiration, one-time buffs, and so on)?
What if either the attacker or defender has some kind of reaction?

Now. This may seem incredibly pedantic, and you’re right! These operations are not all created equal and depend a lot on varying factors. Again, we don’t have a profiler, so we have to play this a little by ear: but the more you engage with these kinds of ideas, the more you get a feel for it. Let’s go into each.

Roll #

You have dice, cards, whatever. Roll ’em or draw ’em, get the value. Easy, right?

Well, not all rolls are created equal. Rolling can easily get into calculate territory once you start adding operations to do TO the rolls to get out secondary results: adding rolled dice together for a total, picking out a number of successes for a dicepool, picking out doubles or triples or combinations, the wild poker dice thing that Cthulhutech was doing, and so on. So be wary. Some tips I can give:

The fastest additive-die result (aka D&D’s d20 or damage rolls) is going to be a single die, for obvious reasons of “not actually adding”. The fastest dicepool-style result is going to be “roll X and take the highest or lowest” because it’s pretty scannable and you don’t usually have to track multiple values.³ Results where one die is tens and another is ones (d100, d66) are pretty quick too. What I will say about d100-style rolls, though, is that they can very often feel like a d10 roll in practice, so think about if you can just do that.
If you’re adding dice together, keep them small, ideally around a d6, but if you must use a different die, aim for d10 or lower. (Adding single digits together is quickest and easiest, generally, the lower the better, but if you have too many dice because you stuck to d4’s you’re often adding too many values together.)
If you can use a roll in more than one way as opposed to rolling more than once⁴ then even better.
Making roll resolution into some kind of choice is inherently slow because then you’re getting into the transmit category. Adding conditional rolls is even slower - interpreting the result of a roll, spending resources for rerolls, exploding dice, and so on. This isn’t to say universally avoid it, just understand that this is where things can and will really drag over time if everyone is doing this like, every roll.
Dice tricks are fun but they will often bog stuff down. Unless you’re really getting something out of them, I’d avoid.

Look up #

So you can probably guess what “look up” generally means: I believe in you. But if you’re reading that example above, you’ll understand that I mean it in a very broad sense. From low-impact to high-impact:

Basic mechanics. This is where “roll a d20 and add stuff” generally comes from. You hopefully don’t have to look up the d20 every time so this is roughly as low impact as it gets.
Conditional mechanics. Remember when I said the basic resolution was as basic as it gets? Well, sometimes you have multiple resolution mechanics for similar actions, in which case it can get a little hairy. As few as you can get within a certain category to reduce this kind of friction is best. For instance, the 4E house style of “all attackers roll, all defenders have defenses” is preferable in this regard to “some things provoke attack rolls, some things call for saves” because you’re always sure who’s doing the rolling and if high is good. This can easily stray into discrete active/received effects if you’re not careful - especially when you start getting cute about a ton of different procedures.
“Permanent” values. Permanent in the sense of “within a scene”. This is your skill or attribute value, your primary attack’s damage dice, your AC, your saves, that kind of thing. The kind of stuff that definitely should be written down somewhere on your character sheet. Odds are most people will just remember this over time.
“Temporary” values. This is where situational modifiers, buffs, and debuffs come in. In the best situation, this is something where the value is just like…give advantage, give disadvantage, give a +2/-2. In the worst case, see “Discrete received effects” at the bottom of this list.
Discrete active effects. Powers, spells, and so on. In the best case, this is stuff that a player picked and has written down and knows by heart. In the worst case, it’s a 20-30 entry list of spells that a monster has that exists somewhere else in a different book entirely and most of them are not worth using in a pinch.
Discrete received effects. Lookup-style things, but more passive. These can be where a lot of those temporary values come from. Depending on how organized and compiled and concise they are and how well documented their interactions are, conditions are either a very effective way to increase the depth of combat or the bane of your existence. Do you remember exactly what Shaken does in 3E? How about Fatigued? How about the increased versions of either of those that you get from stacking them twice? If you don’t know those, do you know the quickest place to look them up? How about if you can’t google quickly? I’ve focused a lot on combat stuff, but for noncombat example, I would posit PbtA-style Moves fall into this category rather than active: bear in mind that the way The Conversation is supposed to go is that a player is supposed to say what they want to do, then the MC says that triggers a Move for them based off of that. Does the GM have all those off the top of their head to know what move to trigger? Does the player know what they’re doing when they roll a move? How about something like Root where you have 6 basic moves, some of which have a ton of permutations, and each playbook is going to be selecting 3 moves on top of that? If not, well, get to looking up.⁵

Things that help mitigate lookup slowdown: aids like good character sheets, good cheatsheets, and good tools go a long way. But just putting down what a thing does instead of relying on tags, keywords, conditions, etc is even better than that: if you can keep the number of concepts referenced to a minimum, so much the better.

Calculate #

I want you to think about a few things for me.

How quick can you add two values? Do 2 + 6 in your head, how long did that take? How about 21 + 67? How about 217 + 687? How about adding three values? How about four, five, six values?
Now in your head subtract some values. How fast did that go? Is this a system that cares about negatives? If so what happens when we do 21 - 67? How about 21 - 21? Does it change based on context?
Ok, now multiply them - 2x, 3x, 4x. How quickly can you do that?
Now instead, divide them in half, thirds, or quarters. How quick did that go? Did you round up or down? Which does the system recommend? Does it change based on context?
You’ve just made an opposing check in a dicepool system. Both you and your opponent are rolling like, a double digit number of dice. How quickly can you tell what a success is? How about for anything that needs degrees of success?
Your enemy rolls d66 as a grid-based hit location⁶ against you - how quickly can you tell if it hit and if you have to care that it hit?
If you could do all of those pretty quick, imagine a person you know who’s the worst at math and imagine a table of 5 people are waiting impatiently for them to add it all up. How fast can they do any of these?

The more things throw numbers and values around to achieve sub-totals, the more time you’re going to spend figuring out where it all ends up. If there’s some kind of lookup table or complex result involved, well, no prizes for guessing what operation this intersects with.

Keep numbers lower (or remove them entirely) and things will move faster. Let those numbers balloon out and things will slow down. As far as actual calculation-operations, if at all possible, stick to addition. It’s going to be way faster and there’s fewer edge cases of negatives/zero/rounding. Multiplication is ok too sometimes if values are low - it gets sticky when they’re higher, like everything else.

Ideally when thinking about those kinds of floating modifiers that get calculated, it helps to limit where bonuses and penalties go: in the sample attack roll, for example you can have attack bonuses/penalties and AC bonuses/penalties, which are redundant but are calculated separately. Whenever you throw a modifier around, try to make it affect the direct roll rather than a value from which others are derived because on the fly you’re not likely to remember what derives from it, or if you do you’re not likely to remember to switch it back after.

This is the kind of thing where computers, VTTs, etc help a lot. Anyone can add in every bonus into roll20 or whatver and it’ll just add it all up while rolling, which is great, and if you have a particular module for a VTT it’ll do all that kind of busywork for you - even better! But if you lean on the fact of those kinds of tools existing too much in your designs, you’re going to have a hell of a time running the game WITHOUT one of them. Try out anything as analog as possible and see where it lands - if it can reasonably be run that way, that just means it’ll be even faster automated.

Compare #

Obviously this overlaps with calculate and determine and roll because you need to have things to compare them. But it’s an intersection-subset that comes up often enough to call it out specifically. Is this ability higher than this one? How about if they’re equal, what does that mean? How much of a disparity is there and does it matter?

A binary threshold - standard pass/fail, for example, despite all valid critiques about how pass/fail sucks - is fairly quick as these things go. Ternary thresholds - fail/partial success/full success or fail/success/crit are the most common ones - are slower because inherently you’re going to be comparing one value against multiple others, but it doesn’t mean they’re necessarily WAY slower or anything. For common rolls, the more unmoving the comparison target is, the better. If I always know a sure success is when the highest die is a 6 and a partial success is when it’s 4-5, it makes for a quick comparison. If double digits is always a success, that makes it scan pretty easily.

For less common situations where one roll has a lot of weight, you can be looser with this: I’m quite taken by Inevitable’s showdown roll and Troubleshoot’s recovery/advancement roll, for example, because they both happen fairly infrequently so the drama and tension of setting up those thresholds can feel good.

Determine #

This one’s a little fuzzier than the rest, which are often more quantitative: this is my catch-all for “figure out if something qualitatively changed in the fiction”. As mentioned above, this is where you decide if states change: bloodied/staggered, knocked out, dead, etc. This is where “success/fail and there’s a consequence/complication” live too though.

On the first point because it’s quicker: A big thing you’re going to run into when you hit those kinds of states as a result of effects is, well, a double check after every action. Half health isn’t usually too hard to remember, and it’s not too hard to write. When there are rules like “X% damage in one sitting does something extra” or death spiral effects, that then gets into various other things like record or look up or calculate. Be judicious about these kinds of things being ambiently attached to anything because that’s an extra background process you’re going to have to mentally go through every time. It also helps if certain factors are personalized over generic: Pathfinder 2E making Attacks of Opportunity a class feature instead of something everyone has to think about, for example.

In general, the more nebulous the results of an action or outcome are, the more time this can take. The generalized “there’s a complication” is by a long shot the worst offender of this: if your GM is great at improvization or a situation has a very obvious outcome, fantastic, but if they’re not then, y’know, good luck. It’s also really hard to determine just how nasty a complication should be on the fly and it’s extremely easy to overshoot or undershoot, which can then have knock-on effects on whether a partial success feels more like a failure or a success: position/effect or similar concepts help with this but it’s all pretty subjective. Sometimes this kind of thing can be mitigated by knowing exactly what a partial success or a failure looks like: PbtA moves are half and half on this, for example, as a lot of them are great at defining partial success but leave failure as a more nebulous “something bad happens as a result”. LUMEN v1.0 combat complications do the thing of being like “usually this means an enemy can act” so you have a good baseline for what this looks like. A lot of games nowadays that use a generic-complication have big “here’s some ideas for what that means” charts. ( FIST is a great example of this.) You can also nip that in the bud a little via “determine what the potential risk is before rolling”-style things but this is definitely a “you should just play the game differently to make my design make more sense” style of fix, so you’re going to have to decide if that’s enough.

Transmit #

A transmission is whenever you pass information between players. In our attack roll example, we have three transmissions:

The attacker tells the defender their attack roll.
The defender tells the attacker whether or not it hits.
If it’s a hit, the attacker tells the defender how much damage it does.

So we’re going back and forth between two people three times for one action. Every one of those transmissions can come with pitfalls like:

Giving too little information.
Giving too much information.
The total information load just has too much baked in.
Literal latency issues. A ton of us are playing online, after all!
Requirements for clarification or misunderstanding what is being asked.

As anyone who’s had to deal with any of that knows, these can just suck up time like a sponge. So this one’s easy: When at all possible, reduce transmissions during a process. Ideally this goes as low as one transmission: the actor does their thing entirely on their end and informs other players what happened all in one go. When you do have a transmission, encourage it to be as clear an concise as possible.

Record #

So we’ve done something: now, we have to track it turn-to-turn. The part where this came up in our example was HP, but that’s just because this was one basic attack. Once you start getting into any kind of resource expenditure, this gets pretty sticky. Spells, powers, MP bars, ammo, different kinds of ammo, and so on and so forth. This also comes into play with state tracking: this is where systems that do everything by conditions or tags or descriptors or etc. can bog down hard, especially when you’re duration-tracking.

Whenever you can make something a yes/no state or something tracked with small numbers (i.e. small enough that you can put them on a clock or a series of checkboxes) instead of something tracked by larger numbers, that’s for the best. This is one of the better outcomes of Vancian-style one-and-done casting: you either have the spell or you don’t, so there’s not much in the way of paperwork, you just cross it out when you’ve used it and that’s that. Simplifying durations of effects goes a long way too.

When you do have a situation that involves a lot of changing states that need recording, understand that some things will slip. When you have to deal 1 damage to 5 targets as a result of an action, not only is this annoying and slow sometimes, it’s prone to rushing through and missing something big. When someone is getting 4 effects put on them at once, one of them might just get left out by accident. When you have to write something qualitative down, today’s shorthand will often not make any sense next week. So put a little thought into how flexible your design is to missing a beat: if something will really harm the experience by someone not changing a value or writing something down, try to make it as uncluttered as possible to avoid this.

Uncommon, High-Frequency, and Hidden-Information Processes #

Ok, so we’ve gone wildly in depth into these kinds of component operations of a process. You have one, it’s slimmed down to your overhead, you’re feeling good. But something’s still up. Let’s try to put two kinds of problematic processes in context.

Watch out for when the process is uncommon. It’s just not the kind of thing that comes up often and you’ll probably have to look up how to do it as a result even if you’re pretty familiar with things.
Watch out for when the process is high frequency. That attack roll’s not THAT bad, is it? Now how about if a character makes like 8-10 of those in one action and there’s three times as many characters as players?
Watch out for processes that involve hidden information. Two of those transmissions in our attack roll example are partially slower because a piece of information (the defender’s AC) isn’t just out there.

In all of these cases, the prescription is similar:

Make processes like these simpler. Just flatly remove steps or configure things such that they’re easier to determine if they have to have one of these processes. Even if those extra steps might add depth, often it’s just not worth it!
Add in early exits. Make processes that can easily short-circuit at an early stage due to criteria. If you often only do the first third of an inherently slow process, it’ll go faster.
Make them more “regular”. For uncommon processes, fold them into another kind of more “normal” thing. For high frequency processes, figure out if there’s a way you can combine multiple processes into one. For hidden-information processes, think hard about why information is being hidden, and if you can, make that information public.

Your game will not be perfect at this and that’s OK (aka I should follow my own advice more often) #

So naturally as soon as I came up with those component features I plugged my own processes into them. Some of them came out pretty well! But I do have a few habits in there that bog things down.

First, thinking about operations:

Roll: One thing I’ve been especially cognizant of is allowing rerolls: both APOCALYPSE FRAME and Valiant Horizon allow you to spend a resource on them, which you’ll note that I called out in the Roll section as being incredibly slow - guess how I figured that out! The truly annoying thing is I knew this about APOCALYPSE FRAME and still included them in Valiant Horizon. On the rolling front, though, I’m quite happy with how Total//Effect attacks work on this front, the attacker has all the information on their end to resolve an attack and just tell the defender what happens which cuts a lot of messing around. One place where this has come up a lot is actually the Drops roll in APOCALYPSE FRAME because everyone always asks around as to who needs it, etc and someone’s always not paying attention or doesn’t want to be that jerk who goes “yeah give me everything” - it’s an awkward system in a game that’s mostly streamlined enough, if not perfect.
Look up: God, this is all over APOCALYPSE FRAME given its tag system. Tags: not even once. At least they’re all on one spread so you can largely just put a bookmark in that spread and go for it. For Celestial Bodies I actively avoided this by redefining each keyword every time it showed up, but eventually I pulled Disabled out to just be a common thing because it came up a whole lot and at a certain point you’re not gaining that much by having to redefine it. (Some looking up is fine! Helps when it’s a word that mostly does what it says rather than pure keyword-jargon.) Celestial Bodies avoids a lot of this in general by having your mech be defined almost purely by what’s in your Build - anything passive or active that we add outside of that paradigm (for example, Psychic abilities) risks diluting this advantage, so I’m trying to keep a pretty tight leash on those kinds of things for that reason.
Calculate: I’ve done pretty good on this front because I like small numbers, but high level Valiant Horizon gets a little sticky here sometimes but all in all it’s not too bad. One thing that helps is I’ve found advantage/disadvantage are easier to use than a bunch of +/- 2’s because you’re not actually adding any more values that way, you’re rolling a little differently and just choosing your basis prior to totaling, which ends up being a little quicker.
Compare: Ditch hit rolls, ditch AC, free your mind! Most everything I’ve done past 36th Way has done this and it’s good - when the value is static it makes things real quick. I feel pretty good about my solutions on this front. It’s not technically static in Celestial Bodies but it’s extremely scannable, which is the next best thing.
Determine: APOCALYPSE FRAME is the biggest culprit here: it could do way better as far as providing pre-made complications/consequences that aren’t just “an enemy attacks too” for out-of-combat stuff. In a future edition I’d probably include a d66 table for ’em like I did in Liminal Void. Valiant Horizon and Celestial Bodies have this a little too but it’s basically always in a situation where a player both provokes it defines what the downside is so I think it works a little better. The Bloodied/Staggered example came to mind here because I pointedly tried to sidestep this in Valiant Horizon by providing Winded values for players and mostly keeping high-Vigor enemies at easily-dividable values. Celestial Bodies has a little bit of this with reliable reactors: in this case I feel like they mostly get away with it because Ultras aside, it’s mostly opt-in.
Record: This is where I feel like I can definitely improve. A lot of my designs have a lot of different “meters” to track because I prefer resource expenditure over static values, but with enough of those going back and forth that can be a real burden. In general it’s probably not too-too bad but some of them could absolutely be simplified: for example, I like where attributes in Liminal Void have landed but charge/ammo on equipment probably still needs further simplification. Money in Liminal Void is something I’ve gone back and forth on quite a bit on this account too: I want to get that feeling of being nickel-and-dimed in there but without like…wasting everyone’s time. One reason amongst many that game is still in development. Celestial Bodies shield generators get particularly sticky here given each is tracked separately: heavy/ultra mechs can get pretty hairy in that regard, especially if some of the generators have Resilience processors and some don’t. Valiant Horizon gets a little annoying when a stack of 4 Vigor minions each takes 1 Harm over and over.

And thinking about those process types:

Uncommon processes: I’ve mostly avoided this entirely in my post-36th-way stuff, mostly because I believe that if you have a resolution mechanic you should use it; there’s a few ones in there like Valiant Horizon’s reputations that are a touch far afield. Trespasser has that weird skill+equipment roll-two-dice mechanic too. Always something can be sanded down a bit more.
High-frequency processes: This is a huge thing on my end because I like it when players can chain together more basic actions into a combo rather than just be given a power that does it for them, so all of my games can have some pretty intense action economy. Celestial Bodies lets you do a ton of attack rolls per action, but mostly this is mitigated by the fact that you don’t frequently get that in conjunction with positive accuracy so there’s relatively little choice per roll (and indeed, usually it’s negative, so a lot of those will miss). (And from the start I considered Celestial Bodies a higher-overhead game though so that’s fine by me usually.) Valiant Horizon’s higher tiers get into large numbers of actions per turn too - 3, 4, 5 actions before you get into “give X buddies an action” powers! For players this is mostly not a big deal because if you’ve been playing since the first tier you pretty much know your kit, but it can clog things up with enemies who get more. I mitigated this a little bit in the most recent version by changing how Elites work such that they can’t just spam one attack over and over, but can instead spend those extra actions charging up an attack. APOCALYPSE FRAME light Frames can act a TON during a turn, which is why I’m particularly keen on thinking about how to revise those - swapping to diceless resolution vs removing rerolls (diceless vs. dice is basically removing “roll” in favor of “record” and runs into oddities with scaling, so it has pros and cons), coming up with better defined material for complications, and so on.
Hidden information processes: I’m a big fan of tension over surprise, so mostly I’ve avoided this one just by being fed up with traditional D&D “keep your cards close to your chest” shitty-GM moves to begin with! Celestial Bodies only works at all, even if you play with a GM, because information isn’t hidden - it’d slow to an absolute crawl otherwise.

I’m sure you can do the same to your games. If you find that something’s pretty high up there, it’s ok! Despite the title, there’s nothing to worry about. The truth of the matter is that this is a hobby made up of a lot of people who have simply not put that much thought into this, and that could be you - and that’s fine. If you want to improve it, though, the thing about games in the internet age especially is that you can always make another version and put it out, even if it’s already out. I’m going to try to keep improving my craft, making things tighter, making them better, optimizing processes as much as possible, and in general iterating to make my existing games continually better and improve future ones. I recommend you do the same.

This is a gross simplification to make a point. Don’t worry about the details. ↩︎
I’m thinking 3E/5E but it applies to most of them. ↩︎
I’m an insufferable asshole about this tidbit so this is as good a place as any to put it: Most PbtA rolls at bonus +X have a fairly similar distribution to 1+X die FitD rolls as far as distribution of failure/partial success/full success. For example, 1 FitD die is about the same as PbtA +0. Hit “At least” and compare the FitD 4+ result to PbtA 7+. and the FitD 6 result to PbtA 10+. Do whatever you like with this information. ↩︎
For instance… ↩︎
I frequently have to give credit to this article for making me think about the “collapse gracefully inward” aspect, because that’s a whip-smart way to design things. Ideally I want to design games such that they don’t HAVE to collapse gracefully, though, even if the potential is there. It’s not that it’s a failure state or anything if they do as long as everyone’s having fun and knows WHEN to collapse, of course, but well…that’s the rub, isn’t it? If you don’t know when to move things along and when to dig in, you can either end up ignoring half the game OR slowing everything down to dig in, and any game with a GM already puts a lot of pressure on them to pace things right. Write your game for people who will not be planning to ignore most of it. ↩︎
I’m required to mention it at least once per post, no exceptions. ↩︎

Phipps23 and Demonstrating Themes in Celestial Bodies

Fri, 18 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been meaning to try to post more on my blog/site following the death of Cohost, which made it very easy for me to toss design thoughts out. Writing into VScode and pushing to my site via git has no juice at all by comparison. But we press on anyway.

Phipps23 #

On November 27th of 2022 - a little less than 2 years ago as of writing this - Dan Phipps (of Gem Room Games, go check them out, they’re cool folks!) posted a neat approach to worldbuilding based on Gygax 75. I don’t know how long cohost links like the above are going to last so I’m going to reproduce the post here for general preservation’s sake, at least until I’m confident it’s been posted up somewhere else (drop me a line if and when it is):

Contents of the archived Phipps23 post

Project Phipps 23 (WIP) #

So I got most of the way through the Gygax 75 Challenge (it’s free go read it here https://rayotus.itch.io/gygax75) and it’s good! I genuinely think it’s an interesting way to go about making a campaign world specifically for tabletop play. I also wanted to tinker with it, so I’ve started writing something with the project name of Phipps 23 (in the hope that it’ll be ready to print in 2023).

The goal is to structure a tabletop rpg campaign worldbuilding exercise that starts with a sketch and fills in details over time. Something built to be anti-canon. Something built to be semi-system-agnostic. Something that knows you’re going to discover through play so it gets your world ready to play in as quickly as possible.

The outline so far looks like this:

Inspirations #

Name a handful of things that you want to inspire your setting. Shoot for 6, maybe more maybe less, don’t go overboard.

Once you’ve got a list you’re happy with, use it to write down 4-6 things your setting is About. What are the core themes, feelings, vibes, tones, or other elements from your inspirations you want to bring to your setting. Explicitly state to the best of your ability why those inspirations are on your lest.

Icons #

For each of your About statements above, write one of the following that embodies it.

An event (historical, reoccurring, holiday, or future?)
A Landmark
A Person
A Peril (Creature, Disease, Hazard)
A Treasure (or otherwise powerful object)
A Secret

If you get stuck, go back to your inspirations and borrow heavily. By the time you’re done you should have 24-36 stray setting components that speak to at least one thing your setting is About. For a lot of GMs this is enough to host a session zero, maybe even start playing.

Integration #

Name the following

Two Factions
A Settlement
A territory
A Dungeon
A Season

Your Icons and Inspirations should help a lot here. Be explicit about how your icons relate to these larger organizations or areas. You don’t have to use all of them. If you haven’t been playing yet start playing. Write down what your players are bringing

Illustration #

This is where things start getting fuzzier for me lol.

Start drawing an incomplete world map.
Start making a partial calendar calendar.
Start spinning a web of faction relationships.
Start linking the events of your calendar to places on the map and factions in the web. Get real conspiracy board with it. Everything is connected. Build a delicate status quo.

Remember that none of this is necessarily the truth, this is just what someone would tell you.

Illumination #

Look at what your players are doing, let that guide your priorities. Start drawing the first floors of dungeons, maps of neighborhoods. Start fleshing out important or interesting factions. Start making timelines of what will happen if the players don’t intervene. Start making rival adventurers and hirelings. Start looking for a second set of players to play in your setting with a different system.

By now the About is baked into your setting so you can just add stuff that’s cool. I’m a fan of tables, add some tables.

Example #

I’m trying this out with my Gygax 75 Setting called Meteor Break. You can follow along here.

Updates #

2022-11-28: Icons - Changed “Creature” to “Peril” to open things up a bit and make it fit a broader type of adventuresome worldbuilding activities. Realizing the full text might need a disclaimer on how you approach the designation of “person” vs “creature”. Not today’s problem. Thanks to @binary for poking at this.

I made a couple of posts going through this process for Liminal Void through Integration and rediscovered them while porting over my cohost archives.¹ This is obviously not the first time this anticanonicity concept has been outlined - I would point especially to this excellent Mindstorm post. But the structure changing from “world anchors can be anything” to “write Statements That It’s About, then write these varied Icons to embody them” really helped me wrap my head around the more prep-focused version in a direct and actionable way. I want to pick at what makes it work for me - at least as a spark of an idea - and how I’m trying to apply some of its broader concepts.

Demonstration over Direction #

So let’s say that you’re interested in making/developing/running a game that’s about something thematically. (We will presume you don’t think themes are for eighth grade book reports.) What’s going to be the most useful tool for you to facilitate that, and for the designer-minded, to facilitate someone else running something in that ballpark?

Certainly establishing the themes themselves is going to be helpful. But in practice just throwing them out there cold can be a very “draw the rest of the owl” kind of situation - put on the spot to figure out something that relates to a specific theme, a lot of folks (and especially an overworked GM!) are either going to rely on their own standbys and ignore them to come up with something kind of obvious and hamfisted.

Now, I don’t think either of these are strictly bad if everyone’s having fun, to be clear! But again, we’re presuming you (either as the designer or GM) want to engage particular themes. So a great way to do this is to create specific implementations of those - either as GM prep OR as setting details provided for GMs to throw in. My take is to not just direct facilitators or players to engage with a theme, but instead demonstrate the theme by fleshing it out.² Various kinds of spark tables help a lot with this of course, and traditionally that’s the primary way to do it. I’m much more into more mechanical games, though, so in that context this should also reflect in things like mechanics included or omitted, what players are presented with in the game and how they interact with the world around them, and how a setting is expressed. Everything you throw into a game, either as a designer or a GM, is a chance to set a tone, re-establish a theme, etc. There are exceedingly few kinds of writing, mechanics, etc on that front that are incapable of doing so.

This approach also allows a different kind of freedom of further intent at the table: this is where anticanonicity can really come in. If you’ve got these details anchoring themes, it’ll definitely color the proceedings in one way, but ultimately in the context of a TTRPG someone still has to carry it out, and that’s where the anticanon magic happens. Players and a GM (if present) will pick and choose what makes it to the table, what gets breezed over, and what gets proper focus. This then shapes what their game is about more specifically. This also stands in contrast to the “shotgun out whatever comes to mind for your setting and let them sort it out” approach. Ideally you keep it pretty lean as these things go. An overstuffed repository of capital-L Lore³ invites stasis over dynamism, which also isn’t my goal here: a setting made with this in mind is relatively sparse and the focus is narrow to allow room to breathe. It’s a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.

Celestial Bodies Factions #

So in case you don’t know for some reason, I’m one of the authors on Celestial Bodies. It’s going to be (and already is) a big book with a more defined setting than many games I’ve written. Given that Celestial Bodies is a GMless game especially, we only have so much in the way of room to let people “draw the rest of the owl”: there’s no GM to pick up that kind of slack. While we have to trust a table of players is willing to roll with our intended themes if they’re also incidentally interested, it’s also incumbent on us as designers to provide something concrete to latch onto re: those themes. One of the more nailed-down portions of the book, included in Titan Edition so you can read them right now, is Factions: this takes up like 2/5ths of the book and are something you interact with a lot, so making them properly evocative is important. Re-reading the old Phipps23 posts made me think about how much I’ve reflected that base principle here in particular. Each Faction is made up of a couple of things:

General description and Items of Interest. First, using the general description, we set a general idea of what we’re going for with that Faction. This is the closest you’re getting to a Proper Theme. Then we determine a few things for each. These are the most Phipps23-adjacent items - I was drawing particularly from my unpublished Liminal Void work when thinking about presentation here. Every faction has 3 things listed, be they a person, a place, a home-ship, a Spark, or something else. Unlike the Phipps23 idea of “make this specific list of things connected to a theme” we varied these up a bit, because each faction has more specific areas of focus. So for example, the faction INTREPID is a tiny home-ship with very strict, tight population control - so given that, it made sense to focus on 3 individual people, their particular quirks, and their lack of replaceability. INFINITY, on the other hand, is a sprawling fleet with designs to sprawl further, so their 3 items of interest are a specific home-ship in their fleet, a specific colony, and a specific squad (whose members are pointedly anonymous), intended to paint a picture of them as an unfeeling, uncaring body of projected power. For a more traditional GM’d game I’d probably do more, but given the situation in question, I pointedly limited this section to a single spread: everything after this is directly mechanically involved.
Signature Feature. These are parts or buildings or features that ideally reflect those themes while also providing a bit of mechanical spice to opposing or befriending them. The hope is that it fits that idea of the Faction’s own self-image, the portrait of the faction as shown to players, and some theme for that faction.⁴ And if you’re friendly with them and use what you’re given in your own mech builds or home-ship, that projected theme is in some way inescapable.
Builds. Much like the Signature Feature, these are what players are going to run into with regards to those factions in a practical sense, and as such this is more or less the “bestiary” of the book. Obviously you’re going to get some insights in each mech build’s description. But bear in mind that out of necessity, you have 100% transparency into the Build of every mech on the battlefield. Players will be able to see on a per-Build basis what the faction’s priorities are - not only by fitting those signature features in but in priorities like speed vs. offense vs. shielding vs. other protection, diverse Sparks vs. extreme focus on one use case, and so on. If your players want to get through an encounter with a minimum of resource expenditure, they’ll do well to understand what that faction’s deal is - which in turn hopefully makes them engage with that theme at least a little. (These also serve the purpose of giving players ideas for their own builds, which gives them an easy way to riff off of that in-character - maybe it’s a matter of affinity with that faction, or maybe they’ve fought them so much they’ve internalized the same ideas.)
Spark Composition. Most of what I said above with Builds is also true for Spark composition: which is to say, when you do encounter a group of members of a given Faction, what that group looks like. Factions that mostly have small Sparks of elite enemies could be low-population or incapable of easy manufacture of mechs, or they could just have a very strong martial tradition. Factions that provide more minion-style enemies might not value their lives much, or they could be technologically resourceful enough to employ drone warfare so as to put fewer of their own at risk while emphasizing swarm tactics. Both of these options (and everything in between: for example, some factions have one composition table for peripheral colonies and another for elite squads) not only vary up gameplay but can inform how they come across.

Ideally, if we did our job right, every one of those elements will not only provide gameable content but carry forth the idea of a given Faction. Beyond that, though, they also have to carry a lot of the game as a whole. All of them have to not only portray their own deal, but through that also (hopefully) make you think about things like:

What kinds of measures will people take to survive in the meager conditions of deep space?
At what point does attempting to survive give way to attempted dominance?
What beliefs are people willing to internalize to make sense of a situation that doesn’t otherwise make sense?
What HASN’T changed through the last five generations?

Or, well, that was the intention. Hopefully it works for you.

You can demonstrate your appreciation for this post by leaving a comment below, or by following our kickstarter. Have I mentioned we have a kickstarter coming up for the Titanic Eclipse edition of Celestial Bodies, the game we’ve just been talking about? You should probably follow it.

This was back when that was a major priority for me, before I took a hard left into crystal fantasy and got Celestially Bodied into changing my Big Book priorities. LV’s still being slowly iterated on - the quickstart got updated early this year, and even earlier than that I’d written quite a bit of stuff for it in early 2023, including some setting stuff that borrowed liberally from that Phipps23 work. You can see a lot of my posts about it here. ↩︎
Is this just “show, don’t tell” or “write with intention” with a different coat of paint? Kind of, but I think it also has a particular distinction in the context of a TTRPG because it’s explicitly a medium where a work has to be acted upon, so there’s several layers of disconnect that can happen. This is especially relevant with GMless games. More on that later. ↩︎
I’m always going to plug split/party when it makes sense, so recommended reading: 1 and 2 ↩︎
Some of these are, admittedly, better conceived in that regard than others. In the upcoming edition I really want to drill down on some of these more, especially with more of an emphasis on factions that provide not just mech parts but downtime services or unique home-ship structures. I think there’s a lot of potential beyond just “you get a cool weapon/part”. ↩︎

Valiant Pilgrimage

Fri, 13 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

_{Last time I did a brainstorm session like this was for Persona: 1, 2, 3. This one's way shorter though. The idea is to flesh out some kind of specific JRPG-inspired campaign structure for Valiant Horizon.}

So let's say there's these crystals, right? Used to be 12 of them - nowadays there's, uh, let's say 3-5 ~~PCs~~ crystals remaining. Each of them has the power to maintain the last few villages that stand in the world and prevent them from being swallowed up by the darkness that has consumed the rest. The crystals' power is not infinite. Every decade since the beginning of known history, each crystal chooses a Hero: someone to carry on its legacy to perform the Ritual of Rebirth at the origin of life, which imbues the crystal with their soul for the sake of all. The herald of life then returns their crystals to their village to maintain it until next time. There's never been any resistance on the road of rebirth: it's still hallowed ground, after all.

This year, the journey meets resistance.

The general setup

Each player chooses a class to be the origin of their village's heroic crystal. When PCs are chosen, they're that class. Each session starts at the foot of the road of rebirth, on their way to the origin of life. Aim for about 1 session to get there and perform the ritual. When they have been turned to crystal, the herald of life returns them to their villages and tells those of their courage.

Draw a quick map in the center of whatever canvas you have: 1 village per player near the origin of life.

For every crystal that doesn't get chosen, determine a short, appropriate curse that affects the world outside the crystals, something like:

Bard: Songs fall flat.
Berserker: Tempers go up with ease.
Blazemagus: Fires scorch the land.
Champion: Courage sways easily.
Commander: Consensus is easily undermined.
Dark Knight: The souls of the dead linger.
Earthmagus: No crops will grow.
Frostmagus: The world is encased in eternal winter.
Knight: Walls and defenses crumble.
Ranger: Wildlife is nowhere to be found.
Tactician: Great plans go awry.
Windmagus: The wind does not ever blow.

These are not present in a short area surrounding the heroes, because their crystals protect them. Outside that area? Well, everything is laid to ruin and nobody can live there. Or so the story goes.

If a pilgrimage takes more than one session, at the start of the next one, describe how your villages are starting to fail. Better get a move on. If a pilgrimage fails on the road of rebirth? Well, it's not ideal, but the herald can usually continue the ritual and bring crystals back to their respective villages nonetheless. Try again next pilgrimage. If a pilgrimage fails outside of the road of rebirth? We'll get there.

At the end of a generation, determine whose story the people sing the most between generations. Everyone else gains a Relationship with that hero, and their next hero gains an extra Determination.

Fledgling Tier, levels 1-3

This is the first year that the pilgrimage meets resistance. Pick one of the following to desecrate the hallowed ground of the road of rebirth:

Strange people, armed and armored, try to block your path.
Monsters are rampant on the road of rebirth.
The fragments of souls linger and strike out in anger.

Once you reach the pinnacle to perform the ritual, determine what the Herald tells the next generation based on what opposed you:

A great and terrible empire has sustained itself by creating its own crystals from fragmented souls.
Monsters and wild beasts rampage towards crystal energy.
Fragmented souls seek out crystals to tear asunder.

Draw that threat somewhere on your otherwise pretty empty map: an empire, a wildlife area, and a ruined spooky place. Add a level for each threat outlined in this way.

This gets you to level 4.

Famous tier, levels 4-6

At the start of this, the Herald has news: the other crystals remain, but they're greatly diminished. They could be restored with the ritual, however.

The GM distributes these as necessary across those 3 threat areas, and gives rumors for each. Heroes now have a choice: complete the pilgrimage as before, or try to regain more. If they choose the latter, they'll find that the world outside is not what they know: people do exist, though much more furtively. Wondrous things abound. The world is ruined but wild and beautiful.

For each crystal regained, increase the size of one of those villages: those are the ones that are getting doubled up. Players can now choose a hero from one of those crystals to be a "PC" one in a new generation. (Your old one still gets a hero, but they're an NPC or just offscreen.) If you regain all crystals in a region patrolled by a "threat", gain a level.
If your heroes should be fully lost outside the road of rebirth...well, it's a lot harder for the Herald to retrieve everyone. One of the crystals must be regained and the next generation of heroes can't have a character with that Class until it is. That curse ravages the land and their village is destroyed or diminished, depending on if you have a crystal to replace it.

This gets you to level 7.

Renowned tier, levels 7-9

When the last crystal is regained, depending on the nature of where the last one was located, the heroes learn one of these three terrible truths about the state of the world and, unbeknownst to the Herald, pass it onto the next generation:

If it's the empire, the ritual was created to imprison a great and terrible creation made by the first emperor to usurp the natural order. (You should figure out what the nature of it is.) The horrors that befall the world outside of the crystals' light are either the outgrowths of the backlash from a poor attempt at holding off the horror and a punishment for it or the lashing-out of that terror. The Herald is someone related to that ritual, either an opposition to or creator of it, who will stop at nothing to keep that terror imprisoned.
If it's the beasts, the ritual keeps a sleeping god whose body is the world asleep. If they should ever wake, they will surely ruin what's left of the world. The monsters of this world are their outgrowths. The Herald is someone who knew that god when they were awake, for better or worse, and will stop at nothing to keep them asleep.
If it's the fragmented souls, the ritual was designed to maintain the regeneration of intact souls when a terrible mistake or blasphemy started to fragment them long ago. If the ritual should ever be fully forsaken, the Age of Souls ends and all souls will fragment. The Fragmented Souls know this and seek to disrupt it. The Herald is a dear friend of the first heroes who sacrificed themselves in this manner and will stop at nothing to continue it.

At this point you can ditch the generation setup. This generation is the last one. There will be no more sacrifices, because these heroes will finally stop the ritual by addressing the root cause. Add further Relationships periodically and add Reputations when people do cool things.

To oppose them as they seek to learn more about the threat kept at bay, bring in old heroes (their former PCs!) brought to life by the Herald; and whatever forces yet remain to oppose them of those 3 that were set up. Aim to have them learn the last thing they need and defeat the Herald at level 9. Then...

There's a level 10???

What's even the point of this if you don't defeat a false god, an actual god, or some kind of indistinct force of darkness at the end? You know what to do from here. Go get 'em, tiger.

_{h/t Aura whose good post and playing through Visions of Mana made me think about this. RIP to Ouka. RIP to Cohost. One day we will break our own cycles of pointless sacrifice.}

(Read the original on cohost here!)

The Grid™️ 2: Hypergrid (Or: Home-Ship Construction)

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last time I made a post about mechanics I talked about the Grid. Now I’m…still talking about The Grid, kind of! But it’s a different one this time.

Home-ship construction is something that had been on our minds since the beginning. Originally it was going to be kicked to the final version! But we had a lot of backer items created that we wanted and so this was a good opportunity to make an initial system out of it.

Construction, Generally

Your home-ship has 2 to 6 decks (2 by default, and you can construct more). Each of these decks is a 6x6 grid, upon which you place buildings that have specific shapes. (Again, we’re not falling too far from the original concept.) So for example:

_{I see those hands up from future readers who are already familiar with Celestial Bodies: Empty space is not really a problem in the same way as it is for mechs. Relax.}

Types of Structures

We’ve categorized these structures into a few general types.

Basic Structures: A few structures are just the defaults you need: a hangar, living quarters, etc. These come along by default and don’t give you anything, but they do give penalties if they’re damaged or not present and you don’t have any mitigating factors in fiction.
Advanced Structures: These are where we start getting into added functionality. A lot of these add parts for you to put on your mechs. Some of these deal with a functionality that I’m not going to go into any detail about yet! But anything Advanced is extraneous, technically: all the parts in the Terrestrial Edition are the “default” bits. The Ballistics Lab up there is an Advanced Structure that grants the use of Revolvers (reconfigured pistols) and Sluggers (slug-based shotguns) for your mechs.

Basic and Advanced Expansions: Now we’re getting into the more complicated stuff re: construction. Expansions are classed as structures that need to be placed next to a pre-existing structure: for example, hangar bays need to be placed next to the Hangar. Basic expansions tend to add more direct, universal benefits while Advanced Expansions riff off of the thing they were expanding. The Calibration Workshop up there is a Basic Expansion that grants +1 Precision.

Complex Expansions: To make matters even trickier, complex expansions need to be placed next to two other structures or expansions. Some of them need to be placed next to two expansions - meaning you’ll have to think about placement of other things to allow that! The more annoying they are to place, though, the more interesting stuff you’ll get out of them, generally.

Because of all of these constraints, it’s very unlikely you’ll be able to add every structure to your home-ship. You’ll have to think about your priorities and decide what you want most.

That’s all for now!

_{How do you determine the rate of construction? Can you do things other than construction during downtime? Can you move structures once placed? Do we ever roll to hit a deck like it’s a mech? Those are questions answered by going too long and too off-topic for this but these questions have answers.}

(Read the original on itch here!)

v1.1 released!

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! v1.1 of Valiant Horizon is out!

This includes:

Tweaked Create an Opening downward because it was Too Good By Far.
Clarification of interaction of inverse with resist/vulnerable (it does the thing you’d expect and reverses the step to do less or more Harm respectively).
Clarification on if moving to far counts as two near movements for the purpose of anything that cares (yes).
Clarification on encounter composition and scaling: Upgraded composition to its own page with an example and some extra advice and dedicated an entire page to scaling to make it clear what’s going on there.
A bunch of enemies stuff.
- Enemies can no longer use the same ability more than once in a turn.
- New enemy action type: Prepare, which gives them advantage on their next roll this round.
- Elites all have 2 abilities to account for the above. This should make them a bit more interesting to play against (and run) at higher tiers especially when they have 3+ actions.
- Fixed/tweaked a few enemy abilities while I was there.
Pulled out the most important Narrator advice onto its own page.
Character sheet is now in the document! As it should have been from the start, frankly.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Devlog #2: Stamina

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Stamina is a resource I bolted onto both the RUNE engine and the NULL/CIPHER healthless idea for Valiant Horizon Tactics. It’s a very major change to how a RUNE-like does things.

Notably it’s also not really a Valiant Horizon idea, it’s kind of something that came off of neither game. So what’s up with that? One prior that bears notice is that Stamina was in the earliest Total//Effect prototype version I made: it was going to be like 13th Age recoveries/4E healing surges but also usable for restoring used abilities to form a kind of generic “dungeon attrition” resource. It also made it into VH briefly but I cut it early (like, a month into active development/testing) because it was kind of useless there, as it was only for recovering (which people don’t do enough for it to be worth tracking). So it’s been on my mind for awhile in relation to Valiant Horizon. (It might return in a future Total//Effect game. Who knows, stay tuned.)¹

Now, what do I want it to do here? I want to add choice. RUNE has this thing where once you’ve got your equipment set, you pretty much know what you want to be doing every round and there’s not much in the way of options beyond placing dice depending on what they provide (or don’t provide - you can just get skunked repeatedly on rolls). I love the dynamics of “some rounds I have more options than others” but not “I don’t really have a choice here other than to stall and wait until the dice stop fucking me over”. Overall I want to give people a little more control over things - I want them to have the ability to mitigate bad situations AND tools to capitalize on good ones. I want situations that don’t just boil down to the loathed D&D-story trope of “I rolled a 1 so everything went to shit” or “I rolled a 20 so I got everything I wanted”, basically. You can see this idea coming in a lot of RUNE content through consumables or runes with 1/battle effects too. So instead of that, I just built it into the game inherently.

Ways to spend Stamina in combat include:

Each Soul Crystal has 1-3 Stamina-spend abilities. No matter who or what you are, you have at least one! These are usually in the mold of:
- When you (Block, Move, Strike, Invoke), spend 1 Stamina to do an extra (Block, Move, Strike, Invoke).
- Spend 1 Stamina at the start of the round to gain some beneficial effect.
- Spend 2 Stamina at the start of the round to gain some extremely beneficial effect.
Some Armaments and Accessories have Stamina-spend abilities similar to the above.
Using Powers. You have to prepare them during rest by reserving max Stamina (or depending on your Soul Crystal, you might get 1-2 “free” Powers: classes with fewer stamina-spend abilities - and therefore fewer “free” Strikes, see devlog #1 - gain proportionally more of these) and using the Invoke action. When you Invoke, you can use any Power you have prepared by spending its cost in Stamina, so if you have 2+ prepared you’ve got a fair amount of choice.

Characters have 8 max Stamina (and maybe a little less with more Powers prepared as described above, call it like 6-8²]). Attrition brings Stamina down over time (we’ll get to long-term attrition between fights in the next devlog probably, put a pin in that) so in a lot of fights they’ll practically have more like 4-6. On average this usually means they can use like 1, maybe 2 per round comfortably in a fight. When they run out, they’ll have to rely much more heavily on good rolls and playing defensively, so it behooves them to not just try to blow all of it at the start so much as think about when it can be used best.

What this also does is help to differentiate characters. The RUNE approach of “your character is basically just your equipment” is perfectly reasonable for a lot of games but that felt weird for this more fantasy-ish one: one thing I wanted to do from the outset here was make it so two characters with pretty similar equipment would play differently. One way to do that is to provide a bunch of passive abilities, but it’s my constant assertion that nothing slows a game down quite like players tracking a bunch of passive abilities.

Instead I provided those stamina-actives above. This provides a way to steer classes towards different playstyles based on their actions rather than generic traits: the Knight wants to be up close and personal because they have abilities that work at that range, the Bard wants to be very mobile and create its own luck because it has abilities that let it do that, and the Blazemagus wants to be Invoking damaging Powers a lot because its one stamina-ability keys off of that. This could have been done via more Valiant Horizon-esque/RUNE-esque One Use Encounter Power style tracking too, but this way, you only have to track one resource - this was done for both attrition reasons and for flexibility reasons. You’re going to get a lot more screwed by bad rolls here than in VH, so adding in some flexibility is good; correspondingly, if we start chipping away at your maximum meter that powers everything, it affects everything you do, and both of those are good outcomes as far as I’m concerned. (Each class also has a you-rolled-a-1 ability, and I could have done more of those, but I’d prefer to keep roll effects mostly in the realm of armaments/accessories.)

Next devlog is probably when we talk about the general flow of exploration and attrition unless I think of something else worth talking about first.

I also just like resource-based approaches to things in a lot of cases!³ APOCALYPSE FRAME has two of ‘em: Tension which is a push and pull of action economy and Fuel which lets you activate powers outside that action economy. (VH Tactics had two in the first version I made, for that matter - Stamina and Focus, with the first acting like current Stamina and the second restoring only on rest - but I decided it didn’t feel right and collapsed it down to one resource. ANOINTED still has this basic split but that game’s currently kind of a mess and will probably return in an extremely different version whenever I get back to it.)
Any numbers here - and especially things like Stamina and power prep costs, which are in flux and I have several minds about - are subject to change as I mess around in the game more and see what the more general shape of things is. But that’s the general idea.
I have complicated (mostly negative) thoughts about the value of spending-health-as-do-stuff-resource but that’s a post for another time.

(Read the original on itch here!)

v3.1 and the 3rd Scenario are released!

Fri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

First off, a little update to this quickstart. A few big changes:

Gaining your Background doesn’t give you a smattering of Attributes anymore. Instead, you get to grab another Trait. This can be another Profession’s thing, something from things that hint at a less savory Profession, or things that indicate where you came from.
- To support the latter two categories, there’s 7 more traits now. More Attributes is something you’ll gain by proper leveling later past this level-0 quickstart.
Escalation and combat have a different interaction. Escalation now adds to all Toughness-coded actions and subtracts from all Focus-coded actions (which was in v3) but crucially, all combat actions are coded to Toughness (melee by default), Reflexes (ranged by default), or Focus (usually “steady aim” style weapons).
- You’re not trained soldiers by default, you’re regularish people, being good at shooting isn’t a thing that adrenaline helps you with. If it’s something that means your hands have to be steady, it’s probably the opposite! One of those aforementioned Background traits (Combat training) makes it work the old way again: if you ARE a trained soldier, well, that’s a bit different, isn’t it.
Energy Harm/Resistance no longer exists. Anything that was Energy is now just a gun (laser pistol -> pistol), is now a smaller amount of Hazard Harm (Supercharger used as a weapon), or is now Kinetic (Peacekeeper.)
- This one is for a handful of reasons: it had a huge overlap with Hazard conceptually and having too many Harm types made getting resist armor a little cheaper. If someone has Kinetic or Ballistic Resist armor now, it means a bit more as a result, and Hazard Resist/Vulnerability is going to come up in combat more as well: if someone has a big laser now, it’s an immediate threat, as a big laser should be in a hard-ish sci-fi setting!

Secondly, a third quickstart has landed, courtesy of the Indie NASA TTRPG Adventures and Sci-Fi One-Shot Jams! Escape from the surface of Europa as the twin forces of corporate maneuvering and corporate malfeasance threaten to squeeze you out.

Have fun!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Added commentary edition!

Wed, 01 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

I added a commentary edition of the game. This is exactly the same as v1.2 except I added 2” of margins on either side and added a bunch of red-text notes, development history, commentary, and self-criticism. Get it in the downloads!

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Devlog #1: Healthless*

Tue, 23 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

_{(This is a companion piece to Gila RPGs/Spencer Campbell’s recent stream about healthless TTRPGs, which is well worth your time if you have an hour to spend and goes into VH tactics a little itself, because the original impetus was based on his idea of healthless TTRPGs prior to this video. It would probably also be good to be a little familiar with RUNE! But I think everything makes enough sense if you aren’t.)}

I recently released Valiant Horizon Tactics! It’s a fork of RUNE that takes it in some different directions: some responses to RUNE gameplay, some stuff from Valiant Horizon I wanted to explore, and some weird ideas and approaches to the same stuff. I’m going to dive a little deeper into its design choices as I work through how I want to go forward.

Healthlessness is the big thing that kicked off the design, before it was connected to Valiant Horizon. What does RUNE look like without health? Enemies mostly die in like 1-2 hits anyway, can we avoid tracking actual health?

The basic concept, lovingly ripped off from Aaron Joliffe’s (not out yet) NULL/CIPHER which was itself riffing on Spencer’s ideas about removing Health in a LUMEN game, is that a Strike is an attempt at defeating an enemy. If it’s not Blocked, it does exactly that. If it is Blocked, however, a Strike removes a Block. (The player doesn’t get taken out immediately on hit; rather, you remove a Trait, and you only get taken out when you get hit with none to remove.) It’s like everything has 1HP and every attack deals 1 damage, but sometimes you or an enemy can gain a temporary 1-2 HP. The big advantage to this is that you simply don’t have to track anything round to round for most enemies: they either have Block or they don’t, they’re either defeated or they’re not.

The complication to this (and the asterisk in the title of this devlog) comes with Qualities/Defenses (I’ve wavered a bit in the text). Most of these serve the purpose of adding Block when certain conditions are fulfilled. As an example, here are three that get used for normal enemies in the default Region:

Armored: Gain Block at the start of the round. If this Block gets used, don’t gain it next round.
Evasive: They gain Block this round if they move 2+.
Hard: They gain 1 Persistent Block at the start of combat. (Most Block goes away at the end of a round, Persistent Block…well, persists, hence the name.)

So there’s 3 ways of dealing with these, of which the first 2 are also present in NULL/CIPHER:

Some weapons have Piercing or Accurate, which simply negate Armored or Evasive Block. One Power simply negates one Block before Striking. Done and done, no frills, pack the right tool for the job and it will make your job easier.
Each quality has a way of dealing with its Block in a “puzzle” fashion: Armored and Hard need you to hit the enemy multiple turns in a row, Evasive needs you to stay in the enemy’s ideal range or close to it so they don’t move.
If you don’t want to do either of those, though, there’s a third option: Brute force. It’s just Block, after all. Get a combination of factors that allows you to Strike a target twice in a round so you can bypass the first Block and then Strike them. This is the deviation.

The reason for this addition is that I’m trying to thread a very particular needle because of my own very prickly and particular priors. My operating theory is that there is bound to be tension in any combat-ish TTRPG with enough mechanical weight between what I’m going to call expression and strategy:

Expression is acting as your character would act, embodying that presence in the game, and having it reflected back onto you. LUMEN games are usually great about this: there’s a lot more finding out how you do something rather than if you do it and finding out what else happens along the way as a result.
Strategy is the more board-gamey side of things. The game is built such that we need to do X, so we’re going to do X. To defeat X enemy, you’ll need Y, so you should have Y. The goal is victory, however it’s defined.

My goal is to make a TTRPG, not a board game. (I’m not much of a board gamer, truth be told.) I would reckon it’s extremely easy for any given solo TTRPG to slip into something extremely board-gamey. I think one major step towards securing it as a TTRPG is that expression needs to be encouraged to some degree. (This is why I kept in some of the more important VH elements in the core rules, like determining how you got here and who your Soul Crystal belonged to! I think putting your own spin on that, even when so much of the game is predetermined by scenarios, is a key form of expression.)

Let’s wheel back around to the original point. Puzzle-y approaches are very strategic in nature: they have one basic answer, in this case sometimes with a “skip” granted by pre-preparation. For what I’m doing here - and especially given that it’s tied to Valiant Horizon, which is itself a very expression-forward game - I don’t want to force that layer on anyone. I’d like them to not feel like they have to do one of two very specific things to win a fight. (Obviously they do still need to Strike enemies in some manner, so it’s not like…fully free-form.) They’re going to still have to figure out how to achieve extra offense within the context of what they want to do, but that’s something that almost any playstyle can spec into eventually, albeit with some risk - and it’s easy enough to swap between the three methods of dealing with it based on your enemies. Basically:

If you’re prepared, you bring the tools to deal with it; or
If you’re tactical, you solve it; or
If you’re determined, you push through it.

And ideally all of those are valid ways to approach anything in the game.

Next time I’ll get into Stamina and the shift from attrition via durability to attrition via reduction of options.

(Read the original on itch here!)

v3 released!

Sat, 24 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! I made a big update to how Liminal Void works! You can see some previews of what I did in my newsletter post here. The big changes are:

Static Assets from Profession/Background are out, attribute spending is in.
- You have 3 Attributes, of which a Profession gives you 5 and a Background gives you 3 more. You can spend them to use them as Assets and regain them by taking various painkillers and stimulants and supplements, which is probably extremely healthy and good for you.
- The previous ones that basically just always gave you +advantage bonuses were not really in keeping with the rest of the game’s “constant attrition” vibe, and these ones better answer the question of “why don’t they apply to combat rolls” (because now they can, if you want!)
Tools and Weapons work completely differently.
- Some tools still have some low-key combat stuff but it’s not much. Mostly they’re just…well, tools. All of them have a capital-A Ability - kind of like a PbtA move or something - that highlights a specific thing that tool was designed for. You can also just spend Charges use them as incidental Assets as before too.
- Weapons are a bit less uniform as far as 1-ammo/3-ammo spends. There’s a generic “Fire” action now and all of them call out how it’s used in addition to having (usually) 2 moves. In general they feel a little closer to like, actual weapons instead of things that give you powers.
- Instead of 3 Ammo/Charge abilities, we now have the concept of Let Loose. This represents stuff where you push your tool’s battery to the limit or hold down on that gun’s trigger a little too long to do something stronger - use that exoskeleton to do a hulk-leap, bore through a metal wall with your drill, spray and pray with your PDW, etc. You spend a random amount of charges/ammo (d6), which can explode (on a 1-2, so you’re spending at least 3) and disable your weapon/tool if you’re super unlucky.
I updated the two scenarios to match (and the second scenario, The Graveyard Buckle, has been combined into this page). Because I took the liberty of licensing the incredible Victor Merino’s sci-fi portraits last summer for commercial use, Escape from CICP-1 now looks a LOT better too - all of those names in the module have faces now!
A relayout!

Hope you enjoy. Let me know if you give it a shot!

(Read the original on itch here!)

v1.1 released!

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! v1.1 is here! It brings a few major changes:

Formatting

Increased page size slightly.
Various typo-fixes.
Tightening up of layout.

Combat Rules

Missiles.
- Deploy now states the deployment range for missiles (0-1).
- Direct now lets you move 8 missiles by default instead of 5.
- Direct now states clearly when missiles count as “armed” (i.e. when they automatically attack if their target gets within range 0).
- Missiles are now slightly easier to shoot down by default (3+ instead of 4+).
Disabled is now a called out thing that Electronic Warfare weaponry does (alongside Damaged and Destroyed), and explicitly states its interaction with crits.
The interaction between armor and crits is now explicitly stated.
Electric is now Shock, because while Electronic and Electric are in fact different words, we have been hard pressed to convince anyone of this.
By default average encounter difficulty is stated, and Scavengers and INFINITY now have a 1-6 roll-table from which to construct encounters with them.
Added a little more clarification about Zones/Ranges and added a second note in the Combat section to make all grids public information.
Tackle lost its +/- for size difference but has a crit effect now.

Frames/Builds

Mechs

Just about everything except Light//Nerve had some kind of Frame or Build tweak. This is because Light//Nerve was born perfect and doesn’t need anything changed about her.

Light//Flash: Streamlined as written distorted effective ranges greatly and warped the sense of how big maps should be, which is not ideal for one trait. In its updated version, it achieves the same defensive effect but with less range-distortion.
Medium//Flash: Armored now covers slightly more surface area (matching the covers-internal-squares pattern of Heavy/Ultra armor). MF-BANDIT was changed to account for S Missiles changing size (more on that later).
Medium//Nerve: MN-FORTUNE was changed to make a little more sense, losing one pistol but having a smarter layout. MN-VECTOR was changed to remove missiles (again, because of the missile size change), making it more of a dedicated railgunner.
Heavy//Flash: Grid was changed from 5x5 to 6x4 (and HF-CARNAGE was changed to match this). Armor covers about twice as much of its surface area now.
Heavy//Nerve: Armor covers about twice as much of its surface area now. I’m In got a slight change to account for increased-duration abilities existing.
Ultra//Flash: Armor covers about twice as much of its surface area now. Stable Fire Platform got adjusted to be a little more flexible and add an extra defensive bonus for staying put to account for rarely ever having evasion or being in an ideal range if attempting to use its trait.
Ultra//Nerve: Armor covers about twice as much of its surface area now. Superior Guidance didn’t feel substantial enough as written. With other changes to shooting down missiles and the MC processor, space was freed up to give it a unique advantage, but one that doesn’t feel overwhelmingly necessary for missile operations.

Non-mech enemies

These have explicitly called out traits now to make customizing them for factions/etc easier.
Hovertank was made 5x5 and got changed to match.
Turrets are now 4x5 and have been rebuilt to have missiles so they can threaten enemies outside of gun range.

Parts

Shields now vary their capacity slightly (+/- 20%, specifically 1/2/3/4 for L/M/H/U) depending on reactor size relative to Frame size.
H Reactor now provides reliability (does not depower squares until 3 or more are damaged)
H Thrusters and H Shields have two shapes available now, straight or angled.
MC Processor now does something else entirely (allows you to modulate missile speed when Directing) because it was too essential to missile builds, and as a result, too easy to make a single point of failure. (Half of its old effect is now Ultra//Nerve’s trait.)
EW Processor now specifically calls out what it doesn’t apply to.
L/M/H thrusters no longer stack with each other. U thrusters, however, now stack as many times as you can fit them. Go wild.

Weapons

Lots of ‘em so I’m breaking down by category.

Ranged

Shotgun is entirely different now: a short-range (but not AS short range!) armor-and-shield-puncher that inflicts adjacent damage on crits.
BFG got a slight accuracy buff, but only when used by Ultras.
EBFG got a range and ROF decrease, because it was way too good pound-for-pound. (It’s still plenty good though, especially in the hands of a Heavy//Flash.)

Explosive

Grenade Launcher now hits adjacent squares even on a miss or armor-hit.
Rocket Launcher now does 4 DMG (previously 3).

Melee

Dagger now does 3 DMG (previously 2).
Lance now deals 6 DMG (previously 5) before Kinetic and has a built-in move-when-attacking that stacks with MO.
Pilebunker has +1 accuracy (previously 0) and ignores Evasion.

Electronic Warfare

Shock does not ignore armor anymore (affects Stun Needle, Stun Baton, Voltaic Missiles).
Stun Baton now has both Strong Melee and Shock designations rather than an in-between category that doesn’t really mean anything.
ECM Generator now does not operate when damaged, and is more specific as to how long the effects last (effects stick on targets for 1 round, cloud stays in that location for DUR rounds).
EMP Missiles are now Voltaic Missiles, because they basically operated by Shock rules already so it made more sense to unify the concepts (and also because we want to save EMP as a concept for later). They have a default speed of 4. S Voltaic Missiles now have a QTY of 3 instead of 2.

Missiles

Damaged missiles now halve their QTY (round down).
“Normal”/“Quantity” missiles are now called Swarm Missiles. They have a default Speed of 4.
S Swarm Missiles now have a QTY of 4, M Swarm Missiles now have a QTY of 6. This makes it more likely that anyone would take them on purpose.
S Swarm Missiles are now 1x3 instead of 1x2 so we don’t have to think about what that means on a Light//Flash.
S Prox Missiles now have a QTY of 3.
Guided missiles now do 4 DMG but launch at higher quantities (2 for S, 3 for H). They’re also a bit harder to shoot down. Clarified how they operate when any enemy enters range 0 of them.

(v1.1.1 is now up, fixes a few tiny goof-ups.)

(Read the original on itch here!)

Revising Liminal Void, 2024 Edition

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Liminal Void quickstart cover

Liminal Void's quickstart has been around a little more than a year now. It's the first Total//Effect thing I put out and it's...fine. It's fine. Total//Effect is a strong backbone, the vibe carries it pretty far in my opinion, and again in my humble opinion, my two quickstart scenarios are decent. (Read it yourself and see if you agree. It's free. Click that little liminal void tag at the bottom if you want to see me everything I've written about it here, which is quite a lot.)

But as a game to go further and do more with, it's not good enough for my standards yet. As I've been working on Valiant Horizon, Celestial Bodies, and EXPLOIT (a minimalist jam project that ended up getting scrapped, RIP) I've been thinking about it a lot. Especially with EXPLOIT, because I started dev on that by using Liminal Void's mechanics (the initial concept was Total//Effect + LOOT) and went from there. So let's dive in on what I've got in mind.

The biggest things that don't feel right to me are PC options. Both professions/backgrounds AND the equipment that defines them more feel less focused than what I was going for.

Professions and Backgrounds

There are 6 Professions in the Liminal Void quickstart, and I wrote 6 more into the (current) playtest document. I wrote about them here about 9 months ago, but to recap, these are an answer to "what did you do before you were an off-the-grid lowlife with a ship". They give starting equipment, a passive trait, some starting recover/reload/recharge dice, and a skillset that gives you an Asset to do various things within its purview. If you're a level 0 character, this is all you've got to work with. Breaking that down:

Starting equipment and the passive trait are fine.
Skillsets in Liminal Void are boring. They used to work this way in Valiant Horizon too and there's a few reasons they don't, but a big one is that they were also boring there. Very much a holdover from like, LUMEN 1.0 and especially 36th Way stuff. (Also people always asked if you could use them to give advantage to all of your rolls in combat as such and like, no because that'd be kind of boring mechanically/would overwhelmingly make ones that make sense in combat dominant, but also I didn't have a good answer.)
Recover/Reload/Recharge dice are a holdover from a pre-Liminal-Void Total//Effect prototype. I don't think they're terribly interesting in this context and they can probably just get dropped.

Stealing from the dearly departed EXPLOIT, I think the play is to replace Skillsets with Attributes. Something like the LUMEN Force/Flow/Focus or Celestial Bodies' Nerve/Flash/Precision/Force:

Brawn: Physical strength, endurance, forcefulness.
Reflexes: Reflexes, mobility, quick reactions.
Focus: Concentration, planning, deliberate actions.

(Might add in a 4th attribute if it needs it, but that's probably a good starting point.)

In EXPLOIT these were going to be used in a kind of LUMEN 2.0 sense where they were used like a resource rather than a dicepool: unlike LUMEN (or Celestial Bodies, for that matter), this isn't an auto-success, it's just Advantage or a step-up. This takes the place of the broad Skillset: you've got X points to spend which come back when you've got extended rest time, or you can restore some with an item.

So let's say we start at 1/2/2 or 1/1/3 and map combinations to those 6 quickstart professions:

Laborer: 2 Brawn, 2 Reflexes, 1 Focus.
Driller: 3 Brawn, 1 Reflexes, 1 Focus.
Pilot: 1 Brawn, 3 Reflexes, 1 Focus.
Technician: 1 Brawn, 2 Reflexes, 2 Focus.
Engineer: 1 Brawn, 1 Reflexes, 3 Focus.
Foreman: 2 Brawn, 1 Reflexes, 2 Focus.

Feels like a good start. For the "funnel" option, you could just subtract 1 from all of those.

This also makes it way easier to map to Liminal Void's escalation tech:

Combat rolls and rolls that would be associated with Brawn add Escalation.
Rolls that would be associated with Focus subtract Escalation.

It already kind of works this way, where Escalation adds to combat rolls/rolls to do physical things and subtracted from thinky things (which rules and makes a good "shit is ambiently kind of fucked" meter) but the attribute-focus makes it way more clear which one applies where. Reflexes being neither also leaves open design space for certain ideas, like I might make the Pilot trait "add Escalation to Reflex stuff" instead of its current thing, or specifically negate positive/add again to negative for certain ailments.

So what does your Background (which you get the same way, either in play at non-funnel level 0 or at level 1) do now? Let's say it gives +2 to one attribute of your choice and +1 to another, which puts you at 8 or so and lets you cap out something at 5 if you really go all-in on something. (And that's not like strictly the move, because these aren't bonuses, they're separable resources: that just means your eggs are all in one basket.)

Tools and Weapons

Tools and Weapons basically are the same thing in the current iteration - they weigh 2-4, have 6-10 charge or ammo, 2 combat moves (each costs 1/3 resource in the quickstart, or 3/5 resources for some of the ones outside of the quickstart), and you can spend charges/ammo to use them outside combat to gain Assets on rolls. And it sucks bad that they're the same thing. The flaw in this became really apparent to me as I started to make more tools: you run into a real issue of "well they have to have two combat moves each, because that's how this fucking game works"...which then informs what you're making, and then informs what professions can even be. I blame basically only making combat-centric games before this, which Liminal Void isn't really intended to be in that as-sport sense unless your crew intentionally kits out for it (which then loses them opportunities to take other equipment, etc).

Right off the bat, tools aren't getting full combat moves as such anymore. At most, they might get a combat modification or two to existing things if it makes sense - someone with an exoskeleton might be able to spend charge to leap to Far instead of Near when moving or someone with a big fucking drill might be able to step up Harm when attacking hand to hand in addition to generic increases to Struggle, for instance.

What they WILL get is a non-combat move. I experimented with these a little in EXPLOIT, which I was intentionally taking a more PbtA style approach to noncombat stuff with moves like:

Tread Carefully

When one or more players try to circumvent a hazard or dangerous enemy that can be physically avoided in some manner, whoever is in the lead rolls. They remove up to Low Die of the following possible consequences from the outcome:

You don’t get all the way to where you want to go.

Someone takes Inverse Mid Die Harm.

Something or someone that didn’t know where you are now knows.

Half Inverse High Die pieces of personal gear are compromised or depleted.

It will take Inverse Mid Die extra minutes (or actions, if in combat) to do this.

13+: Avoid all consequences.

17+: The leader may add a detail to the scene that explains how they avoided any consequences.

In this case, I think the play is to give each tool an explicit Move in addition to a generic "you can spend 1 Charge to use as an Asset". Like that Exoskeleton might have an explicit Move Or Wreck Heavy Physical Shit Move. I have two levers I want to bring into these powers:

Spending an Attribute. You'd be able to spend Attributes for Advantage/step-ups like with normal "skill" checks, but the idea would be that some moves might either cost an Attribute or do something extra if you had spent one for Advantage.
Discharging. I want some extra expenditures to risk a full discharge: something like "roll a die, if it's higher than your current charge you're now out."

(I'd also just make batteries/ammo give a flat charge/reload amount instead of the stupid recover/recharge/reloads.)

Weapons feel better from the start. Having two explicit combat moves makes a dedicated weapon feel a little better than trying to stick with like, tools, but also it requires you to bring ammo. Instead of relying on 1 ammo/3 ammo moves or 3 ammo/5 ammo moves, though, I think the play is to lean back on the same levers I want to pull for tools: instead of always been 1/3 or 3/5, you could have moves being 1 ammo/1 ammo+1 attribute, or 1 ammo/risk running out in that same "discharge" way.

So those are the big takeaways I have at the high level (other than that I should lean less on Progress/Resistance). When I have time to rebuild the quickstart with this kind of stuff in mind, we'll see where else we need to go.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Valiant Persona, Part 3 of 3*

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

*Before I release the extra edition that tacks on like 2 more posts.

In Part 1 we established what kind of game we're using. In Part 2 we tied together Valiant Horizon's class system with the tarot thing Persona has going on. In this final installment (because at this point more beyond what I'm covering here would involve just making the thing) we're gonna think about using what we set up in part 2 for a session and campaign structure.

Disclaimer: This is off-the-dome ideas more so than like...stuff I've tested. If I make a real project out of this I'd make this a lot more explicit/etc. Actually assembling this involves writing a lot of prompts! I'm making it sound a lot easier than it is because it's very high level.

Arcana/relationship connections

In Persona, as you get closer to friendly characters associated with an arcana, in return you get more powerful in that arcana. This is basically the same as what we do in Valiant Horizon! And we could just leave it at that, but I've got other plans.

In the currently outdated Total//Effect SRD, I outline ways to use relationships not just between friends but between opponents: any time you have reason to feel strongly about one another for better or worse, that's a Bond. We can apply that here by attaching arcana to recurring/important antagonists too! In this case, leveraging that relationship works the same way as Call for Aid in Valiant Horizon, but with a twist: instead of calling for help from your friend and the roll determining whether or not they help you, you can also use it (probably renamed!) to trick or manipulate someone into doing something you want them to do if you roll well. And it makes for an easy way for allies to betray you or enemies to join your side: relationships aren't strictly positive or negative, they just exist, so there's no real mechanical change.

So now that we've established that, let's talk Tarot.

Tarot spreads as oracles

Disclaimer: I am not wildly knowledgeable in talking Tarot.

Tarot as oracle is kind of...well, duh, that's what people use tarot readings for in the first place! And in the tabletop sense too, obviously they figure hugely into solo games in particular. I'm not thinking of them as writing prompts so much as plot prompts though - and I'm not looking to make a generic generator, I'm looking to make something that ties in directly to a campaign structure for this game.

There are so many kinds of tarot spreads out there if you look around even a little! And it's clear people are making their own or customizing them for their own purposes, which is both very cool and extremely useful. As such, my goal here is to create two kinds of spreads to best serve what we're doing.

But I just have playing cards!

Obviously this assumes you have a tarot deck (or an online resource that approximates one!) that you can pull from easily. If not, you can approximate this with a normal deck of playing cards:

Remove all jokers, kings, and queens. This leaves A-J, 44 cards.
Use the remaining cards as equivalent to the 22 major arcana based on suit: clubs/hearts are the first 11 major arcana, spades/diamonds are the last 11 (go by number and add 11 to it).
Whenever it matters, red (hearts/diamonds) is upright, black (spades/clubs) is inverted. If you getheart+club or diamond+spade of the same card, just ignore the second one drawn and draw again.

If you don't have either, then I don't know, figure it out. Get a pack of cards from a gas station or something. I believe in you.

5-card spreads: Arcs

Persona games typically have a structure of: there's a problem that needs to be prepared for or resolved within a month (in persona 3, specifically on the full moon!) Sometimes this involves a specific party member: in 4/5, each "problem" involves recruiting a new character.

This is a good cadence for a campaign! And what's more, setting this up is prime oracle territory - especially with that table we set up! So let's see what we can do. Doing extensive research (less than ten minutes of googling) a 5 card spread is often arranged as such:

 [5]
[2][1][3]
 [4]

with 2-1-3 and 4-1-5 being related. So let's start with that. I'm going to assume upright/inverted draws are at play here because it gives us another draw/roll axis to work with and I love that shit, but you could probably leave that up to the Narrator instead.

The first card (1) is the "main" subject of the arc. Incorporate the "true self" associated with that card.
- If it's a previously unseen arcana/class: If you draw it upright, it involves someone from your world who suddenly finds themselves drawn in to the situation: either through antagonistic meddling, investigation into the players' situation, or just happenstance. If you draw it inverted, a new antagonist or threat associated manifests in some way and the players find out in some manner. In either case, the new character/antagonist/etc is associated with that drawn class/arcana.
- If it's an arcana already associated with a character, a plot point emerges related to them. If it's upright, something good from the players' perspective is happening: something good for a character you like or an opportunity to get one over on/find out more about/discover a weakness of an antagonist. If it's inverted, they're on the back foot: it's something bad for that character or a way in which that antagonist is making a move.
- In either case, set some sort of clock. A month (4 "weeks"/sessions, see below) is probably about right. Characters have that much time to prepare for it in addition to whatever the fuck is happening in real life.
The second and third ones (2-3) are two factors relevant to what's happening: if these are existing characters, tie them in somehow. Maybe they know the person for better or worse (use upright/inverted if that's a question) If they aren't existing characters, this is more thematic, or feel free to introduce another character associated with that arcana/class.
The fourth and fifth ones (4-5) are threats: what's at stake if this main arc resolves poorly? As with before, tie in existing characters if possible: what's going to go wrong for them in particular (or right, if they're an antagonist)?
The players can raise motions to replace any given card, swap an upright to inverted or vice versa, or to de-associate a draw/plot element with a character. This is intended to be an idea generator, not law. (It's not good to force people into the spotlight long-term if they don't want it and if the same one comes up a bunch it'd be boring or weird.)

3-card spreads: Per-session/side problems

What's going on this week? If you have no idea, ask the cards. Draw three in a row:

[1][2][3]

The first one relates to something that happened last session. What in particular, related to that arcana (or the associated character), reverberates here? (This is a good opportunity to recap too!)
The second one relates to some real-world event for your characters. What is pulling at them from the mundane? Tests, bills, overtime, new boss, new teacher, spring break, summer break, etc? It can tie into the main arc or not, up to you!
The third one relates to some other-realm event. Is something wrong there? Is there some opportunity you can pursue? Is there something there that will help with the main arc (or a red herring)?

As before, tie into characters if associated ones get drawn and use that upright/inverted as a guide to if it means a good or bad thing for them.

Inside the loop

So I'm thinking, given this loop above, that we treat a session as a "normal week" or a confrontation.

Normal Week session

In a given normal week, let's say players have 2 weeknights (or work days) and 2 weekends (or time-off days) free to do things like:

Vibe: Add a bond to a relationship with an ally. Describe where you're hanging out and what drew you closer to them (including making up something about them, if it's an NPC, or prompting the other player to make something up if necessary). If it's another ally in the party or if someone else is already hanging out with them, you're all hanging out together, but a given person can only add one bond.
Investigate: Add a bond to a relationship with an antagonist. Describe what you're doing to look into them and why you feel like you understand them better (including making up something about them). Spend an Asset or gain 1 Stress.
Chores: Attend to something you can't easily ignore in real life: study for a test, work an extra shift, get car maintenance done, etc. Doing something may require several "chores" actions, gaining extra Stress, or spending an Asset. Gain 1 Stress.
Chill: Blow off steam. Lower Stress by 1d6.
Venture: Head into the other realm. Gain 1-3 Stress depending on what happens there (basic recon -> fight/serious recon -> fight where you got Downed/some kind of serious discovery). If the next day isn't a weekend, roll twice on stress and take the lower.

As you may have noticed, stress is a factor. At the start of each "free" day, roll a die: if it's greater than your current stress, everything's cool. If it's lower, you're burned out: describe what tilted you and pushed you over the edge in particular. Until you're back at 0 Stress, you don't gain your default per-session Determination and every "normal time" action needs a roll-over-stress to succeed (including Chill! It's hard to get your mind off of things sometimes!)

Confrontation session

The culmination of whatever arc. Maybe this HAS to happen at the end of the month (i.e. a particular thing is happening on that day or whatever), maybe it doesn't. Either way, this is the big blow-out, the big boss fight, this is where major plot shit happens.

Wrap-up

At the end of the arc, probably give everyone a level. Figure out any fallout from stuff that didn't get done. Did you fail the test? Is your car busted? And so on.

Outside the loop

So with this "loop" in mind, let's step back. What's a campaign look like? Maybe something like...

Have players establish from the out what we know about the setting, the realm, etc. Establish like 2 facts per player about it. The Narrator makes a secret note that three of the things that have been established are false or incomplete.
As noted, probably give everyone a level every time an arc is completed. Do a level for 2 arcs if you want to slow-roll it, or introduce more characters per arc if you want to make everything available sooner than later. You have enough pacing mechanisms to get this sorted if you want.
- Every arc should add something to the group's "knowledge" of how things work. This can be mid-arc or some kind of revelation at the end.
- During the confrontation at levels 3 and 6 (i.e. before getting to tiers 2/3), reveal one of the "false" pieces of information as such as part of the plot, and show what the "real" answer is. These should ratchet up the stakes in some way. If anything else depended on that information, change it appropriately!
- When you get to the confrontation at level 9 or get to level 10 (there's a level 10???), reveal the last piece of information. Everyone figures out together how that's the big thing holding everything together.

So there we have it. That's the outline.

...this is probably a bad time to inform folks that if I make this for real, it wouldn't get finished-finished until after the season pass concludes (i.e. July at the earliest), isn't it. Oh well. Maybe you'll have to make it yourself if you want it sooner~

Hope you enjoyed reading it!

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Valiant Persona, Part 2

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

So we started poking at turning Valiant Horizon into Persona in Part 1 by establishing initial premises of what even this kind of game is like. It's got a lot of the DNA of urban fantasy/masquerade style games (WoD, Unknown Armies, etc) but with a very different emphasis, and especially the fact that there's a harder divide between the two "halves". Now we start digging in to what we want to do with that.

Arcana vs Classes, Persona vs Heroes

To reiterate, the big goal here is not to like reinvent the game from scratch so much as add context, mechanical or otherwise, that recontextualizes it. One major avenue of context in any given Persona game is the use of the Tarot Major Arcana as a symbol that has meaning in-game. And we have a very similar hook in Valiant Horizon: Classes.

In Persona, any given character who has significance will be associated with one of the 22 Major Arcana. In tarot readings they've got a pretty fixed set of meanings, which the games kind of follow (though they've developed their own sub-language with them): a character associated with a given Arcana will usually relate to it in some way. (It also clusters kinds of demons/powers them up as you grow closer to that person but we're not doing that with relationships.)

This is useful as shit for scaffolding. In the core rules I've got 12 classes: after the season pass (coming soon!) is done, I'll have 24 classes. (To say nothing of the 6 backer classes!) That (almost, put a pin in that) matches up numerically with those 22 major arcana! And each Class has a very similar naming convention (could easily be rephrased as The ____).

Now...the easy move would be to try to line each class up with one of those arcana from the out and just write the association into the book. But that's fairly prescriptive and means that two of those classes are going to necessarily be left out (we're still putting a pin in those, mind you). I do want to use those tarot cards though...so here's an idea.

Sift the minor arcana out of a tarot deck.
Each player draws from the top of the deck of majors. The typical meaning behind the card should tie into their false self: how they're perceived, how they like to comport themselves, their reputation, etc. (These can be represented by a chart of leading questions to help people draw something related out. We might pick out a skillset based on this if we're going with normal VH asset-mechanics for non-Shadow-Realm stuff, I haven't quite decided yet.)
Each player picks their class: that's the arcana of their character's true self. Maybe each of them is pre-associated with some kind of weapon (this is something I initially considered but rejected for VH, but it might make more sense here though!) For the rest of the campaign, these two arcana, a real-life one and the class, are entwined, as both are associated with that characters. Keep track of which is associated with which! You'll end up with a table (and save this table, I'm secretly setting us up for Part 3) like:

Character	Tarot Arcana	Class Arcana
foo	The Hierophant	The Knight
bar	The World	The Bard
etc	Death	The Blazemagus

You can take that pin out now. The table comes up with a Tarot Arcana to represent the broad strokes, on-its-face nature of your bond based on the premise of your game: what is the general concept, what common goal brings you together? (Don't be too bashful about this, Persona makes up new major Arcana all the time or finds obscure ones when they need one.) Tie this to a class as well: what is the closest manifestation of your common cause?
- The goal is to have most of the "normal" tarot arcana assigned to a class be someone you can have a Relationship with, as per standard Valiant Horizon (sometimes in different ways than others, but that's a later problem). This one's special: it's a relationship every PC has with each other as a team, which automatically goes up as they level or as they grow stronger or something. Every time it goes up, reflect on how the mission has changed.
The Narrator makes up another Tarot Arcana, this time representing the appearance of the threat. Tie this to a class as well: if you're not sure, pick one at random and make it make sense later as the campaign progresses.
- This one is similar: it goes up over time as they level or as the threat manifests a new angle or something. Every time it goes up, reflect on how your characters' understanding of the situation has changed.
Finish out the rest of that chart, drawing the rest of the cards and assigning them the [22 - party size - 2] remaining Classes. (I'm assuming we just loop in the 24 core+season pass classes here, but pulling in a backer or third party class shouldn't be too hard: either sub out an existing class or come up with a similarly auto-leveling force like those two we reserved, things like the student body or the city or reputation or something.)

And now we've got ourselves something that ties strongly into that Tarot theme and helps everyone get set up. In part 3 I'll get into some ideas I have for how that manifests in play (and we'll come back to that player:tarot:class table).

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Valiant Persona, Part 1

Sat, 03 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I'm thinking about Persona* a lot lately, partially because P3 Reload is out and I kind of want to play it but also it's $70 so fuck that shit. But partially it's because I realized while putting together the playlist for Valiant Horizon how well the two concepts overlaid with each other with only a little reflavoring/stretching:

Normalish people given extraordinary power
Powers come from discrete beings with archetypical distinctions that are intended to match with the character
Huge emphasis on relationships and building both towards understanding that archetypical power better and being closer to the person who wields it, is associated with it, etc.

_{*3-5. I know 2 has its fans but I've never played it and honestly it's a little longer in the tooth than I have patience for nowadays. I'm sure 1 has its adherents too but I don't know them.}

All the building blocks are there. And if that's all you need or want, you could probably just run it like that as is as long as everyone's on the same page. Nothing more to see here. You don't have to click through on that "read more". Ignore that "part 1" in the title, it's ok. See you next post!

Ok, they're gone. Only the real sickos better be left. Let's see how deep this line of thought goes.

The idea behind this extended thought experiment would be to create something that explicitly scaffolds around Valiant Horizon and extends it towards the end of creating something that's better at making that kind of game: the goal is not to make a new game, but to leave the mechanics of this one mostly intact and build around them. But first, we should establish what we're even doing.

Establish The Broad Tenets

Valiant Horizon has a few specific callouts as to what it means by "crystal fantasy", and the nature of the setting I'm assuming: heroic souls exist in crystals, heroic crystals attach to worthy people who become heroes over time, fragmented souls exist, there's an empire and they suck. Let's dig deeper in this direction: we're not doing crystal fantasy here, so we'll need a new set of broad setting callouts to make a Persona-ish setting.

The setting is mundane, if not modern. The vibe probably works best with a game set in like, Earth sometime in the last 30 years because it's pretty easy for people to see as "normal". But it would probably be fine in anything where characters have like, kind of regular lives before things kick off. (It would be sick to create this around like...an actual medieval village or something, for example, or workers in a factory or something.) The goal is to create contrast: if the "regular" portion is also fantastical then the other elements don't really contrast well.
There is a dangerous realm representing hyperreality and manifested metaphorical reality that overlaps this one. In the same way that the "base" world is fairly grounded, there is a parallel, dangerous world that is ungrounded: the contrast between these two is important. The denizens of that realm are themselves unreal, exaggerated and dangerous. Entry to that realm might open and close based on resonance or connection to specific events, or be available at any time.
In this realm, a person's archetype-bound true self may be found, for better or for worse. The true self is buried deep within, and when in great peril, it can manifest in that other realm. To accept it when it does is to know yourself better and gain a powerful ally. To deny it is to risk its wrath, often at the cost of your life. People who know themselves in this way are bound to that other realm in some way, at least enough to know how to access it when it's available.
The two worlds are connected and in flux. Change, turmoil, or significant happenings in one will affect the other. This gives those who have come to terms with their true self the ability to greatly influence real-life events by making things happen in the other realm.
Characters are in some kind of regimented schedule that prevents them from doing this full-time, and forces them to stay grounded. Work, school, family, etc. The only way this works is by creating a balance between the two halves of the game. If you can just hit da bricks or devote your entire life to it, it's a little less meaningful.

So this not only gives us some very good setting tenets, but provides some ideas for scaffolding going forward: namely, balancing other-realm play (very similar to base VH) vs this-realm play (more uncharted). Next time we'll talk about the biggest scaffold that already exists in Valiant Horizon and then extend it further: Classes and Relationships, and what we can do with Tarot stuff.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Machinations of Amirus Intro+Act 1 Postmortem*

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Machinations of Amirus A Machination of Court and Frame Binary Star Games

*Does it really count as "mortem" if only like 1/3 of the game is out? I don't know but I'm sure going to post about it!

About 6 months ago I put out the intro and first act of a visual novel, Machinations of Amirus. (It's free and will take you about an hour if you want to run through it before reading this. I am simply not going to worry about spoilers, either for Act 1 or for my plans for Act 2/3 going forward.) My goal here is to think out loud about what I was intending to do, what I did, what works in my opinion, what could be improved within the confines of this basically-a-first-draft, and what's worth keeping an eye on going forward.

What is Machinations of Amirus?

Machinations of Amirus is a tie-in to a TTRPG that does not yet exist - and will probably not exist for some time if my stack of WIPs is any indication - about mecha duels and power struggles among space nobility. In this game, you take the role of a member of House Alzur, which thinks of itself as a proper aristocratic House: you're a scion, a knight, or a captain, indicating varying levels of capital-n Nobility.

Narrat is a VN engine that expects you to use skill checks to operate with varying levels of skills. In Machinations, your "skills" are your relationships with 8 important people to the plot: 4 nobles and 4 commonfolk. (Which isn't too-too far from my intentions for the TTRPG, but in that case, it's because you're intentionally influencing other characters - it's been adapted here to make more sense for a single player fixed story.) Skill "checks" are basically adding 0-2 to a static value: you either have a 0%, 33%, 66%, or 100% chance to pass a given check, which lets you overwhelm checks if you have enough but lets you reach higher if you're close.

At the end of the day, the goal is to let the player unfold and greatly influence a story about the future leaders of various houses caught up in a greater game that turns them all against each other. Think FE Three Houses, Game of Thrones, etc etc etc you get the genre I'm going for.

Goals

Character creation that's meaningful but not much. My goal was to make approaching this game as a different background feel different right from the start, but not toss a character sheet in front of people and make them figure shit out - especially because there aren't like, stats as such!
Establish how the main cast and how you know them, and what that means. Your "build" is your connections, as it were. So we need to establish that you know everyone, how you know everyone, and how well you know everyone. Even at early stages, it's important to make it clear that knowing people more or less well will get you different outcomes too.
Establish the setting, specifically and generally. As you might guess from the title, we're going to be on Amirus following the chargen section. Act 1 has to establish somewhat what that's like, at least from an invader's point of view. Beyond that, we have to establish like...what each House is like at the high level, their relationships to one another, and what this setting is like in general - not like in the sense of loredumping, but in the sense of thematics.
Sow seeds of the conflict to come. In Act 1 everyone's on the same side. But like...you and I both know that won't last. That's why we're here, to watch it all burn down. That's what this setting is for. So we need to set some of those things in motion.
Establish that failure isn't the end. You can't die and you're not going to be able to...at least before the proper end of the game, anyway. I don't want to create a game over "do it again, stupid" situation.

So let's see how I did.

Chargen

You pick out one of those aforementioned 3 backgrounds after a brief stage-setting monologue. These don't have as much to hang on as they will in the tabletop game, so I tied them in more strongly with those characters and your mech. I elected to go with a "lifepath" method of chargen:

The Scion goes to House Alzur's mecha academy, where they learn to fight and meet the heir to both your House and Amirus. Then, the scion attends finishing school, where they meet the two other heirs to the houses that matter, among others.
The Captain comes up in a gladiatorial arena on a backwater world run by House Alzur. They meet two of the commoners here, as part of a fighting trio who get forcibly recruited by the various Houses and have their contracts bought out. Then, the Captain is deployed at Nilara, an occupation that goes very poorly, and meet the two other commoners who are deployed there as fellow officers.
The Knight goes to mecha academy and then is deployed at Nilara, so they exist kind of "between" the two. (And the four people they interact with in their background are closer to "between" nobility and not-nobility than the other four.)

You have a few choices in there too:

Your station in life defines how heavy your mech is: commoners get easy-to-kill light mechs, nobles get hard-to-kill heavies, commoners with a little more loyalty built in get mediums. (Going forward, the size of mech a given character has indicates to some degree how they see themselves acting in the world: heavies as literally farther from the conflict, mediums as up in the shit, lights as harder-to-hit daredevils or people who consider themselves expendable.)
At each step, there's a point where you have to lean more towards one character or another: given that character affinity is your "skills", this is basically part of your "build".
Each mech has 3 moves to start, but you get a 4th one (each kind of character chooses between two).

I did add a few "false" choices in all of these too that don't have mechanical impact: each background gets one instance of a "no-win" choice, where the chips are down and you simply don't have good options.

Establishing the main cast

In every case, you meet...most of the main cast. You meet 4/8 initially, and then after a brief introduction, it splits based on who you have more affinity with: you're introduced that way to 6/8 of the characters. You get a fairly good idea of what the deal is for those initial 4 and decent idea of the other 2, at the very least, and you'll have an opportunity to flex those affinities in the end sequence by getting them to cover for you so you can make it there relatively unscathed or egging them on to duel at the very end.

Establishing the setting

Chargen gives a pretty good view of the setting: what growing up noble vs common is like, especially. The Scion hadn't worked a day in their life at the start of Act 1 proper, while the Captain had been a gladiator and then a deployed officer for years prior. The fact of there even BEING an arena on a world that Alzur controls contrasts hard with a noble being sent to school to learn how to administrate properly. The inequality and inequity of the setting is emphasized well: the "no-win" choice mentioned prior is repeated near the end (did you catch it?) as a way to drive home that this setting is simply not fair at all, and that you can do everything right but still lose. You get some kind of idea of what kind of place Amirus used to be by nature of how you're able to invade it and the places you go to do so. Inherent to the invasion, you wreck the planet's infrastructure in some way.

Sowing seeds

A few important character points are established in act 1, especially with regards to Caterina (with the death of Roderick) and Gustav (with however the final encounter plays out: winning and losing are both huge inflection points, because either his brother is fucking dead or he isn't and is still at large as a rebel). There's a few good moments in there with just about everyone else too. And there's a ton of foreshadowing.

The "branch" in the middle of act 1 gives you a choice between taking the easy way and destroying infrastructure, or taking the hard route and trying to recapture it: this forces you to choose between depriving the people on the planet of resources or taking extra risks and threatening the invasion. This is where the ~ideology~ seeps in: you are very rarely incentivized to give a fuck about the people you're theoretically invading on behalf of, except in the instrumental sense, and this will continue to be a trend going into act 2. The various approaches that characters suggest also characterize how they'll act in future situations: conservatively or willing to take on risk for whatever reason, trying to avoid destruction or being fine with it, regard or disregard for civilian casualties. Leaving it intact, success or failure, sets you up in the future to more easily find out about the rebels and their source of funding, which is intended to set up growing tensions in act 2 that boil into act 3.

Failure is not the end

You can lose every fight except the tutorial, or fuck up every "major" skill check, and it's fine. Things keep rolling, just different now. You might lose an opportunity or two later, but in one case you might even gain an opportunity by messing up.

What works really well

The lifepath chargen feels great. There's just enough variation going into act 1 proper to make it feel meaningful between playthroughs and you get a very different sense of who House Alzur in particular is depending on your choice.
Act 1 has decent variation and works well to establish most characters. I'm pretty proud of the branching in general, it exists and feels meaningful but it's not a total clusterfuck on the backend.
The combat engine exists and feels pretty good, in my opinion.
I really like how the ending turned out, and all the twists and turns it can take, and all the variables leading towards it. Fucking up in the end is not only possible but can be good going forward, which I'm proud of.

What can be improved

I don't feel like there's enough characterization for all 8 of those important characters. Like I'd mentioned, you get to interact with 6/8 of them, but those other 2 are left hanging, which kind of sucks - and you have limited interactions with those two you meet on the act 1 branch too.
- There's two junctions in particular where we could fix that: one is before splitting up, which would be a good time to introduce everyone. Another is talking to folks post-branch - right now you get a choice of one person to talk to, I think it's better if can you talk to all of them. (Not least of all because I want people to see some of the better micro-dialogue-nodes in there. ~~Mostly Theo's if you go comms because I get a chance to be extremely not subtle.~~)
A few more "fake" choices would be good: these help you get in the shoes of your player character and decide how you want to play them. (I might add in "input a name", "input your mech's name", and "input a callsign" for this reason.)
The ending sequence is kind of lazy with regards to the consequences of failure in the leadup to the TYPE-RAPIER/Gustav standoff. I blame this on needing to get the game out for the jam! That section's probably worth rewriting, or at least making it so you can't do a duel against the TYPE-RAPIER if you got whacked in the leadup - only egg Gustav on or not.
Combat bugs and interface. Needs tuning up, I have some fixes and I was working on an interface that tells you a bit more about the state of a duel without being as verbose in the combat log.
It's very instrumental in parts. A little more description, dialogue, etc would go a long way. I blame writing mostly essentially technical documents and not dialogue or prose, minimalism doesn't always suit the game.
It would be so sick if it had music or sound or backgrounds or something but that costs money (and I don't expect this project to make any) or time (and that's at a premium).

Going forward

Last call if you don't want to be spoiled on future happenings.

First, I should clean up the intro and act 1 a bit. Make it more of a representative vertical slice.
Act 2 is going to be administration of the planet post-invasion.
- I think the play here is to establish it as kind of a series of vignettes: as you put fires out across the planet, more and more spread as things come to a head.
- In addition, in between, you'll have conversations with your fellow administrators, get to know them a bit better, etc. Thinking like a schedule thing: mission -> who are you hanging out with -> mission -> hang -> etc, with a few big events thrown in there.
Act 3 is where Houses Alzur, Reyaal, and Montrant all start pointing guns at each other and shit hits the fan.
- I think the play here is to establish 3 "ending" scenarios, one for each noble House, and plot those out.
- Act 2 has to lead you (based on your decisions, and who you know best, and various decisions made) towards at least one of those. Probably Alzur is always a possibility but you have to put a little more effort into the others.
- I'd like one or two "harder to unlock" ending sequences too, but the emphasis has to be on making siding with one of those 3 feel just as satisfying, especially Alzur if they're the "default" option - I don't want it to make it feel like a bullshit ending as opposed to a true ending. Very much in favor of players being able to mostly muddle through to something that feels appropriate when playing blind, then figuring out how to do more specific things if they decide to go total sicko on it and pull it apart by the seams.
Individual character endings? Maybe!

When will I continue to work on this? Uhhhhh I'll get back to you on that. I keep having other projects take priority. But it's been on my mind lately and I've wanted to post more about game dev this year so here we are. Hope you enjoyed reading it!

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Valiant Horizon is out for real!

Tue, 23 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Valiant Horizon v1.0 is finally out! Some big changes:

12 incredible illustrations by Charlotte Laskowski!
Editing and revision by Marx Shepherd!

And some smaller ones:

Swarm enemies don’t exist anymore and Prime enemies are a bit different.
Relationship rolls are now reversed so high rolls are good.
Various little fixes, typos, and tweaks.

Thanks so much to everyone who backed the game! I’ll have news about a season pass soon. And for everyone’s generosity, I added one community copy for everyone who bought it (and a few more on top).

(Read the original on itch here!)

Class Overview #6: Meet the Tactician and Windmagus!

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! Last class overview devlog, because after these two we’re out of core classes! Introducing the final two, Tactician and Windmagus. Just in time for the full release on January 23rd!

The Tactician

From the start, I wanted one full-support class - not just for mechanical reasons, but thematically, I wanted someone whose almost exclusive role was to support and boost allies. As mentioned in the Commander overview, I’ve had the idea of Tactician via 36th Way Weigh the Odds Commander via 13th Age Commander via 4E warlord in my head for awhile, and I knew I wanted something like it here - so tying it to full-support made sense. I styled it as kind of the “brains of the operation” or the “puppetmaster” - a lot of its abilities focus on planning, logic, tactics, strategy, or unexpected preparedness.

The Tactician’s roles are Supporter (Command, Ward) and Defender (Shield). In my initial prototype/alpha game for Total//Effect (which was a lot more 36th Wayish than what you see here) I had a class called Noble which did this kind of thing, I figured it was worth revisiting Command-as-primary-skill, and a few of the Tactician’s bits were repurposed from that prototype.

One of the key things you have to keep in mind when making any ability that doesn’t have offense attached to it is that it has to be “worth it”. Its main Standard isn’t some kind of offensive or semi-offensive ability, unlike every other (core) class in the game, so I mitigated that by making it trigger other players’ Standards - something that lets it “extend” other players’ capabilities in that sense is helpful and valuable, and pairs well with various offensive buffs to “extend” them.

I approached the Shield role from a “this class is extremely fragile but has sneaky tricks to mitigate that” perspective - its powers allow it to hide behind allies and lure enemies in to counter their attacks. (Because of that, its powerset can pair really well with classes that try to make themselves a target like Champion and Knight, and vice versa.)

The Windmagus

To round out the 4 magi (and the classes in general!), we have the Windmagus. Like the other 3, a large emphasis in their definition was thinking about how they hook into the world as a whole. When I think about wind and people who would be associated with it, I think about someone who goes far and is defined by travel - explorers, nomads, etc. Combine that with my love of extra/forced movement in tactics games and you’ve got a great combo going.

The Windmagus’s roles are Defender (Disable, Provoke) and Attacker (Break). Like Earthmagus, the goal behind this one was to create a mostly defense-oriented class that’s not “tanky” at all - it debuffs enemies and knocks them out of position in addition to setting them up to be attacked further. Its trait is an extremely basic “makes everything you focus on suck” ability too. Provoke in this case is something that I used to justify forced-movement: either by putting a debuff to anyone on a zone (forcing them to spend an action moving out of position) or by threatening harm to enemies who don’t accept being moved, you’re still encouraging certain kinds of actions, which is in the spirit. Its base standard, Buffet, doesn’t really fit the mold of Disable anymore? But it’s fun so it stays. (All of this stuff was only ever a suggestion anyway. Break your own rules if it’s cool.)

And that’s all of them! I hope you enjoyed this series of class overviews. The polished version of Valiant Horizon will be out January 23rd!

Until next time.

(Read the original on itch here!)

Class Overview #5: Meet the Knight and Ranger!

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

Valiant Horizon v1.0 is coming out on January 23rd! So we’re devlogging fast now.

As noted in #1, all role/sub-role talk is referring to Total//Effect’s role and sub-role concepts.

The Knight

Once of the martial ideas I wanted to replicate was someone who is just absolutely steadfast in every sense: physically and otherwise. I knew I wanted a Knight somewhere too - I just inherently like the idea of a warrior defined by dedication. (Not in like the historical sense, of course, but in the fantastical/romantic sense.) It seemed like a good pairing, and all of its tales and much of its skillset pertain to one or the other. (One of its suggested Exhaust abilities, “Swear an oath that anyone will believe”, is probably one of my favorites that I’ve written.)

The Knight’s roles are Defender (Shield, Lockdown) and Supporter (Command). Shield is a hard role to fill as a primary. On the one hand, it’s very easy to make: give it a lot of abilities that defend itself, easy peasy. On the other hand, that’s a really good way to just make it hard to kill but not do much in the way of being helpful. I mitigated this a little by giving it a trait that lets it take hits for Winded allies: this both reinforces that theme of dedication to others and lets it use its durability for allies’ sake. Lockdown and Command abilities complement this further by allowing it to tie up enemies and move allies out of harm’s way or under its protection.

The Ranger

I’ve complained in the past that the traditional D&D ranger is kind of a mess and nobody has a great idea of what it’s supposed to be (beyond, well, y’know). Here, with the benefit of very limited conceptual premises, it gets to be the dedicated wilderness expert and sharpshooter. With no rogue/thief/etc in the crew, I was able to dedicate a lot of that energy here: some of the skillset and tales mention things that probably would have gone there.

The Ranger’s roles are Attacker (Spike, Break) and Defender (Lockdown). Trick shots and conditional attacks account for most of its power set, but it’s also got a few other moves like setting traps. Its trait, precision, is the real kicker - that’s the one that really sets it apart, nothing else has that kind of consistency of damage when escalation gets high. (It’s slightly limited by the fact that there just aren’t THAT many far-range powers, and it’s pretty easy for enemies to get up in your business, maps are only but so big.)

Tactician and Windmagus, the last two, are next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Class Overview #4: Meet the Earthmagus and Frostmagus!

Tue, 16 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

Valiant Horizon v1.0 is coming out on January 23rd! So I’d better get moving on these devlogs.

As noted in #1, all role/sub-role talk is referring to Total//Effect’s role and sub-role concepts.

The Earthmagus

All of my mages (the -magus classes specifically) are just a little off from what people expect. “Earth” is probably the most skipped element in video games on top of that - you see fire/ice/lightning a lot, and earth sometimes comes in as like “acid” or some similar cop-out like that. This makes sense if you’re only making up elemental attacks and not trying to hit something more core to the concept/trying to make something that feels like it belongs to the world. But I don’t want any of the magic in this world to be solely for combat - they all had to feel like they were like, part of the world in some way. So Earthmagus’s Tales are about understanding, addressing and nurturing the land, and their iconic portrait is a farmer or tender of some sort.

The Earthmagus’s roles are Defender (Lockdown, Disable) and Supporter (Ward). It excels at creating a sense of stability across the party: encouraging or forcing enemies not to move, debuffing enemy attacks, and buffing allied defenses. (A lot of the “damage enemies if they move” abilities also become a form of offense when combined with allies who can move enemies around - or borrowed powers that let you do that!)

The Frostmagus

Frostmagus is a weird case. At one point it used to be Watermagus, but I decided to get more specific with it because it felt a little better in that regard. As with Earthmagus, I tried to keep its Tales a little more grounded in nature - a focus on discovery, travel, and healing rather than offensive action. Ice has a real “combat magic” vibe to it, same with Fire, and pushing against that was important here, and doubly so given its role as a more supportive class.

The Frostmagus’s roles are Supporter (Ward, Heal) and Attacker (Spread). This one is definitely playing against type in some ways - healing isn’t usually something associated with frost/ice, right? This is partially a holdover from when it was more “water” but it’s also not that big a stretch if you think about it - ice is what you put on wounds, after all, and at the end of the day it does still provide water. Aside from that, it’s very good at preventing and reducing Weapon Harm in particular, which is extremely common among “minion” enemies - and given that their trait affects allies affected by a Power, they want to be looking for Powers that affect multiple allies.

As noted before, only a handful of classes can deal both Magical and Weapon Harm from their ability set. Both Earthmagus and Frostmagus do this! For me this is part of their abilities feeling much more “physical” in that sense than something like fire - it’s still magic but it kind of acts like a weapon. I think it’s also good for that level of grounding both of them want.

Next time, the two final martial classes - Knight and Ranger!

(Read the original on itch here!)

2 Stats 2 Rolls

Tue, 02 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Written for Prismatic Wasteland's "make a new mechanic and give it a name" challenge.

You have two approaches to a situation on either side of a spectrum. For example, let's say... Soundwaves and Emotions. Decide which is "high" and which is "low", then define your Number between 1 and 10, inclusive. A number skewed towards one side means that you'll have high chances of success but also high chances of consequences for the other side, and vice versa.

Whenever you do anything, decide which approach it fits best, then roll two distinct 10 sided dice (distinguish by different colors, etc): one of them is your resolution die and one is your complications die.

If your resolution die is on the same side as your Number (lower for the "low" approach, higher for the "high" approach), you succeed at what you're doing! Describe how that approach served you. If it's on the opposite side, you don't. Describe how that approach let you down. If you roll your number exactly, it's a success: you can either remove any complications on the roll or turn it into a crit. Describe how your exact combination of approaches helps the situation.
If your complications die is on the same side as your Number as above, something about what you did complicates the situation, or there's a twist you didn't expect! Describe how your shortcomings in the other area tripped you up. If it's on the opposite side, there's no complication. Describe how your expertise in the other approach helped you. If you roll your number exactly, there's no complication on the roll, and increase the resolution result from failure -> success -> crit. Describe how your exact combination of approaches helps the situation.
If you roll your number exactly on both dice, it's a megacrit with no complications.
[ADVANCED] Once per session you can swap the dice. Describe how you turn the situation around this time, against all odds.

(Not that this uses any text from it intentionally, but Lasers and Feelings, by John Harper, is licensed under CC BY 4.0.)

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Class Overview #3: Meet the Commander and Dark Knight!

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! Long time no see!

Now that Valiant Horizon is nearing full release, this is #3 in our design series. We’re back with the Commander and Dark Knight.

As noted in #1, all role/sub-role talk is referring to Total//Effect’s role and sub-role concepts.

The Commander

To get the elephant out of the room, yes, I came at this starting with the 4E warlord by way of its less acclaimed distant cousin, the 13th Age commander. More specifically, I took a crack at this idea starting in 36th Way. 13th Age/36th Way’s Commander have two resource-generating class features indicating focus: Weigh the Odds, which lets you reliably generate the resource you need, but is purely non-offensive; or Fight from the Front, which is a melee attack that generates the resource on a hit. (More on Commander here.) So we had two concepts of:

The “offensive support” character. (This is the Commander.)
The “full support” character. (This is the Tactician, which we will get to eventually.)

They don’t fully diverge, of course, but they do have a slightly different focus that helped both figure out how to coexist: for instance, Commander is a high-durability character (12 Vigor, mid recovery Resist Weapon) while Tactician is the most vulnerable character in the game (10 Vigor, low recovery, no resistance).

The Commander’s roles are Supporter (Command, Boost) and Attacker (Exploit). Its abilities are mostly oriented around buffs while close to allies or ways to get close to allies: they work best when they’re in the same Location as an ally, meaning they work well as a co-frontliner or someone going back and forth. It also goes well with other buff abilities, other movement abilities (their trait buffs folks who start their turn at that location), or other offensive abilities.

Is it weird that the Commander isn’t primary for Command? Not really, honestly. They’re notional/descriptive categories, not prescriptive ones. Nominative determinism is a fake idea.

The Dark Knight

This is the one I used in all my promotional stuff! And for good reason. It gets attention, it’s got a callback people likely recognize, and it feels good. It’s also one of the first few I wrote.

The big influence for this one is FF4. The idea of high durability, high offense, spend your own Vigor sticks with you. Couple that with the “fragmented soul” idea and you get this odea of a character who frequently writes checks they can’t quite cash and is dealing with things that are very powerful but very dangerous.

I only intended to make one FF4 reference in the tale prompts but at some point I realized you could make a case for all of them. Oops. I’m not changing it though, they’re all good.

The Dark Knight’s roles are Attacker (Spike, Exploit) and Supporter (Boost). Exploit in this sense is less what I frequently use it for (mobility, though it does have one that’s good at that) and more “opportunist”: it has a lot of abilities that can be amplified by taking self-damage. All self-damage from the class is magical: this complements the class’s Resist Magical that it gets when winded, allowing it to take greater risks with self-damaging abilities when close to being downed. (This also makes those abilities worth taking by other “caster” classes who want to walk on the wild side, as they always have Resist Magical.) If you want to play around with those self-damaging abilities, you’ll want to either commit and accept your fate, pack healing, or pack defenses.

Dark Knight’s also one of few classes that can swap between physical and magical within its own power set! We’ll get to the others next time, when I cover Earthmagus and Frostmagus.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Objective Game Design Axioms

Tue, 19 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Make something that you'd want to play.
Or wouldn't want to play, I guess, if that's your goal. Basically try to make something that holds your interest.
Just feel it out, you know? You probably know what you want to do, practically speaking. Trust your instincts, they probably came from somewhere.
Unless you don't have any clue where you're going which is fine too. Sometimes it's about the journey. Sure helps to have a destination in mind though.
Be an absolute sicko about something in your work. This isn't really game design specific but it's good practice.
Design offensively, not defensively. Whenever you think you went a little too far, suppress that instinct and double down.
Every person posting about game design like they absolutely know what the fuck they're doing is a goddamn liar or has their head up their ass, including me. Just make the fucking thing. You got this.
You should always have 10 things on a list even when you can't think of 10 of them.
FREE SPACE
Your game needs at least one more railgun than it currently has. Get on that.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

v1.01 released!

Thu, 09 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We released a slight update to Celestial Bodies this morning.

Fixes

Refigured the layout to A5.
Fixed a few typos, copy/paste errors, bad labels, and wrong icons.
Fixed a few examples.

Changes

Ultra reactor now has the Reliable quality.
Tackle is way more accurate (and Force can be used for it now).
Direct rules now specify how missile speed works a little better.

Thank you so much for your support thus far! It’s been truly overwhelming.

Enjoy!

(Read the original on itch here!)

The Grid™️

Sun, 05 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I know what you’re here for, mechanically. Let’s talk shop about The Grid™️.

Loadout and Construction

Every mech in this game is defined by a grid like this:

When I say defined, I mean fully defined. First, the basics:

Every frame (basically a chassis for a kind of mech) has HP (Hull Points!) equal to its grid size. So the one you see above has 12HP.
Every frame has a unique trait based on its grid’s size and shape. (This one gets more movement for having oversized thrusters, for instance.)
Each component you see listed there has a specific designation as to what it does (some of them relative to the mech’s size) as well as a shape and size. Weapons can’t be rotated but can be flipped.

And then the advanced stuff.

Every mech is built around a reactor. That needs to power (read: be placed adjacent to) the thrusters, any shields (not present here), any processors, and electronic weaponry.
Processors need to be be adjacent to anything they benefit. (In this case, the processor benefits the blade and shotgun.) They can also extend reactor power and the effects of any other linked Processors.

So that grid you see there really does define what it’ll do! There are a few other things, though, which we’ll get into when we get into…

Combat

So not only is this grid a matter of construction, it’s extremely relevant to combat.

During combat, when someone rolls to attack, they roll d66 (if unfamiliar, two d6’s with one of them acting as “tens”). Then they compare it to their target’s grid, laid on a 6x6 grid like so:

If it lands outside the mech’s grid, it misses.
If it hits your mech in their grid, that part gets damaged (takes a penalty). If every square in a part is damaged, it’s destroyed (including parts with one square, which are uniquely vulnerable). Reactor squares that get damaged don’t power anything attached to them, and if your reactor is destroyed, you’re history.
If a shot hits a square that was already damaged, it crits.

Complicating things is Accuracy, which is reduced by the target’s Evasion (which is based on how much they’ve moved on their last turn).

Positive accuracy means the attacker may move the result 1 square up, down, left, or right on that 6x6 grid.
Negative accuracy means the defender may move the result in the same way. (They can’t move it off the 6x6 grid, but they can make an attack miss.)

A few different permutations of weapons complicate this:

Single-shot and strong melee weapons tend to have higher accuracy and do more damage on crits, making them better at targeting specific parts.
Full auto, fast melee weapons, and multiple missiles hitting a target at once make multiple hit rolls for less damage and less crit, but Accuracy is spread out evenly among all attacks (for better or worse): for instance, -5 Accuracy spread out over 5 attacks becomes -1 Accuracy to all of those 5 attacks, meaning even very fast light mechs can’t fully outpace a huge volume of fire.
Explosive weapons have low accuracy, but if they hit, they damage both the target square and everything adjacent (and some deal a bit of damage everything in the area even on a miss).
Electronic weapons don’t do almost any damage but disable parts temporarily even when damaging them and ignore armor and shields.

And this ties into construction:

Shield generators provide an HP buffer to anything adjacent to them that gets hit…but if they get hit directly that buffer drains faster. Bigger generators cover more squares and provide a bigger buffer.
You’ll have to be careful about chains of power from processors! They can extend power but they’re extremely fragile, and if they’re hit they’re not coming back. (There is an emergency Repair option but it takes 2/3 of the actions on your turn and doesn’t work on destroyed parts.) They do chain effects, though, so high risk, high reward.
Heavy/Ultra mechs have armor, which reduces damage: any square that takes 0 damage does not affect the protected part.

So there you go! That’s The Grid.

(Read the original on itch here!)

The sixth backer class is here! Meet the Shaman!

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The sixth backer class has arrived! Meet the Shaman!

The Shaman is an attuned, receptive hero.
It focuses on supporting others by boosting their abilities, drawing attacks against them, and healing them.
It’s a full-support class that can be played without taking any offensive actions!

It’s in that backer classes PDF. Enjoy!

(Read the original on itch here!)

The fifth backer class is here! Meet the Arcane Knight!

Wed, 06 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The fifth backer class has arrived! Meet the Arcane Knight!

The Arcane Knight is a multifaceted, balanced hero.
It focuses on the interplay of bladework and magic, and benefits from alternating the two.
It’s extremely mobile! I love making extremely mobile classes.

It’s in that backer classes PDF. Enjoy!

One more backer class left after this, so stay tuned!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Class Overview #2: Meet the Blazemagus and Champion!

Tue, 29 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! #2 in our design series, meet the Blazemagus and Champion!

As noted in #1, all role/sub-role talk is referring to Total//Effect’s role and sub-role concepts.

The Blazemagus

I wanted to go elemental for explicit “magic user” types - just the four basic elements, earth/air/fire/water. It felt very on-brand. And the first one of those four that I made was Blazemagus.

Fire magic in games is usually a damage-over-time kind of thing when it’s not just direct damage. In video games I think that’s mostly fine because there’s an expectation of fights lasting for enough increments that that matters. I’m not so keen on damage-over-time effects in tabletop, though, or at least not slow-trickle ones. I generally think the ideal tabletop combat fight is 3-4 rounds, so at most any such effect would matter 2-3 times - and that’s assuming an enemy who takes forever to take out! VH isn’t that kind of game, really, even Prime enemies will generally not last all combat.

The Blazemagus’s roles/subroles are Attacker (Spread, Break) and Supporter (Heal). Instead of that damage-over-time, they largely make it easier for themselves and others to launch more devastating attacks. Area effects are another classic fire thing (fireball!) so Spread was an easy second choice.

Part of my goal with some of these classes is to have things that surprise people for all of them. In this case, I wanted something that really contrasted the idea of the aggressive destructive mage type. I generally associate warmth with comfort (at least if you’re in a part of the world that has winter as such!) so that seemed like a good fit.

Based on this, I tweaked the suggested tales as such: two that sound a little more “standard” for aggressive wizard/sorcerer type, but one that has less of a martial or dark tone to it. The archetype ends up as more of a crusader than a destroyer, which feels right.

The Champion

I always want the fighter-type to feel cool. I firmly believe most fantasy games live or die by how well they do martial classes - not just because of the elephant in the room usually screwing that up badly, but in general because it’s indicative of what level of abstraction the game is working on. Champion started life as “Warrior” but that felt boring and I wanted to give off more of a “veteran”/“duelist”/“gladiator” impression. Someone extremely skilled, maybe a little flashy and overconfident, and hard to ignore. So, Champion!

The Champion’s roles/subroles are Defender (Provoke, Shield) and Attacker (Spike). I wanted to really emphasize “unignorable”, not just by classic taunt abilities (which it does have) but by indirect abilities. In this case I interpreted “provoke” as being mostly retributive: it does have one taunt ability but a lot of its kit instead just does Harm or extra Harm if they weren’t attacked by a given enemy last round, so a Champion who gets to the center of the battlefield will either be the center of attention or an offensive menace. In the event of the former, it’s got a few tricks to stay alive; in the event of the latter, it’s got a few moves to further increase its output. That said, its kit doesn’t have a lot of movement (minus one defensive ability) so it pairs well with abilities that move it around.

On the note of wanting martials to feel good, all of the Spike roles/sub-roles went to martial or part-martial attackers. This is intentional!

Next time: Commander and Dark Knight!

(Read the original on itch here!)

v1.2 released!

Tue, 15 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

v1.2 is up! I added two things:

There’s now a little more on campaigns and running them.
I expanded a bit on the mission prompts, changing crises into modifications on those prompts.

HOPEFULLY this is the version that will be the last one because I’m going to be doing a print run soon! Stay tuned for that.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

The fourth backer class is here! Meet the Steward!

Mon, 14 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

We cracked $2000 last night, which is well beyond any expectations I had for this crowdfunding period. Thank you all so much for your support!

The fourth backer class has arrived! Meet the Steward!

The Steward is a cultivating, budding hero.
It’s a support class focusing on healing and protection.
It’s very concerned with the land itself: setting up “safe” areas for allies to stay in or areas that mess with enemies.

It’s in that backer classes PDF. Enjoy!

(If you want to up your pledge to get one of these, itch doesn’t really do that unfortunately. But if you just buy Just The Game again, add enough to it to get to the higher tier, and let me know on discord/social media/by email, I’ll count it.)

(Read the original on itch here!)

Class Overview #1: Meet the Bard and Berserker!

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! I’m gonna reveal class art every week and talk about their design as I do. I’m gonna go start to end alphabetically, so meet the Bard and the Berserker!

On roles and sub-roles

I’m going to be talking about roles a lot in these posts. This is because I designed every class using Total//Effect’s role and sub-role concepts as a basis. Each class has three sub-roles: two from one role and one from another. The sub-role indicated in text with bold is the “primary” focus, and each class has a primary sub-role that no other class has. I also have an image highlighting them for each class!

These roles and sub-roles don’t do anything directly, they’re just a design tool I use to shape the kinds of abilities I give them.

The Bard

Minstrels are a Thing in heroic fantasy. Everyone loves to be self-referential about stories within stories, and rightly so: it’s cool and people should do it more. For its tales and skillset, I tried to focus on that aspect: peacemaking, inspiration, pulling on heartstrings, getting in your head, promoting social behavior, all the good things that art can do.

What a Bard ends up as in games has been way stickier over time. In Valiant Horizion, the Bard’s roles are Supporter (subroles Heal and Boost) and Defender (subrole Disable). From the beginning, I knew I wanted a non-standard healer. Cleric/White Mage/etc is so like…D&D, you know? I wanted something that would stand out. Given the change from HP/Health/etc to Vigor, something that invigorates characters would make sense. I knew I wanted some kind of “performer” class so Bard seemed like a perfect fit for it!

I’m generally in favor of full-support classes. (More on that later when we get to the Tactician. I love that “lazylord” archetype.) But I don’t think every support class needs to be full-support, you know? And Bard in particular feels like it would be a weird fit for it. I wanted to emphasize that idea of a performer, someone who’s constantly dancing around and flourishing and giving out praise and throwing around insults and confusing enemies. And as such, their non-movement Standard is an attack rather than a support ability, while the other two really emphasize smart placement and dancing around.

This more active/offensive focus is also something to cap off a different thing: The thing with healing as a focus is that it only matters if players are…getting harmed! If you’re all very good at the game it won’t happen too much. So they’ve got a few other tricks, some more supportive and some more offensive. But their dedicated-healing power is extremely good - if you’re going to spend an action for that, it makes perfect sense that it had better be worth your time, and it definitely is.

The Berserker

I like the idea of someone who just tears shit up and can’t be stopped. Conceptually, this is where its tales and skillset are going: no thoughts, just (angry) vibes. Its Exhaust suggestions amplify this even further.

Mechanically, it feels like the Berserker (which typically goes by Barbarian, but that name/concept sucks for a lot of reasons) is frequently a “you gain a short term buff that makes you better at fighting/staying alive”. Sometimes it’s paired with being worse at defending yourself. Sometimes it’s coupled with some kind of cooldown period afterwards because you’re all tuckered out from being angry or whatever. Sometimes you can do one big thing and tucker yourself out immediately.

I decided very quickly to throw that buff-concept out the window. Partially because the relationship-ability-swapping stuff would make that kind of special self-buff hard unless I made it a very complicated Trait, but partially because I don’t think it’s that interesting as a thing to pin a class on. It’s just another kind of buff, you know? I’d rather have something that signifies a certain kind of behavior in action rather than in a modification of action.

The Berserker’s roles/subroles are Attacker (Spread, Exploit) and Defender (Provoke). (Exploit is kind of a catch-all sub-role for Other Offensive Stuff: in this case it’s mostly offensive abilities that integrate movement.) I made a few non-obvious choices when picking primary sub-roles for classes and this is a big one: Berserker’s got way more AOE and multi-target stuff going on by default. It felt right: its default stance is indiscriminate destruction rather than highly focused attacks. Having an AOE ability as its main standard, being able to splash single-target damage, and having an attack+move standard makes them able to constantly stay on the offensive even while repositioning or finishing targets and hit a surprisingly high number of targets per action. It also has the best Vigor and recovery around, so in a pinch it can take more punishment than its more offensive focus might indicate - as such, its Provoke abilities (which penalize enemies who don’t attack them) won’t be too much of a problem if they’re judiciously used. (A few self-defense abilities or defensive buffs from others wouldn’t go amiss though, as it doesn’t have any built-in resistances - it can take another hit or two and bounce back more easily but that’s about it.)

Next time, I’ll dig into Blazemagus and Champion!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Third backer class is here! Meet the Astrologer!

Sun, 06 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

I’ve uploaded the third new Class, made possible by a very generous backer. Meet the Astrologer!

The Astrologer is a stargazing, prophetic hero.
It can easily provide full support via re-rolls, Advantage, and Disadvantage.
It has a lot of effects that mark or apply to locations, letting it shape the battlefield.

It’s in that backer classes PDF. Enjoy!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Mechanical choices: Diceless, Roll for Magnitude, and Roll for Success

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

This post is about the various mechanical choices made in Valiant Horizon at a very high level. I group these into three categories: Diceless mechanics (stuff that works), Roll for Magnitude mechanics (stuff that works but you roll to see how much), and Roll for Success mechanics (stuff that works if a roll goes your way).

Diceless

The simplest kind of mechanic. This is what Assets, Exhausting Assets, and Burdens are:

You take an action and it works.
If you didn’t expend a resource, you add or amplify a complication on that action.
- The complications here are Burdens.
- The resources here are Assets or Determination (which can either restore the use of an Asset or negate a Burden).
You can also reduce your access to a resource to achieve a larger effect.
- This is Exhausting Assets.

The vibe I wanted to achieve wasn’t “do you solve problems, overcome obstacles, etc.” so much as “how do you do it”. We are going to assume, generally, that the protagonists will get to the other side of whatever problem they encounter. The question then becomes: how do they win? What do they prioritize with asset use? What are they willing to let fall by the wayside or go imperfectly to get there? What resources are they willing to pull from the combat side to make it work? Are they willing to overextend themselves to achieve a victory? It becomes a question of resource management and long-term risk rather than short-term probability-based risk.

It’s also a matter of spotlight management and diversity of outcomes. If your Windmagus knows they only get one use of wind magic per session, they know they can’t solve every problem with that. But maybe they have something in their background that will suffice, or there’s a good chance someone else will have something else too that might work. Or if they think whipping up a tornado will solve the problem better, they won’t have easy access to their wind magic in the future, but it might be worth it. (Given that the penalty for Exhausting Assets is reset when you gain a level, this also encourages players to go a little more nuts with it near the end of a level - which should probably be something somewhat climactic anyway, so good!)

This is not how it’s going to work in every Total//Effect game. Liminal Void, for instance, has more traditional “skill” rolls with Assets being granted by skills or by tools, granting things like advantage or stepping up numerical outputs. Get you a system that does both!

Roll for Magnitude

Now, this isn’t to say it’s a diceless game! Far from it. You roll a lot in Valiant Horizon. But usually you’re rolling for magnitude and not success.

Generally I like the idea of failure-less combat. I’m sure plenty of people love the tension of whiffing attack after attack but it’s not my bag in almost any circumstance. I’m fully on board with removing roll-to-hit. One criticism I have of purely diceless systems, though, is that they can lead to very predictable situations, especially when diceless abilities are tied to set effects/powers. (It’s what spawned my quarterbacking posts. Now, of course a GM/Narrator/facilitator/etc can always introduce new things to the scene to spice things up - that’s why there’s a “the GM does something cool” thing in LUMEN, for example, and why I kept that rule in APOCALYPSE FRAME. But that’s already an intensive role, and requiring them to keep things interesting is sometimes a big ask.

As a middle ground, combat in Total//Effect still involves rolls for variable effect for set powers. They all get better at higher Totals (3 dice added), and most of them key something off of Effects (individual die values). This means that something always happens, no matter the roll value - depending on the ability, it may be extremely small, but it’s something. Correspondingly, even pretty middling abilities (like basic enemy abilities) can sometimes spike up hard on triple 6’s! (This happened literally the first Total//Effect session I ever ran. Incredible moment.)

If you’re wondering what probabilities look like for it, I wrote a big piece on it here. Back in October, so parts of it are outdated! I can hardly believe it’s been going this long. The math’s still good though.

This is also used for Fame rolls for Reputation: Fame decays by a die roll at semi-regular intervals. (This is actually an off-shoot of two separate Total//Effect systems that are in play in Liminal Void, Rolls for Progress and Threats, which are Good Clock and Bad Clock respectively. Having something that conditionally ticks up but at a non-constant rate adds another level of tension to an already tense thing!)

Roll for Success

There is exactly one thing that can still fail on account of a roll: Calling for Aid from Relationships. The tension I want in Valiant Horizon shouldn’t come from “does my cool combat stuff work” or “does the cool thing that my hero gave me”. It comes from “can I rely on my friends”. This is partially because it’s a huge benefit! It’s a 1/session/relationship thing where you can tag someone in out of turn and outside the action economy (if it goes well). But it’s partially because I want that tension: do you, does your character, think they can reliably call on their friends for help?

At low levels of relationship, the answer is…sometimes, but not really. At higher levels, you’ve gotten a better understanding of how to ask: you can reliably ask for lesser things, but grander things are still dodgy. And at the highest level, you can always rely on them: it’ll never fail as such. (Sometimes you’ll get a mixed result still.)

Dice, rolling, and such are tools in the toolbox. Knowing when you want to use them, how you want to use them, and why goes a long way.

Next devlog, I’ll get into the various classes and start showing off more of that incredible art Charlotte made!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Valiant Horizon post-itchfund-launch devlog #1: Diceless, Roll for Magnitude, and Roll for Success

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Valiant horizon logo

Diceless

The simplest kind of mechanic. This is what Assets, Exhausting Assets, and Burdens are:

You take an action and it works.
If you didn't expend a resource, you add or amplify a complication on that action.
- The complications here are Burdens.
- The resources here are Assets or Determination (which can either restore the use of an Asset or negate a Burden).
You can also reduce your access to a resource to achieve a larger effect.
- This is Exhausting Assets.

The vibe I wanted to achieve wasn't "do you solve problems, overcome obstacles, etc." so much as "how do you do it". We are going to assume, generally, that the protagonists will get to the other side of whatever problem they encounter. The question then becomes: how do they win? What do they prioritize with asset use? What are they willing to let fall by the wayside or go imperfectly to get there? What resources are they willing to pull from the combat side to make it work? Are they willing to overextend themselves to achieve a victory? It becomes a question of resource management and long-term risk rather than short-term probability-based risk.

It's also a matter of spotlight management and diversity of outcomes. If your Windmagus knows they only get one use of wind magic per session, they know they can't solve every problem with that. But maybe they have something in their background that will suffice, or there's a good chance someone else will have something else too that might work. Or if they think whipping up a tornado will solve the problem better, they won't have easy access to their wind magic in the future, but it might be worth it. (Given that the penalty for Exhausting Assets is reset when you gain a level, this also encourages players to go a little more nuts with it near the end of a level - which should probably be something somewhat climactic anyway, so good!)

This is not how it's going to work in every Total//Effect game. Liminal Void, for instance, has more traditional "skill" rolls with Assets being granted by skills or by tools, granting things like advantage or stepping up numerical outputs. Get you a system that does both!

Roll for Magnitude

Now, this isn't to say it's a diceless game! Far from it. You roll a lot in Valiant Horizon. But usually you're rolling for magnitude and not success.

Generally I like the idea of failure-less combat. I'm sure plenty of people love the tension of whiffing attack after attack but it's not my bag in almost any circumstance. I'm fully on board with removing roll-to-hit. One criticism I have of purely diceless systems, though, is that they can lead to very predictable situations, especially when diceless abilities are tied to set effects/powers. (It's what spawned my quarterbacking posts. Now, of course a GM/Narrator/facilitator/etc can always introduce new things to the scene to spice things up - that's why there's a "the GM does something cool" thing in LUMEN, for example, and why I kept that rule in APOCALYPSE FRAME. But that's already an intensive role, and requiring them to keep things interesting is sometimes a big ask.

As a middle ground, combat in Total//Effect still involves rolls for variable effect for set powers. They all get better at higher Totals (3 dice added), and most of them key something off of Effects (individual die values). This means that something always happens, no matter the roll value - depending on the ability, it may be extremely small, but it's something. Correspondingly, even pretty middling abilities (like basic enemy abilities) can sometimes spike up hard on triple 6's! (This happened literally the first Total//Effect session I ever ran. Incredible moment.)

If you're wondering what probabilities look like for it, I wrote a big piece on it here. Back in October, so parts of it are outdated! I can hardly believe it's been going this long. The math's still good though.

Roll for Success

There is exactly one thing that can still fail on account of a roll: Calling for Aid from Relationships. The tension I want in Valiant Horizon shouldn't come from "does my cool combat stuff work" or "does the cool thing that my hero gave me". It comes from "can I rely on my friends". This is partially because it's a huge benefit! It's a 1/session/relationship thing where you can tag someone in out of turn and outside the action economy (if it goes well). But it's partially because I want that tension: do you, does your character, think they can reliably call on their friends for help?

At low levels of relationship, the answer is...sometimes, but not really. At higher levels, you've gotten a better understanding of how to ask: you can reliably ask for lesser things, but grander things are still dodgy. And at the highest level, you can always rely on them: it'll never fail as such. (Sometimes you'll get a mixed result still.)

Dice, rolling, and such are tools in the toolbox. Knowing when you want to use them, how you want to use them, and why goes a long way.

Next devlog, I'll get into the various classes and start showing off more of that incredible art Charlotte made!

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Second backer class is here! Meet the Assassin!

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

I’ve uploaded the second new Class, made possible by a very generous backer. Meet the Assassin!

The Assassin is a deadly, subtle hero.
It can choose to gain bonuses to its Total against debuffed enemies, with the caveat that the debuffs are removed afterwards.
It’s a great combination of deadly and mobile, with debuffs and “finishers” - moves that cap out at extremely high Totals, but provide incredible rewards if met.
It’s technical and really shines with good teamwork!

It’s in the now-updated backer classes PDF (labeled 7-31), along with the previous backer class, the Adept. Enjoy!

(Read the original on itch here!)

First backer class is here! Meet the Adept!

Fri, 28 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

I’ve uploaded the first new Class, made possible by a very generous backer. Meet the Adept!

The Adept is a skilled, highly-trained hero.
It combos off of self-buffing/taking self-targeting utility actions.
It gets a lot out of taking/being given extra actions.
It’s the most mobile class I’ve written thus far!

It’s in that backer classes PDF. Enjoy!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Adapting Machinations of Court and Frame to a VN-ish format

Sun, 02 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

For @liananana's Narrat Jam 2, I'm poking my ideas for a political, intrigue-based mecha game that cares deeply about ties between people with power into a little linear VN storyline. A TTRPG designed for PVP troupe-level play is pretty different from a story following one person! So I'm gonna think out loud about what I'm changing and why.

Ah no I'm writing another dicelessness article by accident oh god help

Off the bat, one of the technological aspects I ran into is that Narrat is very particular about skill rolls. They're binary in nature, you have to define how they work up front, and you don't get the roll value on a check, just pass/fail.

Now. I could possibly hack something together to account for this, it does have access to a generic random function. But honestly, I'm not gonna bother. Total//Effect's core mechanic is fine if you're a person looking at dice but kind of annoying when you're telling a computer "pick the middle of these three d6's, or the lowest or highest if a specific thing happens, but also we care about the sum of the three, and sometimes it's roll five and take the highest 3".

So in two different ways, the core mechanic changes. And these have other impacts, so we'll just go into those here...

Relationship changes

Relationships in Total//Effect compare a die of 3d6, based on the request being made, to the number of Bonds you have with the person. (Bonds in Machinations default are mutual and also add Tells to combat against each other.)

Dice rolls in TTRPGs are a tricky thing. It's very easy to add them because everyone's doing it and just as easy to forget why you're doing them. FANTASTIC article on this here. In core Machinations, Relationship rolls are a way of doing a push-pull on another character: if you succeed on that roll, you do something that influences them to act in a specified way, through whatever means your shared Bonds provide. But a mixed success gives them more narrative control about it, and a failure means they can potentially turn it around on you. In a tabletop setting, it's really easy to account for all those branching possibilities because a) you can just make shit up and b) in this case in particular, it's two players.

The thing with VNs, etc is that's a LOT of writing and uncertainty. Disco Elysium's great at this kind of random-branching but think about how much branching dialogue that takes. And that's a game where most checks can be re-tried later after gaining a skill level! In a more linear story, you could have a roll or two that just completely fucks your entire intent. (This is why you see people playing those games savescum like mad.)

I don't like that model very much! I prefer the Age of Decadence narrative model. In that, there's NO randomization. If you have 3 Persuasion and 3 Streetwise, you can always succeed at the check that needs 6 total. (That said, it conceals the check-required values from you, so you can still fail by just not having enough.)

I'm going to make a small concession, which is letting folks reach beyond their grasp: a 1d3-1 (0-2) is attached on each relationship check. So if you've got a 5, you have a 66% chance of hitting a Difficulty 6 Check, or if you have a 4 it's a 33% chance, but you'll hit Difficulty 4 checks 100% of the time. (And I might gate a few of the more important Difficulty 6 checks behind a "you must be this tall to enter" anyway. Gotta commit if you want to do the most drastic things.)

Duel changes

Duels are not random at all. Ok, that's a lie, but the main randomization is the enemy "AI", not any of the outcomes. Once both moves are locked in, it's going to play out exactly as expected based on Priority (the rock-paper-scissors of Aggressive, Defensive, and Indirect that various moves have).

The big thing here is, again, creating interesting outcomes. My goal for combat is that failing one doesn't create a "do it again, stupid" scenario: I'm already planning to have failure outcomes for fights that move the story forward rather than force you to reload and try again. But again, I think it comes down to intent: in the context of tabletop, I think it's cool as hell that sometimes you can get some wildly swingy rolls that completely change a situation! MoCaF in tabletop form is going to largely give opportunities to be as equal as possible. But in the context of a single player game, I don't want it to be as all over the place. I'd much rather it be like a chess match: you pick the best you can based on the knowledge you have. And this extends to the Tells system: this is way more egalitarian in the tabletop game, as anyone you have a Bond with has as many Tells on your business as you have with theirs. Here, it's your special edge. You can definitely win fights without one but it's gonna be a hell of a lot less reliable. (Plus, that's an awful thing to program.)

I'm also not including escalation here, partially because I don't 100% know what to do with it in duels in tabletop, but partially because we don't really have rolls for it to influence.

One POV Character, Eight Predetermined Main Cast Members, Four Predetermined Houses

Machinations in concept is a very irregular TTRPG. Most have some idea of a single "group" that you follow: Machinations expects you to hop around various alliances and have players pull out their PCs from other alliances when they show up in their expected off-weeks to do politics, have intrigue, and fight.

For the sake of me being able to finish this game, you control one character here. Your relationships with those 8 other main cast members (four noble, four common) are the key concern. They relate to each other, of course, but that's in a non-mechanical sense (like they don't have capital-R Relationships tracked or anything, just what the narrative needs them to do).

Again, switching viewpoints would be cool! But holy shit is that a different proposition scope-wise. And ultimately it'd be way harder to do any kind of branching.

In the actual game, creating your own House is a thing! Each player creates two for the game as a whole. But in this, we're sticking with four predetermined:

House Alzur, an ancient House deeply invested in lineage from the first lightspeed traveler and steeped in tradition;
House Reyaal, new money from betting right on other Houses' conflicts;
House Montrant, a weapons-manufacturing House with eyes towards supply lines; and
House Weber, an extremely tiny house with a lot of connections: they own Amirus, the planet that the plot takes place on that all of the other 3 lay some claim on.

No Court Maneuvers and Status, but Backgrounds can matter

I'm eschewing Court Maneuvers entirely, just for complication reasons. But in their place, your starting Background (Scion/Knight/Captain) matters more directly!

Backgrounds tie into Status, which is a thing in the tabletop game but I'm leaving as more nebulous here. In the tabletop game having high Status is generally always good, but you get some benny points for being low-Status; in this, instead some situations will go better if you have less-blue blood.

Adaptation is interesting! I'm hoping I can get this one across the finish line. It's definitely ambitious but doable: most of the infrastructure is there, it's just a matter of filling in the branching tree.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

ANOINTED v0.2 is out, I made a tutorial for it, and I want to talk about it.

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

ANOINTED v0.2 cover

So ANOINTED just got a big update. Part of that is that I added a Tutorial region! I wanna talk about it.

The region

ANOINTED's premise is that you are an immortal warrior (an Anointed) who has been locked away for years following ages of glory, intrigue, war, and disillusionment. When you emerge, you have no memories, but are called/drawn/etc to return to the side of the (long dead) king to whom all Anointed are beholden by ritual bond.

Fitting that, the premise of this region is that moment of emergence: you are suddenly freed from the bottom of a prison and have to fight your way out. Along the way, you gain a little context about what's going on and regain a few memories.

(sidenote: My RUNE Realm The Cragcliff Reformatory was intended to be a tutorial for ANOINTED originally, but I had scrapped it because it was too much for a tutorial before repurposing it for RUNE and making this simpler one. You can see the influences/similarities if you look closely. Remember, don't throw anything away, just shelve it! It might come in handy later.)

Most Region maps are pointcrawls with multiple directions, branching paths, etc. This one's a straight shot, 1-2-3-4-5. Many would have clocks, for simplicity I'm choosing not to include one here.

Intro

I describe the setup, then walk players through chargen: pick a Background (Brigand, Cleric, Knight, Magus, Mercenary, Thief: these set starting Attributes and equipment, Souls-style), pick out two Memories based on that Background (which add +1 to an Attribute).

① Sanctuary Cell

It's the Sanctuary (i.e. bonfire, i.e. Sigil.) I put some text here reminding players a reminder here to check (and make a choice about) your equipment and make sure you know what it does before going to the next segment.

② Low-Security Cells

Here's the first area: an encounter with Dregs.

Dregs are my unsubtle replication of Souls Dreglings: earlygame enemies that are mostly a threat when off guard or in numbers. They're pretty weak. 2 per player is no big deal.

But...the thing is, depending on your setup, you just don't have to fight them. This is where Disposition comes in:

By default, they're Aggressive, aka attack on sight.
But...if you've got enough Conviction or Prowess, you can make them Wary. This means they won't attack you unless you try to scavenge! You can just walk on by if you're into that.
Or, alternatively, you can make them Fearful. This means you also don't have to fight them, because they run away. The implication is that this means they'll be your problem in the next area, but we'll get there - this is me setting an expectation that sometimes things will interact in unexpected ways. Because it's a TTRPG, you'll see what that interaction looks like in the next Location even if you didn't do it here!

The description tells you all of this, because this is a tutorial. If you choose to fight, it tells you how combat works GMlessly (each enemy acts based on range and conditions, Dregs are very simple and work purely on proximity to the closest target, with stronger attacks if they start their turn closer). It also reminds you about Embodying Grace (not-Estus). If you defeated them or scared them off, you can pick up some guard equipment (a Spear, a Round Shield, and some Leather Armor, giving folks a little bit of build variety). The Dregs have a Relic Scrap, which can make an encounter easier going forward.

③ Guard Station

Remember what I said about Fearful making Dregs run here? Well, if you do that, these guards will have killed those Dregs for you, but are in disarray as a result: those dispositions become default Aggressive (Guarded is worse because they start combat shield-up, this is an improvement), Distracted Skill 3 (which means you can ambush them).

Thinking about numbers, 5/6 of the classes start with 2-3 Prowess or Conviction (only Magus is low at both) and 3/6 of the classes start with 2-3 Skill (Mercenary, Thief, Magus). Given that you get +1 to two Attributes, this means:

Just about anyone can at least do at least the Wary thing if they want. Even Magus could get to Fearful if they put both Attributes into Conviction.
If you have two players who picked different Backgrounds, you've got a good shot at either being able to Fearful -> Distracting as above or pick the ambush from the getgo by splitting that 6 Skill Challenge into two 3's (which you can do, as long as both characters have 3 and expend their Skill).
If you skipped out on Fearful you've at least got the stats to make them Aggressive, which is better.

My notes here remind folks that Spearmen actually have defenses at all (Staggering them and attacking when they're not Guarding matters more) and that Apprentices deal Magical and not Physical Harm (meaning if you've been relying on tanking hits as a slow, heavily-armored Knight you might be in bad shape against that Apprentice: consider which Reaction to use, Guard vs Dodge vs Parry, and it might save your life). Because there's an Impassable hex in between, there's a high chance that nobody's going to be able to hit that Apprentice before it can attack, and if they do they'll find out about what Spearmen do at close range (it's shield bashing).

When they win, they'll get 2 Holy Water (restore Health) and 2 Rare Spice (restore Focus). Odds are they'll need a little pick-me-up at this point.

④ Entrance Foyer

No frills. This is a kind of "miniboss" to prepare you for the real deal.

My description notes that Knights are more dangerous and reminds you to reserve actions to use Reactions. It also reminds you that you can go back and rest, this area doesn't respawn enemies or have a Clock so it's fine.

I also reveal who freed your Anointed: someone in strange close with Volhyr's crest on them. This is when I spring the fact that you remember the King (or at least, your theoretical oath to him) and feel the call.

⑤ Courtyard

Big man on campus. This is your first Major Threat (boss): another Anointed who has been bound to serve as warden.

He's not too-too bad, but every time he hits a multiple of 10 Health (he has 30 to start) he'll spend his round calling for reinforcements while turtling up. This gives you a good opportunity to think about switching targets and changing tactics based on bosses' actions (as (thers will have big nasty attacks that you'll have to dodge triggered at this threshold).

At the end, I pose a Memory question asking about how you know of him (as he is also Anointed, you have likely crossed paths in the past). He's got a sword that can buff allies and a very big, chunky shield. Then, you're free to start the game properly!

I'm very proud of how it turned out and I want to do this for more games, it's fun and helpful. Give it a shot if it sounds cool!

(Read the original on cohost here!)

v0.2 release!

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! I’ve just released ANOINTED v0.2! This has:

A revamped combat system that removes dice entirely. (You can see a preview of my initial formulation here, I changed a few things from there but that’s the general idea.)
At long last, rules for exploration!
A tutorial region. If I did it right, it should hopefully give you some idea of how to play the game!

Give it a play, let me know what you think. It’s solo-friendly!

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Machinations of Court and Frame pre-production notes: Noble Houses and their Agents

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I don't have an actual cover for this one yet so for now you get a screencap from the SRD title. This one's still at pretty high level. But I did some of that high level work and I wanna talk about it!

Speaking of the SRD, this is the third Total//Effect game I initially proposed/outlined/etc on the Total//Effect SRD. My general (self)-pitch was:

Mecha, But Politics
- This Time, This One's About The People, Not The Mechs ^TM
  - (But it's also about feudalism and how internecine struggles between people in power completely do not care about the average person)
Political maneuvering and such. Heavy Faction emphasis in the form of noble Houses. Think Battletech or Game of Thrones or Dune.
Heavy emphasis on Relationships/Bonds/etc. They're big in Valiant Horizon but they're supposed to be even bigger here.
No "traditional" group tactical TTRPG combat. But there are mecha duels, because that's very important to me.

So first off, I think to give this the proper "space" (haha) to breathe, this one also needs to be a space game. This lets me be pretty vague on certain points without it being weird, especially I'm purposely relaxing "hard"-ness because the specifics aren't the point - everyone has FTL shit and can travel easy, planets are just habitable or terraformable and have atmospheres, it's fine. Get those good Dune/Battletech vibes going more so than like, Front Mission.

Given that, I think the proper order of operations is: Factions/Allegiances contain Houses which contain Planets. Factions/Allegiances are something that I think mostly gets hashed out in play but I'll focus on Houses/Planets.

Planets

The main resource I'm tracking is the number of planets they control, which is the only "resource" I'm tracking as such. More planets, more power in general: certain things can add "virtual" planets to this tally, like prominent (extra-population/resource/etc, counts as two) or independent (counts as half at most, is split X ways between any House with a trade agreement with them) planets. What do more planets get you? Each House gets X actions per Faction Turn: reinforce X planet, infiltrate Y planet, do some digging on Z, etc. I'm thinking the big benefit is that they get 2/3/4/5 actions if they have 1/3/6/10 planets: meaning a handful of lower Houses can overwhelm a higher one if they're isolated.

Houses

So off the bat, my first inclination was to do some kind of complicated 4X resource thing with Houses. But I realized very quickly that I didn't want that. The thing is that the interplay between Houses is not so much a game in and of itself as it is a backdrop to the personal action between agents of said Houses. Your points of view aren't the machine, they're also cogs in it, even if they are very important cogs. So what do we do for Houses?

To define a House, we start by defining the House's Distinction. This is kind of like a character class or playbook for the House. The ones I have down are Legacy (they're very old and storied), Money (they have a lot of it), Connections (they're got to where they are through intel and favor arbitrage), and Industry (they have control of some major supply of something, like food or ore). This is basically why they matter.

When you define this, the player making the House (this is a full-group effort, ideally, with each player making probably 2) is asked 3 Distinction-based questions to define something in particular about how the House got to where they are, who they're allied with, and who they're unfriendly with. Distinction also defines holdings, i.e. how many planets they start with, but it's based on a roll and each kind has various downsides: Money-Houses have High Die (average 5ish) but many are independent, while Connections-Houses have Low Die (average 2ish) but their capital is always Prominent. Because this isn't really a game about winning or losing, I'm perfectly fine with Houses starting on the front or back foot. For example, I rolled up 1 House of each kind to test this, and the Legacy and Money houses started with 4 each while the other two rolled very poorly ended up with 1 each. That instantly creates an asymmetric dynamic: maybe those first two are the major two powers, with the other two splitting one way or another (or combining forces to act as one...for now, anyway). That's workable!

The chosen Distinction also defines the Frames the House picks as its "core three" types (light, medium, heavy). I've defined 3 "lines" of mechs by name/manufacturer: the first is intended for old-money, focuses on melee capabilities, and labels theirs like TYPE-WEAPON; the second has more of a PMC vibe and labels theirs like 0X-ABC where ABC is a "character class" like KGT = Knight, RGR = Ranger, etc; and the third is full manufacturing and labels them XMYAZ (for instance MM10A4, like how the US military labels things as M16A4/etc). Legacy Houses have to pick 2/3 from the first (they're the oldest one, prior contracts, etc), Money houses have to pick 2/3 from the second (they have a expensive-but-practical vibe), Industry has to pick 2/3 from the last (more of an emphasis on no-frills craftsmanship), and Connections have to pick 1 of each.

Distinction does another thing with Relationships too but I'll get to it when writing about...

Agents

So the focus of the game is characters who are Agents. This is a very broad term that more or less comes down to "representative of a House, sponsored by them to get The Overwhelmingly Good Shit from their Frame manufacturer, sent to problem areas to fix or create problems or as liasons/representatives". Each player makes two and play shifts around various sides of a conflict on a per-session basis - when Agents clash, it could be with an NPC, or depending on what House moves have been taken, it could be another PC Agent! (And since direct conflicts are 1v1, you can just have this play out as PvP, unless both duelists were made by the same player.)

I'm taking a similar approach re: playbook/broad "class"-like distinctions to Agents. Specifically, I'm envisioning 6 kinds of Agents on a sliding scale of privilege/status/position from Heir/Scion at the high end (literally in line to be House leadership, or could be if enough people die) to Officer/Mercenary at the low end (not even nobles, just professionals who are good at mech fighting). The more important you are, the more Status you have: Status means that other characters with more/less relate to you differently. (One big one, for example, is that is no big deal for someone of higher Status to actually kill someone of lower in a battlefield duel, but someone of lower status is expected to find a way to disable rather than kill whatever inbred heir in their sight who has a death wish.) It does mean you've got more of a target on your back, however, and less ability to pivot around: I'm thinking a meta-currency equal to X - Status (probably 4 - Status, with Status being 1-3).

Playbooks/whatever I end up calling them also define a few things. I'm envisioning a passive ability relating to Relationships (like counting them as doubled for the purposes of Influence or unlocks), as well as starting packages: starting Relationships with the House and with people, and starting Moves picked from a big list split between Court Intrigues and Frame Maneuvers (like the Mercenary is Maneuvers-only at first, but it gets 4 instead of 3 Moves and can gain more of an appreciation for intrigue over time - think someone like Bronn from Game of Thrones).

Finally, back to Distinctions to talk about Relationships. When characters gain Relationships, they can take those out with other people (which gives advantages to influence them in particular) or with Houses. In addition to making it easier to influence them and various set benefits like extra Frame access or Tells on all that House's Frames or that person's Maneuvers, When they take a Bond (which is 1 of 6 points you can put into a Relationship, crystallized by a specific thing), they gain a token, which they can spend anytime to answer questions about a House: the questions in particular are defined by that Distinction/Playbook, and there's one good-connotated/one bad-connotated. For example, Legacy has a) What hidden secret in their past could propel this House to greatness? b) What dark event in their history or lineage is this House trying to hide? (Keep in mind these aren't just for good bonds, these can be for enemies too - a character can create a Relationship with a House they've sworn to bring to ruin, for example, and cash them in to create some horrid rift they can exploit, or a friendly Relationship can turn sour after a betrayal and lead to awful things being revealed on both sides.)

Hell Yeah

This game's gonna be cool as shit whenever I make it for real, folks. I mean I say this about literally every significant-sized game I make but this one's definitely also my baby.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

As promised, the compilation is (finally) here!

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

I’ve uploaded the PDF compilation of all 4 season pass modules into one coherent book. Everything should be up to date with v1.1 (hence the title).

Epub version coming soon.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

TTRPG Quarterbacking part 2: Solutions, kind of? Mostly vague ideas about solutions.

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Somehow this one didn’t make the great cohost migration! I’ve converted and back-dated it appropriately, and lightly touched up a header or two, but otherwise it’s intact. - Binary, Sep 22, 2025

So I outlined the problem (as it is) in part 1. This is the part where I think out loud about what to do about it as a designer.

Foreword #

I’m going to put this as the first thing because it can’t be stressed enough ~~and because I don’t really want to hear about how this isn’t an issue at anyone’s specific table or whatever because that’s not the point~~. Communicate with your players. If someone’s doing it a little too much you can probably just ask them to cut it out and they probably will. Folks are generally pretty reasonable.

We will ignore this going forward because it’s a really glib answer from a DESIGN perspective. But keep it in mind.

The second thing is that at the end of the day you don’t want to like, stifle general table talk unless you’re really, really sure you want to do that. A tabletop game is ultimately going to be an avenue for folks to hang out and sometimes that involves like, giving each other advice. This is more about ways to build and run a game such that naturally it doesn’t come up as much.

Strategic Quarterbacking #

Getting this one out of the way first. In group-based games especially, the biggest source of this is the combination of strict role protection and role requirement. A great example of this is the “holy trinity” of DPS/tank/healer in an MMO. For a noncombat example, think about a heist crew: Shadowrun for instance wants everyone to have specific, specialized roles and you’ll probably want a dedicated face, decker, magic person, getaway rigger, etc. Maybe not all of them for every job but you’ll feel it if one is missing over time.

Ways to mitigate this include:

Similar capabilities #

Make it so everyone can mostly do a similar thing, which is the thing you need to do. In APOCALYPSE FRAME you can basically make any strike team work because they largely all fill the role of “smash face”, the big difference is how much offense they have, how much mobility they have, how much they can get away being exposed along the way, and specific utilities from specific Frame abilities. This isn’t a great solution for every game but for explicitly combat-based systems especially, give this some real consideration: at the end of the day, if the thing you really need to do is move the ball forward, let everyone be able to move the ball forward.

Role overlaps #

Make it easy to fill multiple roles. In Valiant Horizon each class is written to have a major and minor focus between Attacker (extra Harm, breaking defenses, exploitation of positions and conditions), Defender (mitigation, control, and prevention of enemy action), and Support (buffs, healing, and giving allies extra actions). For example, the Berserker can do a lot of AOE Harm and has a fair number of abilities that move and attack (Attacker/Spread and Attacker/Exploit) but also has abilities that give penalties to enemies who don’t attack the Berserker (Defender/Provoke).

For less combat-ish situations like the heist example, challenges can be described in-system in such a way that they can’t only be solved in one fashion. Maybe it’d be better to hack security so help can’t be called, but maybe you can also just physically cut the cyber-phonelines to roughly accomplish the same thing. Focus on outcomes/results rather than means. (You can still make it narratively better to do one or the other - like maybe hacking can bring down autoturrets or reveal things to grab that cutting the lines doesn’t - as long as it’s not a hard barrier. It’s good to make choices count.)

Watch for bottlenecks #

Remove functional bottlenecks - areas where a particular function needs to exist - wherever possible. A big one for combat-focused games is often healing: if only certain classes have access to healing and damage is unavoidable to the extent that healing is expected, then there’s a bottleneck that you need a healer. For this particular instance, you can introduce other ways to avoid that, like damage mitigation, the ability to hamper enemy attacks, spike offense to the degree that you can defeat enemies before they attack, etc. You can also give everyone a way to “fill in” on roles: damage isn’t so one-sided towards attack-focused classes that other people can reasonably do it, non-defensive characters aren’t so comparatively flimsy that you strictly need a tank to draw fire, everyone has an emergency ability to heal themselves, etc.

Tactical Quarterbacking #

This is the meat of what I was getting into in part 1, and what got me thinking about it in the first place. As noted in my first post re: diceless designs, I think the “set” nature of being able to set up combos, etc. can cause this. A major way to combat it is to make situations less “solvable”.

Uncertain Outcomes #

Certainty is a major factor in this, so a major solution is to introduce uncertainty in a few ways. The first obvious move is to…introduce randomization again, of course!

Frankly I think a little randomization is fine, if not generally interesting! But I’d rather it be in the form of “how well did the thing you’re doing work” rather than a pure binary “did it hit or not”. This is the approach Total//Effect games are taking. (Basically fuck to-hit rolls as a base mechanic, they fucking suck. This has nothing to do with quarterbacking, but it’s important to me personally so I’m including it.) Also for games where players have a ton of actions (aka mine, I do this a lot), randomization can slow things down.

Another thought re: uncertain outcomes is to have everyone figure out their actions separately, then reveal at the same time, but this is a pretty specialized kind of mechanic.

Uncertain Situations #

Another idea is to just throw curveballs so players don’t know exactly what to solve for. LUMEN has this built in with its “do something drastic every round as part of the GM Turn” idea: you’re encouraged to constantly be changing the situation. But beyond that, just hiding information until something happens is a classic move. (Sometimes this creates quarterbacking in the way of contingency plans but like, after a certain point if everyone’s that on board, have at.)

This comes with a caveat: as a designer, provide tools and templates and ideas for GMs to do this without constantly having to come up with shit on the fly. Otherwise, it can add more narrative requirements to a role that can already be very overwhelming!

Uncertain Motivations #

Here’s another thing: How well do you trust your quarterback? Are they calling plays that best suit the situation or ones that’ll get them the hall of fame nod?

Games, mostly-co-op board games and video games, sometimes have a betrayer mechanic - thinking of the Battlestar Galactica board game where one player is a cylon so you can’t really trust anyone to truly lead the way on ideas, but you can see this in video games too with SS13, Among Us, etc. The goal is to do the thing, but the goal is also to find whoever the betrayer is.

Now. I don’t think you should do exactly that for a TTRPG! If everyone’s always second guessing everything everyone else does because they’re worried it’ll fuck everyone over then it’ll bog down everything HARD. (Though, if that’s your bag then go wild, sounds like fun to me but I recognize I’m weird.) What you can do as a less extreme measure is introduce personal/secret motivations alongside group motivations, and to instill doubt as to motivations for opinions. Does a warrior’s motivation suggesting the group try and take the demon lord on alone match his protestations about keeping civilians safe by not involving them or indicate that he’s a gloryhound? Is that wizard reticent to attack a shady group because they’re not doing anything wrong or because she needs something out of them? Basically, make it make sense to make your own call sometimes rather than rely on someone else. When you’re not sure you’re 100% on the same page as someone, you’re less likely to accept their recommendations and more likely to do what you feel is best.

Uncertain Communication #

This is one I’m reticent about because I don’t usually like restricting table talk too-too much (see foreword point #2) but: in tense situations, make communication mechanically scarce. Enforce taking actions to communicate things of substance. Give players explicit mechanical abilities to ask for help, or create situations where there are comms blackouts, like when player characters are separated. (I don’t recommend like, running two halves of a game as secret information because that shit’s annoying as fuck over time, and the tension of watching half your party fuck it up for you is palpable.)

You can also make the details each character has uneven, or even just subjective - different characters will notice different details about a situation based on who they are, perfect information is a lie - but that can be a pretty tall ask unless it’s very integrated into the system, and even then you can get weird situations where everyone’s unclear about what kind of information their character knows vs what they know.

On a related side note…

Idea: The Quarterback Is A Gameplay Construct Now #

Alright, hotshot. You think you got what it takes to run this operation? Congrats, you’re now the other characters’ handler. You don’t have an in-action character of your own, you run overwatch from afar and communicate information as best you can. If they hit a communication dead zone, they’re cut off and can’t talk to anyone except anyone local, so better hope you gave applicable advice prior to that.

If it’s a more local situation, you’re now the squad leader. You’ve got one free-action suggestion per round - anything past that needs an action - but also anything intelligent you face knows to go for the guy barking orders first. Best of luck.

Reduce Coordination Complexity #

So one major source of quarterbacking is coordination: you need to do X and they need to do Y so I can do Z, that sort of thing. If the first person doesn’t get the memo and isn’t on board for X then the whole plan could be up shit’s creek.

In general, when there are mechanical combinations, add in fallbacks. Sure, X + Y -> Z is the best outcome, but maybe if you have either X or Y it’s still better than nothing at all.

Reduce stakes out of character #

So honestly, one of the big takeaways I have re: quarterbacking is that it’s mostly when people think there’s going to be a really important outcome from a situation: losing is too painful or winning is too crucial. Honestly though? Unless it’s an especially brutal kind of game, not to spoil anything, but the good guys are gonna win eventually. And if it is that kind of game, generally the idea is to play to find out rather than ensure victory. If people start getting a little too intense about it, just remind them of the goal, whatever it may be. The benefit of TTRPGs is that it’s way easier than a video game to make situations recover from “everything went sideways” because everyone involved has way more narrative control: if things do go badly in a “the good guys will definitely win” kind of game the players and GM can usually come up with a way to bounce back. Encourage people to allow things to go sideways.

Conclusions #

Try out any and all of this as a dev/GM, but just be careful to make sure it’s actually improving the game. In a lot of cases being too worried about it just slows things down.
I think about this stuff the normal amount.

v1.1 release! Some extremely preliminary diceless rules!

Mon, 29 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! v1.1 is out. It’s nothing big:

A few clarifications in a few spots.
A few typo, bad reference, and bad copy/paste fixes.
Some layout normalization on Frame spreads re: right-page spacing.

I also made a chost about how I’d convert APOCALYPSE FRAME to diceless here. (At some point I’m going to clean that up and add other variant rule ideas I’ve been kicking around. Compiling The Infected World and updating Ballad of Industrial Gods come first though for APOCALYPSE FRAME work.)

Someone kindly made a roll20 module for APOCALYPSE FRAME as well which I’ve been periodically testing out - when that’s up, I’ll be posting about it here.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Thinking about (a very broad definition of) quarterbacking, especially as it relates to TTRPGs (part 1)

Wed, 24 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Somehow this one didn’t make the great cohost migration! I’ve converted and back-dated it appropriately, and lightly touched up a header or two, but otherwise it’s intact. - Binary, Sep 22, 2025

This is going to be a bit meandering and I’m not going to have answers at the end of this post because it’s already too fucking long. Bear with me.

Disclaimer/preface: I’m mostly spitballing based on my own experiences as someone who has both seen and done this. I’m sure there are better terms for what I’m saying and that I’m probably reinventing the wheel. I’m fine with that. I know about the killer/explorer/socializer/roleplayer model for multiplayer games already, it’s useful and there’s definitely an intersection point on a venn diagram of where it interacts with this but it doesn’t 100% map to where I’m going with this.

As I mentioned at the end of my post on diceless ideas for APOCALYPSE FRAME, I like the idea of resource-management-based rather than randomness-based methods for tactics games, but I am slightly worried that it would increase the prevalence of quarterbacking.

What is quarterbacking? #

Typically the definition used for this in this context is: in a setting where everyone is on the same team, one person (the “quarterback”) tells everyone else in the group what to do. I’m expanding that definition here into generalized situations where people are telling seemingly-equal peers what to do during a game or even to some degree when people feel pressured/coerced into taking certain kinds of game actions. I like to think of this on two levels:

Strategic. The kind of decision that’s made at a high level, usually before anything that actually happens takes place. Quarterbacking here takes the place like someone having to pick a specific class or character or role. If you’ve ever picked the party cleric because nobody else wanted to be a healer, even if nobody told you to or even suggested it, that’s what I mean. The more defined player roles are and the more essential they all are, the more this comes up, but it can also be reflected in things like equipment loadouts.
Tactical. The kind of decision that’s made at a per-action, per-encounter, etc level. “Go over here”, “do this”, “cover X other player”, “spend this level of resources but no more”, etc. The more important a given action or resource expenditure is, the more this comes up.

Tactical is mostly what I’ll get into because that gets to what made me think about this, though I’ll probably get back to Strategic later a bit in part 2 because I have a few thoughts there.

Where does this show up? #

As much as I’d love to say sports, in seeking a useful definition, I’ve actually defined it here in such a way that kind of crowds them out: in American football, for instance, it’s not intended to be an equal team of people making play decisions: roles are predefined, a play is passed down from a coach to the quarterback to players, and it’s up to them to stick to the spirit of the play while interpreting the best course of action along the way. In the context of non-sports, you can see it a lot in video games, board games, and RPGs.

Online games are a big one that comes to mind. There can be a lot of coordination involved and if you’re in a group of randos you will inevitably run into someone who decides to tell everyone else what to do. They’ll probably start being real shitheads if you ignore them too! Co-op board and card games have this too (I’ll get into this more below). And of course, TTRPGs, that’s what brought me to the dance after all and got my brain spilling all over the page about it.

Is this actually a problem? #

Maybe! It depends! It’s a really broad thing I’m outlining here so it’s hard to answer.

I think it’s a function of expectation going into it. For a lot of groups maybe this is how they like to do things: the strategy person gives out marching orders and everyone else goes along with it, everyone decides party composition ahead of time, etc. If one person is just not as good at using the tools at hand, they might ask for suggestions and that’s good! If someone’s obviously floundering, suggesting a way out of it is probably also good as long as they’re cool with it.

I’m going to use the cases of TTRPGs especially for cases where I think it can be a problem because I reckon there’s a few kinds of expression going on that can be at odds. I’m going to make some terms up so bear with me, I’m sure someone way smarter has come up with a better distinction but this is how I’m thinking about it:

Game state expression. This is the “trying to win/lose” or “trying to solve the puzzle” layer. This is where quarterbacking makes the most sense! If you’re coordinating to win then coming up with a strategy together, maybe with someone setting it all out, can definitely make perfect sense.
Narrative expression. When you think about an action scene or a fight, usually there’s one of two things happening. One, there’s a major plot point that’s getting resolved by it. This is where you get like “boss fights” and “setpieces”. Two, and this is more common, they’re pretty low-stakes but are used as a way to show off how characters prefer to do things. Does a vulnerable character keep distance or put themselves at risk? Does a bruiser character pick targets to keep friends safe, to take down easy pickings, or to go for the biggest thing they can see? Do defensive characters mostly keep themselves alive or protect others? This is where I think TTRPGs can really shine. Sub-optimal play isn’t strictly necessary for this, but situationally, it can be a way to express this. Quarterbacking often steps on those impulses, but not always: maybe characters are willing to put their personal ways of doing things aside for the greater goal, and that can be narrative development too! But I suspect that’s not going to be the response every time.
Personal expression. Sometimes people don’t like to do a certain kind of thing, you know? Maybe someone doesn’t like their characters having less than half health even if it’s like, fine. Maybe someone never wants to spend more than half of their resources “just in case” even when that makes no sense. Maybe someone always goes full auto instead of using bursts because it feels better. Maybe someone only prepares AOE attacks instead of individual-target ones. But it sure would be better for everyone else if they did things that made more sense! This is the one that quarterbacking can really clash with because it’s often strictly suboptimal behavior.

I suspect you’re going to see quarterbacking be more accepted and less of a problem in video/board/card game scenarios because Win The Game is a lot more emphasized in those, so there’s more acceptance of taking some direction from others in order to succeed because that’s why we’re here. Personal expression still crops up for sure, but aside from like roleplay servers or the more nebulous early phases of an MMO - Dan Olson’s example of a WoW player who always stays shoeless and always walks outside of combat and eventually draws the ire of their guild is a great example of that transition, for example - I don’t think there’s honestly too-too much in the way of narrative expression for multiplayer video games. Your “verbs” and goals are necessarily much more actively restricted too, which furthers this - no matter how you feel about your character or whatever, at the end of the day, W or L is in many cases the thing the game expresses, so that’s what folks will aim for. (Some games are, of course, better at this than others.)

Now, this is not to say that I’m drawing a “rollplay vs roleplay” distinction. I would really hope we’re several decades beyond that. (I know we’re not actually but I like to be optimistic.) What I’m saying is that in a given situation, someone playing the game is going to have several motivations pulling them in different directions, and in a lot of cases any of these can lead to folks telling other people what to do or feeling like they have to do something they don’t want to. I mostly think this is a game state vs. other motivations thing but it can definitely happen from narrative or personal angles too: if someone has ever told you that your character probably wouldn’t do something, for example, there it is!

Why does turn-based make this more of a thing? #

There will almost certainly end up being “correct” decisions, and when there are “correct” decisions, there will always be a frustration in some players when others aren’t making them. You can correlate this extremely strongly with the margin for error for victory/etc narrowing: as soon as there’s a perception that a binary win/loss is at stake, people will start to do this more. And the longer a game lasts, the more likely this is. The idea of playing a co-op game for 4 hours and losing kind of sucks - much less a campaign that lasts a year and is on the brink of ending in a TPK or whatever!

For turn-based games, you have much more of an opportunity to draw out a turn and figure out the exact optimal thing, and do an “are you sure” or “please do this instead” when someone says the “wrong” thing. In contrast, for a video game that’s real-time (and especially one that’s remote!) you don’t really have a chance to second-guess anyone’s course of action, they’re just going to do what they’re going to do and you can either scream obscenities at them for it or not. Depending on the game, they may not even be able to hear it!

Why does removing randomness also make this more of a thing? #

Let’s imagine a three-person combo: Person A sets something up with one ability, Person B primes it in some key way with another, Person C finishes it off with a third that ends up as something far greater than the original. Great! This is what co-op tactics games are made of! It’s cool when people contribute. We love to see it.

If this works every time, if all of them can be guaranteed to be able to happen, then setting things like this up is the play, no question. If you’re Person B, you’re guaranteed to be decreasing the value of your actions by doing something that isn’t bridging that gap between A and C unless there’s a situational reason not to do that. If you can’t guarantee any part of that combo happens/will work, though, the value of being able to set those combos up decreases or they’ll be much shorter/more conditional to account for it.

This isn’t to say it’s useless when there’s more uncertainty, but there’s way more latitude for not sticking to the plan when things have an increasing number of ways they can go off track.

Can’t we just solve this by talking it out. #

Yes. I feel the need to emphasize this, yes. I’ve done it in the past. You can always talk to a group of friendly folks to fix almost anything. It’s always correct and valid to just talk to people if there’s an issue if that’s an option. Talk to your friends.

Now that that’s out of the way, I think it’s a bit of a thought-terminating cliche. Of course you can just ask your friends to knock it off…but that assumes you’re playing with friends, and often if you’re playing with someone you aren’t that comfortable with it’s way harder to do - doubly so if that’s how they’ve always played and they’re not sure what they’re doing wrong. And especially if you’re time-limited, like at a con game! “Suddenly become an extrovert” and/or “figure out how to confront people you don’t know” is a little beyond the scope of this topic, and if you can teach people how to do that, write a book about it or something.

Ideally I’d like to design and run games so it doesn’t feel like it needs to get to that point as often or as quickly. For instance, a game that’s wildly poorly designed and unbalanced requires a lot more pulling punches and intentional spotlighting to keep things even-keeled than one that isn’t, you know? For traditional GM-centric games it puts a lot of work on them, and even for more distributed-role games it adds a ton of work that doesn’t have to be there and expends a lot of energy that could go elsewhere. As such I think there’s value in figuring out design and play tools to help myself and others with this (and luckily, there are neat examples to pull from).

Next time.

Diceless but it's APOCALYPSE FRAME, or: I Do Love The Token But I Am Now Worrying In A Different Tangential Existential Way

Tue, 16 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

apocalypse frame front cover cropped

Same idea, different game. I'd considered dicelessness for APOCALYPSE FRAME first, actually, but decided it wasn't worth putting it in the core game because I wanted it to come out ever. The big reason I'd do it is that rolling dice actually does slow things down quite a bit and for the most part players usually just reroll with Tension in combat so it's not like consequences come up that much unless folks are using low-die Armaments with low Tension or rolling low Attributes for some reason.

The current situation

It's more likely folks have this game but again, odds are you're not wildly familiar, so here's the rundown of random/non-random elements.

Random

Attribute/Approach rolls. LUMEN standard, roll Xd6 and take the highest, 1-2/3-4/5-6 bands for fail/partial/success.
Armament rolls. These are like Attribute rolls but are based on the Armament - an accurate Assault rifle has 4 dice associated with it, for example, while the powerful but slow Plasma Blade has 1 die. Various Armament tags can amplify this: that Plasma Blade has Charge which lets its first attack have 2 dice instead, meaning it's more reliable 1/turn.
Drops. For each (non-insignificant) enemy killed, roll a d6: 1-2 is a Material (used for advancement), 3-4 is Tension, 5-6 is Vigor.
Shields. Roll a die: if it's lower than or equal to your current Shields value, Shields drop by 1 and the Harm is nullified. If it's higher than the value, the Harm goes through.
Cover destruction and random locations. Usually these amount to: roll one die, on a 1-2 cover is destroyed or artillery scatters or etc.

Not Random

Resource generation by Build (with exceptions).
Systems use. That's NOVA-esque "spend the resource and it happens".
Tension use gives you an extra action that turn (prior to rolling to actually do the thing).
Armor, unlike shields, just flat reduces Harm by X (usually 1 when it exists, occasionally 2).

Attributes/Approaches

I looked at NOVA Tactics for this one and tweaked it slightly by stealing the BOB idea of strong (spend 1 token)/neutral (no spend)/weak (gain 1 token) moves.

For each Approach, you gain a number of Tokens for it equal to the value. (Approaches are always 3/2/1, so this is 6 tokens.)

If you want to do something without error, pick the Approach of your choice, describe how you do it, and spend a Token. It happens, no frills.
If you want to do something with some risk, pick the Approach of your choice and describe how you do it. Don't spend any Tokens. The GM describes what happens as a result.
If you want to do something with major risk, pick the Approach of your choice and describe how you do it. Gain a Token for that Approach (can go up to a maximum of the value). The GM describes what goes really wrong as a result. (This is a double-strength complication: GMs can activate two enemies if this is in combat or have something go twice as bad, for example.)

Anything that says "use an Approach" from here on means to make the above choice.

L1-RECON's Signature Feature doesn't really make sense anymore without rolling, so it has its Signature Feature changed to "once per mission, you can treat an Approach as if you had spent 1 Token more to use it".

Armaments

Obviously number of dice isn't a relevant thing anymore, so we have to replace it with something so I don't have to rebalance everything.

The Attack action is changed to just succeed. However, scratch out "dice" and replace it with "tokens" in every Armament entry: you must spend a token from it to use the Attack action. You can use an Approach to reset an Armament's Tokens to its max value.

There are bunch of tags and a few systems that add or subtract dice which don't make sense anymore. The majority can just be swapped to +1/-1 Harm with no frills as a MVP - that's basically what enemies do already and it's fine - but for greater diversity in tags I'd probably want to swap a few to do other things (like interact with those Tokens). A few do need more substantial changes:

Burst (normally +1 Harm on a 6) probably gets changed to "every time past the second time that you use this during a turn, attacks gain +1 Harm".
Splash (normally all other enemies at that hex take 1 Harm on a 6) probably gets changed to something like "you can use a second Action or Armament Token when using this to also deal 1 Harm to everyone Close to the target". (Splash+ makes this just happen without having to spend another action/token.)

Build

Re: Builds, most of them are fine. I think the main one we have to tweak is MX-BEACON, which, in addition to regaining 1 Vigor rolls a die and checks against current Tension to determine what it does. Change that rolling behavior to:

If your Tension is at half or more, your next System use is free.
If your Tension is at half or less, gain 1 Tension.

so it becomes more about maintaining an exact equilibrium at half tension if you want to maximize your Build's results. It's not exactly the same vibe but like, it's something.

Drops

By default we just say that drops are distributed evenly: for every 3 enemies defeated, gain 1 Material Drop, 1 Tension Drop, and 1 Vigor Drop. If there's a non-multiple-of-3, players pick where the other 1 or 2 Drops go (but if there's 2, it can't be both Drops to the same thing).

Before assigning drops, each player can choose to use an Approach or remove 2 of one kind of Drop to add a Drop of their choice.

Shields

I think the approach to Shields looks like "halve all instances, but each Shield blocks one attack without Piercing". Keeps it short and simple. A few things that add like one Shield probably need tweaking but that's fine. Players can use an Approach to circumvent all enemy Shields for one attack.

Cover/Scatter/etc

I think these come down to "the worse thing happens by default unless players use an Approach". For example:

For Cover if an enemy is being attacked, it holds up after the attack; if a player is being attacked, it crumbles after the attack.
For artillery scatter, it hits the designated location, but a player can use an Approach when it would hit to either move out of the way or have it move to a location of their choice.

And that covers everything, I think! None of this shit is playtested AT ALL so I'm sure it needs tweaking but at a high level it seems functional.

Uh Oh, A New Challenger To Worry About Approaches

Buuuuuttttt...in mocking these out, I'm wondering if this is overall a great idea. Dicelessness in general for tactics, that is. The thing with extremely repeatable outcomes is that you can set up extremely repeatable combos and it becomes extremely optimal to do that. While that can be cool, I'm wondering the degree to which this leads to more intense quarterbacking - when 1-2 people basically tell everyone else what to do with their turn. It's not a big deal when a scenario are intentionally, extremely PC-skewed but as soon as Shit Gets Real it can start to kick in hard because players start to care about outcomes. You start to get into situations where when everything is extremely resource-based, personal resources are team resources, so there's optimal and suboptimal ways to handle things.

I don't know. Is this even a problem actually? Maybe this is fine. It's not like dice-oriented design prevented that either, you know? Can anything? Is this even a solvable problem (if it is one)?

That's gotta be another post and not this one, we're out of scope.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Removing/Reducing Dice in ANOINTED, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Token

Mon, 15 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

ANOINTED cover cropped

I had been thinking about the topic of randomness when writing entries for Regions for ANOINTED23, but Spencer Campbell (GilaRPGs, creator of LUMEN/RUNE/etc) wrote two blog posts (with a third on the way) that got me thinking about it. Specifically, I'm wondering if I could/should just remove dice almost entirely from ANOINTED, my GMless or GM'd/group or solo soulslike game in development.

The current situation

In the interest of not assuming people have any idea what I'm talking about (and also to have it in one handy place for later) I'm going to list out the random/non-random parts of the game.

Random

Determining memories from a table in chargen and play (though this one's optional, you're allowed to just pick one or make something up, will ignore this as a result, you do kind of need some kind of randomization to roll on tables after all)
Attribute checks (the game has 4 attributes, Prowess/Skill/Conviction/Knowledge, which add to a few derived stats, act as weapon/spell prereqs. To do various things, you roll that many dice, FitD/LUMEN style (take the highest, 1-3/4-5/6 fail/partial/success).
- Disposition checks (you can use a specific kind of Attribute check with custom values for enemy groups to change how you interact with them, like a Skill check to make them Unaware instead of Aggressive if you want to sneak by/ambush them, that sort of thing)
Dodge and Parry (you spend Stamina or Focus respectively, roll dice equal to your current Stamina or Focus and take the highest: Parry needs a 6, Dodge needs a 6 but lets you spend more Stamina and reroll on a 4-5). Enemies can Dodge/Parry but it uses a different mechanic (roll under a number).

Not Random

Activating weapon/spell abilities just spends Stamina/Focus and an Action. No roll needed. (This is part of why I think it's a good candidate to try this.)
Movement.
Enemy actions, even in GMless. They're purely based off of distance from a PC.

Attribute/Disposition Checks

This was the thing that got me thinking about it before Spencer's articles: When making areas, I didn't really like how I imagined this would play out given the Souls-ish checkpoint design. I'm growing kind of lukewarm on success/partial/fail design without a good reason for it anyway but especially in the context of a solo game it feels like a weird fit. I'm bad enough at coming up with consequences for games as a GM, coming up with them solo is tough. It also doesn't feel very strategic at all, you either succeed or you don't, which isn't a great feeling of choice.

Instead, I think I want to use a token-based system for it.

You have a number of tokens for each Attribute equal to the Attribute's value. They restore upon return to a Sanctuary.
Obstacles, opportunities, etc that require something like this to proceed are looking for a certain number of tokens from a specific Attribute or two listed. If you don't have that many, you can't do it.
- Right now I'm thinking 2, 3, 6, and 10 Tokens as like easy/medium/hard/nasty cutoffs. For example, something you have to climb that's a little tough might be noted Prowess 3, or if you can tough it out just by persistence, Prowess/Conviction 3.
- This works as-is for solo or single+GM play. For multiple PCs, I think I'll raise those cutoffs by 1 per extra PC (so if you have 4 total, it becomes +3 for 5/6/9/13), but you can split any of them two ways as long as it's an even (or even+1 in the case of an odd number, so like 6/7 for a 13) split.
- If you have a proper tool to do something - climbing tools for climbing, rope for descending, lockpick for picking locks - halve the number of tokens (round up). This is what makes those 10's more possible before like, endgame stats.
You can restore all tokens to one Attribute with a use of Grace (aka not-Estus), so it's harder to block yourself, but you're spending from Health Restoration to do it.

For Disposition, same thing. An encounter currently looks like:

Default Defensive, 4-5 Aggressive, 6 Wary

for something where you need to roll a 4-5 when trying to aim for Wary or a 6 to aim for Unaware. Whereas with this it might be:

Default Defensive, Aggressive 3, Wary 6

which indicates token costs.

Dodge and Parry

This one's a little trickier. The goal prior to this was to make it feel different than blocking and it needs to maintain that.

I think the play is to introduce a number of Reactions alongside number of Actions. (Right now characters have 2 + Skill Actions per turn, it'd probably be 2 + Skill Actions and the same number of Reactions to start with.)

A Dodge Reaction is always available. It negates all Harm* and you move a hex. You always spend 3 Stamina to do it but it takes 1 + Encumbrance Reactions (but you can overspend at no cost as long as you have at least 1 Reaction).
- Enemy attacks with Slow require 1 fewer Reaction (min of 0). Makes it make more sense for "fat-rollers" to try that against really nasty slow stuff.
- Enemy Dodge/Parry is probably just "number of times they can do this automatically in a round".
- That * is because Undodgeable is probably going to be changed to "if you dodge out of the AOE, you're fine, otherwise you take Harm as if you didn't dodge". We're not doing I-frame stuff on tabletop, if you're in the shit you're just in the shit.
A Guard Reaction requires a piece of equipment with the Guard ability (shield, etc). It uses 1 Reaction but spends Stamina equal to Harm blocked, or 0 Reactions if it blocks half as much Harm as its Defense.
- Enemy Guard works as it currently does, no number of reactions tracked, just boosts current defenses/poise.
A Parry reaction requires a piece of equipment with the Parry ability (shield with Parry, parrying dagger, etc). It negates Harm and the attacker is staggered. You always spend 5 Focus to do it and it takes 1 Reaction. (At 0 Knowledge, this is all of your Focus. At 5, you can do it twice. It's very powerful but costs a lot.)
- Spell keyword works as-is.
- Unwieldy adds 1 spent Reaction to this.

Notes:

Dodge/Parry lose the "roll dice equal to current Stamina/Focus" thing but I'm not terribly married to that idea honestly so that's probably fine.
This makes Skill a bit better, which is worth keeping an eye on, but also means Skill builds are way more dodgy, which was kind of the intention prior to this anyway.

We'll see how this works! Might mock out what a diceless approach might look like in APOCALYPSE FRAME at some point later, I've got some conversion ideas.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Liminal Void: Professions (like Classes but not really). What are we doing here?

Wed, 03 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Liminal Void cover

So I'm thinking about what I'm doing with Professions in Liminal Void. A Profession is like...a class, kind of/sort of? It's got a starting skillset (basically a broad Skill category), a little passive ability that differentiates it, a few changes to being able to recover/reload/recharge in combat, and a starting equipment package (which includes an outfit, a capital-T Tool, and two consumables).

Beyond the mechanical aspects, though, there's a few things I've been thinking about. What is the purpose of this, and should I extend it further?

Worker Professions

If you haven't read the free quickstart, I've got 6 in there:

Laborer
Driller/Excavator
Pilot
Technician
Engineer
Foreman

And I'm also going to be adding 6 more:

Demolisher (person who breaks down ships/station walls/etc, has a big portable-wrecking-ball driver)
Doc (tor, making the distinction that this is probably not someone with theoretical so much as practical medical training)
Janitor (it's a janitor, has a self-propelled waterless cleaning device)
Surveyor (person in charge of measurement, has a ranging/highlight-for-targeting laser)
Sysadmin (has a movie-hacker-style device)
Welder (high-temperature specialist)

The idea is that for any given Level 0 scenario, you can pick 6 of these that best fit it (6 for easy randomization) and go, characterizing it in a different way. Your character is a lot more defined by equipment than this stuff, but it'll make a pretty big difference over time.

I'm quite confident in the first 6...some of the last 6 are kind of a stretch or might be too specific. We'll see. I might also add a few more if I come up with 6 more ideas.

Mercenary Professions

Obviously given the easy formulation (skillset, talent, outfit, tool, consumables) I've been looking at swapping "Tool" for "Weapon" conceptually (given the two mechanically work roughly the same way, it's just that weapons are better at offense, use ammo, and have very few uses outside of combat) and creating professions based around more martial (or non-tool-using) things.

Now. I have mixed feelings about this. The big thing I want to avoid is letting this into A Dedicated Combat Game. It's got the ability to do that for sure, but I want that to be opt-in - if a character is set up just to do that from the word go, it's going to slide way more in that direction by implication. If your character's main talent is "do guns better" then, well, guess what they're going to do, probably. I don't really want to set players up to just do that.

On the other hand, though, it's not like taking on mercenary contracts isn't a part of the game, and that can involve hiring help - or if someone dies, maybe that hired help becomes a permanent fixture. (Or even before then, I strongly promote the idea of troupe play for this.) And for that matter, some people just have a more martial outlook on life. Not everyone started their career as a space plumber or whatever, or even if they did, it's not really always the most relevant thing about them, you know?

Right now the compromise I'm thinking is:

Backgrounds that leverage 6/12 of the weapons (basically, not the more situational/"heavy weapon"/"this is basically only for cops" ones). Right now I'm thinking:
- Hunter (typically of the bounty kind, has a Revolver. Probably overlaps Investigator? I'll think about this one some more.)
- Infiltrator (sneaky bastard, has a Rail Pistol)
- Investigator (private eye/intel, has a Laser Pistol)
- Marine (boarding/CQC specialist, has a Shotgun)
- Sharpshooter (what it says, has a Rail Rifle)
- Soldier ("being in firefights" specialist, has a PDW)
Explicit guidance to not start with these these at Level 0 for characters, except if it makes sense through play. For example in Escape from CICP-1 there are a few corpsec soldiers and raiders that could defect, so if one of them joined the party that could make sense, but everyone starting out is going to have a Worker Profession.
Guidance as to how best to use these when starting at Level 1: basically, make sure that your Background is something that helps them gel with the rest of the party.
Integration in play: describe what kinds of characters you meet and hire with these kinds of backgrounds. Explanation of retraining at Tier too, like if you were an Engineer but you basically only shoot people nowadays maybe that part's not so relevant anymore.

But we'll see. I might just put a bunch of the Talents I was gonna use for those 6 into a list for players to take during advancement.

Conclusions

As usual, I have none other than "I'm gonna try some shit out and hope it works", but I still like making a final header for these writeups so here you go.

Once again, there's a free quickstart for this game if you're interested.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Dungeon23/ANOINTED23, March and April roundup (oops)

Tue, 02 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Tower of Godfrey map (March)

The Village of Plainswall map (April)

Updating has been pretty spotty for reasons of "I wrote basically 150 pages of Game in these two months"! But as I had time to catch up on Month 4 and finalize it, here's my two.

The Tower of Godfrey

A prison that was originally built to house Godfrey, a rune sorcerer who did something egregious that was lost to time. Over time, it expanded to house other inhabitants. Legend has it that Godfrey knows a long-buried path to enter Volinn, the shadow-torn kingdom where the dead king who calls you to his side lies. But the prison has been untended for years, and its inhabitants and wardens are both twisted beyond recognition.

The Region Clocks here are Time and Alert: as time goes on and as you do things that raise alarms, more enemies swarm. There are two entry points: the "left" side is a jailbroken cell in the new section of the prison (6 on the left, which soon became 13 because oops but I don't feel like updating the picture), while (1) is the main entrance. You can get a key for the Warden area (4-5-6) in that new section by defeating a miniboss (a nasty prisoner) or just pick/kick down the Warden area's lock; you do need a key to get to (10-11-12), however, which is in that Warden area. There's also a second miniboss (the warden) guarding a prison control that makes fighting Godfrey easier.

Godfrey is a very dodge-heavy enemy who sets "trap" inscriptions all over. The prison control decreases the traps' range, and you can set them with an Inscription you get from beating him.

The question asked of you is: What did you learn or do during your life that could inspire someone to lock you away forever if they found out?

The Village of Plainswall

A small village, curiously empty save for a few soldiers and knights. But nightfall betrays a hideous secret...

The Region Clock here is Night. It's a 4-segment clock that, when it fills, doesn't un-fill until you die or rest, and changes encounters and items you can retrieve.

This is intended to be another interstitial region, and one that leads to The Battlefield of Karus - so the soldiers and knights here are deserters from that region's 5th Regiment. This is the first appearance of Captial-SE Shadow Enemies - the villagers here did a ritual to protect themselves that got compromised and got them Shadow-tainted, but the ritual holds enough to keep it contained until night-time.

This one's built to be a lot more "puzzley" - you can escape at (8) in the daytime as soon as you open the gate at (4), which you can get the key for at night at (3), but you can only open the gate during the day. However, there's optional things you can do: a slightly nastier encounter at (7) night reveals what you need to complete the ritual fully and stop the clock finally, which allows you to return to (7) during the day (which is normally not reachable due to the clock being 4 segments) and get a new weapon.

The question asked of you is: What have you done for power or protection that you regret?

I'll settle on one for this month sometime today.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

v2 released!

Thu, 20 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

I just released version 2 of NANO after a little testing and tweaking. My main takeaway is that it needed to be a little more play-to-lose.

Surviving 7 days is framed closer to a partial victory (and can also be a loss). (This encourages people to go for Breakthroughs rather than only putting out fires.)
All actions ding you on at least Fatigue on anything but Harmonize. (It was far too easy prior to lean on Prepare/Progress especially, but also I wanted to preserve the general flow of “you can do however many things you like as long as you think you can keep it up” to encourage people riding the razor’s edge of an Error.)
- All Resists now have Gain 1 Fatigue as their Harmonize (Sustain is now 2/3 for its Synchronize/Interfere).
- Prepare’s Synchronize is now +2 but gains Fatigue.
- Progress’s Synchronize now provokes a Resist.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Liminal Void updates: Advancement is hard and weird

Thu, 06 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Liminal Void cover

Advancement in a game is tough. Or rather, like all things in game design, you can kind of just do whatever with it but it'll have long-ranging implications as to player behavior. As much as we don't like to admit it sometimes, numbers going up very frequently provide a throughline and driving force for campaign-length games, but how those numbers go up matters. If you give XP for gold, guess what, your game is now at least partially about making money. If you give XP for killing things, guess what, you're going to see a lot of killing. If you don't have XP but just give out character levels when important milestones get finished, they'll frequently beeline to those milestones. And so on.

That last one is mostly how I run my various "heroic" (D&D-like) games with levels. I don't like tracking XP, mostly because it's boring accounting that amounts to the same thing and/or encourages weird behaviors. But I think micro-tracking in that sense works better for something like Liminal Void, which isn't supposed to be about those kind of big epic quests and is at least somewhat about ups and downs.

Methods of advancement

The first method of advancement in Liminal Void is pretty standard: you make money. The more you can spend on your ship(s), the more you can make. Classic stuff. The second is kind of a standard thing, but I'm gonna get there through a third thing that hooks into it but is also its own thing.

First: Money and Spending It

This one's a no-brainer. Get money, spend it on your ship (or get more ships), repeat. Over time, the money you spend for upkeep goes further, as ship upgrades and being able to store better tools for various jobs make various regular expenditures cheaper. And so on and so forth. To wit, there's a fuckload of things you can spend it on for your ship (including just making your living space better), and eventually you can just get a second ship or more crew members or such.

Second: Levels and Tiers

This one's a little weirder of a fit, most games of this type do a point-buy thing for spending XP on skills or whatever. But I think there's a certain value in being able to track, like, general proficiency and status.

What you actually get per-level is pretty low-key. A few bonuses to personal durability/loadout flexibility (a choice between extra Health, Endurance, or equipment slots) and a choice of some passive abilities, as well as better credit for taking out debt. But it's something.

Every three levels, you gain a Tier. This is a 4E/13th Age idea that I've carried forward to Total//Effect because it's really narratively convenient: it represents which kind of

But how do you determine when to gain those levels? Well...

Third: Achievements

I want to preface this by saying, again, that none of this is new-new - it's at least partially derived from stuff I've seen done in other games. (Alpha Protocol especially does a lot with this kind of idea, for instance.)

You get your XP-equivalent by earning Achievements. These are little character/group beats that represent intentional actions and consequences. Every 10 of them you complete, you gain a level. Achievements can also have prerequisites and can come with benefits and penalties for completing them,

Some of these are pretty straightforward, and encourage you to put yourself in more dangerous situations to get them, or put your character out there in the spotlight to get a permanent benefit for it:

Some of them encourage players to take on certain kinds of jobs - and they'll get better at them as they go.

But I have secondary goals here. I'm trying to:

Give players ideas for things to do. The game's very sandboxy in construction and some people really need guidance. Tying advancement to doing different kinds of things - including failing in some cases, see Not Worth It above - helps get the ball rolling, and including penalties as well as benefits adds texture to the game.
Give the Narrator (GM) ideas for ways to react to players. A lot of the penalties (especially suggested Threats) act as sample ideas for pressures to put on players in various situations.
Bring in core themes of the setting. This isn't a cyberpunk game but it's got a lot of the same DNA to it, as will any "hypercapitalist future" style game: you can get hired by a megacorp to work against another one, you can work for big companies against small companies and vice versa, you can work for the exploited to help them against exploiters and vice versa. But working for people with money is usually way better for you.

(A Threat is kind of like a FitD Clock.)

But even if they know the penalties and aren't willing to take the risks...well, the potential is going to be staring them in the face every time they're looking for something else they can move the ball forward on, daring them to do it.

And if they don't...well, that's very on theme, isn't it. This is a kind of power fantasy, but it's not the "everything is handed to you to do cool stuff that shapes everything" kind. It's far easier to sell out than do anything cool. If you want to make a change in future-capitalist space, it's possible, but you're going to have to wrench it from someone's cold dead hands, and you might not survive to see it. But maybe it's worth it anyway, y'know? Maybe it's the only way you'll be able to sleep at night.

Is this going to work as intended?

I have no fucking idea. This is probably the part of the game that'll need the most tweaks. But I think it'll be neat even if it's kind of a mess.

(You can get the quickstart here if this sounds cool: https://binary-star-games.itch.io/liminal-void-qs)

(Read the original on cohost here!)

ANOINTED23 Week 9

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Well, "week" because it's actually for just March 1st through 5th. You know what I mean.

Wednesday, 3/1: This month I'm making The Tower of Godfrey, a prison that was originally built by the Academy to house Godfrey, a rune sorcerer who did something egregious that was lost to time. Over time, it was expanded outward to house other inhabitants. It's going to have two Region clocks: Time, a 12-segment clock that ticks with every action/point movement, and Alert, a 6-segment clock that ticks every time Time rolls over, every time a fight lasts 5+ rounds, or on specific events. Alert mostly raises Dispositions to be nastier and adds more enemies on encounters.
Thursday, 3/2: Drew the map above! 1-2-3 are the main hallway, 10-11-12 are the tower, 4-5-6 are the Warden area, and 7-8-9-13 are the newer cells. This one's going to have two entrances (I'm thinking you get to each depending on the Region you come from: one at the front door and one through a hole in a cell. The 1 -> 4 and 3 -> 10 routes are locked by default: 1 -> 4 is a "soft" one that can be broken down or lockpicked if you don't find a key, while 3 -> 10 needs a Warden's key.
Friday, 3/3: I wrote up the sanctuaries, points 1 and 13.
- Point 1: The shoddily-constructed stairs loom before you, pitted with age and weather. A small receiving station is here, with a very small but stately sanctuary and a carefully carved dedication: "Pray for those who reach beyond their grasp. They will find only fleeting rewards in this life, and none in the next."
- Point 13: This cell has a sanctuary carved into its wall, worn down by weather let in from the gaping hole leading outside. Carved into the wall, barely visible and actively defaced in a few places, is the dedication: "Pray for those who defy the faith. They will find no reward." There is, however, no trace of the prisoner who escaped from here.
Saturday, 3/4: Did some planning for enemies. Aside from Godfrey himself, I'm going to use:
- Existing: Dregs and Apprentices. The former for prisoners, the latter for guards.
- Some secondary Academy enforcer-types. (I have some Inscribed folks in core but this is more something orthodox, as inscription is supposed to be taboo.)
- Another kind of prisoner.
- This might be a good time to introduce a Warden as a midboss.
Sunday, 3/5: Wrote up an Academy Enforcer. They're a melee magic type.
- Health 6, PD0, MD2, Poise 3. Kind of like a Spearman but a little more magic-resistant.
- Dagger Sigil: Rng 0, Mag 1, Combo 3, Advance 1
- Shield Glyph: 1 PD, 3 MD, and 4 Poise until next round. Retreat 1.
- Targets sorcery/incantation users first.

Next week (aka this week that's already started) I dive deeper and start filling in (more) points.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Liminal Void rambling: ships, ship combat, and ship “combat“.

Thu, 02 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Thinking out loud about Liminal Void ship stuff because that's on my docket alongside Valiant Horizon and VH is mostly in the "the thing's constructed, just gotta tweak it around the edges" stage. (If you're not familiar from previous posts, basically it's a space game with an Expanse-ish level of hard-sci-fi-ness, give or take a bit, but more centered on survival in shit space capitalism than interplanetary politics as such. I have a free quickstart here! for ground-level, Level 0 rules if that sounds like your thing!)

Ships

As part of the core concept of the game, past that Level 0 conceit (which is defined as "the time before you have a ship and become capital-P Protagonists") I'm assuming you have a ship at all times. (My toxic trait as a designer is I think I can be the one designer make vehicle and not-vehicle interactions that actually work and make both parts of the game good/interesting/not worth skipping.) In general ship stuff is supposed to be one of the major sources of advancement, but that's a later problem.¹ Right now I'm thinking about ship combat.

My general concept for ship-on-ship combat is that it's not some cool dogfight even at the Expanse level (where fighting ship-to-ship is insanely dangerous) so much as "two sets of assholes in tin cans desperately trying to poke holes in each other before the other one does, escape, and/or board the other one". My concept for this was to use my Clashes and Dueling rules - you can see a sample ship there, even. In this system each combatant picks an action and both are revealed at once, a priority is determined based on classification of the ability picked (Aggressive < Defensive < Indirect < Aggressive), and effects resolve based on that priority. I think it seems like it'll be cool in the abstract. I have two problems to solve at the high level though which intersect.

Combat

My first problem is that I definitely designed this dueling system first with a different game (Machinations of Court and Frame, which you can see referenced in that page, and which is only in pre-pre-production, and not tested in the slightest) in mind. Machinations is conceptually a troupe-based game where players have a few characters working for various noble houses on all sides of a war, so odds are any duel is going to be between two PC characters and players who aren't directly involved get drafted and split up out of character to give advice to players who are for a usually-1v1 fight between two noble house-representing pilots, while the GM/fifth wheel/etc acts as a referee (online this feels like a "both parties send a secret message to the ref who reveals both at once" situation, at a table this is "both people scribble actions on cards or have action cards and flip at once"). I think it works best in that case: each character in the fiction is a mech pilot who can mostly focus on taking one action at a time, and you don't have as many players sitting around bored because you're splitting the PCs into two camps or running two parallel duels or whatever once that starts.

Liminal Void is...not that kind of game. You're playing one character, or possibly one of several characters in a crew, but either way everyone involved is on that ship having probably one of the worst days of their lives so far. Splitting the party up in that way feels weird given that - designating half the party to be in charge of Random Dipshit Corporate Police Cruiser kinda sucks, and saying the party can only do one kind of thing at once feels weirdly limiting and feels like it will mostly lead to one person quarterbacking and everyone else just along for the ride. But also I don't want the traditional "battle stations" idea where everyone just Does Their Thing every round because that sucks and I don't think anybody really likes that!

I'll give it a think. Given that the actions are typically a lot simpler and each shot is intended to matter way more than in Machinations (after armor is stripped away, each hit has the potential to deal systems damage, which I suppose gives characters who aren't the pilot something to do but more importantly has lasting implications until they can get legit-repaired) maybe it's tense enough to be fine.

"Combat"

The thing about Liminal Void is that it's a game where I wanted to emphasize not-just-combat as being interesting and worthwhile. You can mostly take jobs that involve salvage/repair/exploration if you're into that, and even in the quickstart scenario you can "win" without ever getting a proper weapon or firing a shot. That way, when combat happens, it's not "casual" in that sense: it's quick, visceral, tactical, intense, and someone you like is very likely to walk up kind of messed up if not dead. So given that, how do we represent ship encounters where it's not like a fight to the death? Or even an encounter with another ship?

If you think about spaceship stuff, off the top of my head there's a lot of cool scenarios that aren't dogfights: navigating asteroid/debris fields, trying to take another ship intact, trying to get away from a ship trying to board you without shooting at it, chases, flying through highly populated areas like local station traffic, flying close to an emplacement that's shooting at you. In a lot of cases it's a safe assumption your ship doesn't even have a weapon: like it's very possible you have a luxury cruiser and your main strategy for getting attacked is to speed up and either get out of acquisition range so they can't find you. Or maybe you have a space big rig and your main strategy is to ram them and board them because you're twice their size.

I think this is mostly doable by designating scenario events as "actions" in that Aggressive/Defensive/Indirect enemy attack sense: like for an asteroid field, they could come in the form of rocks in the way of the ship (Aggressive), rocks with enough minerals in them that they deflect sensors (Defensive), and rocks that are coming towards the side because they were deflected off something else (Indirect). Instead of aiming to deal enough Harm to take down some kind of Health/Integrity so the opponent dies/explodes/is destroyed, we could re-use the idea of Rolling for Progress and define various actions in a scenario as adding X Die Progress (like moving towards a goal, or lasting long enough in a chase that you get to a part where your pursuer has to turn around, or finding the proverbial needle in a haystack in a ship graveyard where the black box signal is coming from).

Conclusions

I have none, honestly, I just gotta make some stuff and see how it feels.

Anyway, thanks for reading this far!

My general thought is as you make more money you can install more storage, add workbenches and armories to maintain increasingly expensive sets of equipment for various tasks, etc. Personal advancement as opposed to ship advancement is probably going to be a mess because right now most Total//Effect advancement I've written is "get more powers per level"² and that doesn't work as well here because those kinds of abilities are equipment-locked but that's a problem for future me and I have some ideas already.
Also I need to figure out the best way to make Reactions exist fluidly. Again, a problem for future me.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

v2 released!

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

I put out a v2 of this quickstart. It has the following changes:

Has a slightly more proper cover now for both the rules and quickstart scenario!
Made a few typo/clarification fixes
Added a few things to the quickstart that came up in play (nothing big, just “you can try doing this” kind of stuff)

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

ANOINTED23 Month 2 roundup: The Eternal Battlefield of Karus

Tue, 28 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

January 30 through February 5th notebook entries

February 6th through 12th entries

February 13th through 19th entries

February 20th through 26th entries

(Follow-up from here but I'll be summarizing it in the post below. This includes weeks 7 and 8 because I got lazy.)

We've got ourselves a 11-point region to round out February! A battle has proceeded for hundreds of years between the Fifth Regiment of the League of New Volinn (noted as Camp A above) and the Divine Order of Saint Amelia (Camp B). The Regiment's more numerous, but the Divine Order has more elite troops and more importantly, is under the command of General Ingrid, an Anointed general tasked with holding this battlefield. If she were defeated the battle might finally be over, and travel through this region might be safe once again.

Some Region-based stuff:

The Region Clock here is an 8-segment clock for Cold. Every eight ticks (for fighting at a point, movement between points, picking up things at a location, etc), every Anointed takes 4 unblockable Harm. The clock resets at a sanctuary or at a warm location (such as a bonfire, etc).
Point 3 is very out there: it takes 4 ticks of the clock to move there from Point 2 and 2 to move there from any other point.
Movement between point 7 and any point other than 9 is prohibitively hard because of a manned ballista: you'll have to roll something appropriate to avoid death on approach/retreat. On anything except a 6, your Anointed dies. (You can avoid this by going through Point 9, or by getting lucky at Point 5, but we'll get there.)

As for each point:

Point 1 is the Fifth Regiment's sanctuary: A stone altar sits here, largely untouched with time, with the inscription: "Pray for these warriors, that they may achieve victory over their foes for the cause of righteousness." The path leads to Point 2.
Point 2 is the back gate of the Fifth Regiment's camp. A handful of Spearmen and Archers are here, but they're not on heavy guard: you could easily get the jump on them. It leads around the far end of the camp to Point 3 (which takes 4 ticks of the clock to travel here, as it's a long way) or through the camp at Point 4.
Point 3 is the western end of the camp, where the kennels are: 2 Archers and a handful of Guard Dogs (a new enemy created for this Region) are here. You can collect some rope along the kennels here if you're so inclined. It leads to Point 5 (where a catapult can be seen) and 6 (where a bonfire rages). (It takes 2 ticks of the clock to travel to either of these locations).
Point 4 is the narrow camp of the Fifth Regiment. A large number of Knights (nastier enemies) and Spearmen are here. You can try to sneak through, but it requires several rolls and time. You can also run through to the exit if you're fast enough, but you'll be beset by those enemies the whole way. If you do manage to defeat them, though, you can find a Steadying Glyph (a rune sorcery) and two Holy Waters here. This leads to Point 5 (where you can see a catapult).
Point 5 is a Fifth Regiment catapult, left unguarded. You can use this to automatically kill enemies at a hex and all surrounding hexes in a surrounding point (there's a 50% chance of hitting a hex or having it divert by 1-3 hexes). Point 7 has a manned ballista that prevents travel to or from it from any point other than 9: if you get a direct hit on it, it's broken, nullifying that penalty. You get one shot. There's also a set of 4 firebombs here. It leads to points 4, 6 (the aforementioned bonfire), 7, and 9 (a Divine Order forward command post) and can hit any of the fights in those hexes.
Point 6 is a skirmish between a Fifth Regiment Knight, a Divine Order Holy Knight (a new enemy created for this Region), and equal numbers of Spearmen, alongside a blazing bonfire. If you're sneaky or clever enough, you can get them to keep fighting each other, leaving less for you to deal with. The bonfire here allows you to reset the Cold clock. It leads back to 5 and 3, and forward to 8 (a sniper-infested hill overlooking the Divine Order camp).
Point 7 is a Divine Order ballista team. Two Holy Knights and a handful of archers defend it: once it's destroyed, you have much freer access across the battlefield. You can also get two more firebombs here. It leads to most of the upper half of the map.
Point 8 is the aforementioned sniper nest: a set of archers up on a hill, guarded by a Holy Knight. When defeated, they make the General fight easier, as she can't call in sniper shots from afar. You can pick up two Relic Scraps here as well, which will make fights in this Region (or the fight with the General) way easier. It leads to Point 7 as well as 6.
Point 9 is the Divine Order forward command post. Like Point 6, it's under attack; unlike Point 6, it's a little more one-sided in favor of the Divine Order. You can pick up a Herald's Flagpole here, a heavy spear that lets you heal allies a little as its special ability, as well as some spikes from defensive fortifications.
Point 10 is the Divine Order's sanctuary. A more ragged sanctuary than the Fifth Regiments, but it nonetheless bears the inscription: "Pray for these warriors, that they may achieve victory over their foes for the cause of righteousness." I'm very subtle with my parallelism, as you can see. You can also pick up an Invocation of Vigilance incantation and 2 Holy Waters here.
Point 11 is the fight with General Ingrid! She's mostly a commander: her actions primarily call reinforcements or let other units act. When you defeat her, you gain her signal horn as a Relic, which lets you give an ally one of your actions once per turn.

And that's a wrap for February! Tune in next month. (I still haven't decided what I'm doing tomorrow from my big list, but I'll pick it out sometime today.)

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Valiant Horizon dev: what even are basic actions anyway?

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

So some of my early playtest feedback is that melee feels less good than range which...yeah, tactics games are sure like that, huh! I'm fixing to handle this in a few ways right now.

The obvious moves first:

Lower the utility of Far range attacks. (This is even more pronounced because 3/6 of my players have abilities that hit to Far - basically almost all of the ones in the book. It's a good stress test at least!) Far range support is probably fine.
Add movement to a lot of powers. I'd done this with some of the later classes I designed (self-buff powers, for example, are usually move + buff) but the older ones could stand to have that energy too.

Now for the weird moves.

Take out the default Hustle (aka move to Near) action. Get rid of it. Who needs a default "move" action? (enemies still have one though)
INSTEAD, replace it with an extra Standard for each class that does move + something. (See Shadowstep above.)

In addition to giving each class a little more flair, this has a few fun bonuses.

At level 4 you can prepare other Classes' standards instead of your own, and at levels 4 and 7 you get an extra standard. Originally this meant you'd just get another default way to attack most of the time, but now you have more interesting choices: you could prepare 2 attack and 1 movement standard, 2 movement/1 attack, 3 movement ones, 3 attack ones (if you rely a lot on powers/traits that move you around, of which there are more now), the sky's the limit.
- I don't know if it's funnier to take no movement or all movement - no movement is probably it but it's close - but both are probably viable if you're clever.
Purely a parallelism nitpick: aside from trivial Interact actions, there are now no combat actions that don't involve a roll. (Hustle was the only one prior to this.)

(Read the original on cohost here!)

v0.1.4 release!

Wed, 22 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! Been awhile.

I’d been iterating on ANOINTED briefly over the past 6 months or so, and thinking about it more recently because of Dungeon23/ANOINTED23. As such I’ve finally gotten enough done that I’ve released a v0.1.4.

Brief list of changes:

Defenses are all now wildly different.
- Armor is now subtractive rather than the previous situation, and all Armor now has a Poise to it.
  - The old system was fine but created a bunch of weird problems.
  - This gives it a little more going on than previously.
  - Shields are now basically “you gain a better PD/MD/Poise while blocking, but drain stamina”.
- Dodge’s 4-5 result now lets you reroll but spend another Stamina instead of its previous thing. (Gets that good “mash dodge button” feel to it.)
- Parry now only works on a 6. Makes it way more uncertain for what you get.
Stagger is way less bad than it was, now it just strips defenses.
Rebalanced all equipment/spells/enemies based on this (and gave them little outlines so they pop a bit better). They’ll probably need another pass once I do more testing.

You can see all my ANOINTED23 stuff here! I’m making a region per day. (I’m also putting dailies on my discord.)

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

End of week 6

Tue, 14 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Feb 6-12 continued this trajectory.

Monday, 2/6: Point 5, the Camp A siege engine. If you get here, you can use it on any adjacent point - 4, 6, 7, or 9 - to (hopefully) instantly kill several enemies there. If you get a direct hit on the ballista at Point 7 (we'll get to it in a few days, but it prevents travel to/from point 7 except via point 9), it's destroyed. You can use this to soften up a few difficult fights.
Tuesday, 2/7: Wrote up a Holy Knight, a variant on the standard Knight enemy in ANOINTED, to differentiate Camp B a little bit. It has a single-strike attack instead of a combo and uses Invocation of Vigilance to add stagger resist instead of having a Guard ability.
Wednesday, 2/8: Point 6, midfield skirmish. A Knight and some Spearmen are squaring off against a Holy Knight and some Spearmen. Disposition by default is that they attack you, but a good roll can make half or all of them keep fighting among themselves instead of you. There's a Bonfire here, so you can reset the freeze clock without taking Harm if you clear the point.
Thursday, 2/9: Herald's Flagpole. A heavier than usual polearm, it has a Stance move that allows the user and nearby allies to regain Health and shake off Stagger.
Friday, 2/10: Point 9, Camp B forward command. A Holy Knight and some archers are picking off a few spearmen and guard dogs here. Once the dust clears, you can get that Flagpole here.
Saturday, 2/11: Point 7, the Ballista and crew. As noted, this makes travel very difficult between 7 and any point other than 9 (it's a "roll and if you don't get a 6 you die" situation). Two Holy Knights and some archers are here. Once combat is done, you can permanently destroy the Ballista.
Sunday, 2/12: Point 10, the far sanctuary. Very similar to Point 1's, and it bears the same exact inscription: A stone altar sits here, largely untouched with time, with the inscription: "Pray for these warriors, that they may achieve victory over their foes for the cause of righteousness." I like parallelism.

This week I'm tackling the area boss (General Ingrid, Camp B leader) as well as the remaining Point 8, and then doing cleanup for the rest of the month.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

v1.0.2 is out! And a little something extra!

Thu, 09 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there,

v1.0.2 is out! A few more typos fixed, and the character sheet should print a little better (stuff is further from the edges).

Also, have a setpiece on me! This is one I made to end out my home campaign - feel free to use it for yours!

A flying fortress big enough to blot out the sun, its pointed prow clearly designed for intimidation. On its underside, enormous energy cannons create brief light sources of their own as they crackle violently to annihilate anything that would dare to stand in its way. This is the Republic’s Jupiter-class platform. It’s designed to destroy cities.

It can easily level a factory and its surrounds. You should probably not let it do that.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

ANOINTED23, 2/5 (end of week 5)

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

February 1-5 brought us the start of the Eternal Battlefield of Karus.

Wednesday, 2/1: Point 1, the Sanctuary. I didn't fuck up this time so it's first day. A stone altar sits here, largely untouched with time, with the inscription: "Pray for these warriors, that they may achieve victory over their foes for the cause of righteousness." (This is obviously talking about the eternal battle but also I'm doing a thing. Get back to me at Point 10.)
Thursday, 2/2: Point 2, the southern gate of Camp A. (I'll come up with some names later.) The flank of this camp has not been guarded strongly in quite some time. This has an intro fight: 1 + #Anointed Spearmen/Archers, split half and half. Disposition is Default Aggressive, 5-6 Distracted: as mentioned, it's not very well guarded.
Friday, 2/3: Point 4, Camp A's center. The narrow camp is heavily guarded. A catapult is visible to the north. There's a fight here with 1 + #Anointed Spearmen and 1 + #Anointed Knights: Knights are tough, so this one's pretty rough, especially solo; however, there's an "escape" hex on the far end of the camp. Disposition is Default Defensive, 4-5 Aggressive, 6 Unaware: each Unaware gives you an opportunity to either launch a surprise attack or move up 2 hexes towards that "escape" and ticks the area clock once. (If you make it to the catapult at Point 5, you'll have a better shot at defeating this group.)
Saturday, 2/4: Wrote up a Guard Dog. It's similar to a Dreg but a little stronger and more aggressive at range 1, but similarly frail.
- Health 4, no defenses/Poise
- Leap: Rng 0, Phys 2, Advance 3, Quick 1
- Bite: Rng 0, Phys 2, Advance 1, Combo 2
- Savage: Rng 0, Phys 2, Combo 3
- Prioritizes least armored.
Sunday, 2/5: Point 3, the far end of Camp A with kennels. It takes 4 ticks to travel to or from here from Point 2, 2 ticks from anywhere else. (Might make this 2 across the board, it's an 8-tick clock so 4 might be a bit much.) 2 Archers + #Anointed guard dogs are here: the dogs are in kennels until they take their turn, which makes it harder to attack them directly.

So far so good! (And I've done two since then, obviously, but we'll get there next week.)

(Read the original on cohost here!)

ANOINTED23, 1/31, week 4 + January wrapup

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Week 1, 2, 3

So this week, I pretty much just did cleanup.

Tweaked Saint Gratien a bit: reduced MD to 1 and Poise to 4, and changed Invocation of Sanctity (spell parry) to Invocation of Vigilance (can't be staggered). This makes him a much more approachable threat as a mage while still being dangerous.
Added Dispositions to Points 5, 6, and 9.
Added more formal descriptions to every point (except 1, which was pretty good).

And on the 28th I decided month 1 is wrapped! Got The Delta Sinkhole, a nasty little swamp region with 9 points, two new enemy types, some nasty ambush stuff, an optional boss, and an NPC! Makes a nice transition area.

My next area is the Eternal Battlefield of Karus! This is going to be a destination-style Region, so focused around a boss. The general premise is that there's a very populated side (Side A, pending a better name) that you start at and have to make your way over to Side B to defeat their general. It's a Prowess/Skill area - so mostly traditional "soldier" Souls enemies.

The clock is Freezing Cold, every 8 ticks you take 4 Harm. There will be bonfires in a few places to warm up.

Excited to get moving on this tomorrow! I drew up the pointmap already.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

v1.0 release! (v1.0.1 patch.)

Fri, 27 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

At long last, v1.0 is out! Featuring:

A reorganized body text, with a manuscript edited by Marx Shepherd
A full relayout
Art by Galen Pejeau and Mykell Pledger
A few minor additions and rules changes

If you have the game, you now have the final release version as well!

As per tradition, there was a release-version typo found on Efficient which has now been fixed in v1.0.1. (I’ll have the epub updated as well in a bit.)

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

ANOINTED23, 1/22 (end of full week 3)

Sun, 22 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Week 1, 2

Day 22! At the end of this week, it's mostly all sketched out.

Monday, 1/16: Point (7), the shallows. Last week we defined Saint Gratien, the Major Threat of the area. This is where he is, shuffling around mindlessly. He can be attacked here, or potentially bypassed (Default Aggressive, 5-6 Occupied).
Tuesday, 1/17, Point (8), the detritus pile. A mountain of materiel and bodies, piled into the back corner of this area. You can grab a Poleaxe here...however, it's harder to sneak back, because approaching the pile makes it shuffle around - meaning Gratien is more likely to be disturbed (Default Aggressive, 6 Occupied).
Wednesday, 1/18, Point (9), the far sinkhole shore. There's a handful of more whole Dregs here. Barnabas (who we defined last time) comes out from hiding when they're dispatched. You can easily retrieve the staff at Point 3 from this side of the bridge if you're so inclined.
Thursday, 1/19: We define the Memory which this place manifests. Since we decided last time that this is a Knowledge/Conviction area, the answers provided in the picklist are Prowess, Skill, 2 Conviction, and 2 Knowledge. Memory: Who or what was left behind when you became Anointed?
1. Your fellow Fighters. Your camaraderie was immense, but immortality drove a wedge through it. (+1 Prowess.)
2. Your craft. You could have been a famed artisan, but your skill fell away over time. (+1 Skill)
Friday, 1/20: The Conviction answers.
1. Your faith. Seeing the machinations of the Church, especially during the Age of Spears, instilled doubt. (+1 Conviction.)
2. Your family. Perhaps you tried at first, but the strain of watching them age and die was too much. (+1 Conviction)
Saturday, 1/21: The Knowledge answers.
1. Your studies. An entire field was set back years when you were called to serve elsewhere. (+1 Knowledge.)
2. Your pupils. Some would find their way elsewhere, on their own or with another teacher, while others would founder. (+1 Knowledge)
Sunday, 1/22: Some cleanup until the end of the month is probably in order. I'm going back and adding Dispositions to various Points where I don't have them.
- Point 2: Default Aggressive, 5-6 Unaware
- Point 3: Default Ambushing, 5-6 Aggressive
- Point 4: Default Aggressive, 4-6 Distracted

I'll probably make a post about Dispositions sometime this week.

And that's that! Next week...more cleanup, probably. For one, I need to get Gratien into a better space. Might add another enemy type to make things a little more interesting. We'll see.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

ANOINTED23, 1/15 (end of full week 2)

Sun, 15 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Picture of my planner, week 2

(Previous)

Day 15! Halfway through. Here's the daily for that:

Monday, 1/9: Point (1), the Sanctuary. (I'm going to be using the Sanctuaries to do two things. First is re-emphasize the Anointed's connection (via ritual) to the Church; second is to give some way to foreshadow some themes of the area. This is done from the description of it and a prayer set at each.) The place is new, but hastily-erected: it's half fallen apart. This Sanctuary's prayer is: "Pray for the forgotten, those left in the wake of disaster and war. May they find refuge and stillness." (If you're keeping score...nothing here has found refuge and stillness.)
Tuesday 1/10: Point (6), the walkway north. There's an encounter with 2 + 1/extra Scavengers on the way: by default half of them start behind you, but if you do something tricky on the approach you can avoid being surrounded. You can find a Wakizashi further up the walkway afterwards.
Wednesday 1/11: Saint Gratien, part 1. (This is the Major Threat in the area - because this is an interstitial region, he's optional, but you get some good stuff. Based on the Attribute combo, he's a Conviction/Knowledge enemy: relating to faith and corruption.) A tall, gangly man with no arms and desiccated skin. His clothes are half-rotted, revealing a carved lump under his skin under the right side of his chest.
- Health 40, PD 1, MD 2, Poise 6. Pretty tough to stagger, pretty resistant to magic.
- Trait: Any Mag. Harm received splashes to all nearby (at range 0B)
Thursday, 1/12: Saint Gratien, part 2. Gratien's actions are all Incantations. I pictured him as one of the original Anointed from the Age of Legends/Daggers, so he gets to have one of each kind: he learned Storm before it was a Blasphemy. (Will probably revise some of these in whatever cleanup pass I do, he's a little too anti-caster focused at the moment.)
- Prayer for Wrath: Range 0T, Mag 2, Mighty 4, Forceful. (Uses when something's at Range 0-1.)
- Invocation of Sanctity: Evade 3-, Spells only, reflects back at caster. (Uses when targeted by magic.)
- Channel Storm: Range 2-4, Mag 2, Multi 5. (Uses when nothing is at Range 0-1.)
- Dangerous Action: Projected Wrath: Range 1B-2B-3B-4B, Mag 4, Mighty 6, Forceful. Immediate: Move back 2, adds 1 to Encumbrance of all swamp tiles. (He'll initiate this at the end of a round when put below 30, 20, or 10: the Immediate thing happens, and then at the end of the next round the rest happens. It can be canceled by dealing 10 Harm or staggering him in the interim.)
- His default Behavior is that he goes after anyone with Talismans.
Friday, 1/13: The Talisman of Saint Gratien (a reward for beating him) is a mass of bone embedded into his breastbone, carved into the symbol of the ancient Church. The corruption leaked into it causes it to repel magic in its vicinity.
- Weight 3
- 1 Tier 2 Slot: Prayer
- 1 Tier 2 Slot: Invocation
- 1 Tier 2 Slot: Blasphemy
- Parry (Spell)
- Having 1 of each is unusual, but less flexible than most talismans, and most don't have Parry of any kind. Most are also Weight 1-2 instead of 3.
Saturday, 1/14: Invocation of Implacability. (This is another reward for beating him.)
- Tier 1, Conviction 3, 4F
- You're immune to anything that would add extra encumbrance (beyond Encumbrance from your equipment Weight). Lasts until the Region Clock advances.
Sunday, 1/15: Made an NPC. Barnabas is a pious low-country sanctuary tender. He'll ask Anointed to put Gratien to his final rest, and teach them the Invocation of Implacability in exchange for it. He also unlocks all Tier 1 Invocations/Prayers for selection between Regions - my plan is to allow players to choose 1 thing from a list that starts with "everyone's starting equipment" and expands out as they meet NPCs or find things.

Next week, I'll put Gratien and Barnabas in points 7-8-9 and assess what we're doing from there. Might use that last week as a polish week if I run out of content to fill. We'll see!

(Read the original on cohost here!)

ANOINTED23, 1/8 (end of full week 1), some rambling on planning for Attributes/Regions for ANOINTED

Sun, 08 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Pointmap from 1 to 9.

A bunch of chicken scratch writing from January 2 to 8.

(Previous)

So we're at day 8 for this Region. Here's the breakdown of what that looks like:

Thursday, 1/5: I wrote a new enemy (Scavenger) that I'm picturing as like somewhere between a hyena, wolf, and vulture. Tactics are to approach/surround (they have a very good move for this with Advance 4/Retreat 2) and pick off from there.
Friday, 1/6: I wrote point (4), which uses those enemies (they're looking down at something at point 5, so you can possibly get the drop on them). The walkway is disconnected from here: you can get to point (6) from here if you have a way to get over there (like a rope), otherwise you have to go down the slope and back up (aka route through point (5)).
Saturday, 1/7: Point (5), which uses those half-dregs again: it's basically an ambush situation in a bunch of swamp. If you clear it, you can get a few Holy Waters.
Sunday/Today, 1/8: Planning. I drew out the map and wrote down some self-direction notes. Which, well, we'll have to detour for a sec to make this make sense...

Sidenote: Attributes and how they apply to Regions

To catch anyone reading this up on ANOINTED (because it's not like fully out yet) characters have four attributes, which can be rolled in the FitD/LUMEN sense (#dice = attribute, take highest 1-3 = fail, 4-5 = mixed, 6 = success). They also add to various other substats:

Prowess (physical fitness and strength. Adds to Health/weight Capacity. Hard requirement for heavy weapons. Soft requirement for high-Weight equipment.)
Skill (training and reflexes. Adds to number of actions available in a turn. Hard requirement for quick/difficult weapons. Soft requirement for equipment that only hits its stride with high Combos.)
Conviction (faith and force of will. Adds to Stamina and number of times you can Embody Grace - which is basically Estus. Hard requirement for Church incantations. Soft requirement for anything that burns Stamina harder than usual.)
Knowledge (education and academic technique. Adds to Focus and increases restoration from Embodying Grace. Hard requirement for rune sorceries. Soft requirement for anything that burns Focus harder than usual.)

All of the Backgrounds emphasize a combination of two of these, with an emphasis on one of them. This is done in a hard and a soft way.

The hard way is that each Background has Attributes that start at 3/2/1/0, and the two emphases get the high ones and equipment to match. To give two examples of ones that have the same highest one: The Brigand, for example, has 3 Prowess, 1 Skill, 2 Conviction, and 0 Knowledge - as a Prowess/Conviction character it's mostly about having light armor and heavy weapons. On the other hand, the Knight has 3 Prowess, 0 Skill, 1 Conviction, and 2 Knowledge - as a Prowess/Knowledge character it has more of an emphasis on heavy armor but lighter weapons with an emphasis on using their actions that require Focus.
The soft way is in the character creation questions. Each Background has to answer two questions, each of which gives you +1 to an Attribute. You can make up your own answer and choose the Attribute that goes with it, or you can roll. The trick is that each is a d6 chart where the two emphasis Attributes have two entries. So if you're picking at random or choosing from the options in front of you, you're more likely to double down on their strengths. As an example the Brigand has questions with a few prompt-answers that correspond to:
1. +1 Prowess
2. +1 Prowess
3. +1 Skill
4. +1 Conviction
5. +1 Conviction
6. +1 Knowledge

This is something that I want to keep going in Regions, because advancement is through the same means: describe a memory of your immortal life, either free-form from a vague prompt or answering a direct question (with prompt-answers). So each Region is going to be associated with two Attributes as well:

Prowess Regions are focused on things like scale and weight: large enemies, mountains, big castles, etc.
Skill Regions are focused on things like organization, personal conflict, and craftiness: factions, traps, groups setting ambushes.
Conviction Regions are focused on endurance, age, faith: consistent conditions, older stuff, incantation-users.
Knowledge Regions are focused on magic, contamination, and unusual stuff: abominations, weirder things, magic-users.

I intend to use these in three ways:

Direct the questions asked, as noted above
Provide themes and emphases for the Region, and especially for any Major Threats (bosses, basically, optional or otherwise)
Direct how I want to do any loot. I want at least one piece of permanent equipment per attribute, hard-requirement or soft-requirement (with less emphasized ones leaning more towards soft). One of these has to be area-unique instead of generic equipment from the book.

Which brings us back to...

Attribute-based planning for the Delta Sinkhole

So I think the most appropriate emphasis for the Sinkhole is going to be Conviction/Knowledge. Conviction because of the emphasis on harsh conditions and things piling up over time, Knowledge because the main "thing" here is half-eaten immortal enemies and that's pretty unusual with more of an emphasis on the "supernatural" things about immortality. For planning purposes I'm thinking:

The Major Threat here (in 7-8, based on the cyclic map, there's a patrolling monster: I'm thinking it's going to be an optional boss basically) is going to be Conviction/Knowledge based. Due to the way we've described this swamp up to this point, I'm thinking it's going to be an ancient Anointed associated with The Church who's been ground down and contaminated with the bad vibes of this place - maybe they've lost their faculties entirely.
For loot:
- Since we have a slight emphasis on Conviction, the unique thing is probably a unique Talisman/Incantation. Probably for beating the optional Major Threat above.
- We also have an emphasis on Knowledge, which lines up well with our Point (3) Polished Staff/Combustion Sigil. (CS has a Knowledge requirement of 6, which is pretty hefty, but the staff is at least immediately applicable. Might provide one of the starter Sigils with that like Light Sigil so it can be a future blaster-wizard starter kit.)
- Prowess and Skill are the non-emphases. One is going to be at Point (8), you can circumvent the Major Threat entirely to get it if you so choose/roll well. One is going to be at Point (6) as a "halfway there" kind of on-the-path reward for people who aren't taking side routes.

And we'll get to the question prompt-answers when the time comes. Given that you don't have to beat the Major Threat to proceed it'll probably be a more generalized question.

And that's it for now! Next time, we'll get back to Point (1) ~~which I definitely didn't do last Monday by accident)~~ and keep on trucking from there.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

ANOINTED23, 1/4

Wed, 04 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Delta Sinkhole entry as above, now with a little map.

The Half-Dreg entry and two points, as well as two combat maps.

Three entries so far. Map is going on that first grid for space reasons. ~~I definitely didn't screw up and write Point 1 on Jan 9th already. Ignore that (1) on the map for now.~~ Combat maps for fights go on the grid on the right (they're hexes in the actual game, but the way I have it set up is basically hexes).

So we've got a swamp full of materiel and undying detritus, as per the above idea. The first few entries emphasize that as an intro to the place.

Monday (1/2), I established a new enemy. ANOINTED has Dregs by default, which are normally fast, easy to kill things (and are unabashed expys of the classic Souls Dreglings). In universe, they're basically the product of desperate attempts at making shock troops at the tail end of a long, bitter war. These are that, but run through the extra grinder of being left here among scavengers and in water: they're half-rotted away. In game this means they're weaker and slower (1 less Health and loses the Dreg's big movement+attack ability) but, crucially, are way more dangerous in swamp areas: they don't care about the swamp depth and gain extra defenses in water. (Right now it's 1, might change that to +Physical Defense = depth if they seem too trivial. They have no Poise so it goes away as soon as they get hit anyway thanks to Stagger.)
Tuesday (1/3), the first "real" point: (2) the sinkhole's shoreline. (Point 1 is the Sanctuary starting point ~~and like I said, we'll get back there~~.) This is a good opportunity to "tutorialize" what the deal is with these guys by having them show up in a safe way: so we establish a map where they're crawling out of the swamp water towards you as you arrive on solid ground. There's a lot of them (4 for a solo player, +2 per player past that) but without their extra defense from being in water and without the Dreg's Sprint, it's probably pretty trivial to divide and conquer. You can grab 4 Firebombs after the fight: these are way more helpful when you're knee deep in it and a group of things that aren't terribly strong is swarming (like these enemies, for instance...see the next point). Decrepit walkways go north and west from here - the idea is that it's a very unreliable bridge/boardwalk around and through the sinkhole's center.
Today/Wednesday (1/4), the second "real" point: (3) the northern walkway in the center of the sinkhole. I'm going by the rough approximation of the Cyclic Generation showcase map for the structure here, so this is the false goal. The walkway theoretically stretches to the "exit" of the area, with a staff stuck in the swamp alongside it halfway down: on approach, the walkway crumbles, leading you to a classic ambush encounter! If you win (or if you do your level best to ignore everything and bum rush the * on that map where the staff is) you can grab a Polished Staff and a Tier 2 short-range rune sorcery, Combustion Sigil - if you're a high Knowledge build or intend to be this is a great find. In either case, you can't continue north afterwards (though once you reach the other side, if you hadn't gotten it yet, you can grab the staff+sigil safely).

Next, we'll go west from (2) and probably introduce another enemy type - most likely the aforementioned scavengers - for variety.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Part 2: Escape from CICP-1 Scenario Teardown

Tue, 03 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Ok. This is the part where I talk more firmly about the scenario. (See the map above.)

The goal of this scenario, as repeated from above, is the same goals as Level 0 in general:

Establish some "starting points" for characters, and give some playstyle options.
Figure out, through play, what kind of people your characters were and are. (The Background mechanic is the obvious version of this, but even more subtle decisions inform a character.)
Make sure the party is a persona non grata in some way.
Get the party a spaceship. That's a major part of the game going forward.

I had more to do here than just present a fun adventure. I was tasked to present a jumping-off point for the rest of a campaign! And I think it worked.

Spoilers below, probably, I'm not sure where exactly anyone draws the line for spoilers for a scenario so I'm being safe. If you'd rather experience it directly first, here it is, take a look.

So basically, as a player, the setup is: while you're working a Space Job™️, an outside attacker invades the freighter deck. You'll also find out shortly that the station's reactor has been given the command to start a meltdown routine and the shuttle between rings has been shut down. Players start at the Operations Crew Quarters, which gives them four immediate ideas:

They could go towards Processing/the dock to fight off invaders, either from the direct entrance or around the back of the ring.
They can head down-ring towards Engineering to try to do something about the shuttle outage, and/or later the meltdown. (It's pretty easy to get into the shuttle bay doors - exoskeletons and excavation drills are all around and those are both tools that will definitely help. There are also plenty of people to enlist help from.)
They can go up-ring towards Security to either enlist security to go deal with it (in theory) or get weapons.
They can go towards Admin to get to the emergency shuttles.

Depending on where they go, they might uncover the maintenance tunnel, which provides certain other ways around: they can easily get to the main hangar outside, the Storage area in ops, or the Security Hangar. With some effort (a spacewalk to repair a disconnection, then a bug infestation), they can also get to the Emergency Hangar and the Executive Hangar.

I tried to give each ring a kind of "narrative":

Ops has the invasion, which is mostly a fight, but can be other things too (like you could talk or sneak your way through parts of it). It's also got some explosives and supplies in storage.
Engineering has a bunch of engineering levers you can pull and easy maintenance access (as well as hardvac suits for taking a walk outside).
Security's got a fight up front that can be obviated if you're smart, and some weapons - but by the time you get them there's nothing to use them on here. If you're resourceful or lucky (or both) you can access some security functions on the terminal here too, and get some important information.
Admin's got either a hostage situation or a slaughter situation. There's no world in which the guy who perpetrated this is getting off the station WITH you, but you can either fight or talk your way through.
Executive has some turrets as well as a pissed off, tied up suit. If you're resourceful or lucky, you can get executive level actions, which can give you sharply different ways to approach other rings - like venting them. (Executive's the weakest/shortest, but if you made it here it's basically the end, so that's fine.)

When putting this all together, part of my goal is to make players think about their approach to things. Liminal Void is intentionally not about just pure-combat, or not about it entirely: you can certainly do that but I wanted to emphasize other approaches. But it's also not NOT about that. So thinking about those approaches, you have three of them based on those professions:

Physical/combat (Laborer, Driller): fighting your way through someone or something to get a ship.
Technical/scavenger (Technician, Engineer, Pilot): finding ways to fix things or rig things such that you can leave.
Social (Foreman): talking someone into letting you do something to leave.

And you have a few ship "archetypes":

Combat-oriented (Security gunship, raider vehicle)
Civilian (Freighter, emergency shuttle which is basically a passenger ship, the administrator's ship)

Here's a trick I pull: It's way easier for combat-oriented characters to get civilian ships, and vice versa.

The easiest way to get the freighter is to take out the raiders. (combat) (you could also take the raider ship afterwards, but it's a real piece of shit so you probably wouldn't and the freighter has a valuable load of ore. If you have the choice, it's an easy decision, unless you're weird.)
The easiest way to get the emergency shuttle is to take out the corpsec folks in Admin (combat) (you can also talk them down but it's tough and will often end in a fight anyway)
The easiest way to get the administrator's ship involves going through a bunch of turrets, hard to get around it (combat) (the turrets in Reception aren't on the grid so they can't be disabled).
The easiest ways to get the raider ship are either to sneak around the main hangar gate and steal it (technical/scavenger) (it's easier to steal that one than the freighter because it's closer to the entrance), or talk to the raider captain and convince him to give you it in exchange for the freighter (social).
The easiest way to get the gunship is to go around through the maintenance tunnel and fix the door. (technical/scavenger).

This means that at level 1, there's very likely a mismatch between your crew's actions and the kind of ship they have. And it won't be too-too much effort to sell it and use the proceeds to finance the ship you actually want...but it might also convince groups to try something they wouldn't otherwise do.

The nature of how you escape also lends itself to several plot hooks:

If they grabbed any the security logs or rescued the administrator, they know exactly who caused all of this, and can track him down if they so choose. (The administrator will likely pay them to do this.)
If they negotiated with the raiders, the raiders might be amenable to future business. They do have a ship now, after all, and have shown to be reasonable people.
If you're using any of the station's ships, eventually the corporation will declare them all stolen - you could have an impound situation on your hands and need to raise money to bribe station security or buy out the ship.
If anyone got heavily injured, guess what? Medical care isn't free. They'll happily let you take a loan out though...

So you've got a few things to pursue at Level 1. Add in Background stuff and you've got yourself a stew.

The last thing here is funnel vs. background. The big thing is that Backgrounds give you a huge jump in both combat potential (being able to call one in in a few cases to get a weapon or something is a big deal), but to a much larger extent, social/technical potential (being able to bullshit an easier way through one of those problems is huge). This means that many of the "safer" ways through are usually either closed to you or much more dangerous. You'll have to take way more risks...which leads to way more injuries and deaths, which is the point! (I'm patching it soon for a few reasons, while I'm there I'll probably make it even easier to die for funnel games.)

Thanks for reading. I'm very proud of how it turned out and wanted to talk about it.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

ANOINTED23, 1/1

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Delta Sinkhole entry.

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!)

Liminal Void Quickstart and Scenario Teardown, Part 1: Background, Quickstart rules

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Map of CI Central Processing Station 1 (CICP-1)

I'm in a posting mood ~~because I'm putting off finishing writing a press release/kit~~ so I figured I'd ruminate a little bit about how I put the Liminal Void Quickstart rules and scenario, Escape from CICP-1, together. Mild spoilers for the scenario under the fold if you care about that sort of thing, but most of the big scenario stuff is going to be in a follow-up post, but also it's just long and this seems polite.

History of the first few Liminal Void things/Background

I initially slapped together the "first draft" of this ruleset and scenario as a last-second thing when a critical mass of people in my weekly game dipped because I saw a chance to playtest an extremely early version of Liminal Void. (Extremely early because I basically just made pregen sheets for 6 Professions - Loader, Pilot, Technician, Engineer, Security, Foreman - and a few weapons and armor and went from there, as well as a quick map of a station with some ideas I could improvise with and a general idea of the scenario (raiders entering + reactor meltdown).

That map was intended to be top-down as far as gravity, office building-style, because I was less concerned with harder sci-fi and more concerned with tapping something out - instead of a shuttle, the central pillar was an elevator, and instead of rings, they were just floors. In the one-shot I ran, I also used clocks instead of Threats, because I hadn't really written that section of the SRD yet or internalized how I could really use that.

Reading the first few expanse books on vacation got me thinking about ways I could revise this, and as such I went to the ring/hangar construction concept - and the rest is history.

The Quickstart rules: Level 0, professions, tools, weapons, and outfits

I'll touch upon a few bits of what I put together and my intent. I'm not gonna copy all of it or touch on everything, just read the thing if you want to see all the numbers or whatever. It's free.

Level 0

First off, the idea of Level 0. Obviously this is not something I came up with: it's common in OSR/D&D-adjacent contexts (off the top of my head, DCC and Shadow of the Demon Lord use it). This is both a distinctive thing for Liminal Void in Total//Effect though (levels 1 through 9 are always there, 0 and 10 are the big ones) and a great starting point for people who want a self-contained taste of the system without the more complicated things (ship maintenance, economy shit). In those, a lot of the time it's an excuse to kill off a bunch of characters. (And that mode does exist here too! Funnels are conceptually interesting and I like them.) But even if you're not doing that kind of thing, I have a few goals for Level 0 in Liminal Void:

Establish some "starting points" for characters, and give some playstyle options.
Figure out, through play, what kind of people your characters were and are. (The Background mechanic is the obvious version of this, but even more subtle decisions inform a character.)
Make sure the party is a persona non grata in some way.
Get the party a spaceship. That's a major part of the game going forward.

Professions

So to start, characters are basically only a Profession. Aside from combat recover/reload/recharge die tweaks, a skillset they can use for roll bonuses, and one passive trait (which matters inside and out of combat), these are basically just bundles of equipment. There's no character "creation" as such. This is both practical (it makes it easy to grab another from the stack in funnel play) and thematic - at the start of the session, you're just a regular person working a space job, you blend in perfectly. At the end of it, you've been through at least one traumatic experience, you've probably revealed some part of your past that people didn't really know about before, you've had to make (or go along with, more on that later) some interesting choices, and you have control of a ship. (Level 1 assumes you have a Background, so if you gain that in play, you're basically just getting an advance on that.)

These professions are:

Laborer, which is the "bruiser" of the group, basically someone solely tasked with manual labor. Its trait is that it's got more Health/Endurance and can punch people better with the default Struggle combat action. It starts with Safety Gear (more Endurance) and a futuristic version of a construction exoskeleton that lets them grab things well and take big dumb flying leaps at things.
Driller, another somewhat "bruiser"-y one...well, you can guess what it does. Its trait is that it gets better results when it rolls well on physical things (which also includes that Struggle combat action). It starts with High Impact Gear (more Endurance, resists Kinetic which is essentially melee, less equipment slots) and an Excavation Drill which lets them drill through things or put up a debris shield to protect people.
Pilot, which is a pilot (but also a navigator/drone pilot/equipment operator, which gives its skillset a little more to work with). Its trait is that it gives Advantage when doing things at long range. It starts with a Pilot's Suit (which has a small air supply and Invulnerability to Hazard, making them the default for things involving taking a trip outside) and a Drone Kit, which allows some low-Harm ranged area attacks and a wingman routine to protect others.
Technician, which is basically the person sent to fix things on the station. Its trait is that it can move after completing a task, because they're so overworked, and gain bonuses vs. things that would benefit from them being able to quickly move away, drop to the ground, etc. It starts with Coveralls (extra equipment slots) and a Supercharger, which is conceptually basically a voltmeter combined with one of those "jump start your car" battery kits: it can shock people or charge up an Energy weapon.
Engineer, which is someone a little more on the "systems administration" side of things than Technician. Its trait is that it ignores penalties from Escalation, making it the go-to profession for doing more measured things when shit is going very bad. It starts with Coveralls as well and an Analytics Helmet, basically an AR display that lets them target enemies better or highlight them so allies can anticipate their attacks.
Foreman, which is basically the "face" if they show up. Its trait is that it can assist allies with anything involving coordination or timing (which includes attacks, but also just a lot of things in general). It starts with Safety Gear and a Comms Array, roughly a portable loudspeaker which lets them be very loud to attract attention and bark orders at allies.

As mentioned, my first set of Professions was Loader, Pilot, Technician, Engineer, Security, Foreman. These went through a handful of changes:

Loader changed to Laborer. (Made it more generic.)
Security became Driller. (Security was a weird fit, being the only one with an actual weapon instead of a tool - and having a mall cop in the group made for a different vibe, and not in the good way.)
Technician changed from Pulse Driver to Supercharger. (Pulse Driver was "I couldn't think of a good thing so here's basically a sci-fi wrench with some gravity stuff". I ended up reusing the concept for the Excavation Drill but reversing the 1-Charge and 3-Charges effects.)
Engineer changed from Supercharger to Analytics Helmet. (Supercharger always made more sense as a technician thing, Engineer is the analyst: so they gain something that lets them be a little more supportive rather than up in the mix.)
Messed around with starting equipment. It used to be a lot more generous as to how many Stims, Batteries, or Clips you started with.

Tools and Weapons

As noted above, there are six tools included in this quickstart, one for each Profession. Tools vs. Weapons is one of those things I shifted around with in my head a lot. In the end, I differentiated them in several ways:

Tools are usually more on the supportive side, weapons are more Harming or do good Harm at longer ranges, because that matters a great deal in tactics games. As many people have noted in many games, Harm is the best status effect, and this is no exception: in combat, a weapon is just better to have if your goal is to kill something with it. (Tools are fine at this in some cases, like the Excavation Drill, but the ones that do one-shot Harm are typically Melee range only.) But...you don't gain the out of combat uses of a tool, unless it's the kind of out of combat problem that can be shot to pieces. So if you're taking a weapon instead of a tool, you're making a choice!
Tools use Charges, Weapons use Ammo. This is a similar choice: stock up on Clips (which restore Ammo) or Batteries (which restore Charges) or both (which means you have less ability to stock the other kind of thing).

For tools, those were relatively easy because they came with Professions. For weapons, I split these into two categories: 3 are used by security forces, 3 by others.

Security weapons are mostly designed to put down riots more so than take out intruders. They have a Peacekeeper (an energy-based crowd suppression tool), a PDW (a short-range compact weapon designed for anti-group fire), and a Smoker (smoke grenade launcher that can also launch aerosolized stimulants).
Other weapons are more generalized, used for self-defense in boarding actions and in general (most of these are gained by fighting the intruders). Those are the Laser Pistol (which is more defensive in this configuration, meant for shooting quickly then ducking into cover), the Shotgun (it's a shotgun), and the Rail Rifle (which is a sniper rifle).

I knew early on that I wanted everything to have a 1-Charge ability and a 3-Charge ability, which makes for 12 things. To decide what everything would do, I used the concept of roles, of which I defined 12! So to ensure there was a good variety, I made sure that within those 6 Tools, each one had one ability from one Role and one from another (Attacker vs Defender vs Support) and each sub-role was supported. I then did the same thing for Weapons. In a lot of cases Roles/Sub-roles overlapped, which is fine: it's not intended to be prescriptive, but more so an exercise to ensure that weapon abilities don't just turn into "shoot good" vs "shoot more good".

(Weapons, improvised or otherwise, that don't take charges/ammo exist, they just modify the Struggle action. This does mean that a Laborer or Driller with a big wrench or something can still absolutely clean up, because their traits stack with that. Low-tech weapons/tools do still take usually 2 slots, which could still be used for something more versatile, but it's sometimes a reasonable trade for reliability.)

The final piece of the puzzle is number of Charges/Ammo a tool/weapon can store. Typically I went for 6 for 2 Slots, 8 for 3 Slots, and 10 for 4 Slots as a baseline, and tweaked less broadly versatile things (including melee-only abilities) up and more versatile things (including high Harm at range) things down.

Outfits

For each outfit, I weighed a few different properties as equal to each other, and as a starting point, balanced around each outfit gaining 2 of them (default is 6 equipment slots, which is basically one tool/weapon and 2-4 slots for incidentals):

+2 Endurance
+3 equipment slots
Resist X
Invulnerable to Hazard + 15 Threshold Air Supply
15 Threshold Air Supply

Outfits are simultaneously less obvious and just as important as tools/weapons. This is for a few reasons:

By default, everyone has 6 Health and 4 Endurance. If you gain +2 Endurance from an outfit, that puts you at 6 Health and 6 Endurance: suddenly you can guarantee that you'll tank exactly one hit with no adverse consequences (because everything does Harm based on d6 values, so it's almost always going to be 1-6 Harm) and probably tank one extra Low Die Harm hit (because that's 2 Harm). Resist X does this too but better (stepping down Harm effectively reduces it by 1.5 in most cases, so it's like +2 Endurance multiple times, and unlike +Endurance Low Die Harm of 1 reduces to 0) but only for that particular Harm type (so you can take a few more hits from people with wrenches, for instance, but not bullets).
On the other hand, more equipment slots means you effectively gain way more in the way of in-combat and out-of-combat capability through bringing more equipment.
Hazard resistance/invulnerability and Air Supply makes it possible to do Space Stuff or handle certain kinds of hazards like fire, extreme cold, teargas, etc. which is its own kind of utility.

Tune in next time (at some point) for part 2 where I go elbow-deep on Escape from CICP-1!

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Dungeon23 tech showcase: cyclic dungeon generation

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Figured I'd get a little into the sausage on one particular thing I found that I'll be using quite a bit.

Cyclic dungeon generation is a really, really cool thing that I saw posted about on twitter (from @riseupcomus I believe?), and from there I've seen other people posting about it too. In general it's a great read just for picking out good design patterns for making little moments in a level, dungeon, etc - Zelda is described as the big influence but you can see this kind of technique for design going pretty clearly into a lot of soulslike areas, for instance. So I decided to give the randomization from it a shot! I'm intending a mix of bigger "destination" regions and smaller "interstitial" regions so I'm not terribly worried about the size at this juncture, but it's built such that you can pretty easily compound on it if you want.

I rolled on the d12 table 3 times (once for the initial cycle, two for two subcycles) and got:

10. False Goal

The dungeoneers are presented with a short path to what initially appears to be the goal. However, it is revealed that the “goal” is a trap or trick, and that the true goal lies at the end of a long path that extends from the false goal chamber (or a chamber nearby). There is a 1-in-3 chance that this long path to the true goal is concealed by a secret.

3. Hidden Shortcut

The dungeoneers are presented with a long and dangerous path to the goal. However, a secret short and less dangerous path to the goal is hidden in (or near) the start chamber.

8. Monster Patrol

A very powerful monster patrols a short circular path between the start and the goal. Players moving through the start, goal, or any chambers in between must be careful to avoid the monster. There is likely something valuable in a chamber patrolled by the monster that the dungeoneers must retrieve or manipulate.

So to start, just so I can wrap my head around it, I used mermaidjs to draw out a little diagram based on this:

Afterwards, I thought about it a bit in terms of "how do these pieces fit together".

A false goal as the primary loop is something that feels like another aspect, the Foreshadowing loop: something where you can see the destination but can't get there. (The overlap doesn't bother me because the point is to spark ideas, not so much be extremely prescriptive with it.) In this case, I think it makes sense to be a "it looks like you can approach the destination but there's a major trap or hazard in the way" kind of thing. Think like the arrow tower in Demon's Souls 3-1 (we'll ignore the people who do go straight through it for now). The other path won't be secret because that's a little much for main-loop. (This is also a great way to introduce one of those classic Souls boss shortcuts if there's a boss at the end of this, have there be some way to disable the trap or hazard or whatever.)
For the hidden path, for similar reasons, I'm going to interpret this as "if you have the proper equipment and a good roll you can bypass this, otherwise you'll take the longer route". It's not guaranteed they'll have whatever equipment, it depends on what Regions they'd done before this and what they'd picked up along the way, but it's a nice way to avoid tanking resources as they go.
For the monster patrol, this is a great place for good loot gated by a nasty enemy.

So from there I started drawing. 2-8 is the false goal cycle, 3-4-5 is the hidden path subcycle 1, and 6-7 is the monster patrol subcycle 2.

This is an extremely serviceable map! I've already got an idea of which of those Region ideas I want to use it for. (I'm using the graph paper in the back of the planner for sketching out generalized, disconnected pointmaps in pencil so I can tweak them as necessary - for instance, if I end up going with the one I'm thinking of I'll probably add a point between 2 and 8 for the "trap". Once the thing starts for real, they go on the pages proper in pen.)

Anyway, check out Cyclic Dungeon Generation!

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Liminal Void Phipps 23 Worldbuilding, Part 3

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Ok, no more icons. Here’s the next step:

Integration

Name the following

Two Factions

A Settlement

A territory

A Dungeon

A Season

Your Icons and Inspirations should help a lot here. Be explicit about how your icons relate to these larger organizations or areas. You don't have to use all of them.

Given that this isn’t really a fantasy thing as such, “Dungeon” and “Season” are going to have liberties taken with them. And Factions are going to be very loose because I’m actively trying to avoid faction tech for this game: as fun as a more explicit Expanse-like game of Great Powers would be, the biggest players are mostly intended to be out of reach, these will be mostly groups of broad-strokes similar corporations.

Faction 1: Mars. (Icons: A-Event, C-Event, A-Landmark, B-Landmark, D-Landmark) The first “real” colony (Luna doesn’t count) was where Terra’s capital fled the planet first to set down roots. Many attempts at getting a colony “right” still stand, and many more have been destroyed: a lot of people suffered and a lot of blood was spilled to get here. The various corporations there have a lot of legacy pull and a lot of ties throughout the solar system: it was from Mars that most of the stations and colonies that dot the system launched. In the past few decades, though, it’s lost its luster, and most of the new blood has tried to set up shop elsewhere. But the old corporations have too much money at stake to be pushed out of the loop forever.
Faction 2: Jupiter. (Icons: D-Person, C-Secret, D-Event) The first colonists on Ganymede were offshoots of former technology corporations who were fired for various reasons - sometimes for being a little more tech-smart than politics-smart, sometimes for being too politics-smart. They had a casual manner and a revolutionary ethos: to think differently, to break the old and reshape it into the new, to worry more about long term progress than short term profit. How any of those values got interpreted over the years has been different for any of the corporations who spread across the Jovian system, but the results have at least been different, if not as utopian as their initial visions. There have certainly been life-changing things coming out of the system’s labs and shipyards, including a lot of tech that had been broadly considered decades away like inter-system communication, but in recent decades it’s rarely lived up to any of the hype. With Mars and Terra making leaps of their own, the operative question is what Jovian corps will try next - and what it will cost those in their sway.
Settlement: Callisto Colony (Icons: B-Person, B-Event, A-Peril, A-Secret) Callisto Colony is one of the few truly independent colonies, established on the surface of the Jovian moon of the same name. It won this right through hard-won battles with its founding company, Ganymede Freight - and though it suffered greatly for it, it finally won a true foothold when CSTO Transit, their trade brand, won several key Jovian transport contracts. Since then, they’ve run into many problems, like bug infestations - of late, though, many of their ships are disappearing mid-transit with no warning, which deeply threatens their continued independence.
Territory: The Saturn system (Icons: A-Person, C-Person, B-Secret, B-Peril) Some attempts at establishing a foothold to mine Saturn’s moons have been made, largely by Jovian corps. Some of them were abandoned because of environmental reasons. Some simply lost contact over time, their fates known mostly to a corporate assessment team, if even that. The system, however, is also known to be the territory of a ruthless set of pirates who have made it very difficult to maintain colonies or stations. Despite the best efforts of various intelligence firms, their hideout has never been established.
Dungeon: The Graveyard Belt (A-Treasure, B-Treasure, C-Peril, D-Peril). The remains of many ships in a major battle for Martian independence hold an eternal orbit around a lonely abandoned station near Ceres. The station itself is intact, as are many ships: the belt has resisted salvage thanks to automated targeting systems on otherwise dead ships, as well as rumors of intentional sabotage on the part of corps wanting no part of the battle’s story being changed, have discouraged salvage crews. A sufficiently armed and reckless ship and crew could make a killing from selling old drives, databanks, and weaponry to the right bidder, though.
Season: Scrap Market Boom and Bust (C-Treasure, D-Treasure, A-Treasure, B-Treasure). Every once in awhile, every few years or so, the amount of machined materiel to make new ships runs low. That’s when salvagers go to work: old stations, old ships left derelict, and such are brought in and stripped for parts. The need for new ships eventually wanes, and the salvagers either rest on their winnings or find other work until the next boom.

The game doesn’t exist yet so I’m probably going to take part 4 and run with it in some direction - since I’m just writing the thing from scratch, not running a game with it yet, I think I’d rather flesh things out while still being vague in the anticanon sense. I guess in the next installment I’ll try to figure out how I want to do that? Sure.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Liminal Void Phipps 23 Worldbuilding, Part 2d

Thu, 08 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Origin, 1+2a, 2b, 2c

Part 2d: Icons for “The wildly disruptive nature of independent ship ownership”

Event: In the early days of the Jovian colonies declaring independence from Mars, Mars had shut off all wormhole beacons in an attempt to starve them out. One lone sympathetic freighter, however, brought enough supplies via off-network beacons to keep them supplied so they could maintain their resistance. That ship is long since gone, but is celebrated yearly on the Jovian Independence Day on June 1st.
Landmark: The Deimos Travel Consortium’s logo which still emblazons that tiny moon. The Consortium collapsed after independent investigators with their own ship used it to uncover evidence that a mass transit disaster due to improper maintenance was covered up. Rumor has it they were paid handsomely by a competitor to look into it.
Person: Josiah Flake, the current CEO of Translunar Water, was once declared legally dead. It turned out that he had faked his death and, with the help of a ship’s crew, used the opportunity to turn the tables on a would-be assassin - and the only other person in line for the executive position once his boss retired.
Peril: If you’re supplying workers with the means to secure a better deal with themselves, watch your back. Businesses watch closely for pro-labor ship captains and find ways to make them disappear.
Treasure: It’s said that there are still the husks of ill-fated stations in orbit around Venus, but no company in their right mind would take the chance to salvage them. Which means they’re ripe for the picking if you’ve got enough thermal shielding.
Secret: A Terran shipyard has made a prototype of a nearly self-sustainable ship: it has a new kind of engine that requires no fuel and its air and water recyclers run at an absurdly efficient rate. It could change the limits of the galaxy forever if made at scale.

Icons done! Time to move onto phase 3.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Liminal Void Phipps 23 Worldbuilding, Part 2c

Tue, 06 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Origin, 1+2a, 2b

2c: Icons for "Being thrust suddenly onto the fringes of society and having to figure out how to deal with that."

Event: When the Terran and Martian beacon networks were merged, a lot of stations became redundant. Everyone manning those stations were fired and reactors were deactivated as soon as the merger went through. The stations who had suitable engineering knowledge to restart them did so for the sake of everyone on the station, but for their trouble, they were blacklisted from all future corporate work.
Landmark: Adrastea station was the source of one corp’s experimental “study” into worker efficiency in high gravity conditions. When the study ended in a drastic failure, workers there were all forced to sign non-disclosure and non-compete agreements before receiving medical care. After receiving the bare minimum, they were all promptly fired.
Person: Barnaby Russell was a pilot who got fired from ferry duty due to having a management inefficiency pinned on him. On his way out, he stole a security patrol fighter and used it to hijack several freighters. He’s still at large, along with a few old friends he managed to recruit, and occasionally his crew will disrupt an ore shipment leaving the colonies.
Peril: Every once in awhile, someone decided to give a little too much control to an automated system. When that happens (and when it goes wrong), it’s quite standard for everyone involved in programming or maintenance to be let go and the mark put on their permanent record in spite of whoever made it happen.
Treasure: If your station gets attacked or cut loose, strip the place clean, then hide it well. What are they going to do, fire you twice? Just make sure you don’t take anything traceable…
Secret: A lot of corporations cut people loose or mark them as falsely dead on purpose. There’s a lot of things you can hire someone who doesn’t exist for.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

RUNEvember Summary

Sun, 04 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Session 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

As you can note by the big ol' index above, I played a lot of RUNE last month! As someone who has both made a few Realms and played a ton, here are my opinions (not rules or anything! Just my observations) on what helps make a good realm.

On realm mechanic design:

I get that a bunch of designers have got it in their head that balance doesn't matter because you can tweak it but especially with a solo game where you're playing a pre-written thing like RUNE, a lot of people simply aren't going to do that, and will just go "this sucks" and put it down. It doesn't have to be exquisitely balanced or anything, but a baseline double check is nice. At the very least, try to play through it once like you don't know anything about how it's supposed to work - if it feels bad or too hard or annoying doing that, consider revising something.
On a similar note, double check to see if a mechanic is annoying as well as balanced. There are things I've run into that are like...this is fine on its own but it doesn't add a whole lot and it's way more cognitive load. If you're introducing a new mechanic that takes a bit of thought, consider introducing it in a "tutorial" kind of way (i.e. less threatening, gives you some idea of what to expect) before the main attraction you have in mind.
When in doubt, reduce bookkeeping, mechanics, etc. Try to think of different ways you can use one new mechanic rather than two new mechanics used in one particular way each.

On realm map/point/etc design:

Try to introduce a few different paths players can take in a Realm. An easy way is to branch things out from point 1, or introduce a few secret paths early on. Make it so that two players can have pretty different experiences.
Vary up points a bit! Have a few that are fight-heavy, a few that don't have fights, Lore, items, etc.
Put really good stuff in points you can't access without finding a secret way to that point, or behind particular fights. Make it feel earned!
Please put cards for a section near that section (like on the same spread or something). It's not strictly required but it sure makes the lives of anyone running the Realm easier.

On item design:

Keep in mind that you're not just balancing for your Realm, you're balancing for other people's Realms too. If you introduce a way stronger weapon because you have way stronger enemies then that weapon's just going to be way stronger in other people's Realms, and vice versa. This is not the worst thing in the world but it’s less interesting to have something that people either have to not use or use to exclusion, or design around.
I slightly regret setting a trend of taking away all your weapons, lol. (I'm kidding but certainly if you're going to do that, consider providing some alternatives for people to use quickly other than whatever standard two you give them - there's a reason there's 3 easy Discovers with a LOT of different kinds of equipment you can get early in Cragcliff. Locking people into a playstyle isn't going to be everyone's bag!)
The most broken players thing in RUNE is nearly always 2+ Harm at Adjacent/2 Spaces + Movement. Turns out being able to maintain range in a tactics game is really good! Who knew, right? You can mitigate this by having 1 Harm with movement, 2-3 Harm without movement, or 3 Harm + something else with negative movement.

On encounter design:

I suspect nobody really wants to be in a RUNE fight for more than like, 10 rounds. Doubly so if there's a ton of enemies with a lot of crap on them so they take forever. Plan accordingly.
- Be careful with having Block being too common, that's the quickest way to make a fight last forever. If you want high Block on an enemy, reduce their Health a bit from what you'd normally make it.
One big thing you want to avoid in setting up encounters is making them "damage races". This is to say: you don't really want to have a situation where it's purely a matter of "did I roll better than them for enough rounds to win".
- For all fights, use terrain. Terrain is a great way to make a fight entirely different. Introduce chokepoints, add difficult terrain to points so savvy players can maneuver enemies onto (and un-savvy players can be maneuvered onto), etc. Add new terrain too! Mechanically "normal" enemies and an interesting map is going to usually feel better than really intricate enemies and a boring map.
- For standard (non-solo) fights, you can help with this by introducing several kinds of enemies. Having a few to work around, especially if they complement each other, means players have to prioritize which one is more important to defeat first.
- For solo fights, you can have a moveset that does noticeably different things (attack at different ranges, for instance) to encourage adjusting tactics round to round or taking different approaches.

I'm sure I'll have more thoughts as time goes on, but these are my big takeaways.

See you next RUNEvember!

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Liminal Void Phipps 23 Worldbuilding, Part 2b

Fri, 02 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Origin, 1+2a

2b: Icons for "The farther out a station or colony is from any of the centers of corporate power, the more exploited and extracted they are, but the easier it is to achieve some kind of independence."

Event: The first corporation to set up a headquarters in a colony. It's how you know a colony is about to become a proper hub, and that everyone living there is about to have their lives permanently changed.
Landmark: A few decades ago, the first Martian worker housing unit was a deeply inhumane honeycomb-like structure with awful conditions. It's long since been demolished, and only a tiny museum exists in its place. Mars is now a thriving center for commerce, and anything that reminds people of its roots isn't suitable.
Person: Joe Reyes, an organizer who was the public face of victories for workers in Callisto Station. He now lives in Ganymede and works as a fundraiser for similar efforts, but he's frequently accused of enjoying his relative fame and the comforts of the city while other stations and colonies languish.
Peril: Diseases don't often hit colonies, but when they do, they spread like wildfire due to cramped, awful conditions. If it's something that's a serious risk, it's very common for the founding corp to quarantine the colony entirely to prevent spread, regardless of how well the colony can withstand that.
Treasure: If you've got a ship and want to make salvage money, what you need to do is head to Earth and dig up old records of existing colonies and compare them to known ones. If you see one that doesn't show up on current records, head that way. There's a chance it's been completely abandoned and there's something worth salvaging there. Who knows what condition it's in, though.
Secret: The destruction of the Enceladus commune. By official records, no colony could possibly exist without corporate sanction, and yet one did, for a surprisingly long time, exist. They were destroyed outright by Jovian corporate navies, and all official records were scrubbed. But some people remember.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

RUNEvember Session 15: Cogrealm of the Mechanist

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Session 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

For the final RUNEvember Realm, I entered the Cogrealm of the Mechanist!

The whirring, ever-dancing fragment of Obron known as the Cogrealm has been a beacon of light and progress even in the grimmest days of the shattering. Wielding the wondrous power of Uncertain Mathematics, the people of Cogrealm can create machines and devices that defy the paltry limitations of reason and physics.

But the tick of the Cogrealm is winding down. Cold, harsh reality seeps into the dream of invention that is the Cogrealm, born in the harsh logical fist of an interloper. Something rigid, something arbitrary, something cruel has slipped into the heart of the Cogrealm, and is rewriting the its wonder with the brute certainty of reality. A new rune pulses in the black heart of a Rune Lord, usurping the land’s old order and replacing it with a new, rigid regime. Only an Engraved can restore things now.

Overview and Realm Mechanics

For the Realm as a whole, there's not much in the way of overarching mechanics (Clock/Death aside).

The big Realm Mechanic is Contraptions. These are like Gear but don't take up a Gear slot (but you can only have one out at a time). Some of these have a Power Up rating, which means you can spend Stamina Dice to get it completely charged, at which point it does something.

Some enemy attacks have the Suppress keyword as well, which sets the Engraved's highest die on their next stamina roll to a 1.

Realm Clock

Every 8 movements/actions, one of your Contraptions at random becomes entirely inert. However, every unique enemy you kill resets the clock to zero.

Death Penalty

You lose a Contraption. You can regain it by returning to the point where you died.

Play Impressions

Neat little Realm. Not much in the way of exploration but some very fun gimmick fights here! Give it a look!

Everything in this part of the post is spoilers for the Realm. Click this to show it if that's fine with you!

As you can tell by the map, the Realm's pretty linear, all in all. Which is fine, of course. You need all the Lore and a key item to get to point 8 and the Rune Lord and you'll need to hit every point to do it.

Enemies are interesting. Every other fight in this Realm is some absolute nonsense and I mean that in the best way possible. The gimmicks I remember are:

Two sets of enemies, one of which only acts on an odd roll, one of which only acts on an even roll
An enemy that has a different range for each roll.
An enemy that you fight on a hex grid.
An enemy who hates randomness, and as such they just get 1-6 results that get chosen in line

The Contraptions you can get are similarly cool:

One gives you a bonus on roll combos (1 and 2, 3 and 4, 5 and 6): you either gain 1 Move, Block, or Harm.
One needs to be charged with every die in order (1, then 2, then 3, etc) but once it's charged.
One needs a huge charge period but gives you a 5 Harm ranged attack.
One lets you invert your dice (1 -> 6, 2 -> 5, etc)
One gives you a 1/combat extra stamina die

The weapon you can get is the Axe of the Prime. It's a two-hander which only operates on a 2, 3, 5, 7, (9 for some reason), 11.

The Rune Lord is the enemy with the randomness gimmick. Phase 1 is pretty easy because he has 8 Health and range adjacent, 2, and 3 - if you can get to Same and stay there he's not so bad. Phase 2 is where the tough part begins, he has Harm 3 or 4 on every attack, 20 Health, Range same/adjacent/2, and a ton of movement. Your saving grace is that every contraption you acquired is active this fight - meaning that if you're smart about things, you can charge up that 5-Harm Contraption and ping him at range. It's pretty rough going though.

The Rune lets you use those Contraptions elsewhere. (Pretty powerful given that one of them just gives you a flat +1 Harm when powered up!)

FINAL

Weapons:
- Blood-Drinking Blade (The Scourged City)
- Witherburst (Shrouded Hamlet)
- Radiant Heater (Cragcliff Reformatory)
Gear:
- Broken Timepiece (Echo Crater)
- Raynard's Resistance (Abrus Island)
Runes:
- E: Tide Run (Coral Rock)
- E: Osteomancer's Rune (World's Grave)
- E: Rune of Control (Castle Blanchard)
- Fate's Foe
- Silvertongue Rune (Cragcliff Reformatory)
- Devouring Rune (Bulwark Hollow)
- Obran Express Medal (Obran Express)
- Obsidian Arm (Obsidian Brink)
- Fate's Hunter (Great Serpent Tree replacement)
- Grinea's Stasis (Abrus Island)
- False Rune (Dread Manse)
- Scourged Rune (Scourged City)
- Backtrack Rune (Echo Crater)
- Command Rune (Shrouded Hamlet)
- Rune of Uncertain Mathematics (Cogrealm of the Mechanist)

And that's it for RUNEvember! I'll make a wrap-up post probably sometime this week.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

RUNEvember Session 14: Shrouded Hamlet

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Session 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

This time, I entered my own Shrouded Hamlet. (CW: alcohol, fungi)

The village of Cammillon was once known as a vibrant fixture in river trade, famous for a rich, exclusive liqueur that bears its name. Export of barrels and bottles had increased greatly as it became well known, until they suddenly stopped completely. A thick fog had slowly crept over the village, and none who entered afterwards returned.

You carve your sigil into the northwestern bridge and survey the village. Even from here, relatively free of the fog, its pervasive, musty stench is a feeling as much as it is a smell. You take one last untainted breath before you enter.

Overview and Realm Mechanics

The main Realm Mechanic here is that there are two new kinds of Terrain: Beds and Blooms. Beds sit on top of walkable tiles, while Blooms sit on top of permanent Terrain. Whenever an enemy uses an ability with the Blossom keyword:

If you're on a Bed or adjacent to a Bloom, you advance the Realm Clock.
If an enemy is on a Bed or adjacent to a Bloom, they regain 1 Health.

(Some weapons cancel Blossom too. This was tied to a word in the weapon's name but that's way too restrictive, and also I goofed and forgot the right name, so given the new card format I'm going to tie this to Fire or Necromancy in general instead.)

It also has "Automatic" and "Bypass" keywords for FIGHT actions, which either indicate that you're forced into that FIGHT or that you can ignore that FIGHT for the purposes of taking other actions at that point, respectively.

Realm Clock

The air here is toxic in some manner. The Realm Clock here starts with eight segments. When you take an action or move, you mark one segment, and some actions can mark multiple segments. If it fills up, every further action you take deals 1 Harm. It empties out when you rest or die.

As noted, Blossom can also advance this clock! So you can get overwhelmed pretty fast if you're not careful with positioning.

The Realm Clock increases its number of segments every time you gain Lore.

Death Penalty

The penalty is that your maximum number of clock segments goes down! Whatever's happening here remembers you after death and attacks you faster every time.

Design Notes

This will absolutely spoil the entire Realm, and possibly even if you've already read/played it if you really don't like to see how the sausage works and would prefer your own interpretation of things.

So the base idea for this one came from wanting to do more of an explicit horror thing about digging too deep. So I came up with a general structure of mining town -> mine runs out -> bad idea to prolong the village's life -> disaster. I came up with the bad idea being related to some kind of food/drink because I don't think anyone had really done food/drink/etc before to this level as part of a Realm and it's a really good way to drive worldbuilding. People gotta eat.

I was looking up the French word for mushroom (fungus zombies are cool) and it turns out champignon looks a lot like Champagne. So I tweaked it around until it wasn't actually a word and thus, Cammillon was born - and much like its origin, the village named a kind of booze after themselves. And you can then tie it into the mines, because they dug out the old mines further to make room for more beds...and then that gave me the idea for the Realm Clock - the toxic "fog" is actually a bunch of invasive spores.

In general there's a lot of ways to progress through the Realm: you can head towards 2 or 3 from the outset, which branch before rejoining near the center of town.

Point 3 incurs a pretty massive Realm Clock hit, which is used as a soft deterrent to go to 2 - 2 has a "tutorial" style easy encounter, a Bottle of Cammillon, and a +1 Lore that hits you for a bunch of Clock increases at once. It's right next to the Sigil, so you can go back and rest/remove those clock ticks, lesson learned about what you're about to encounter.
From there, you can either continue that way or use your Bottle to go to 3. Or you can just go to 3 from the outset, of course. It looks risky but if you can get past the FIGHT you find something that makes travelling between 1, 3, and 5 faster, and it's a quick way to get another point of Lore (in addition to a pretty big early hint as to what's going on in the village, the Lore stuff elsewhere isn't as explicit).
There's useful stuff at various parts that are kind of "off to the side" from the main obvious path, like point 5 (the docks) and point 8 (the very end of the road near the edge of town), and you can unlock point 7 which gives you some helpful gear and dumps a lot of what happened on you, in the form of the master brewer's diary. (I'm not wild about that decision, loredumps are bad practice, but I couldn't figure out a more artful way to lay it all out there.)

The standard enemies are pretty "standard zombie" stuff: the "fast" one, the "boomer" that's slow, hard to kill, and explodes on death (represented here by having a fair amount of Health but no Block, and it deals +1 Harm if it would die), and the "ranged" one that has some terrain stuff (it adds Beds to the map on a 6). There's a few other ones in a special encounter off to the side too which benefit from being clustered up. A bigger focus is generally on the grid/map rather than the enemies themselves - you have to balance the risk of advancing the Realm clock vs. letting enemies regain Health freely. (Obviously that second one's less of a threat if you've got a very aggressive build, but that creates other risks - there's a lot of instances of 2+ Harm hanging around so you're sure to get pinged unless you're at range.) It doesn't quite play the same after the difficult terrain change but it's fine.

As far as the equipment, there's a lot.

Realm Items: Bottles of Cammillon are all around, which let you negate any Realm Clock increase from an action/movement. (This is extremely helpful for a few actions, but especially the one that lets you jump straight to the Rune Lord if you have enough Lore, in exchange for Harm and/or a massive Realm Clock increase - if you're clever, you can use a bottle to do it for free and skip some really nasty fights at point 9.) There's also a Plague Mask you can get which removes Realm Clock advances based on movement, which is a very nice convenience thing - a lot of players will get this late in the Realm because it's at point 8 which is about as out of the way as it can get, but it's a straight shot to get it from point 1, so it can reward some early curiosity.
One weapon is Witherburst, which is a Same/Adjacent weapon (this was after the big weapon change to make most of them Adjacent-only, so it's a little weaker to compensate). It has the Spread keyword, which makes kill Harm spread to other adjacent enemies.
Another is the Hand Crossbow, which is my way of trying to balance Move + Range 2: after each shot, you have to spend a turn not moving to reload it. (I'm going to change this to alternatively being able to spend a stamina die to reload because in practice that's a little too harsh.)
One piece of Gear is the Caustic Solvent, which lets you remove one piece of terrain 1/combat. This is obviously useful given the Bed/Bloom situation but it's just useful in general.
Another piece of Gear is the Mining Explosives! This one sets a charge by spending a Stamina Die that goes off for 3 Harm in that square in 1d6 rounds. This is another one that's definitely specific to this Realm (specifically the Rune Lord fight) but can definitely find use elsewhere with less mobile enemies.

The Rune Lord (the Infection Heart) is a fun one. I decided to make it a "setpiece" fight where the middle of the square is Blooms and the boss can move between them. You can win this in one of two ways: either hit it until it dies or undermine the columns on the 4 corners by destroying them so the location (the inside of the mine) collapses. As columns collapse or the Heart is Harmed, it gets nastier, first by adding Blossom to more moves, then by rolling twice and doing both actions. The two pieces of Gear support one approach or the other: Mining explosives help with the columns, which are explicitly weak to them, while the Caustic Solvent helps destroy a central bloom, which harms the Heart as well as restricting its movement and increasing yours. Witherburst's a little better for direct assault because you can cancel Blossom, but the Hand Crossbow's probably a little better at sniping at columns.

Depending on how you defeated the Rune Lord, you gain one of two Runes. Destroying the Heart directly gives you the Blossom Rune: when you start/end your turn on Difficult Terrain, you have +1 Harm next round. (Reminiscient of enemies being able to hang out on beds and regain Health.) Taking out the columns nets you the Command Rune, letting you 1/combat decide an enemy's action instead of them rolling. (Reminiscient of the Heart zombie-controlling all the villagers.)

All in all I really like how this one turned out! Definitely intended for just-starting-out Engraved, I soared through it pretty easily, but it's fairly quick and punchy and replayable.

Weapons:
- Blood-Drinking Blade (The Scourged City)
- Witherburst (Shrouded Hamlet)
- Radiant Heater (Cragcliff Reformatory)
Gear:
- Broken Timepiece (Echo Crater)
- Raynard's Resistance (Abrus Island)
Runes:
- E: Tide Run (Coral Rock)
- E: Osteomancer's Rune (World's Grave)
- E: Rune of Control (Castle Blanchard)
- Fate's Foe
- Silvertongue Rune (Cragcliff Reformatory)
- Devouring Rune (Bulwark Hollow)
- Obran Express Medal (Obran Express)
- Obsidian Arm (Obsidian Brink)
- Fate's Hunter (Great Serpent Tree replacement)
- Grinea's Stasis (Abrus Island)
- False Rune (Dread Manse)
- Scourged Rune (Scourged City)
- Backtrack Rune (Echo Crater)
- Command Rune (Shrouded Hamlet)

Next time, Cogrealm of the Mechanist, the final RUNEvember entry!

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Liminal Void: Phipps 23 (24?) Worldbuilding, Part 1+2a

Mon, 28 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Working off of this list because it sounds like a good way to put a loose, anti-canon setting together. (Anti-canon is definitely something I'm aiming for for Liminal Void so I'm game.)

Step 1

(mostly a repost from here so it's in a useful place, made slight changes here and there)

Inspirations

The Expanse
Cowboy Bebop
System Shock
Alien/s
FTL

About

If I had to narrow it down to statements would probably come out to something like:

Space is inherently hazardous and by all rights nobody should be in it. This is more true the less populated the area is.
The farther out a station or colony is from any of the centers of corporate power, the more exploited and extracted they are, but the easier it is to achieve some kind of independence.
Being thrust suddenly onto the fringes of society and having to figure out how to deal with that.
The wildly disruptive nature of independent ship ownership.

Step 2a: Icons for "Space Is Inherently Hazardous"

Event: August 6th (Terran years, because most of the foundational software libraries that govern time were written centuries ago and nobody's willing to rewrite them) is celebrated galaxy-wide as the anniversary of the first successful wormhole transit between Earth and Mars. The unsuccessful attempts don't get holidays.
Landmark: Vulcan Station, the first permanent space station orbiting the sun opposite Mars, is somehow still technically intact a century later. The inside is still highly irradiated thanks to insufficient turn-of-the-century containment tech, but its wormhole beacon is still active, so its outer docks are still occasionally used for resupply/refuel efforts.
Person: Every wormhole beacon placed is the result of someone traveling for years on end to place it. The most famous one goes by Trailblazer. Their trips took longer and longer, and every time they returned they looked more haggard, telling tales of how absolutely empty space gets. They embarked for Pluto, and they haven't been seen since.
Peril: Someone decided years ago that they wanted to try to breed vacuum-survivable beetles, allegedly as part of an effort to try to seed "dead" planets with an ecosystem. What it accomplished is that every once in awhile, a far station will get absolutely infested by a few stowaways in a poorly-checked freighter hold.
Treasure: An absolutely delusional billionaire set out on a long-term freeze colony ship nearly two centuries ago, long before the highest-thrust drives were developed and any beacons were set. They were aiming for Mars, but they never got there - from what we now know, their reactor probably failed about halfway there. Allegedly he packed all kinds of fineries on his vessel, though...if someone were to find it they'd be worth a fortune on the antiques market.
Secret: Some ships head out for a beacon and just never get there. That's at least partially because the corporation who runs the primary wormhole network can interdict travel for ships of interest and redirect them to a secure beacon of their choosing. But in truth, not all of it's being done by them, and that terrifies them. Where are the rest going?

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Liminal Void Phipps23 start

Mon, 28 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

(For context, originally this was a reply to this post).

This is a pretty cool idea! I'll give this a shot because I'm starting to sketch out a new thing (Liminal Void) and I'm trying to give it a little more to work with setting-wise than I normally do for a game.

Inspirations

The Expanse
Cowboy Bebop
System Shock
Alien/s
FTL

About

If I had to narrow it down to statements would probably come out to something like:

Space is inherently hazardous and by all rights nobody should be in it. This is more true the less populated the area is.
The farther out a station or colony is from any of the centers of corporate power, the more exploited and extracted they are.
Being thrust suddenly onto the fringes of society and having to figure out how to deal with that.
The wildly disruptive nature of independent ship ownership.

I'll pull this (and some of those Icon ideas) into a dedicated post later.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

RUNEvember Session 13: Echo Crater

Mon, 28 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Session 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

This time, I explored/am exploring/will explore Echo Crater!

Approaching the edge of the crater you pause to rest and oversee the challenge ahead. An entire realm, sunk into the earth years ago and no record of what happened. You however feel the pull of a rune towards the old sorcerer’s tower. You carve your sigil into the rock, and swear to defeat the rune-lord who desolated this land.

Overview and Realm Mechanics

So this one's fascinating. It's got two maps: Present and Past. You start in the Present, but pretty soon you'll find the ability to go to the Past...briefly. (We'll get to that.)

One thing that's a present mechanic is Impossible Orbs. I'm not going to spoiler these because they're really cool and prominent. These are like not-Hazard Hazards that have 1 Health and die as soon as they do their one Harm 2 move to a random target in range.

Another cool thing is Timeline Anomalies. These mostly only come into play with the Death Penalty so I'll talk about them there.

One thing that's interesting is you can permanently debuff certain classes of enemies - either removing Health or reducing options. It's cool.

Realm Clock

The Realm Clock only takes place in the Past. The clock size is based on your Lore. When it runs out, the thing that destroyed the Past happens and you die and are kicked back to the Present. So you end up with a Majora's Mask style "what can I do in a given loop" kind of vibe, with the added wrinkle that you can do or get things in the past that change or enable things in the present.

Death Penalty

When you die in the Present, you pick a number. When you roll it in your first fight, you spawn two orbs. Pretty straightforward.

When you die in the Past, you bump up your Timeline Anomalies. During your first fight, you have a (anomalies)/6 chance of getting the encounter invaded by the Continuity Keeper, who gains Health equal to your Anomalies. It's a fascinating take!

Play Impressions

This Realm is absolutely unique in the way it goes about things. Strong recommendation if you want to branch out from "normal" Realms!

Everything in this part of the post is spoilers for the Realm. Click this to show it if that's fine with you!

This Realm is so cool! Most likely you'll do some exploration in the Present at first to build up some Lore, then go to the Past, die almost immediately after picking out some Lore (you get like 3 Lore before going to the past). It's definitely rewarding to explore the Present first because you get some very useful things and Lore, but you can just as easily go to to the Past and grab a few things there too. (I did everything I could in the Present before going to the Past and noted a few things that would have been very helpful in the Present, but also some things in the Present that I would have sorely missed in the Past. It's a good mix.) Speaking of Majora's Mask, there's a very Zelda-like amount of key items, and anything you find in the Past you have to find a way to preserve over the ages so you can go get it in the Present.

Enemies are cool. They're all pretty flimsy individually, but that's because every single one of them has an Orb summon and there's frequently quite a few of them, so you'll end up having your hands full either way. Every encounter with a Corrupted Psion (which can pop out 1-4 Orbs/turn) ends up requiring some actual thought, so that's pretty cool. One lategame encounter has an enemy that can shit out 8 (!!!) orbs at a time! If you're playing this, take out like 16 tokens pre-emptively, this Realm loves it some Orbs. As mentioned, you can also nerf every enemy: notably, one tough fight nets you the ability to have the nastier 2 regular enemies lose their 1 roll, which is the one that summons Orbs.

(With regards to the Impossible Orbs, I actually misunderstood the Wild designation and in doing so ignored it in favor of "they only attack the Engraved", which made the fights way more interesting and I honestly recommend this for players doing this fight with more than 1-2 Runes because without that change enemies will absolutely end up orbing themselves a LOT for lack of better orb targets.)

There's some equipment here which is interesting. There's two different kinds of the same Staff, because one is the one you get in the past and one is the worse version of it you get in the future. (You do get an anomaly for getting both, which is fun.) You're not likely to use both at the same time, because they both do roughly the same thing - 1-2 Harm to multiple targets, resolves before Harm - but neither has any Move. At the very end of the Realm - in fact, after the 2nd to last encounter - you get the Broken Timepiece, which lets you store a die you don't use and swap it in for another die later. (Definitely keeping that.)

The Rune Lord lead-up is pretty neat! First, you get a fight with the Orb Sorcerer (see 8 orbs above). Next, you have to fight the Calamity that killed the Realm in the Past, alongside a mysterious Temporal Voyager. This fight was a setpiece-style one (all its moves are "hit this row/column" style stuff) but some things weren't clear - it has an ability that pulls stuff towards it, and it has an ability that Harms anything that moves into it, but those two things combine awkwardly because it doesn't really specify when either of those things hit. Finally, it turns out your buddy is the Rune Lord, and fights you for it. (If you're willing to tread water on Stage 2 and let your Temporal Voyager buddy get chomped, you can explicitly skip Stage 3, which is neat.)

The Rune is a 1/rest reroll-everything, which is pretty neat.

Weapons:
- Blood-Drinking Blade (The Scourged City)*
- Lance of Light (Castle Blanchard)
- Radiant Heater (Cragcliff Reformatory)
Gear:
- Broken Timepiece (Echo Crater)
- Raynard's Resistance (Abrus Island)
Runes:
- E: Tide Run (Coral Rock)
- E: Osteomancer's Rune (World's Grave)
- E: Rune of Control (Castle Blanchard)
- Fate's Foe
- Silvertongue Rune (Cragcliff Reformatory)
- Devouring Rune (Bulwark Hollow)
- Obran Express Medal (Obran Express)
- Obsidian Arm (Obsidian Brink)
- Fate's Hunter (Great Serpent Tree replacement)
- Grinea's Stasis (Abrus Island)
- False Rune (Dread Manse)
- Scourged Rune (Scourged City)
- Backtrack Rune (Echo Crater)

*Adjusted to:

1H: Range Adjacent

2-3: Move 1, Harm 1
4-5: Move 1, Harm 2
6: Move 1, Harm 3

2H: Range Adjacent

2-5: Drain 3
6-7: Move 1, Drain 3
8+: Harm 4, all enemies in one adjacent square and the square behind it, Take 1 Harm

(Read the original on cohost here!)

RUNEvember Session 11: Dread Manse

Sat, 26 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Session 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

This time, I approached the Dread Manse!

Its owner was a well-respected lord, until one day he was never seen again in daylight. Rumors of horrifying vampirism persisted, which were soon confirmed as fact. His newfound dark magic was powerful enough to shade his mansion from the sun and he has not been seen in decades. Rumor has it that he hunts when night is darkest.

You arrive at this accursed place at twilight, when it appears. You have been called to this place by the faint presence of a Rune, though strange and obscured by his illusory magics. Dispel the illusion once and for all, and claim the Rune if it exists.

Overview and Realm Mechanics

This one's my pamphlet realm! It fits on a page, front and back, and you can knock it out in like 15 minutes.

Its clock is just a countdown until True Night: if you take 8 actions before the clock fully expires, the "rune lord" gets way harder. (You can always tick the clock once to heal 2 Health too.)

On death, everything resets. I couldn't really think of anything more interesting and I don't like terribly punishing penalties anyway.

Design Notes

My inspiration for this was that I wanted to make kind of a Castlevania-esque thing for a pamphlet realm. So I started with the vampire at the top, then went from there. 5 points sounded right, so that's where I ended up: the boss room and 4 other points.

Because of the confines of a pamphlet (and the way it's constructed with the trifold), I wanted to make sure that encounters each had one kind of enemy, and that there would be at most two kinds of enemies. So the way it's set up is that you have to fight one of each kind of enemy at point 1 and 3: skeleton guards (I just re-used my Swordsman statblock from the original Cragcliff) and gargoyles (high-move enemies with block). For points 2 and 4, there are harder optional encounters with both, so if your build works better for one or the other, then you can pursue them if you'd like. For your trouble, each of those optional encounters gates a realm item you might want for the vampire fight, as well as provides a little bit of local color: one is a monster hunter's remains, another is a well-hidden holy symbol in a profaned chapel. Not exactly ground-breaking aesthetically, of course. The big trick is that you have no healing other than spending an action to do it. There are 4 FIGHTs and 2 SEARCHes, so that puts you at 6/8 on the clock if you gathered everything, meaning you have a budget of 2 Harm if you want to encounter the boss at max Health and not be at True Night.

When you fight the vampire, based on which items you got and whether or not it's True Night, a few things change:

The Hunter's Potion turns his Drain (all of his moves have Drain) into Harm. (Potions that make your blood toxic are cool and I love seeing them every time they pop up.)
The Sanctified Symbol makes him unable to enter to Same with you, making it way easier to step back from attacks. (He can still attack at Same if you enter his range though. The vampire trope of not being able to enter somewhere uninvited is honestly underused.)
If it reaches True Night, he regens 1 Health/round and rolls 2d6 on his turn, taking the highest Harm in range.

So you have to really think about your priorities. I chose to grab both and risk entering at 4/5 Health and it absolutely could have gone another way otherwise.

For your trouble, you get a consumable that lets you use an extra Rune during one fight.

Weapons:
- Gleamwood's Maul (Abrus Island)
- Lance of Light (Castle Blanchard)
- Radiant Heater (Cragcliff Reformatory)
Gear:
- Graven Shackles (The Cracks Betwixt)
- Raynard's Resistance (Abrus Island)
Runes:
- E: Tide Run (Coral Rock)
- E: Osteomancer's Rune (World's Grave)
- E: Rune of Control (Castle Blanchard)
- Fate's Foe
- Silvertongue Rune (Cragcliff Reformatory)
- Devouring Rune (Bulwark Hollow)
- Obran Express Medal (Obran Express)
- Obsidian Arm (Obsidian Brink)
- Fate's Hunter (Great Serpent Tree replacement)
- Grinea's Stasis (Abrus Island)
- False Rune (Dread Manse)

Next time, Giernan, the Scorched City!

(Read the original on cohost here!)

RUNEvember Session 12: The Scourged City

Sat, 26 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Session 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

The city of Giernan was a place of ambition and prosperity, as well as poverty and despair. Widening social castes gave way to hatred, and something truly abyssal was brought into the city. Unrest became disorder, and men became monsters. The city was sealed off from the outside and you were trapped. Then everything began to burn.

You awakened in the Clinic Ward and discovered it too had burned. Citizens, once seeking to hunt out the demons, are turning into demons without even realizing their spiritual fall. You must escape this sealed city or face a nightmare every time you wake.

Overview and Realm Mechanics

Did you play Bloodborne and like it? If so, you're going to find a lot here to like, because it's very much the first area or so of Bloodborne remixed a bit. I don't mean to be dismissive by saying that, there's a fair bit of unique or interesting stuff here, but it definitely wears its influence on its sleeve.

One thing that it definitely takes from that is discovering citizens. Whenever you take an action that allows for discovery, you roll 2d6 and see who's there. If you've played Bloodborne, there aren't going to be too many surprises. You can send them to the church or to the clinic, for varying rewards.

In kind of an escape-before-escape-mechanics-existed thing, you can roll 1d6 + Lore vs. an escape value listed to bypass a fight. If it fails, you take Harm and have to do the fight. (It says "bypass" but also you just go back to the previous area if you succeed. Doesn't sound much like bypassing to me.)

In addition to Lore gating certain things, you can spend it in various ways too. Lore-as-currency is an interesting push-pull.

Finally, there's a random encounter mechanic which seems to barely come up? More on that in the spoiler section.

Realm Clock

So there are two clocks. The Infected clock ticks forward every time a fight starts. It ticks back, however, when a citizen is sent elsewhere. The Flaming clock ticks forward every time a fight lasts longer than 4 rounds.

When either is full, the city gets Infected or Flaming: this changes what's present in certain locations. Neither is terribly punishing, so this is a pretty cool idea!

Death Penalty

On death, you lose Lore. If you kill the enemy who took it from you, you get it back; otherwise, it's gone forever.

Play Impressions

This one's pretty cool! A few pain points for me but nothing too big.

Everything in this part of the post is spoilers for the Realm. Click this to show it if that's fine with you!

The Realm starts you with just a Syringe and a Torch. No Block on either. Do you get it? It's Bloodborne, did you get it? To theoretically compensate for the massive problem in the gameplay this immediately creates, the Syringe has Rally 1, which restores 1 Health on a hit if you took Harm last turn. This really doesn't feel sufficient - you'll just about always take at least 1 Harm per fight (more notable when I have 5 Health max!) and, more importantly, it's always annoying to track anything from round to round. As someone who's played a lot of Bloodborne, honestly this doesn't really feel like Bloodborne at all, aesthetic aside? Bloodborne's much more about avoiding getting hit, Rally's a cool feature in Bloodborne but it's not really anything you can lean on unless you really know what you're doing or have very specific weapons. But this isn't a game where you can really avoid things so it ends up feeling pretty much the same as Block except with way more caveats. This might be a good use case for tags like Quick/Slow, where some Harm resolves earlier/later. (You can get your stuff back pretty quick at least if you were coming from another Realm, at the very least, but this would definitely feel weird if that weren't the case!)

I really like the Realm Clocks in spirit! I'm always going to be in favor of things that only track certain actions, and putting a clock on fights is interesting. But it also means that you're much more beholden to whatever gets rolled in a given fight. The Clocks filling aren't as nasty as Infected or Flaming might sound at least so this isn't that bad if you get stuck on a loop of the enemy only rolling a 6 or whatever.

The Lore thing is interesting. I spent through mine to make the Blood-Drinking Blade because I had 4 Lore at the right place in the right time. That said, spending it at all feels like a mistake until you know everything that needs it, because it's not terribly plentiful. (Especially given that discovering citizens is the biggest way to decrease Infected and that's Lore-gated. Better hope you do everything in the right order.)

The random encounter thing only shows up in certain places when Infected or Flaming, and mostly as a replacement for a unique encounter? I'm not sure why it's there, honestly. It's a lot of page space for something that barely comes up and could have just been a set encounter.

The enemies are pretty standard fare, with the note that thanks to the Flaming clock you can't stall them too long if they get stuck on a high Harm ability, which as noted above is definitely a feels-bad kind of thing (as there's basically nothing you can do if this happens other than "get hit" or "tick that clock"). One cool thing is that one of the enemies rerolls 1's if you have high Lore, but my Lore never got that high so I never saw that. (Again, though, Flaming isn't too bad so it's not as bad as that would seem.)

The equipment's a bit all over the place. The Torch is like instantly worthless as soon as you get any other weapon, and the Syringe is fine but not incredible, aside from having Rally which is what makes the earlygame possible. (Being able to move on a 1 is pretty powerful at least.) The Rapier, however, is like the Longsword but strictly better - it can be activated on a 1 as well, and has Move 1/Harm 1 on a 1-2. For a bunch of Lore, you can combine the Syringe and the Rapier into the Blood-Drinking Blade, which is like the Rapier but even better, and has a two-handed mode that gives it the RUNE power-combo of Move + Adj/2 Spaces reach, along with wild amounts of Harm, in exchange for always taking 1 Harm every round. (Which...Rally doesn't stop you from healing that as written, so it's not much of a downside, is it.) You can also gain a handful of Molotovs (though a maximum of three, so don't get too comfortable using them...which means I of course never used it, haha.)

The Rune Lord is...honestly pretty trivial if you got the Blood-Drinking Blade, and not terribly hard even if you didn't. Phase 1 isn't too hard to damage-race and Phase 2 being Adjacent/2 Spaces when every weapon in the Realm can hit Same and has good movement means a savvy player is never getting hit.

Everyone can gain the Scourged Rune (If you roll 3 6's in a fight, you can reroll 1's for the rest of the fight), and if the RNG was kind to you and you had the opportunity to send 3 people to the Cathedral, you can get the Cleansed Rune instead (if you have 2 Move, you can dash over hazards). I grabbed Scourged even though I qualified for the Cleansed because it sounds way more generally useful.

Weapons:
- Blood-Drinking Blade (The Sourged City)*
- Lance of Light (Castle Blanchard)**
- Radiant Heater (Cragcliff Reformatory)
Gear:
- Graven Shackles (The Cracks Betwixt)
- Raynard's Resistance (Abrus Island)
Runes:
- E: Tide Run (Coral Rock)
- E: Osteomancer's Rune (World's Grave)***
- E: Rune of Control (Castle Blanchard)
- Fate's Foe
- Silvertongue Rune (Cragcliff Reformatory)
- Devouring Rune (Bulwark Hollow)
- Obran Express Medal (Obran Express)
- Obsidian Arm (Obsidian Brink)
- Fate's Hunter (Great Serpent Tree replacement)
- Grinea's Stasis (Abrus Island)
- False Rune (Dread Manse)
- Scourged Rune (Scourged City)

*I'm going to nerf the hell out of this because it's cool but absolutely busted. I haven't quite decided how yet.
**Removing Block 1 on a 4, it's still too good.
***I forget if I mentioned it but I've been playing the health penalty as halving all health - so I've been rolling with 5 max Health for the most part, which feels right.

Next time, Echo Crater!

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Core mechanic: a painfully thorough examination of every part of the 3d6

Fri, 25 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

(Originally posted on Cohost: https://cohost.org/binary/post/162256-total-effect-core-m )

So this is my first public post/design blog/etc about a system I’m developing as a SRD/toolkit, Total//Effect. It includes a bunch of probability stuff at the end if you’re into that, but I do sum up the important bits if you’re not.

I’ll start with my initial forays into the humble 3d6 (and the originator of some of these mechanics), 36th Way and LUMEN.

3d6 and 36th Way/LUMEN

Total//Effect’s resolution is a kind of combination of two different resolution systems I’ve used in the past: 36th Way and LUMEN.

My first big intro to using 3d6 as a resolution method came from my own 36th Way (which is a total conversion of 13th Age). I was using it as a stand-in for the d20 there, with a pretty typical roll + bonus vs difficulty system, but also using the “Natural” value (the die roll total) like 13th Age did: 9+/11+/13+ on 3d6 maps to the same 75%/50%/25% as 6+/11+/16+ on a d20. Instead of additive bonuses/penalties, I instituted a 5Eish advantage/disadvantage: roll X extra d6’s, take the highest/lowest 3. (See my post about it here if you want more info.) This worked pretty well for that game but the D&Dishness of the general resolution dragged on me a bit (scroll down to “What am I not a fan of?” for more on that). This is especially true of Natural vs. total: more than a few players had a sticking point with this in particular. Players don’t want to hear that their natural roll was a 14 (relevant points to their ability: natural 13+, natural even) when they clearly rolled a 21 after adding stuff. And honestly, who can blame them? I get why it’s there but it’s definitely a “train yourself to be used to this” kind of thing.

My second came indirectly from LUMEN. LUMEN uses a FitD-style “roll Xd6, take the highest” situation, with 2-3 dice being fairly common. 3 is the maximum I set for Attributes for APOCALYPSE FRAME because LUMEN splits its bands into 1-2 fail, 3-4 mixed success, 5-6 success: with that split, 3 dice ends up being 5% of a 1-2, 25% of a 3-4, 70% of a 5-6. (More on this here.) I like this a lot and it’s probably one of the faster resolution systems I’ve seen! LUMEN, however, has to use fixed Harm/etc values to avoid slowing things down with multiple rolls, which I think is great for a certain kind of game about knowing exactly what you’re capable of but isn’t like wildly flexible.

Finally, I got the idea of using 1 die at a time from an old prototype of a game I wrote like 7 years ago that didn’t go anywhere because it was way too involved. (No link to this one because this was like the one good idea in there - it was using the individual dice from Initiative rolls to determine energy regeneration based on general type of character. There was a lot going on in that game.)

The Mechanic: add dice for Total, pick dice for Effect

Total//Effect is named that because you’re looking for up to two different things in each 3d6 roll:

The Total, aka the sum of 3d6
The Effect, aka a specific die (Low, Mid, High) from those 3 dice rolled.

In general to use the Total, you’re rolling against values set by the ability itself, or for generic cases:

8-: PC’s choice: either the attempt fails with a minor consequence/twist or the attempt succeeds with a major consequence/twist.

9-12: The attempt succeeds with a minor consequence/twist.

13+: The attempt succeeds without consequence.

(X+ meaning that value or higher, X- meaning that value or lower, X-Y meaning between X and Y inclusive.)

The Effect is defined prior to rolling in the case that there’s a numerical component to success, usually in the form of one die that’s being used. (For example, if you’re rolling to gather supplies, the GM might say that on a success you gain Mid Die supplies.) You can then use character qualities as appropriate (skills, equipment, etc.) to give Advantage to the roll (roll 1 extra die, highest 3) or increase the die used for Effect. You can also use one or the other in a given situation. To provide a more specific case as an example, here’s a (stripped down to the rolling bits) combat ability:

Defensive Jab: Low Die Harm.

9+: Reduce the next instance of incoming Harm by Low Die.
13+: Mid instead of Low Die for both.

Which is to say: by default (on a Total of 8 or less) it does Low Die Harm, on a 9-12 it does that but also reduces the next instance of incoming Harm by Low Die, and on a 13+ both effects are present and use the Mid Die instead. It’s pretty low-Harm (usually 1-2) unless you roll very well…or unless you’re gaining Advantage, or unless escalation is high enough that you’re hitting that 13+ fairly often. (More on how often that is later.)

On top of this, you have Escalation (stolen lovingly from 13A/36W). Unlike in those, Escalation is the only additive property in the game: it adds to or subtracts from a roll’s Total based on increasing tension or some similar property in a situation (for example, it might add to combat-related rolls but takes away from rolls to do more collected, rational things). It can also add to or replace Effect for certain abilities (like certain combat abilities might add Escalation to Harm/Damage/etc).

Permutations

In addition to the above, I’ve also come up with a few other slight tweaks on the mechanic:

Rolling against PCs to see the details of a consequence on a roll. For example, rolling to see how many hours something takes upon provoking a consequence, using a higher die for a more major consequence. Similar to how they can add Advantage/increase the die used for rolls they make, PCs can use character qualities to mitigate these through Disadvantage/using a lower die - but they can’t use the same thing twice on a roll/counter-roll combo, so there’s some strategy of using everything up-front for the best outcome vs. mitigating consequences.
Rolling and using multiple dice. For example, negotiating payment for doing a job well might get you High Die payment for doing it perfectly, Mid Die for doing it adequately, Low Die for doing it poorly. Another example might be an ability that uses one die for number of targets and another for the actual effects.
Roll, pick a die based on the situation, then see if it’s higher/lower/equal to a value rated 1-6. For example, Relationships are measured by a number of Bonds: when you want to influence the other party to do something, you pick Low/Mid/High die based on how likely they are to do it on their own and roll, taking that die and comparing to your number of Bonds to see how well that works out.

I’ll likely come across more permutations in the future, but that’s what I’m working with right now.

Probability Details

Enclosed is a lot of math. If you don't care about big lists of specific numbers, skip to Takeaways below. If you do, however, give this a click and see how far the number-hole goes.

You can see the numbers I’m working with here, but here are the important values I’m looking at (rounded to the nearest 5 for percentages, .25 for rolls):

For a standard roll (3d6):

Average 10.5
75% chance to get 9+ total
50% for 11+ total
25% for 13+ total
Low die has an average of 2 (70% chance to get 1-2)
Mid die has an average of 3.5 (50% for 3-4, 85% for 2-5)
High die has an average of 5 (70% for 5-6)

For a roll with 1 Advantage (roll 4d6, take highest 3)

Average 12.25 (+1.75)
90% for 9+ total
75% for 11+ total
50% for 13+ total
Low die has an average of 3 (75% for 2-4)
Mid die has an average of 4 (75% for 3-5)
High die has an average of 5.25 (80% for 5-6)

For a roll with 1 Disadvantage (roll 4d6, take lowest 3)

Average 8.75 (-1.75)
50% for 9+ total
25% for 11+ total
10% for 13+ total
Low die has an average of 1.75 (80% for 1-2)
Mid die has an average of 3 (75% for 2-4)
High die has an average of 4 (75% for 3-5)

(You can get 2-3 Advantage/Disadvantage by changing the values in that anydice link to 5-6 dice and changing the Disadvantage to 3/4/5@ and 4/5/6@ respectively.)

Takeaways

The biggest change that happens to Total for Advantage/Disadvantage is to the high values: 13+ goes from 25% to 50% on Advantage (2x as likely) or 10% on Disadvantage (2/5 as likely).
High/Mid/Low increase by .25/.5/1 for Advantage. This means that it makes a bigger difference for Low/Mid dice on rolls. And vice versa for Disadvantage.
Increasing/decreasing the die used (Low to Mid to High or vice versa) is a bigger change on any given die value than gaining Advantage/Disadvantage but keeping the same die, which makes picking one of those bonuses/penalties over the other an actual choice. (More complex outcomes like specific abilities can increase the die used on higher Totals as well, as shown above, but generally speaking: Advantage/Disadvantage has a greater effect on Total, while increasing the die used has a greater effect on Effect, which is largely what you should be able to expect from both of those choices.)
As noted by the 9+/11+/13+ distinction in 36th Way upthread, adding escalation 2 means you’re hitting 13+ 50% of the time - and subtracting it means you’re hitting 9+ 50% of the time. Combined with the probabilities above, this is effectively like an extra Advantage/Disadvantage with the caveat that it’s not changing any of the die values used. So while the Total will shift, changing the terms of the roll, the Effect isn’t going to change based on this. (This also feeds nicely into my assertion that most combats should be 3 rounds: Escalation 2 hits exactly at that third round if starting at Escalation 0.)

Conclusion? Summary? Endnotes?

I’ve started sketching out and playtesting some games with it and I like what I see! You have a pretty good idea of where a roll is going to end up as far as Effect, but with a lot of room for surprises (like in one playtest I did, a low die Harm roll went sideways when I rolled triple 6’s.) It’s fast and feels pretty good!

I’ll have more long-form thoughts about this as I roll out the whole SRD/toolkit, there’s a lot more to it than one roll mechanic. But these are my thoughts going into it. Hope it was helpful or enlightening for you!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Subsystem overview and the three games I'm sketching out with it.

Fri, 25 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

(Originally posted on Cohost: https://cohost.org/binary/post/173316-total-effect-subsys )

I realized I barely described what the rest of the system is in favor of being a Probability Weirdo. Let’s do that. I also didn’t describe, or even mention any of the three games I’m outlining while I’m writing it somehow. Let’s do that too.

The Subsystems

What’s a core system for the system? Like what parts do you need? You need the core mechanic, which can in turn be expressed through any of the subsystems listed. Basically aside from how to roll, the concept of escalation, and some concepts around level/tier advancement, there isn’t any one system that’s “core”. My big intentions for this system/toolbox/SRD/whatever are modularity and configurability, which I’m defining as:

Modularity: Provide subsystems with intended uses that all use the same core mechanic but in different ways, and provide examples of how they interlink. The idea is that you would pick a 3-5 of the more resonant ones for your game - they’re intended to be satisfying enough that they feel like solid mechanics in and of themselves, but lightweight enough that you can easily have a few of them interact. I want this to feel less like a “draw the rest of the owl” situation around one well thought out system and more like giving you a bunch of pre-made things with several kinds of ideas how to go using them yourself.
Configurability: Within each subsystem selected, I want it to be possible that you can use all, most, or very little of it, and be able to have a few good ideas as to how to configure the bits you are using.

Here’s a very short summary of the subsystems I’m launching it with and have mostly written stuff for (unless I decide to add any more or combine any, this has happened a few times along the way). The idea is that for your game you’d tie together a few of these that make the most sense. (More on that later when I describe my sample game ideas.)

The direct PC-related ones are:

Combat and Conflict: There are two kinds outlined here: Tactical Combat is the traditional group-combat while Personal Duels are one-on-one combat. (They’re also built to be interoperable with minimal tweaks.) I’m a tradgamer at heart so this was obviously where I started but this module isn’t strictly necessary as long as others get leveraged instead.
Skillsets and Equipment: This is where I get into a lot of mechanics around doing noncombat stuff and such: how characters have or gain skills, consequences and twists, rolling for success vs. progress, ideas for stunts, ideas for explicit capabilities, etc.
Relationships and Bonds: This is where I get into ideas related to building up bonds between characters and other characters/groups/concepts and what you can do with them, and especially mechanics around leveraging an extensive relationship to influence other people/groups to act in certain ways.

The more group-related ones (which are lower in mechanical weight and more so ideas of ways to link various other subsystems together) are:

Reputation and Perception: For games where the broad-strokes perception of characters by people at large matters, and how to use that.
Factions and Power: For games where major powers are prominent and important. This includes how to make one and how to use them when writing your game.
Groups and Organizations: For games where the PCs being united by an explicit, in-setting common organization is important. This includes aspects of such an organization and ideas around expansion of the idea re: advancement.

The more meta ones (things that much more broadly define arcs, plots, etc) are:

Income and Expenditures: For games where some kind of currency, be it money or scrap or social capital, is important. This outlines some ideas re: buying, selling, and regular expenditures, as well as ideas like debt and investments.
Escalating Threat: For games where there’s intended to be some kind of background ticking clock (or at least, a more explicit one than going broke, which is covered above). This can be short-scale in the sense of being on the run or having to be non-suspicious or long-scale in the sense of big plans and schemes by important people, groups, etc. that get advanced and revealed over time.

The Worked Examples

The problem is that it’s really hard to write dry game design concepts without feeling very disconnected from implementation. Also in my experience it’s hard to think abstractly about these ideas without some specific examples. So I came up with 3 game concepts to outline throughout the process of this with examples of how the mechanic being discussed would come up, as well as what subsystems they’d leverage:

Valiant Horizon: Heroic protagonists perform great deeds as they make a name for themselves. (Touchpoints: The dragon game you’re almost certainly thinking of but mostly its 4th edition, JRPGs but especially Tales and Xenoblade.) This is about magitech-ish high fantasy adventure with a few framing devices: the people you befriend along the way, the creation of your legend, and large threats looming on the horizon.
- Subsystems employed: Tactical Combat, Skillsets, Relationships with people, Reputation, long-scale Escalating Threat.
Liminal Void: Regular people in space in the 23rd Century are thrust outside of normal society and must find a way to first survive, then thrive with their newly-acquired skills and spaceship. (Touchpoints: The Expanse, FTL, Alien/s, System Shock, Cowboy Bebop. Anything that has that kind of used-future in our solar system thing going on with a kind of survival-horror vibe to it.) This is a game that is very much about survival rather than being powerful: combat in the sense of being in a fair fight is generally a bad idea, equipment and resource management is extremely important.
- Subsystems employed: Tactical Combat, Skillsets/Equipment, Groups, Income/Expenditures, short-scale Escalating Threat.
Machinations of Court and Frame: Exceptional mecha pilots with mixed loyalties are thrust into proxy wars and byzantine power struggles between noble Houses. (Touchpoints: The mecha things I didn’t rip off in APOCALYPSE FRAME but especially assorted Gundam/Battletech stuff. Thinking about Tactics Ogre/Final Fantasy Tactics/similar vibes too.) This is about dramatic mecha duels, shifting loyalties, and the actions of powerful individuals and leaders.
- Subsystems employed: Personal Duels, Relationships with people/factions/concepts, Factions, long-scale Escalating Threat. (Maybe also Tactical Combat but leaning towards no.)

Of these 3, I’ve fleshed out Liminal Void the most. (I made a very basic player-facing playtest packet and ran a one-shot with it, which went pretty well.) My goal is to release a Level 0 style quickstart/module of the scenario I came up with for it either alongside or shortly after the main SRD.

Hopefully that made any sense and sounds cool and like something people might want to play! Guess we’ll find out.

(Read the original on itch here!)

RUNEvember Session 10: Abrus Island

Thu, 24 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Session 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

This time, I washed up on Abrus Island!

Agonizing coughing. Heaving expulsions of salt water. Then, finally, a laborious inhale. You live. Wiping sand and blood from your face, you try to piece together the events of the previous night: a sudden severe storm, a giant waves, the crack of the ship’s hull, pain, darkness. You’ve washed ashore here, wherever that might be. Standing, there’s a familiar pull on your soul – a Sigil nearby. Although carved by unknown hands, you feel linked to it. You lash together a simple spear and grab a piece of driftwood as a crude shield before heading off into the dense forest ahead.

Overview and Realm Mechanics

This one's an 8-point Realm. It's not too many points, but they're pretty packed, it's on the longer side.

This one's got a bunch of Realm mechanics:

First up, some fights are Ambushes. This means that they're Fights you have to engage in when you enter the area. (This one's pretty common, though it always has different names.)

There's also a semi-random encounter: on points 1-6, entering has a 1 in 6 chance of provoking an encounter with the rune lord!

Next, some enemies have subtypes. Flying is simple enough, they count as one square further away to hit and ignore terrain. Swarm is more complicated: they can't use any die rolls with an ability higher than their Health, but they roll a d6 for every ability they have available. There's also Destructible terrain, which can be attacked.

Finally, there's a few new tags. Pursue is like Move + Harm, but it happens after the character's movement: it's spent as movement and anything left over turns into Harm. Targeted means it targets whatever's in the square you started the turn on, no matter what's there. Augment's one for weapons, if you're activating that weapon you can spend an extra die indicated (like 1-2) to do something extra.

Realm Clock

The Realm Clock here represents Toxins. Every time you take 1 or more Harm, advance the clock; every time it advances three times, you gain 1 stack of Toxin. For each stack, reduce the highest die amount you have by 1 (so if you have 2 stacks and your highest die is a 5, now it's a 3.) If you can't reduce it further on a roll (like if you have all 1's), you take Harm instead.

Death Penalty

It's just gaining more Toxin. Doesn't need to be more, really.

Play Impressions

A pretty tough one, but it's got cool stuff for sure!

Everything in this part of the post is spoilers for the Realm. Click this to show it if that's fine with you!

Even for someone who's like 10 Realms in, this Realm was in parts VERY hard, not because of the bosses/uniques but because of the regular enemies. If I didn't have the Osteomancer rune I'd have been in deep, deep shit more than a few times here. The non-negligible enemies have a ton of health (most have 5, and at least one Block move) and hit like a truck: one of them has Pursue 5, which is a great way to stop being alive if you're cornered and you roll poorly, because you can easily take 3-5 Harm. This is offset slightly by having a reliable 2 Movement+poke on your starting weapon but in a lot of cases all that means is that the best you can do is tread water. One encounter had enemies who had 5 Health and Block 1 due to destructible terrain they were on, which would have necessitated either taking several turns to whittle that down while being attacked or just dealing with always dealing 1 less Harm, and thanks to Toxin I was at best dealing 2 -> 1 Harm. It took way too long!

Toxin reducing your highest die is extremely rough given how much health enemies have, how much block they have, and how much Harm they can do. If you're relying on taking things down fast with a 6 or blocking more than 1 Harm, you'd better hope you rolled two or can combine dice. Even with 3 dice to start your chances of getting 2 or more 6's on a roll is extremely low. And rolling low at low Toxin basically always means you're taking Harm.

This Realm has something I've seen in a few, which is a resource gathering -> tinkering aspect. Notably, this one has a lab where you can use flowers you find to do things like create antitoxins, increase your stamina, or give yourself equipment. It's neat but unfortunately most of the really good options require very high Lore, at which point they're largely ways to make the Rune Lord easier, and it mostly doesn't need to be easier.

Regarding equipment, this one's got a bunch. You start with a makeshift spear and driftwood shield, of which the spear is wildly powerful in any other context (aka if you take it outside this Realm). It's basically the playtest spear and the playtest spear was pretty busted! The shield is basically the playtest shield though which sucked. When you beat the unique enemy, you can get the Greatwood Maul, a good 4-5-6 weapon with an Augment 1-2 that adds Move and Bash - I'll use that for sure going forward. Through exploration, you'll also find Flux, a spell that only works on a 5-6 but does a bunch of extremely flexible things. Maybe a few too many things, it's got a lot going on. There's a few pieces of gear too: one that gives you Block 2 when you combine two dice to a 2-3 (absolutely taking that) and a few that I didn't get because I ran out of flowers.

The Rune Lord having a 1 in 6 chance of attacking you seems a lot more threatening until you realize the Rune Lord's Phase 1 has 3 Health. It does advance Toxin even faster though. Its second phase is interesting: it spawns with three minions, and every time it would die a minion dies instead. It wasn't hard, mostly because it rolled poorly and I had enough Harm online at that point to take it down every turn.

Depending on how much Toxin you have, you pick one of two Runes. One is a once per Realm ability to Harm a ton of enemies, the other is a once per Rest ability to gain a lot of Block and then set your dice to whatever you like (as long as they're not all the same value). Interesting stuff in both cases.

Weapons:
- Gleamwood's Maul (Abrus Island)
- Lance of Light (Castle Blanchard)
- Radiant Heater (Cragcliff Reformatory)
Gear:
- Graven Shackles (The Cracks Betwixt)
- Raynard's Resistance (Abrus Island)
Runes:
- E: Tide Run (Coral Rock)
- E: Osteomancer's Rune (World's Grave)
- E: Rune of Control (Castle Blanchard)
- Fate's Foe
- Silvertongue Rune (Cragcliff Reformatory)
- Devouring Rune (Bulwark Hollow)
- Obran Express Medal (Obran Express)
- Obsidian Arm (Obsidian Brink)
- Fate's Hunter (Great Serpent Tree replacement)
- Grinea's Stasis (Abrus Island)

Next time, my pamphlet realm, Dread Manse!

(Read the original on cohost here!)

RUNEvember Session 9: Coral Rock

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Session 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

For this session, I returned to Coral Rock:

The sigil seared into the ground shimmers like the bright, crystalline sea that laps against the coastline. A gulch between two hills fills with water, turning the north end of the peninsula into an isolated landmass.

Overview and Realm Mechanics

Aside from my own Realms, this is the only one I'd played prior to this. It's also the first third-party Realm out there, I think! And that's very cool.

The major Realm Mechanic this has is the "Hit" mechanic, because this is where it originated.

Realm Clock

This one has a Tide clock which operates similarly to the Grim Coast day/night clock: 4 segments, advances to the other phase when it switches over, different actions on a point depending on the phase. It's more prominent in the eastern, starting island where it's less mountainous and more swampy.

Death Penalty

Every time you die, you start your first fight after death with -1 Move for 1 round. For each subsequent death, it adds +1 round, or you can spend stamina dice or Health to reduce the duration.

Play Impressions

This one definitely set the tone for a lot of Realms going forward, including my own. I appreciate the care taken with the flavor. This one's a great starter Realm after Grim Coast!

Everything in this part of the post is spoilers for the Realm. Click this to show it if that's fine with you!

So I have kind of the same problem with this Realm Clock as I do the Grim Coast one: given you can advance it freely, there's really no incentive to do anything at any time other than the one you already want to do it at. You can just run it down to wherever it needs to be. Some areas (like the gulch) require a bit of counting backwards to figure out exactly when the right time to be there is but there's nothing too much. It's flavorful though, and it's cool to see the maps change based on the tide height. Likewise with the death penalty, given that it clears after one fight it's not particularly meaningful (because you can just go rest afterwards and that's that). It's definitely interesting going back to this and seeing the progression of mechanics from subsequent Realms - it's only been a few months and there are already tacit standards of practice and that's pretty cool.

I really like the enemy groupings here! The way things are set up, a few of the encounters can be pretty nasty for new characters in the good way - they're doable but you'll have to work to not get cornered or overwhelmed. (Not nearly as nasty as they used to be when difficult terrain slowed movement, of course - the Gulch encounter especially. And not really for me, but then again this is supposed to be kind of an introductory one so I'm fine with that.)

You can get two pieces of equipment here. The Harpoon is a 2-spaces-only armament that can pull hit targets closer before calculating Harm - I remember it being pretty busted at Adjacent/2 Spaces, it's a little less so now but still very good when combined with anything that gives movement. The Prosaic Shell gives you +1 Block at Range 2+ before Harm is dealt each round if nothing is at Same/Adjacent, which combos well with Warding for long-range enemies - I'll take that one.

The Rune Lord is pretty neat. Phase 1 is a same/adjacent attacker, aside from a Range 1-3 ability on a 6 (throwing something at you, maybe?) Phase 2 puts him at Same/Adjacent/2 Spaces, with 1 less Harm from 2+ Spaces (much like your Prosaic Shell!) This one's interesting because the Harpoon lets you play it safer when combined with the Prosaic Shell but isn't as fast to take him down if you do.

The Tide Run Rune you get is extremely handy - you get a free Move 2 1/fight. I'll ABSOLUTELY use that one, that's a serious get out of bad rolls free card. Combos well with Lance of Light's Beam ability too.

Carried Over Equipment

Weapons:
- Battle Axe (Cragcliff Reformatory)
- Lance of Light (Castle Blanchard)
- Radiant Heater (Cragcliff Reformatory)
Gear:
- Graven Shackles (The Cracks Betwixt)
- Prosaic Shell (Coral Rock)
Runes:
- E: Tide Run (Coral Rock
- E: Osteomancer's Rune (World's Grave)
- E: Rune of Control (Castle Blanchard)
- Fate's Foe
- Silvertongue Rune (Cragcliff Reformatory)
- Devouring Rune (Bulwark Hollow)
- Obran Express Medal (Obran Express)
- Obsidian Arm (Obsidian Brink)
- Fate's Hunter (Great Serpent Tree replacement)

Next time, Abrus Island!

(Read the original on cohost here!)

RUNEvember Session 8: The Cracks Betwixt

Wed, 16 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Session 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

This time, I ran through The Cracks Betwixt, another pamphlet Realm!

When something shatters, it leaves behind cracks. Over time, those cracks fill with all sorts of interesting things. All sorts of filth. All sorts of riches.

Obron is no different. When the world shattered it left behind cracks of all kinds, and time has filled them plenty.

Somehow, you find yourself there now; in The Cracks Betwixt. Whichever Realm you were heading towards, you do not find yourself there now, O’ Engraved One.

Will you return to the shattered surface of the world? Will you plunder these wretched depths for all that—much like you—has slipped betwixt the cracks.

Overview and Realm Mechanics

This is a tiny Realm about finding things in the cracks between Realms. It's a cool idea for something to play as an intermission Realm because it's literally between things!

Realm Clock

The Realm Clock deals Harm to you depending on how far away you are from point 1 when it rolls over. Once it's rolled over three times, you unlock the not-Rune Lord's area.

Death Mechanic

This is my least favorite Death Mechanic I've seen so far. Not because it's bad in the slightest - you have an increasingly high chance to fail to activate Runes, which is cool - but because the chance is 10% per death. Don't make me roll percentages in a game that only uses d6's! Argh!

Major Edit: I was using an older version because I'm very lazy and forgot to check if there was a new one. This has been fixed! See the designer's comment below.

Play Impressions

Pretty fast. A few encounters with fairly unthreatening enemies, but a lot of cool flavor to it. One encounter gave me some trouble because there's a curse that removes the highest stamina die until you roll double sixes and I kept not rolling sixes, even with three dice.

Second Edit: The double sixes was also fixed in the newer version!

Most points either give you a Stable Healing Vial (restore Health, can be taken between Realms) or +1 Lore (which matters in the not-Rune Lord fight). One has a new weapon, which doesn't deal Harm but instead slows down either 1 or 2 enemies.

The not-Rune Lord has a clock of their own, which either ticks twice per round or once per round if you collected all the Lore. Once it rolls over, it moves into a far, far nastier Phase 2. Upon defeat, you gain the Graven Shackles, a utility that lets you halve a chosen enemy's incoming Harm on doubles. (This feels way less cheap to me than the Amulet for a 3-Stamina build so I'm taking it.)

Carried Over Equipment

Weapons:
- Battle Axe (Cragcliff Reformatory)
- Lance of Light (Castle Blanchard)
- Radiant Heater (Cragcliff Reformatory)
Gear:
- Graven Shackles (The Cracks Betwixt)
- Radiant Crest (Cragcliff Reformatory)
Runes:
- E: Rune of Control (Castle Blanchard)
- E: Osteomancer's Rune (World's Grave)
- E: Silvertongue Rune (Cragcliff Reformatory)
- Fate's Foe
- Devouring Rune (Bulwark Hollow)
- Obran Express Medal (Obran Express)
- Obsidian Arm (Obsidian Brink)
- Fate's Hunter (Great Serpent Tree replacement)

Next time, a replay of Coral Rock, which I think was the first 3rd party Realm made! (I'll be playing the recently dropped revamp of it, so it won't be exactly the same.)

(Read the original on cohost here!)

RUNEvember Session 7: Cragcliff Reformatory

Mon, 14 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Session 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

For this session I revisited my first Realm, Cragcliff Reformatory!

The very name elicits an involuntary response: it conjures up an image of a horrible, nightmarish facility designed solely for the purpose of detaining magic-users of all kinds, run by the infamous former mage-hunter, Inquisitor Tremain. You had thought it to be nothing but legend. You were wrong.

The beasts that captured you were simply too fast; you were overtaken very quickly. You woke up in a cell, and for some time you remained there. But soon, you would have your escape: as time and neglect catch up to the reformatory and the building starts to collapse, your opportunity arises.

The entire time you’ve been here, you’ve felt a dull echo on your mind. As you free yourself, you identify it: a Rune calls to you. Claim it, engrave it into your being, and escape before the entire reformatory falls into the ocean.

Overview and Realm Mechanics

Cragcliff has two major non-Clock Realm mechanics going on.

The first is random encounters: when you take one of the more public access routes, you have to advance the clock and roll to see if you have a random encounter. These can include the two uniques and phase 1 of the Rune Lord if you roll poorly. (You can also advance the clock again if you'd rather not.) As the clock advances, you have much higher chances to get encounters and nastier encounters.

The second is prisoner discovery: there's 11 prisoners you can find, which either have Lore, a piece of equipment, or a Realm item.

In both cases, the more Lore you have, the better results you'll get.

The Realm is indeed one facility: it's pretty linear-looking to start, but opens up quite a bit as time goes on and more paths are added. (As you can guess by the fact that two points are disconnected.)

(I'm very proud of this map. Public domain and image manipulation save the day again!)

Realm Clock

The prison is falling apart! When the 20-segment clock fills, it also gets smaller by 4 segments, and the prison shifts to a new phase. Prisoners are starting to try to make a break for it, and as such patrols increase. More of the prison falls apart, and previously accessible areas need to be cleared out. If it fills 6 times, you simply fail.

Death Penalty

The death mechanic is related to the clock: when you die, you simply waste more time. (As noted I'm not a fan of overly punishing death mechanics, and wasting time here is already punishing enough.)

Design Notes

"Play Impressions" are a little silly for something I made, aren't they? So instead I'm going to just dig into my design process.

This started life as a GMless quickstart for ANOINTED. I realized pretty quickly that it wasn't going to be suitable for that for the level of complication and pressure I wanted, and this was around the time that the first few Realms for RUNE were being made, so I sliced it down and converted it. (The encounter chart and prisoner discovery, as well as a few other aspects like prisoners being more present as encounters, were more complicated if you can believe it. I've since made a different prison break style quickstart that works better as an ANOINTED tutorial/starting point.)

When I build out an area story-wise I like to use layers of history. This is considering that any given location probably has had multiple things going on there over time, and reflecting that. There are two big stages to the Reformatory with that in mind: first, it was operating as stated (a place for detaining magic-users). Then, there was a clear change-over where the Rune Lord (who was a former prisoner) took over and used it as a way to capture people suspected of having runes.

First off, the clock. (Which as early playtesters well know, it started as 10 segments, then 15 segments, and finally 20 as I decided I'd rather not have it be less likely to fail-fail.) The nature of this kind of 20 -> 16 -> 12 -> 8 -> 4 countdown is that the early stages are much more emphasized. The grand total (20+16+12+8+4) is 60 ticks, so CONTAINING (the first stage) is 1/3 of the total and the last two stages are 1/5 each (8+4 are both COLLAPSING, so it's also practically 12). This means that after you've gotten your bearings, the big changes happen more frequently: random encounters get more frequent and more nasty, fights get harder and start appearing in places they weren't before, etc. So it starts really mattering when you have a better idea of what you're doing and where you have left to go. It's pretty generous in general.

Random encounters (and advancing the clock on movement on the routes where they exist) were a thing I put in to emphasize the need to find other ways around the prison. You can also use them strategically: for example, you might be able to take out one of the two unique enemies outside of their planned encounters, or even knock out the Rune Lord's first phase early. (This is why at high Lore you can increase or decrease the number: you can use that to provoke the top two encounters early if you like.) There are three main routes through to area 12 with some variations (through the normal corridors, through 1 -> 2 -> 11 -> 6 -> 7 -> 10 -> 12, through 1 -> 3 -> 5 -> 12) less time to get to 12 once cleared (2 ticks for the main corridor, 1 for the Warden's study, 0 for the path through 11 and 7).

Discovering prisoners looks like a normal rolltable at first, but there's a few tricks to it:

First off, it's a 2d6, meaning there's a curve around 7: the three +1 Lore ones and the two Realm Items you can get are at 2 and 12 (the least likely rolls). Everything else is Engraved equipment.
The total probability to get a 2, 6, 7, 8, or 12 is 50% - meaning it's a 50/50 chance to get either something relevant to progression or something relevant to combat on the first attempt. You have two DELVE actions to do this in Area 2 (the first "real" area) and you can't get the same thing twice (it's a reroll). This means that whichever of those two you got on the first one increases your chance of getting the other one!

As for the prisoners themselves:

Typically ones on the low end are original prisoners (magic-users), and ones on the high end are newer ones (regular people picked up by the Rune Lord).
6, 7, and 8 are the most likely ones: 2/3 of these are related to the rune in question (7 had it, 8 was suspected to have it) while 6 is just an indication of how gnarly the reformatory was. (I also added Healing Vials to give a more direct benefit in case of Lore-only rolls so the player isn't left with a bunch of Lore and nothing to show for it mechanically.)
2 and 12 are similarly split: 2 (Pickaxe) is the site of an older "escape" route, while 12 (Jailer's Keys) probably happened during the changeover. (See above re: Healing Vials.)
5 and 9 (the most likely outside of 6-8) are basically an alternate Shield (Sanctuary Prayer) and Longsword (Sidesword). So it's a little more likely you'll get one of those than anything else, replacing either your default broken sword or plank shield.
3-4 and 10-11 are less "traditional" equipment. At the low end are spells from the original denizens of the reformatory, and not the most flattering kinds (Wasting Curse is necromancy, Fireball is an unpredictable spell explicitly used by war magi). The Wasting Curse in particular has text that implies that its user's imprisonment might have been somewhat justified, even - which is some indication that maybe some unsavory characters (hinting the Rune Lord) were here alongside those less deserving. At the high end are weapons from the various people picked up (Greatspear, Battle Axe) by whatever logic.

Equipment-wise, there's a LOT of it.

Broken Sword is basically the Longsword with more movement and Same range instead of Adjacent. Same range is actually pretty beneficial here in a lot of cases, so even though it's not ideal, you could use it well if you're crafty. Plank Shield is a more Move-oriented Shield.
Sanctuary Prayer is even more Move-oriented, with the added benefit that it lets you safely use Adjacent weapons (of which there are many) without having to worry about things at Same.
Sidesword is also a more Move-oriented version of Longsword, but with added Quick on a 6: this lets you safely dispatch damaged enemies because its Harm resolves first, allowing some smart maneuvers.
Fireball's a weird one: it has variable range based on rolls, but is largely not very mobile.
Greatspear's one of the three two-handers. It's focused on Quick in both modes, much like the Sidesword, but relies more on being in a proper position before using it as such.
Wasting Curse is relatively low-Harm, but has the benefit of being Same & Adjacent and having Mire, which restricts movement (very handy when fighting something that can't attack at Same/Adjacent...like, for instance, the Rune Lord).
Battle Axe is like a less-mobile, less-Cleave, more-consistent Greataxe.
Halberd is similar to Greatspear but with more Harm instead of Quick and even less mobility. (Deflect on its 7+ is also very helpful if you find yourself in a bad position.)
Radiant Zweihander is the third two-hander. Its one-handed form is pretty high-Harm, but low-Move. When used two-handed, it's also quite defensive: Block and Warding are a great combination for that, and Same+Adjacent means it's a little more reliable to lean on the two-handed mode.
Radiant Heater is a little less defensive at Same/Adjacent than a standard Shield, but it's balanced out by Warding for greater ranges.
Barbed Chain is pretty helpful if you're in a good range to not get hit. Pairs well in this Realm with things that hit at Same (like Broken Sword and Wasting Curse) or 2 Spaces (like Halberd, Greatspear, and Fireball) depending on your opponents.
Radiant Crest is pretty handy when you're only moving a little bit, such as if you have a more mobile shield and heavier weapon. Goes well with the two Radiant weapons, for example, or two-handed Zweihander and a Rune or Utility that grants movement.

Normal enemies:

Swordsman and Halberdier started with some standard statblocks from the playtest. Originally, I tweaked Swordsman a bit so its Move 1/Harm 1/Block 1 came up more and left Halberdier as-is. In this most recent playtest, I added the Slow keyword, which makes the Harm from certain abilities resolve late: this got added to each of their 6 abilities alongside a buff (+1 Move for Swordsman 6, +1 Harm for Halberdier 6) to emphasize their roles: Swordsmen are supposed to rush you down, while Halberdiers chip away at range. For more defensive builds, you'll want to wait for their more standard moves to attack, but for more full-offense builds you'll want to go for the throat when those 6's get rolled. Their flavor text gives you some clue as to what happened here, which is reinforced during the Rune Lord fight: they're being mind-controlled by the current owner of the facility.
Hounds are Same-only attackers, which comes alongside a new keyword: Pursue, which lets them spend remaining move after you spend your move. Broken Sword can be very helpful against them if you don't have enough move to stay at a distance. Their flavor text indicates that they're something like a lesser version of the Pursuers.
Guard-Captains have Mire on a 4-6, which can bog down Engraved and make them more vulnerable to those Slow abilities. Their flavor text clues you into the fact that something's different here: they're ill-fitting in their clothes, indicating that they weren't the original people wearing them (because they're former prisoners), which is also emphasized by a Lore entry.

Uniques:

The Scarred Pursuer is the slower and tankier of the two, with substantial Block. It's more vulnerable to ranged strategies on account of lower speed, but it can likely catch up with high rolls.
The Sleek Pursuer is very fast, and can be wildly deadly if you let it get to range 4 and you get unlucky. It's more vulnerable to melee strategies because its Momentum does very little at close range, but low rolls can be deadly for those purposes.
You only technically have to beat one of the two Pursuers to get out. (You can skip point 10 entirely if you unlocked point 5, but doing that requires finishing point 9.)

In most cases I planned terrain and placement around the specific scenario/landmarks. There's a fun thing I did in the fight in point 9 where I anticipated someone going south to avoid the Scarred Pursuer, teeing up the Sleek Pursuer to possibly roll that 5-6 and deliver a wild attack on round 3. This is because it'd be very funny if that happened.

Rune Lord:

First phase: Three Adjacent/2 Spaces attackers mean you're going to get a lot of use out of Warding, emphasizing the Iniquisitor's Zweihander and/or Heater. The 3-4 also provides something that the Radiant Crest overcomes. You can also get a lot of mileage out of long-range weaponry here because it'll stay in range (with the caveat that the 5-6 being what it is means you'll likely want some defensive backup plan).
Second phase: This is where closer-range weapons really shine, and every ability does something that the Radiant Crest obviates. But you can also sling back and forth with them at range if you prefer, stepping out of range on a 5-6.
The first phase stays down when defeated, so you can switch up your build to better fit phase 2 if it turns out your build doesn't really suit it.

And finally, in the Souls tradition, the Rune gives you something distinctive that the Rune Lord does.

Carried Over Equipment

Weapons:
- Battle Axe (Cragcliff Reformatory)
- Lance of Light (Castle Blanchard)*
- Radiant Heater (Cragcliff Reformatory)
Gear:
- Radiant Crest (Cragcliff Reformatory)
- Amulet of Dawn
Runes:
- E: Rune of Control (Castle Blanchard)
- E: Osteomancer's Rune (World's Grave)**
- E: Silvertongue Rune (Cragcliff Reformatory)
- Fate's Foe
- Devouring Rune (Bulwark Hollow)
- Obran Express Medal (Obran Express)
- Obsidian Arm (Obsidian Brink)
- Fate's Hunter (Great Serpent Tree replacement)

*Removing the result on a 3. Still felt a little too strong. **Instead of -4 Health, capping Health at 6. With Fate's Foe (and presumably other +Health things) it still feels a little too safe.

Next up, The Cracks Betwixt, another pamphlet!

(Read the original on cohost here!)

RUNEvember Session 6: Obsidian Brink

Sun, 13 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Session 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Next up is Obsidian Brink, another pamphlet Realm.

You are being followed. The instant you set foot in this Realm, something caught your scent.

It’s been hunting you ever since.

The runes carved into your being hum within you, not resonating with a source of power, but urging you to escape this place.

Overview and Realm Mechanics

In this mini-Realm, you're being hunted by a big nasty thing, the Obsidian Stalker.

Realm Clock

Every 6 things you do, you get in a fight with the Obsidian Stalker. You can escape by getting to one corner of the map, but you're placed a random distance away from it at the start. It's a cool way to keep pressure up.

Play Impressions

Everything else in the Realm is basically just preparation for that: Enemies stand in the way of Lore, Lore unlocks Delves that weaken it. You can basically try to kill the Obsidian Stalker anytime you get in a fight with it, but every Delve that you do permanently reduces one number on it of your choosing. (I opted for Block removal and went after him after I'd removed its automatic 2 Block, relying on high Harm and move to rush him down.) So this can go by pretty fast, or you can take your time! It's a fun idea.

For beating it you get the Obsidian Arm half-Rune: this is a consumable that lets you use a 3rd weapon in one fight. Neat!

This was a nice, breezy little Realm! Probably took like 15-20 minutes including general setup. (I think it took about as long to write this up as it did to play.)

Next up is Cragcliff Reformatory, the first Realm I wrote for this! Since I wrote it, instead of general impressions I'll probably write about the design process.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

RUNEvember Session 5: Castle Blanchard

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Session 0, 1, 2, 3, 4

Fifth on the list was Castle Blanchard.

This fragment of Obron is like something out of a fairytale: rolling hills provide the backdrop for an imposing castle on the banks of a gorgeous river. But strife rules this Realm: smoke drifts from the green hills hangs over a castle overrun with thorny vines and twisted trees beckon with gnarled branches across the river. Something has gone terribly wrong here.

Overview and Realm Mechanics

So this one's fairly straightforward. There's one big Realm mechanic, which is Threads. Various things can add a Thread, which is like a magical spiderweb that hampers you in one of a few ways. You can either remove a Thread by spending a 3+ Stamina Die in combat or by using specific actions at specific locations. (The Realm Clock and dying both add Threads when rolled over, so I'm not going to go over them in particular.) This is a cool mechanic because it has tangible penalties and isn't just a time-waster - you don't have to waste a combat or get back to a certain location, you just have to false-start round 1 and you're good, but it still matters because that can make a big difference.

The Realm is pretty good-sized, with lots of points and a few things going on at almost every point. I appreciate the use of meaningful positioning on the map, the trouble I have with a lot of the maps is that it's sometimes hard to tie what's going on at a location to landmarks/etc.

Play Impressions

I have a few gripes with some of the combat stuff that I'll talk about, but overall I think it does a lot to tie together its "story" in an exceptional way! Love this one.

Everything in this part of the post is spoilers for the Realm. Click this to show it if that's fine with you!

So basically there's two sets of enemies, a bunch of semi-natural constructs and on-fire soldiers. The Realm does a very good job of distinguishing them through mechanics: the constructs tend to have the Thorny keyword, which Harms players when enemies with it move into their square, while the soldiers have the Ignite keyword, which deals harm next turn if the player doesn't spend Stamina to put it out. This makes them feel meaningfully different and that's cool! My problem is that neither of these clearly outline methods of mitigation. Can you Block this Harm? Can it be mitigated at all? It's unclear what the answer is, and I suspect they have different intents. Also tracking Ignite is kind of a pain. Enemies in general do a little too much per action, especially the soldiers - many of them don't do Harm but do Ignite and also move and block. Encounters tend to have a few too many as well, for instance one of them has six (!!) enemies on the field at once. It's a lot to keep track of! A little more restraint would have been appreciated. Also things just have too much Block, which gets extremely annoying because even Cleave doesn't help that much with too-high enemy counts when things can regularly ignore it.

There are two unique enemies, both of which do something cool: they both have abilities that give some benefit/penalty next round (+1 Move in one case, +1 die result/-1 highest Engraved die result in another). This is a cool pattern for solo fights because it provides more dynamic back and forth and I wish it got used a little more here but it's cool when it happens.

One thing I noted is that given I had 3 Stamina dice on account of the last Realm's Rune, Threads and Ignite weren't quite as nasty as they could have been. With 2 dice that'd probably be pretty rough going at points.

The Realm has a fair amount of different equipment. The first weapon is the Carver's Knife, which is a very simple weapon with the caveat that it only operates on a 1-3 (which could make it a useful second weapon depending on what your main weapon is). The other is the Lance of Light, a Versatile weapon that goes between a defensive high-mobility, low-Harm weapon with Block and a two-handed mode that hits a whole row at once. (I nerfed it a little bit by removing 2 spaces range from the 1H and removing movement from the 2H, with those tweaks it's mostly in line with other equipment.) As far as the other equipment, it has a few consumables, which mostly restore Health; a Charged item that turns into a passive +1 Harm to Constructs thing after you've used it eight times; and another Charged item that reduces one enemy die. It's also got a few consumables (which, unlike many from other Realms, are usable in combat by spending a die).

The Rune Lord is interesting because you can either fight it in its lair (which I did just for testing purposes) or, if you have enough Lore, summon it to another location. If you fight it in its lair, you'll have to contend with a second enemy, a big mechanical heart that takes up the middle 4 spaces and buffs everyone else every round. Speaking of second enemies, the Rune Lord's first phase summons another enemy on a 5-6, which gets really annoying if you fight it in its lair and are trying to take out the buffing heart! I think I ended the fight with 5 of its summons on the field because it kept rolling high. It can also advance the Realm Clock, which can add more of those Threads mid-fight. All in all, pretty fun.

The Rune of Control lets you, 1/Fight, force an adjacent enemy to use an action on a target of your choice. Fun little ability.

Weapons:
- Greataxe
- Lance of Light (Castle Blanchard, -Range 1H/-Move 2H)
- Scale Shield (Great Serpent Tree)
Gear:
- Amulet of Dawn
- Reliquary of Jarmencia (World's Grave)
Runes:
- E: Fate's Foe
- E: Rune of Control (Castle Blanchard)
- E: Osteomancer's Rune (World's Grave)
- Devouring Rune (Bulwark Hollow)
- Obran Express Medal (Obran Express)
- Fate's Hunter (Great Serpent Tree replacement)

Next up, Obsidian Brink, another pamphlet Realm! And depending on how quick that goes I may do a double feature with Cragcliff Reformatory (my first Realm, which I'm revising for this).

(Read the original on cohost here!)

RUNEvember Session 4: World's Grave

Wed, 09 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Session 0, 1, 2, 3

Fourth on RUNEvember, we're entering the World's Grave.

You wake in smothering darkness and claw your way out of a shallow grave. The air hangs heavy with humid decay. In the distance the land cracks into a cavernous maw. You carve the Sigil into your tombstone and set out.

Overview and Realm Mechanics

Another horror-ish one, this one has a unique mechanic: Remains. When enemies die, they (mostly) drop a Remains tile on the map. Enemies interact with these sometimes (consuming them, mostly), and after combat they can be collected for use if they're still on the map. This is a pretty interesting mechanic and gives you reasons to be more aggressive against otherwise not terribly threatening enemies (because sometimes they'll gobble up your precious Remains).

This Realm's not too long, just 7 points, and fairly linear.

Realm Clock

This one forgoes the classic "clock" structure in favor of a one-way clock. When it's 4/10 full, enemies are Famished; when it's 7/10 full, enemies are Ravenous; when it's full, enemies are Voracious. This has map implications as well as implications for every fight (they get little bonuses at each tier). It's an interesting idea! 1-way I'll get into implementation of how it works out in that section.

Death Penalty

You have to reroll your highest stamina die every round until you get back to wherever you died. I like this one because it's not too punishing. That said, you do reset the clock 3 steps whenever you die, which is an interesting phenomenon - at early levels it might theoretically be advantageous to die/return.

Play Impressions

This one's got a lot of cool combat dynamics. Exploration's less so its strong suit, but it's definitely interesting overall!

Everything in this part of the post is spoilers for the Realm. Click this to show it if that's fine with you!

The clock fills up SO fast. It fills on both movement and actions, so if you go to one area, do two actions, then go to another area, the first segment (for Famished) will already be full. After 3 areas it'll be completely filled. There weren't that many things that cared about the clock, though, so it's not a big deal, but then again that's a thing in and of itself. This might have been a good use case to have it fill up only by taking actions. All told, the exploration is very straightforward: it has one triangle near the beginning but the rest is a straight line, with the Rune Lord at an area off of the Sigil. (There is a 2 <-> 6 secret passage that opens up late on the clock, which can help people who are struggling.) One thing you can do is that you can use the Remains you're accumulating to raise your max HP (which I'm assuming ends at the end of the Realm, for sanity's sake). More on that re: the Rune Lord.

Equipment here is cool. The Spinal Lance is a Versatile weapon that switches between a heavy Adjacent stance and a heavier Same/Adjacent two-handed stance. It has a gimmick where if you roll all 1's with it, it splits into two Spinal Clubs. (I don't know if this was supposed to be a permanent split, I'm going to assume otherwise given my equipment limits because that would be super punishing to me in particular.) The Reliquary of Jarmencia is an item that lets you spend a 5-6 to either corpse explode a Remains object, dealing 2 Harm to enemies at same/adjacent, or deal 2 Harm to one Undead. It has no range, so it seems like it'd be pretty good if you're fighting Undead, but other Realms don't have Remains as a thing so its use is a bit limited.

The enemies here are mostly not terribly threatening, but they do use the Remains mechanic in some cool ways. One enemy is normally fairly sedate, but if it starts its turn next to Remains, it transforms into a much nastier enemy. Another enemy can summon that first enemy, but also on a 6 it can consume those enemies to restore Health. Yet another enemy eats your stored Remains on Harm and spits out reinforcements. It's all pretty cool stuff.

Now, as for the Rune Lord...well, the first stage is a pretty standard fight. The real fun happens at the start of the second stage: you take a scaled up amount of Harm based on how high your max HP is and the boss summons a helper with as much Harm as you took. This is a very fun Soulsy thing: give you something and reveal it's a trap later! Love this. (The fight isn't terribly hard afterwards, so it's not that impactful. But still, fun concept.)

The Rune (unnamed, I'm calling it the Osteomancer's Rune because that's the Rune Lord) lets you tank your Health by 4 to gain +1 Stamina. Definitely a worthwhile trade, and I'll be using it because I love that kind of glass-cannon feel. (To keep things interesting I think I'll ditch the Festering Longsword, Drain offsets the penalty too well when you're much more regularly getting 6's. Probably the Amulet too once I get another piece of Gear I'd use frequently. Fate's Foe stays though.)

Carried Over Equipment

Weapons:
- Greataxe
- Spinal Lance (World's Grave)
- Scale Shield (Great Serpent Tree)
Gear:
- Amulet of Dawn
- Reliquary of Jarmencia (World's Grave)
Runes:
- E: Fate's Foe
- E: Fate's Hunter (Great Serpent Tree replacement)
- E: Osteomancer's Rune (World's Grave)
- Devouring Rune (Bulwark Hollow)
- Obran Express Medal (Obran Express)

Next on the docket, Castle Blanchard!

(Read the original on cohost here!)

RUNEvember Session 3: Obran Express

Mon, 07 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Session 0, 1, 2

On the third stop, we've hit our first pamphlet realm, Obran Express! There are 4 of these right now if my memory serves. These are Realms that fit on a sheet front and back, usually they have 4 points and take like half an hour to play tops.

Glass shatters and screams echo across the Obran Express. Your journey to another realm interrupted, you sigh, scratch a hasty sigil. and draw your weapon. Nothing is ever easy.

Overview and Realm Mechanics

As you may have guessed by the name, the entire Realm is a train! The Rattlesnake Gang has taken over and is steering it towards their hideout: you'll have to get past them and either detach the back or stop the train at the front to win before it reaches their hideout. I'd post just the map but it's also the entire Realm because it's 4 points long.

Unlike the default map, each Realm uses uneven maps: 5x4 for 3 of the areas, 2x3 for one of them. There's no death penalty.

Worth noting that this one was definitely intended to work with the old difficult terrain mechanics (moving onto it costs 2 Move instead of 1), so if you're giving it a go, consider using them as such.

Realm Clock

For every 4 interior car movements or actions taken (minus fights), advance the clock. (You can move on the exterior of the car too, which doesn't take clock time but puts you in a situation where you can take a lot of Harm.) Once it's full, you pick one of four events, which can't be picked multiple times. (The fourth one is "it reaches the hideout and you lose" essentially, so practically there are three events.) It's a pretty neat system for a one-way clock.

Play Impressions

I love how hard this leans into the pamphlet thing to provide a unique experience. Every car has one fight with a unique rattlesnake with some kind of unique mechanic, which is pretty cool - it feels like a boss rush. Each car is laid out with terrain to really give the feel of the area. There's a little strategy for which events to pick as the clock turns over because some of them are more disruptive than others or provide an advantage (like Braking, which lets you move more towards the "front" of the car). The snake fights were mostly fun, the gimmicks were pretty interesting (with the exception of the ranged snake, where I mostly spent my time dancing back and forth at range 3 because getting hit with the high-Harm abilities was really gnarly, but half of that was owed to the wonkiness of the Greataxe moveset.) I messed up getting to point 1 because I missed that the diagram indicates that you can only get there on the exterior, so keep that in mind, but it's all good. There's also a few consumables, which have very handy strategic uses.

All in all, a good time! It has a rune which is consumable: it lets you travel an arbitrary number of times without advancing the Realm Clock once, which would be extremely helpful in certain Realms. Give this one a go, it won't take long.

Carried Over Equipment

Weapons:
- Greataxe
- Festering Longsword (Bulwark Hollow)
- Scale Shield (Great Serpent Tree)
Gear:
- Amulet of Dawn
- Charred Whetstone
Runes:
- Fate's Foe
- Fate's Hunter (Great Serpent Tree replacement)
- Devouring Rune (Bulwark Hollow)
- Obran Express Medal (Obran Express)

Next up, World's Grave!

(Read the original on cohost here!)

RUNEvember Session 2: Bulwark Hollow

Sat, 05 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Session 0, Session 1.

Second stop in RUNEvember is Bulwark Hollow:

A stiff breeze stirs the trees around you, the only sounds are that of the rustling leaves, the creak of wood, and the nearby rush of water. Towering mountains, tallest to the north, sweep across the horizon, their peaks snatching at the clouds.

With your Sigil carved into the rock, you head out to find the Rune Lord of Bulwark Hollow.

Overview and Realm Mechanics

This is definitely a Realm with more of a "horror" feel to it. The description and the map have a very "late autumn"/"early winter" vibe! I dig it.

Speaking of the map, it's pretty big, with 10 points to it. It's a bit on the linear side unfortunately which restricts choices a bit later on especially, but that's fine.

This one also uses the Coral Rock Hit mechanic. (That might as well be built in, it's a very useful concept.)

Realm Clock

This is emphasized by the 6-segment Realm Clock, or in this case the Blight Clock. Two points start Blighted, and every 6 actions/movements another one is Blighted. If you wait too long your Sigil gets Blighted and then you can get a bad end! There's a way to halt it that you'll find eventually, but it definitely takes some doing. Recommendation for folks playing this: Bump the clock up to 8 segments if you still want that pressure but with a little less tight of a pace.

Death Penalty

Death gives you some extremely nasty penalties (-1 move or -1 stamina are two of the random options) until you do the traditional Souls corpse run...which, well, see the clock mechanics and the linearity of the map above. I have feelings about this related to the Realm Clock (we'll get to that in the spoiler section), but on first blush it's not very well defined. Do I have to do the FIGHT at a point before recovering on it, for instance? As mentioned last time, -1 move is very rough, honestly, and -1 stamina is worse! You're extremely likely to lock into a death spiral if you die too late without having the clock halted.

Play Impressions

This one's alright! I think @Yuigaron has said he's going to revise it so maybe wait for that to play it (like for instance, the Gear you can get is an older type that doesn't exist anymore and says you should bump your Stamina up, which also isn't really how that works anymore, and some bits were clearly intended for the old difficult terrain) but as-is it's pretty solid. Hard to get into more thoughts without spoilers so I'm going to get into that.

Everything in this part of the post is spoilers for the Realm. Click this to show it if that's fine with you!

This is a Realm where the clock REALLY matters. I'm not gonna pretend that I took an optimal route (I probably wasted ~8-10 actions, which really adds up) but I didn't die and I still ended the Realm Clock just barely while it was at the Sigil. If you want to cap it off earlier than that you really have to ignore a lot of stuff along the way to get to Area 8. Which is fine! But it's definitely a context shift you have to keep in mind in comparison to most other Realms.

The equipment's ok. The weapon you can get is the Festering Longsword - it's the same as the standard Longsword but with Drain 2 instead of Harm 3 on a 6. (Annoyingly, you can only get it by going all the way up a point with 3 FIGHT actions on it, which does annoying things to your Clock - you're better off waiting until the end of the Realm, which means you'll barely have a chance to use it.) Trade harm potential for health regen, it's probably worth it but it's still definitely a tradeoff. (I'm definitely taking it over the standard, the Drain pairs well with a second weapon for when you want to be more aggressive.) The Gear you can get is the Charred Whetstone which adds a flat +1 Harm (noted to be Fire) when Charged, which is kind of an old type of Utility where you had to lock in a die. +1 Harm's an obviously useful one, hopefully this gets revised to have some kind of interesting condition to it. (It's also at the very end of the Realm.)

The enemies are kind of all over the place but I generally like them. A lot of them just have Harm 1 pokes which get obviated by a worthwhile shield. Many encounters have an enemy that either lays Hazards or spawns reinforcements, which can get pretty hairy if an encounter rolls 6's a lot (this happened to me in one of them, 3/8ths of the usable map was covered in hazards). Some of them have really nasty stuff like Drain, so be careful! The two unique enemies are pretty cool and have some interesting stuff going on - one of them's a Troll whose limbs fall off if you deal too much Harm to it at once!

The boss is pretty great conceptually, it starts as an immobile ranged enemy but switches to a slow same/adjacent attacker that ignores terrain. Very souls.

First phase has a move that gives it Block and health regen, which is pretty annoying when it rolls that one over and over and you're not rolling well enough to make progress. Maybe that one could've been changed to Drain instead of the regen so you can counter-play a little easier. It has range out to 3 and doesn't move, but one of its moves lays hazards, which is kind of a weird combo because odds are you're going to get into your favored range and stay there, so the hazards aren't going to be terribly relevant. Even if they're supposed to stick around into phase 2 it's unlikely to change.
Second phase lays a bunch of difficult terrain around, which is one of those things where the change to terrain made a big difference - this would be a pretty nasty fight! But on the plus side, you can destroy terrain here by attacking it, which helps a bit. You're still probably going to take a few hits in the process though if going by the old terrain rules.

There are two Runes you can get. One (Bulwark rune) can prevent up to 3 Harm in a fight. The other (Devouring rune) lets you eat another one of your Runes to buff yourself! Each Rune can be eaten twice before it's gone forever. (This is kind of a pain to keep track of but it's interesting conceptually. I don't think I'd ever fully consume a Rune with it but who knows, if I know I'm getting one that I'd replace an older one with anyway maybe that makes perfect sense.)

Carried Over Equipment

Weapons:
- Greataxe
- Festering Longsword (Bulwark Hollow)
- Scale Shield (Great Serpent Tree)
Gear:
- Amulet of Dawn
- Charred Whetstone
Runes:
- Fate's Foe
- Fate's Hunter (Great Serpent Tree replacement)
- Devouring Rune (Bulwark Hollow)

Next time, all aboard the Obran Express to fight the Rattlesnake Gang! (That's a pamphlet Realm so I might also do World's Grave.)

(Read the original on cohost here!)

RUNEvember Session 0: Ground Rules

Fri, 04 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I don't feel like writing a novel this month. I've done enough writing lately. What I do feel like is doing something I've been putting off for months: playing @gilarpgs 's RUNE a bunch. And now that the backer copy is out, throughout November, I'm going to play RUNE. I'm going to play so much RUNE. I'm going to play all of RUNE that currently exists.

RUNE is in an interesting situation in that it isn't out but it nonetheless has at least 15 unofficial Realms that I'm aware of. I've written 3 of them! But with one notable exception, I haven't really gotten the chance to play the rest. Let's fix that.

Throughout this month, I'm going to be going through every unofficial Realm with one Engraved. Here are the restrictions I'm going to set on myself.

I'm starting with the recommended equipment: 2 Weapons, 1 Gear, 1 Rune.
- I picked randomly for the weapons and got: Greataxe and Longsword.
- Given that this combo seems like a recipe for dying constantly, I opted for the Amulet of Dawn Gear (which heals you in certain condtions) and Fate's Foe Rune (which grants more Health).
I will be sticking with the 3 Runes engraved limit.
I'm going to institute a 3 Weapons, 2 Gear limit carried from Realm to Realm. Once I have more than that, I have to choose what I'm bringing. This isn't in the rules: I'm just doing an unreasonable amount of Realms for one character and I don't want to shuffle through 20 weapons. (Plus this requires me to commit to some general inclination of a build, which I think is kind of interesting.)
If I see gear that's like obviously off I'm going to tweak it a bit, noting any way in which I tweak it. (Given many of these Realms were written this summer and a few were prior to major updates in baseline weaponry and such, this is mostly going to be reducing Move and restricting Range.)
I'm going to randomize the Realm order and figure it out from there. For the sake of keeping things interesting, I'm going to make sure it doesn't start and end with one of mine; otherwise I'm just gonna stick with the order that it spits out.

The order I got from this was:

As I go along, I'll describe the unique features of each, the bits I like about them, and general impressions, as well as describe at the end of each Realm what my loadout/build/etc looks like. (For my Realms I'll instead describe what I did and why I did it.) I'll try to spoiler anything that seems like it's "lategame" in the Realm.

See you at Session 1: Great Serpent Tree! Going to be using #runevember for these if anyone else wants to play along.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

RUNEvember Session 1: Great Serpent Tree

Fri, 04 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Session 0 (and a description of what's going on here).

I started off RUNEvember by playing through the Great Serpent Tree:

Standing in a petrified half life, the Great Serpent Tree balances impossibly on the tip of its own tail, scales falling to the ground as branches burst through serpentine flesh. Blood and venom flows down its length, as distant figures move about its stretch, carving up the still breathing beast.

Overview and Realm Mechanics

As you can tell from the description, this Realm is poised on a giant snake which has a tree growing in it! It's a fascinating idea and I love the map! Very good use of Evlyn Moreau's incredible art, and it's cool to see it subdivided per-point as various parts of the snake/tree as the Realm unfolds.

Realm Clock

The clock for this Realm is Death Throes. The snake is still dying, and every once in awhile it lets everyone perched upon it know. How this translates in game is that every 6 actions, a Death Throes action happens. This is different based on where you are on the snake-tree: at the base of the tree, this might either be minor or even beneficial (like opening up new paths or Lore). At higher levels, this might throw you off of the tree entirely!

I'll get into this in other Realms too but I'm always interested in how to make more cyclical clocks interesting - in my experience the more "one-way" ones are better for putting on pressure, but you run the risk of making things more unrecoverable - and this is a very cool way to do it.

Death Penalty

The Death Penalty is that, like the snake you're on, you start growing trees in you too! You gain a random penalty from 1 to 6, from reduced Move to reduced max Health to just making future rolls on the table worse. Unlike a lot of the death penalties, this one's persistent until removed by a specific thing in the Realm.

Death Penalties are a mixed bag for me because I feel like they can either be a waste of time or lead to a pretty bad death spiral effect or both. I kind of like that this one sticks around and accumulates (though, and this is something that will come up in other Realms too, -1 Move is absolutely brutal to keep around).

Other New Mechanics

Combat maps may be vertical! This means that moving "up" (towards the top rows) is Difficult Terrain and moving "down" (towards the bottom rows) can be done without spending Move if you're willing to take Damage. If you would fall off the bottom row you die! This is a neat idea (more on the implementation of the specific time it comes up later though).
It uses the Coral Rock changes that the majority of other Realms (including mine) have implemented: the notion of Hit (aka an effect happens if Harm is either applied or blocked) and enemy movement to the closest space in range.
It adds a new action type: Attack, which is like Fight but it doesn't block other actions at that point. (So this is a way to set up optional fights.)
Faction Conflict! Enemies each have a Faction associated with them, and if you're out of range or haven't damaged anyone yet they will/have a chance to attack each other if they're from different Factions. This is a little complicated to resolve sometimes but is a pretty cool concept!

Play Impressions

This was pretty fun as a whole! A few places where things were a little unfinished, or cleaved a little towards the older playtests, but with those caveats I overall recommend at least giving it a look!

Everything in this part of the post is spoilers for the Realm. Click this to show it if that's fine with you! The Death Penalty seemed pretty rough at first but the trick is that you can reduce it by being attacked by a certain enemy that's pretty close to the Sigil so it's extremely manageable. It's a little more interesting than "clears after one fight" at any rate.

The Death Throes clock was interesting because if you know what's happening for a certain area, it gives you an incentive to kind of fudge it by lingering to make sure you're in the right place at the right time. I feel like this would be better as a random roll, maybe tweaked based on how high up on the snake-tree you are.

Equipment's a little touch and go, which makes sense because it's not too far from the original playtests. The shield offered (Scale Shield) is very good as written! I reduced the movement on 6 to bring it in line and I'll tweak down the lower values as well for Realms to come. The weapon offered (Talon Fauchard) is a two-hander but the one-hand moveset is the standout with a reliable Move 2 at range 1-2. (I left this one behind because I can't easily fix it.) The Gear (Crown of Branches) uses the older Locked terminology and even with that terminology no longer being a thing (and with no third stamina die) it could be pretty handy in a pinch. (I didn't get it because it was locked behind an optional encounter with an otherwise-friendly NPC and I've never been that kind of Souls player.) There are a few consumable bombs you can get which are pretty cool, I'm always in favor of consumables.

The faction stuff was cool when it came up, but it didn't come up all that often, probably owing to the fact that the Realm's a bit on the short side. That's the kind of thing that needs a little space to breathe.

There's a setpiece fight which is pretty neat conceptually! A great hawk attacks you on the Realm's one vertical combat map while a few of the knight faction are fighting both it and you. It's not physically on the map, but it targets various areas based on the random roll and you can attack it by attacking anywhere it's currently targeting. This is a cool way to do big-enemy setpieces! I've got a few gripes with how it works relative to the verticality mechanic though:

First, as written, you can only bring in one weapon...which made a little more sense with the playtest weapons but even then that's pretty rough. Difficult Terrain might as well be permanent terrain for any build that can't reliably get Move 2, so even if you did have two weapons, you might have a very tough time. edit: Apparently Difficult Terrain no longer works like that, it just gives you -1 Harm, which is great because it makes this fight a lot more possible without fantastic luck! Also I need to edit my Realms now.
Second, you start at the bottom row and the hawk has some attacks that push you down 2 spaces if you get hit - meaning if you're in the bottom two rows and get hit by it (with roughly a 1 in 6 chance of it targeting your starting square), you just immediately die with very little recourse!

So it's a very cool concept, but could stood to have a little more time in the oven. (It was, however, extremely funny when my first enemy roll was such that 2/3 of the knights moved 2 spaces downwards and then got pushed 2 spaces downwards, meaning they got instantly thrown off. 10/10.)

The Rune Lord is ok! A little easy if you got the Scale Shield as written because you can pretty reliably trade damage with it but that's fine. There's a pretty interesting idea here, which is that if you're out of range it'll target the tree itself, which ticks the Realm Clock (which in turn causes reinforcements to arrive if it fills). Otherwise, though, there aren't any secondary enemies, meaning it's pretty hard to get overwhelmed.

Unfortunately, in spite of there being a Rune Lord, there's no Rune at the end! I just randomly rolled another starter Rune (Fate's Hunter) and went with that.

Carried over equipment

Weapons:
- Greataxe
- Longsword
- Scale Shield (Great Serpent, nerfed from 2 -> 1 Move on a 6, 2 -> 1 Block on a 2-3)
Gear:
- Amulet of Dawn
Runes:
- Fate's Foe
- Fate's Hunter (Great Serpent, added for lack of a Rune)

Next stop, @Yuigaron 's Bulwark Hollow!

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Total//Effect subsystem overview (aka, the actual game bits) and the three games I'm sketching out with it.

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Follow-up to my post about Total//Effect core mechanics.

I realized I barely described what the rest of the system is in favor of being a Probability Weirdo. Let's do that. I also didn't describe, or even mention any of the three games I'm outlining while I'm writing it somehow. Let's do that too.

The Subsystems

What's a core system for the system? Like what parts do you need? You need the core mechanic, which can in turn be expressed through any of the subsystems listed. Basically aside from how to roll, the concept of escalation, and some concepts around level/tier advancement, there isn't any one system that's "core". My big intentions for this system/toolbox/SRD/whatever are modularity and configurability, which I'm defining as:

Modularity: Provide subsystems with intended uses that all use the same core mechanic but in different ways, and provide examples of how they interlink. The idea is that you would pick a 3-5 of the more resonant ones for your game - they're intended to be satisfying enough that they feel like solid mechanics in and of themselves, but lightweight enough that you can easily have a few of them interact. I want this to feel less like a "draw the rest of the owl" situation around one well thought out system and more like giving you a bunch of pre-made things with several kinds of ideas how to go using them yourself.
Configurability: Within each subsystem selected, I want it to be possible that you can use all, most, or very little of it, and be able to have a few good ideas as to how to configure the bits you are using.

Here's a very short summary of the subsystems I'm launching it with and have mostly written stuff for (unless I decide to add any more or combine any, this has happened a few times along the way). The idea is that for your game you'd tie together a few of these that make the most sense. (More on that later when I describe my sample game ideas.)

The direct PC-related ones are:

Combat and Conflict: There are two kinds outlined here: Tactical Combat is the traditional group-combat while Personal Duels are one-on-one combat. (They're also built to be interoperable with minimal tweaks.) I'm a tradgamer at heart so this was obviously where I started but this module isn't strictly necessary as long as others get leveraged instead.
Skillsets and Equipment: This is where I get into a lot of mechanics around doing noncombat stuff and such: how characters have or gain skills, consequences and twists, rolling for success vs. progress, ideas for stunts, ideas for explicit capabilities, etc.
Relationships and Bonds: This is where I get into ideas related to building up bonds between characters and other characters/groups/concepts and what you can do with them, and especially mechanics around leveraging an extensive relationship to influence other people/groups to act in certain ways.

The more group-related ones (which are lower in mechanical weight and more so ideas of ways to link various other subsystems together) are:

Reputation and Perception: For games where the broad-strokes perception of characters by people at large matters, and how to use that.
Factions and Power: For games where major powers are prominent and important. This includes how to make one and how to use them when writing your game.
Groups and Organizations: For games where the PCs being united by an explicit, in-setting common organization is important. This includes aspects of such an organization and ideas around expansion of the idea re: advancement.

The more meta ones (things that much more broadly define arcs, plots, etc) are:

Income and Expenditures: For games where some kind of currency, be it money or scrap or social capital, is important. This outlines some ideas re: buying, selling, and regular expenditures, as well as ideas like debt and investments.
Escalating Threat: For games where there's intended to be some kind of background ticking clock (or at least, a more explicit one than going broke, which is covered above). This can be short-scale in the sense of being on the run or having to be non-suspicious or long-scale in the sense of big plans and schemes by important people, groups, etc. that get advanced and revealed over time.

The Worked Examples

The problem is that it's really hard to write dry game design concepts without feeling very disconnected from implementation. Also in my experience it's hard to think abstractly about these ideas without some specific examples. So I came up with 3 game concepts to outline throughout the process of this with examples of how the mechanic being discussed would come up, as well as what subsystems they'd leverage:

Valiant Horizon: Heroic protagonists perform great deeds as they make a name for themselves. (Touchpoints: The dragon game you're almost certainly thinking of but mostly its 4th edition, JRPGs but especially Tales and Xenoblade.) This is about magitech-ish high fantasy adventure with a few framing devices: the people you befriend along the way, the creation of your legend, and large threats looming on the horizon.
- Subsystems employed: Tactical Combat, Skillsets, Relationships with people, Reputation, long-scale Escalating Threat.
Liminal Void: Regular people in space in the 23rd Century are thrust outside of normal society and must find a way to first survive, then thrive with their newly-acquired skills and spaceship. (Touchpoints: The Expanse, FTL, Alien/s, System Shock, Cowboy Bebop. Anything that has that kind of used-future in our solar system thing going on with a kind of survival-horror vibe to it.) This is a game that is very much about survival rather than being powerful: combat in the sense of being in a fair fight is generally a bad idea, equipment and resource management is extremely important.
- Subsystems employed: Tactical Combat, Skillsets/Equipment, Groups, Income/Expenditures, short-scale Escalating Threat.
Machinations of Court and Frame: Exceptional mecha pilots with mixed loyalties are thrust into proxy wars and byzantine power struggles between noble Houses. (Touchpoints: The mecha things I didn't rip off in APOCALYPSE FRAME but especially assorted Gundam/Battletech stuff. Thinking about Tactics Ogre/Final Fantasy Tactics/similar vibes too.) This is about dramatic mecha duels, shifting loyalties, and the actions of powerful individuals and leaders.
- Subsystems employed: Personal Duels, Relationships with people/factions/concepts, Factions, long-scale Escalating Threat. (Maybe also Tactical Combat but leaning towards no.)

Of these 3, I've fleshed out Liminal Void the most. (I made a very basic player-facing playtest packet and ran a one-shot with it, which went pretty well.) My goal is to release a Level 0 style quickstart/module of the scenario I came up with for it either alongside or shortly after the main SRD.

Hopefully that made any sense and sounds cool and like something people might want to play! Guess we'll find out.

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Total//Effect core mechanic: a painfully thorough examination of every part of the 3d6

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

So this is my first public post/design blog/etc about a system I'm developing as a SRD/toolkit, Total//Effect. It includes a bunch of probability stuff at the end if you're into that, but I do sum up the important bits if you're not.

I'll start with my initial forays into the humble 3d6 (and the originator of some of these mechanics), 36th Way and LUMEN.

3d6 and 36th Way/LUMEN

Total//Effect's resolution is a kind of combination of two different resolution systems I've used in the past: 36th Way and LUMEN.

My first big intro to using 3d6 as a resolution method came from my own 36th Way (which is a total conversion of 13th Age). I was using it as a stand-in for the d20 there, with a pretty typical roll + bonus vs difficulty system, but also using the "Natural" value (the die roll total) like 13th Age did: 9+/11+/13+ on 3d6 maps to the same 75%/50%/25% as 6+/11+/16+ on a d20. Instead of additive bonuses/penalties, I instituted a 5Eish advantage/disadvantage: roll X extra d6's, take the highest/lowest 3. (See my post about it here if you want more info.) This worked pretty well for that game but the D&Dishness of the general resolution dragged on me a bit (scroll down to "What am I not a fan of?" for more on that). This is especially true of Natural vs. total: more than a few players had a sticking point with this in particular. Players don't want to hear that their natural roll was a 14 (relevant points to their ability: natural 13+, natural even) when they clearly rolled a 21 after adding stuff. And honestly, who can blame them? I get why it's there but it's definitely a "train yourself to be used to this" kind of thing.

My second came indirectly from LUMEN. LUMEN uses a FitD-style "roll Xd6, take the highest" situation, with 2-3 dice being fairly common. 3 is the maximum I set for Attributes for APOCALYPSE FRAME because LUMEN splits its bands into 1-2 fail, 3-4 mixed success, 5-6 success: with that split, 3 dice ends up being 5% of a 1-2, 25% of a 3-4, 70% of a 5-6. (More on this here.) I like this a lot and it's probably one of the faster resolution systems I've seen! LUMEN, however, has to use fixed Harm/etc values to avoid slowing things down with multiple rolls, which I think is great for a certain kind of game about knowing exactly what you're capable of but isn't like wildly flexible.

Finally, I got the idea of using 1 die at a time from an old prototype of a game I wrote like 7 years ago that didn't go anywhere because it was way too involved. (No link to this one because this was like the one good idea in there - it was using the individual dice from Initiative rolls to determine energy regeneration based on general type of character. There was a lot going on in that game.)

The Mechanic: add dice for Total, pick dice for Effect

Total//Effect is named that because you're looking for up to two different things in each 3d6 roll:

The Total, aka the sum of 3d6
The Effect, aka a specific die (Low, Mid, High) from those 3 dice rolled.

In general to use the Total, you're rolling against values set by the ability itself, or for generic cases:

8-: PC’s choice: either the attempt fails with a minor consequence/twist or the attempt succeeds with a major consequence/twist.

9-12: The attempt succeeds with a minor consequence/twist.

13+: The attempt succeeds without consequence.

(X+ meaning that value or higher, X- meaning that value or lower, X-Y meaning between X and Y inclusive.)

The Effect is defined prior to rolling in the case that there's a numerical component to success, usually in the form of one die that's being used. (For example, if you're rolling to gather supplies, the GM might say that on a success you gain Mid Die supplies.) You can then use character qualities as appropriate (skills, equipment, etc.) to give Advantage to the roll (roll 1 extra die, highest 3) or increase the die used for Effect. You can also use one or the other in a given situation. To provide a more specific case as an example, here's a (stripped down to the rolling bits) combat ability:

Defensive Jab: Low Die Harm.

9+: Reduce the next instance of incoming Harm by Low Die.
13+: Mid instead of Low Die for both.

Which is to say: by default (on a Total of 8 or less) it does Low Die Harm, on a 9-12 it does that but also reduces the next instance of incoming Harm by Low Die, and on a 13+ both effects are present and use the Mid Die instead. It's pretty low-Harm (usually 1-2) unless you roll very well...or unless you're gaining Advantage, or unless escalation is high enough that you're hitting that 13+ fairly often. (More on how often that is later.)

On top of this, you have Escalation (stolen lovingly from 13A/36W). Unlike in those, Escalation is the only additive property in the game: it adds to or subtracts from a roll's Total based on increasing tension or some similar property in a situation (for example, it might add to combat-related rolls but takes away from rolls to do more collected, rational things). It can also add to or replace Effect for certain abilities (like certain combat abilities might add Escalation to Harm/Damage/etc).

Permutations

In addition to the above, I've also come up with a few other slight tweaks on the mechanic:

Rolling against PCs to see the details of a consequence on a roll. For example, rolling to see how many hours something takes upon provoking a consequence, using a higher die for a more major consequence. Similar to how they can add Advantage/increase the die used for rolls they make, PCs can use character qualities to mitigate these through Disadvantage/using a lower die - but they can't use the same thing twice on a roll/counter-roll combo, so there's some strategy of using everything up-front for the best outcome vs. mitigating consequences.
Rolling and using multiple dice. For example, negotiating payment for doing a job well might get you High Die payment for doing it perfectly, Mid Die for doing it adequately, Low Die for doing it poorly. Another example might be an ability that uses one die for number of targets and another for the actual effects.
Roll, pick a die based on the situation, then see if it's higher/lower/equal to a value rated 1-6. For example, Relationships are measured by a number of Bonds: when you want to influence the other party to do something, you pick Low/Mid/High die based on how likely they are to do it on their own and roll, taking that die and comparing to your number of Bonds to see how well that works out.

I'll likely come across more permutations in the future, but that's what I'm working with right now.

Probability Details

Enclosed is a lot of math. If you don't care about big lists of specific numbers, skip to Takeaways below. If you do, however, give this a click and see how far the number-hole goes. You can see the numbers I'm working with here, but here are the important values I'm looking at (rounded to the nearest 5 for percentages, .25 for rolls):

For a standard roll (3d6):

Average 10.5
75% chance to get 9+ total
50% for 11+ total
25% for 13+ total
Low die has an average of 2 (70% chance to get 1-2)
Mid die has an average of 3.5 (50% for 3-4, 85% for 2-5)
High die has an average of 5 (70% for 5-6)

For a roll with 1 Advantage (roll 4d6, take highest 3)

Average 12.25 (+1.75)
90% for 9+ total
75% for 11+ total
50% for 13+ total
Low die has an average of 3 (75% for 2-4)
Mid die has an average of 4 (75% for 3-5)
High die has an average of 5.25 (80% for 5-6)

For a roll with 1 Disadvantage (roll 4d6, take lowest 3)

Average 8.75 (-1.75)
50% for 9+ total
25% for 11+ total
10% for 13+ total
Low die has an average of 1.75 (80% for 1-2)
Mid die has an average of 3 (75% for 2-4)
High die has an average of 4 (75% for 3-5)

(You can get 2-3 Advantage/Disadvantage by changing the values in that anydice link to 5-6 dice and changing the Disadvantage to 3/4/5@ and 4/5/6@ respectively.)

Takeaways

The biggest change that happens to Total for Advantage/Disadvantage is to the high values: 13+ goes from 25% to 50% on Advantage (2x as likely) or 10% on Disadvantage (2/5 as likely).
High/Mid/Low increase by .25/.5/1 for Advantage. This means that it makes a bigger difference for Low/Mid dice on rolls. And vice versa for Disadvantage.
Increasing/decreasing the die used (Low to Mid to High or vice versa) is a bigger change on any given die value than gaining Advantage/Disadvantage but keeping the same die, which makes picking one of those bonuses/penalties over the other an actual choice. (More complex outcomes like specific abilities can increase the die used on higher Totals as well, as shown above, but generally speaking: Advantage/Disadvantage has a greater effect on Total, while increasing the die used has a greater effect on Effect, which is largely what you should be able to expect from both of those choices.)
As noted by the 9+/11+/13+ distinction in 36th Way upthread, adding escalation 2 means you're hitting 13+ 50% of the time - and subtracting it means you're hitting 9+ 50% of the time. Combined with the probabilities above, this is effectively like an extra Advantage/Disadvantage with the caveat that it's not changing any of the die values used. So while the Total will shift, changing the terms of the roll, the Effect isn't going to change based on this. (This also feeds nicely into my assertion that most combats should be 3 rounds: Escalation 2 hits exactly at that third round if starting at Escalation 0.)

Conclusion? Summary? Endnotes?

I've started sketching out and playtesting some games with it and I like what I see! You have a pretty good idea of where a roll is going to end up as far as Effect, but with a lot of room for surprises (like in one playtest I did, a low die Harm roll went sideways when I rolled triple 6's.) It's fast and feels pretty good!

I'll have more long-form thoughts about this as I roll out the whole SRD/toolkit, there's a lot more to it than one roll mechanic. But these are my thoughts going into it. Hope it was helpful or enlightening for you!

(Read the original on cohost here!)

Postmortem

Fri, 02 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! I’m just going to go over the general history of this project, where it went, what state it ended up in, and takeaways going forward. This is going to be fairly rambly in parts.

How did we get here?

To put it bluntly, the primary reason this exists is because I tried running Pathfinder 2E in late 2019 and hated it. It’s not the only reason though.

To back up a little, I’d been playing various D&Ds regularly (among other systems) for roughly 9 years prior, and irregularly for longer than that. When running it I was mostly thinking about how much I’d rather be running 13th Age, but also thinking about all the things I disliked about both 13th Age and Pathfinder (chief among them, the use of the d20). The third contributor here is a Fragged Empire, which I’d run for a bit prior to PF2E. (Specifically: I’d made a big Shadowrun conversion of it because I loved the idea of Shadowrun but thinking about the mechanics of the actual game like at all made me queasy.) Fragged Empire uses a 3d6 + bonus vs target system and it works pretty well and feels right. So off the bat I was thinking about 13th Age with the following changes:

1d20 -> 3d6. (I did some math and realized 9+/13+ could swap easily for 6+/16+ so a lot of things would theoretically just carry over.)
Use something kind of like PF2E Focus Spells except a more interesting implementation (and not just for spells).
Use 5E Advantage/Disadvantage instead of the traditional +/-2 bonus situation. I wasn’t really a fan of 5E when I played it but that’s like the one really notable change.
No ability scores. PF2E really, really did a great job in souring me on them mechanically because of how the math really assumes you’re going to have a maxed out accuracy stat, but DTAS had been floating around prior to that for many reasons.

I tapped out the Fighter pretty quickly over a couple of days. The existing Fighter is not too different than what I initially put down - it had some weirder ideas like Maneuvers being tied to weapon types like slashing/piercing/etc that got dropped. I really liked how it turned out, so I moved onto Cleric, Wizard, and Rogue. I compiled those 4 with some very basic “how do these roll mechanics work” and some instructions to refer to the 13th Age SRD for things like enemies/etc and we were pretty much on the way.

Afterwards…well, you can read the rest of the devlogs, I laid out the order in which I made everything pretty well I think. Over time I got better and better at figuring out class design, and remade a lot of the classes that were closer to the original 13th Age classes. Design by Ship of Theseus Metaphor is how I think about how it came together: I swapped out one thing, and then another, and then another, and pretty soon only a little bit of the original remained.

What went well?

It’s fully, eminently playable. And not just by me! In addition to the playtest campaign I ran for my in-person (and soon in 2020, not in-person) group, I pitched it to a friend who was looking for something to run given we had all found ourselves inside in March of 2020 looking for something to do and he subsequently ran it for a group that didn’t include me (admittedly he knew 13A so he had a leg up). Both campaigns ran from level 1 to 10 and barring some lumps from level 1 being a little awkward due to damage only having 1 die, it ran fine. It felt pretty good from the start and only got better as it became more refined.
It’s VERY reskinnable. From the start I was thinking of this as something to allow for reskinning and built it as such. I’d done this while playing 13th Age with ease, more so than a lot of D&D-likes it really lends itself to it thanks to things like abstract ranges. As mentioned in my last devlog, I watched someone turn the entire thing into a no-magic (admittedly not hard) sci-fi game. One of my original plans for the system was to just make a bunch of settings for it with very little new mechanics except reskinning and maybe like a new class or two and if I’d done that I think it’d have worked great. (I was considering a dark fantasy-ish setting last winter but kind of gave up on the idea as I became less enamored with exactly what the system was. It got recycled into ANOINTED and a future project.)
All of the changes I made worked pretty well. The switch to 3d6 was a big hit, especially given Escalation matters a lot more as a result. I’m pretty happy with all of the new classes and I feel like I breathed a lot of life into ones that had received less love in the original 13A.
Making a 200 page game is a great way to get good at writing a lot of stuff fast. When you get to the point where you can make a 5-7 page class in a day or two, you’re well on your way. It’s not quite 10,000 hours or whatever but it’s definitely something! Getting a good grasp on how to structure things is important.

What am I not a fan of?

Big ticket items:

It’s still basically a modern (3E-onward) D&D. The most important one. I don’t think it’s inherently bad to make fantasy heartbreakers, but much like any other genre, if you aren’t really thinking about what you’re making, you’re going to make a lot of the same mistakes and fall into a lot of the same patterns. Monk and Barbarian are in there named as such - despite me thinking about Barbarian especially and cutting out a lot of the stuff that makes those not great, it’s still what it is. Various kinds of “monstrous” humanoid enemies are in the bestiary too with very D&Dish interpretations and that’s not great either. 13th Age is actually a little better about allowing more kinds of stories because it doesn’t really care about money or experience as such but I still don’t think I really did enough to examine my priors in this regard when writing this. I did some stuff pushing against standard D&Disms that I’m proud of (no ability scores, no mechanical races, etc) but it was definitely an uphill battle and inherently there’s just too much baked in to avoid all of it or really take it into account.
See above, but mechanically. Even past that, it’s still too much of a D&D - which was the original goal as stated but I underestimated how D&D-shaped 13th Age is because of my experience poking it into slightly less D&Dish shapes. Even after this, there’s just a lot of built in baggage. AC, PD, and MD are all different values and PD/MD are usually lower and that’s just how it works. Why is that? Because it’s One Of These and that’s the way it generally is and if I did something different it’d feel wrong. This is the kind of thing that makes it harder to reskin, you can either make everything generic (in which case nobody cares or reads it, generalized tactical stats are kind of boring) or make it specific (in which case you probably just made D&D or possibly Weird D&D again). No matter what, it’s still a game inherently about an adventuring day in which you use up a set of resources over the course of 3-5 encounters and it doesn’t really work well once you start to deviate from that. You can of course buck this in various ways (like stick to noncombat, etc) but, well, that’s what people who defend D&D also say. It’s a bad argument there and it wouldn’t be a very good argument here either.

More systemic gripes:

A PC has too many class features, spells, powers, etc. This feels like a weird complaint compared to D&D or a lot of “trad” games because it’s way less complicated than most of those, but that’s less of a positive note in favor of 36W and more of a comment on how a ton in that field falls short compared to more elegant indie designs. Some of the classes have like 7 pages of stuff to remember, and while you’re not going to pick all of it, some of it can get fairly wordy. Remembering all of your stuff can be a lot, and not a lot of it matters all the time. I maintain that if you have enough stuff on your sheet that a character builder actually makes a ton of sense then you probably have too much stuff and as much as 36W isn’t that bad in this regard, a character builder still kind of makes sense. (As always, passive abilities are usually way more of a culprit for overhead than active abilities.)
There’s too much entangled stuff which it makes it hard to make derivative things from the SRD. Any given class has a fair amount going on. Every talent, ability, etc is pretty distinct and in conversation with every other, which is good from a holistic design perspective but bad if you’re trying to make a basis for further content. There really isn’t a comparison for like, the atomic design unit of a “spell” or whatever. I’m thinking about LUMEN in comparison where the idea was to make something that was intentionally incomplete because that inspires people to “complete” it in the way they see fit - this seems like an absurd problem but things are just too complete for that here and there aren’t enough atomic elements.

And combat gripes in particular.

Combat is still too slow. A comparison to LUMEN is still absolutely unfair, but I’m not writing this section to be fair, I’m writing it to be honest. Balancing around ~1 enemy per PC means that in a given round one hit’s worth isn’t going to feel terribly consequential even if an ability does a lot of things, and decision paralysis is real. Roll attack, check natural result vs ability stuff, check computed result vs. enemy defense, roll damage, check if damage is higher than the staggered/dead thresholds…it’s a lot of steps and that’s just one action! And this doesn’t account for things like conditions, temporary effects, etc. This is compounded by the fact that…
All of the numbers are too high. Especially at high levels. I’d committed to making caster/non-caster math a little more equivalent with the 1 die/level system that weapon damage used in 13A but I hadn’t really thought about what that actually feels like to people who aren’t used to the idea of rolling like 10-20 dice or whatever. PCs and NPCs have hundreds of HP (sometimes thousands for some enemies!) and that’s just too much. LUMEN in particular has convinced me that the most HP something should have is like 30-40 if it’s something extremely nasty, in a lot of cases you simply don’t need numbers that high. 100 is too much, and 1000+ is right out. Some people like big numbers for feel and like, sure if that makes you feel better, but please make it easily divisible by like 5-10 because I suspect most people don’t want to do high 2 digit/low 3 digit subtraction regularly.
Vancian-style spellcasting sucks. Knowing when to use daily/recharge abilities is one of those severe “learning curve” things that’s hard to balance around. It’s not a coincidence that a lot of 13A/4E-derived things get rid of them and move to encounter-only! Daily abilities are especially hard because it’s unclear exactly how hot you should be burning at any given point or whether something makes sense to use right now (and especially if you’re running shorter sessions, a “day” can be several real-life weeks, so who knows when you’ll get access to it again). This is compounded by things like variable adventuring days - a fight-long buff matters more if you know your GM is going to load a day’s worth of fights into 2 encounters as opposed to 4, etc - and exacerbated by players not being terribly experienced with things like resource expenditure and knowing when to burn hard vs. not. (And also just like…wanting to push the button that does fun stuff because it’s fun. Having to hold off on that can be kind of a buzzkill.) The things like Showstopper/Exalt that share a single cooldown for several abilities and the Power-based abilities (Prowess, etc) feel like they’re a little more inexperience-proof and fun.
HP isn’t terribly interesting. Related to combat being too slow. This is a problem that a lot of D&D’s and the more 3/4/5E descended heartbreakers have and it’s present here: a single hit just doesn’t feel very significant and often that’s all you get (and maybe a condition or ongoing damage or something). Bloodied/Staggered and abilities that key off of that help a little but they’re not that-that common, making them more common would probably be annoying, and penalties-on-sufficient-damage often lead to death spirals. I kind of like static enemy damage for speed purposes but it exacerbates this: if you know how much damage something can do, you know exactly how many hits you can take until it’s an actual problem, which removes a lot of tension. This is mostly fine if HP is low and damage is inevitable, but because of the desire for more tactical stuff like conditions to happen (and to de-emphasize pure alpha strike tactics, which otherwise dominate) survival has to be a little higher and damage needs to be preventable so they matter at all. It’s a tough balance and I don’t think it was met here.
Recoveries aren’t terribly interesting. In theory, the recovery economy helps to de-emphasize having to have a character that can heal others in the party - you can heal between combats and focus on taking down targets quicker, preventing damage through high defenses/conditions, etc. In practice, it doesn’t really do that because only parties that are truly on the ball can fully prevent squishy characters from getting hit very badly every once in awhile and even then it’s not foolproof, and support characters act as force multipliers because they’re buffing when they’re not healing. If you manage to play in such a way that you have to deal with less healing, the fact of the matter is that you’re leaving daily resources on the table when you could be getting healed and buffed. I tried to compensate for this by giving recoveries other uses (such as Pushing your Limits or specific abilities that drained them) but that’s a band-aid at best when compared to the AEDUish ability economy.

Lessons Learned

So that’s a lot and it sounds like I don’t like what I made! But a lot of that is really digging deep into it. Like I said at first, the game plays well for a D&D, I had a lot of fun making and playing it, and I’d still probably rather run and play it than almost any other D&D-like if I had to choose one. If you dig down on any game you could come up with stuff like this and it’s a good exercise every once in awhile. Here are some more useful takeaways from this.

Think about what you’re making. Replication of a genre without really thinking about it will usually lead to at least one major headache, thing you’ll regret making, or odd mechanic that doesn’t make much sense anymore. Do your best to consider why things existed in the first place, if they needed to exist, and if they should be carried forward. This applies to structure, mechanics, and content - be intentional with your design.
Less is more. Drill the atomic values of everything down as much as possible - how many things a class has, the level of complication of a given ability does, etc. If you can make an ability that’s paragraph into a sentence, do it. If you can make a class that’s 7 pages into 2 pages, do it. If you can reduce half of the qualifiers, attributes, etc from an enemy, do it. Get rid of filler.
Keep it fast! Any steps that reduce unnecessary processing, sorting, etc are good. Get rid of any “keeping track” steps you can. Reduce numbers. Reduce conditions. Reduce anything that would involve lookup of something else. If you can get rid of any step on a process, do it.
Make sure things are interesting. When something is boring, it’s usually because it doesn’t feel like it matters, and frankly it might not matter. This can be a function of HP vs damage balancing, making abilities count more, less abilities that are punchier, etc. Try to make everything feel like it matters.

I think that covers most of it? I probably missed something and that’s fine. I’ll probably make half of these mistakes again in the future. Let me know what you think if you think I missed anything.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Alchemist, why Occultist/Chaos Mage don't exist, and grab bag of the rest

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! Long time no see! I’ve been thinking about 36th Way a bit recently and realized I never finished my class redesign rundown by talking about Alchemist. So let’s do that, then I’ll do a rundown of other stuff. But first…

Why isn’t there a Chaos Mage?

To be perfectly honest, because I don’t like it at all. Having seen it in play, it never seems to have interesting choices and the concept isn’t that interesting. I like wild magic in theory but practically speaking it really slows things down when you’re expected to be engaging with it constantly. Reading through the talents, it’s a pretty bad sign when more than half of them are “take this other class’s spells”. Just not a lot to work with.

Here’s the original Chaos Mage.

Why isn’t there an Occultist?

To a much lesser extent, see above. I actually did try to think of ideas for this - the idea of a draw-go interrupt-focused class is kind of interesting - but at the end of the day I couldn’t think of anything terribly thematic or interesting to do with it. I had briefly been considering something that brought in that Warlock-ish flavor in its place but decided I’d rather just not continue developing classes for this in favor of doing other projects.

Here’s the original Occultist.

The Original Alchemist

There wasn’t one! I liked the idea enough to make my own though.

I looked at a few major sources for ideas in making one:

The Pathfinder ones
The Witcher, because that’s a pretty major touchpoint in Alchemist Ideas in the recent past
Thinking about specialized grenades, potions, drugs, etc in various games in general. UnderRail was a big one here.

From these, I identified a few big things I wanted for the class to be able to do:

Interaction with making consumables for others
Long-term potion effects
Short-term potion effects
Effects that apply to weapons, etc
More direct explosives
More indirect explosives

The 36th Way Alchemist

So from the start I had developed this with the intention of two major “focuses” for the class:

Self-augment to better use direct attacks.
Throwing bombs.
Make consumables for others.

(Like I said, Witcher on the mind.)

To split each of those up, though, I came up with some sub-categories to incorporate the ideas from inspirations above:

Mutagens are “long-term” self-augmentation, while Infusions and Oils are “short-term”. So if you’re focusing on self-augmentation, you can lean on one or the other.
Grenades are “direct” and mostly just deal damage, while Bombs are “indirect” and do other things. So you’ve got two kinds of focus there.
Potions/Runes are one way to give consumables to allies - either made with resources or the Thrifty talent - but Infusions can be given to allies too with the proper Talent.

And Reactive Blood ends up being the “switch” that lets them have caster Volition for caster things vs melee Volition for melee things.

As a point of differentiation from standard “caster” classes, I wanted Alchemists to feel like someone who knows a lot of things but can only do some of it at once because of physical limitations. To emphasize this physicality, their primary resource is Reagents. They have the most known/prepared Abilities of any class (5 + half level means they end up with 10 Formulae at level 10!) but nearly everything except Mutagens is something that costs Reagents and you can typically only use one Mutagen per short rest.

After like a year, that’s all the classes! Now for odds and ends.

Equipment and Magic Items

13th Age insisted on using weapons and weapon types still, even though everything was determined by class. This caused a lot of weird bits, especially around using two weapons, with very little in its favor except for one weird passage that seems like it was written solely to screw over fightery types (of course). I ditched this in favor of the stances: aggressive is the “two-hander”, defensive is the “one-hander and shield”, etc. Over time, I also sharpened up the various ranged categories so they were a bit more exclusive and there were no “trap” options that did absolutely nothing (and got rid of reloading! What an awful mechanic.) This also allows for much easier reskinning, one group playtesting made 36W into a sci-fi game - Aggressive became a shotgun, Defensive became cover-based pistol work, etc. I also added a Focused stance for cases where it didn’t make sense to be holding any kind of weapon (a bard with a two-handed instrument is what gave me the idea) because what would always happen is you’d pick the Defensive option or be wrong. This gave an alternative in those cases.

Magic Items are pretty restrictive as far as your setting, which wasn’t the goal. Immediately, I switched these to Augmentations, which could be items but could be things like blessings, training, etc. (The aforementioned sci-fi game made these cybernetics, which was cool.) Originally, Augmentations were pretty similar to standard 13th Age ones: passive bonuses and active powers. I always thought the number of active item powers you ended up with was too high, so I made a distinction between “Standard” (gives a +x bonus to whatever) and “Signature” (also gives a power). You get one Signature per tier - I was thinking about this with fantasy novel logic, usually any given hero has at most 3 specific things that provide specific benefits. (And non-casters have more class-based things to do so it evens out.)

Halfway through development, I decided I kind of hated how magic items worked in D&Dish things in general. Flat bonuses are boring! So I reconfigured them to be more “Active” - now they all give you “spend resource to do X” style abilities, with the added bonus that if your class already does that you get a free one per encounter. This feels a lot better to me. Anything that gets rid of weird math edge cases is good.

Combat Rules

Not much to say beyond the obvious “made things use Advantage instead of flat bonuses, got rid of weird/edge case stuff, changed conditions so none of them are deeply debilitating”. For as long as the whole game’s text is, the combat rules section is relatively short now - most of it’s class or enemy content, which is good!

The biggest change I did was probably making initiative non-rolled, which was one of the final updates to the game. This is entirely because I found that having everyone roll and setting up an initiative chart took a surprising amount of time (~5-10 minutes sometimes!) for something that in many cases doesn’t really matter that much past round 1. With the current setup, you can keep the same initiative chart for PCs, slot enemies into their appropriate places, and get going quickly.

Enemies

For enemies, I basically just expanded out the Bestiary to include more non-Troop/Wreckers or convert things into things that weren’t those, got rid of Caster because it wasn’t a very interesting distinction, tweaked the math (especially around mooks), and fixed encounter values once flat augmentation bonuses were out (i.e. you no longer have that weird phenomenon in 13th Age where Champion/Epic encounters should actually be a level or two higher because the math reasons for that - see Magic Items above and the move away from flat bonuses - no longer exist).

I also provided some behaviors and targeting for each enemy, which takes a LOT of strain off of even an experienced GM - you can basically just do what each says (attack X target, ignore Opportunity Attacks or don’t) and you’ll get a fairly characteristic encounter. Wouldn’t take too much to run a semi-GMless encounter with it.

What’s Next?

I’ll probably do a postmortem in general sometime soon. Thanks to an upcoming project (👀), I’ve been thinking about 36W fairly recently, so I have a lot of thoughts about what worked, what didn’t, and what I’d do differently.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

1 year anniversary! Let's talk about v1.0.

Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

We’re coming up on the 1 year anniversary of APOCALYPSE FRAME v0.1 (which was also my first published game)! So let’s talk about AF v1.0, which I’ve been pretty quiet about up until now. (And especially who I’m working with!)

Book Contents

First off, what’s going to be in it? This seems like it has an obvious answer: the core book has been out for a year. And that’s mostly right, but my plan is to add on some ACES HIGH stuff at the end as Advanced Rules. (Having them as separate documents made more sense for a digital-only release but that’s not going to be the case forever. Plus I think AH has a lot of stuff I consider “core” to the experience, like Crisis Advances and Tyrants.)

Collaborators

So let’s talk about who I’m working with on this! From the start, I wanted this to be properly edited before I call it v1.0. I can do all sorts of revisions on a digital game, but I’d like to avoid errata to a printed thing as much as possible. So I teamed up with Marx Shepherd (@iamphophos) , who is handling the editing! The manuscript they’ve helped produce is already distinctly clearer and more focused than the original. I can’t wait to show it off when it’s all finalized.

Now, as for art. For a few months there, I was considering just leaving the art situation as-is. But then I saw Mykell Pledger (@mykellpledger) ‘s work and knew I had to try to get him on board. And so he is! Here’s his first piece for the game: this is the M1-SOLDIER, the most “standard” of the 9 core Frames, which excels at taking punishment and using automatic weaponry.

And there’s more to come.

Release

So this will of course be released digitally to anyone who has the game so far. At a later date (i.e. when I clear out the expected day-one typos and mess-ups), as mentioned above, I intend to start a print run! I’ll post more about that when the time comes, I just wanted to put a pin in that. It’s coming.

That’s all for now, until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Framed by the Apocalypse

Fri, 05 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

If you’ve ever wanted to take a crack at making your own third-party APOCALYPSE FRAME supplement, now’s your chance! Framed by the Apocalypse, a third-party license for APOCALYPSE FRAME, is now available. In the weeks to come I’ll be releasing more content for it as well, including layout templates and design guidance. Hope to see some cool stuff made with it soon!

(Read the original on itch here!)

v0.4.1 release!

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

v0.4.1 is out. This should hopefully be the last update prior to v1.0. (Exciting stuff in store for v1.0, I can’t wait to show it off!)

This includes:

Core

Backup Armaments are now less specific, you can link any armament with any backup. The previous system was fine but too easy to miss and honestly not very interesting.
While on the topic of backups: Shiv (2 dice, 4 Harm, Close) has been replaced with Sword (1 die, 5 Harm, Close, Piercing). Shiv was a little too reliable and boring as a backup, 1 die with no +die mitigating tags feels better as a backup and 5 Harm means it’s still quite useful. (I’ll wait for the compilation to update Infected World sheets with the new Backups/etc.)
Hazards are now 1 Harm on entry, 2 Harm if you end turn on it by default. (Previous Hazards are preserved as Minor Hazards.) This lets things like Incendiary do what they’re intended to do (wall off areas) a little more effectively.

ACES HIGH

Backup Plan didn’t do as much on account of the Backup Armament change, so it now adds +1 die/Harm to the first attack with a Backup Armament per combat in addition to allowing you to add tags to backups.
Distracting+ was different between Systems and Armaments for some reason. They’re the same now.
Overheat, instead of preventing Tension use when activated, deals 1 Harm whenever you use Tension. Walling off Tension use led to a weird situation where players were basically taking every other turn as a cooldown turn, being too out of range to do much with 0 tension available for use, and that’s not really the vibe of the game. This makes it a lot more of a tradeoff.
Reload now has slightly amended wording: between turns, it automatically reloads. This makes it a bit more interesting as a drawback because you can use it once per turn normally, but the efficiency of it tapers off the more you use it in a turn - 2 uses/turn per 1 reload, 3 uses/turn per 2 reloads, etc.
Intensify was only tangentially useful as-is (mostly for AOEs) so I changed it to be +2 Harm per Tension spent, but clarified that it only adds to one target per use (as per Superhot and other similar effects) and removed the “can’t go below half” situation because it wasn’t terribly necessary.
MX-BEACON now has a different Integral System that makes it invulnerable to Overheat Harm and Hazards. The old one didn’t really gel with how the rest of it works, this gives MX-BEACON a little more of an identity as the one that can always burn hot.

Discord

This isn’t really a release note as such but Binary Star Games has a discord now! You can join here: https://discord.gg/vF3z2r3n29 Hope to see you there!

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

v0.1.3 released!

Tue, 26 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! I’ve released v0.1.3 of ANOINTED. This one’s mostly about combat tuning as discussed in my last post as well as more character options.

I made the changes described there to staggering/unstaggering.
Added and changed a bunch of keywords.
Added a LOT of new Armaments and changed default loadouts a bit. I also introduced the concept of Variants, which is to say an Armament with a few parameters or one Attack/Maneuver changed but everything else the same.
Spells have been split up as in that post! I also split them up into 3 categories per type (Sigil/Glyph/Inscription for Sorceries, Prayer/Invocation/Blasphemy for Incantations) which adds a little something to how they work.
Tweaked some of the enemies, including both Major Threats in the book. (Alphonse is now pure-fighterish.)

I’m going to be working on area/exploration/etc stuff for v0.1.4 next, I was planning to include it in this one but I figure it’ll take longer (especially because I want to include a “tutorial” area) and I didn’t want to delay it further.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Trophy release!

Wed, 06 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

Trophy is now available for download! It contains:

6 unique Armaments.
6 unique Modular Systems.
3 unique Frames.
Some guidance on how to introduce them.

If you’ve purchased this, you already have it - check your available files. And this concludes the season of The Infected World! I’ll be releasing a compilation of everything here at some point soon.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

v0.1.3 thoughts, area design

Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! Been awhile because I’ve been working on The Infected World. But I’ve been thinking about and tweaking ANOINTED in the meantime a bit.

Tweaks for v0.1.3

Some general playtesting observations/changes.

Unstaggering needs to be worse for PCs and less bad for NPCs. The original stagger rules (each loses an action) made more sense in an earlier build of the game where each had two actions (more like APOCALYPSE FRAME). To that end:
- PCs have half stamina instead of full at the start of their turn when unstaggering. This puts them on the back foot and forces them to reposition, defend, or if they’re feeling risky, overspend on offense after recovering.
- Most enemies have an ability (usually defensive) that they do when they unstagger. For example, Spearmen will use Guard. This gives a little more of a cadence to a fight on the enemy side too.
- Need to reconsider major threats and staggering/unstaggering too.
Changing a Harm/Defense tie from half Harm/stagger to full Harm/stagger.
- This achieves a similar effect but it’s faster because everyone takes more Harm and acts more.

Some changes:

More keywords and more equipment to play around with.
I want to change how spells work. I’m not satisfied with treating them just like weapons, it works mechanically but the feeling isn’t there.
- I’m thinking split them out more like Souls does, kind of. You have implements and you have spells. The difference is that instead of you picking the ones you have ready, you’ll tie them to (up to two) implements that have slots of various spell tiers (so your starter implement will probably have 3-4 tier 1 slots, while implements with higher level slots will have less).
- I want to introduce the idea of banned/heretical spells that can only be used with certain implements.

And some balance stuff:

General stamina/focus tweaks (especially focus).
Did you know range in a tactics game is pretty good? Turns out it is! Part of v0.1.3 balancing I’ll be doing is tweaking ranged abilities downward (usually just by increased stamina/focus costs for polearms, ranged attacks, etc but in a few cases using new keywords or reduced Harm).
One thing I need to keep track of (evident to testing) is how much defense a given enemy has, especially for bosses. Enemies need enough for it to matter but not enough to stonewall everything.

Designing Areas and Encounters

I’ve gone through a few phases of ideas for how I wanted to define an area.

First, I had considered just having each area be a set of point-encounters that you could overlay on any map. I gave up on that when I read an interesting/relevant article and reflected on the value of how much the environment itself matters in a souls-like experience.

Second, I was considering a map but with a heavy reliance on random encounters that would tick off and be reset by the area clock. I went through a few iterations on this before I tested one of the ideas for a realm for RUNE. RUNE has a LOT of similarities (souls-like, solo/GMless assumed, areas by definition have a Realm Clock) so I figured it’d make a good test bed. I like what I landed on there but decided I didn’t like it as a foundational idea for every area.

Right now, I’ve got a several-pronged approach:

The broad map of an area is a RUNE-like pointcrawl.
Enemies are described for each area. These enemies are one-time setpiece-style encounters. For each of them, the area they’re in is described (like if you can sneak around them, if there’s any way you can reposition or etc).
Each enemy has a set of dispositions that describes things like awareness, aggression, etc in a 1-6 chart with the lowest roll being the default. Like a set of dregs might be 1-2 aggressive, 3-4 unaware, 5-6 fearful while a set of soldiers set to guard a location might be 1-3 guarded, 4-5 aggressive, 6 unaware. When you roll to do something like sneak, intimidate, taunt, etc. you roll an Attribute as normal, but how it resolves is you can slot one die you roll into anything that makes sense (so if you’re trying to taunt a line of soldiers into breaking ranks, you can’t reasonably slot in a 6 to make them unaware, but if you were trying to sneak past them you probably can’t slot a 4-5 in to make them more aggressive). Anything you can’t slot defaults to the lowest roll set (so if you rolled nothing but 4-5’s to sneak, those guards would stay as guarded).
When the area clock fills, encounters that have been defeated are replaced with a less-nasty random encounter.

I made up a very quick area for a playtest, which I’ll be making a quickstart with as kind of a tutorial-dungeon area. (I’ll probably drop it in the main book as well.)

And that’s all for now! Hope to have that out soon. Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Caravan Release!

Tue, 31 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

Caravan is now available for download! It includes:

Some more information/thoughts on The Wayfarers.
A new Frame and some new loadout options.
Mechanics for caravans: areas traveled by traders.
Two new Prime enemies for Wayfarers and Survivalists.
Some more Ace and Crisis Advances.

If you’ve purchased this, you already have it - check your available files!

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Updated BURNOUT files

Thu, 12 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

I made a small update to BURNOUT. If you’re already using it, there are no mechanical changes. Changes are as follows:

Correctly attributed the artist who made the background texture I used.
Text size/spacing has been altered, it should make it a little easier to read.
Fixed an outdated table in the epub version.

That’s all for now, until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Territory Release!

Tue, 03 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

Territory is now available for download! It includes:

Some more information/thoughts on The Claw.
A new Frame and some new loadout options.
Mechanics for territories: areas patrolled by an elite force.
Cohorts, a new mechanic associated with Tyrants that gives specific bonuses to their personal forces.
Two new Claw Tyrants and four new Wildlife Tyrants (highly mutated or wildly xenobiological major threats).
Some more Ace and Crisis Advances.

If you’ve purchased this, you already have it - check your available files!

I also uploaded updated versions of Wilderness and the TRAILBLAZER sheets that are compliant with AF v0.4.0 (the Tension changes).

I’ve also enabled community copies, including an extra one for everyone who’s bought it up to this point. Thanks so much for your support, the reception has been incredible!

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

v0.4.0 release!

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! This version has a noticeable, large change to Tension, but in gameplay terms, it’s not much of a change. (It’s a good excuse to do v0.4.0 though. Double digit patch versions drive me nuts.)

Tension Changes

Big ones first.

Tension now starts at max instead of max - 3. This rule was a weird kind of band-aid to begin with, and instead of doing this, what I really should have done was…
Max tension across the board is now 2 less. The reason it’s not 3 less is because it felt like low-end Tension cases (aka Speed 1 Heavies that aren’t MONSOON) felt like they wanted a little more on turn 1 than starting at 0.
You can gain Tension above max, but anything above max goes away at the end of your turn. Basically if the strike team wants to load up a heavy with Tension drops go to town one turn, they can. Also there’s no weird order of operation optimization re: spending Tension before using Hot, Renewing, etc.
Rolled back Impulsive and Focused. Now that it’s more likely Aces will have max and greater than half Tension, Implusive and Focused are now what they used to be. (Implusive+ and Focused+ are unchanged.)
Updated all of the pregens, Fari and paper, with these changes.

Other

Gatling, Kinetic Cannon, Recoilless Rifle, and Rocket Launcher have been wrong for like 5 versions in the Armaments list (but not the pregens/Fari pregens) and now they’re fixed.
MX-BEACON’s Build Trait is a little more interesting: now it has roll-over, roll-under, and roll-equal cases re: Tension. Give a little more mechanical tension (haha) to keeping Tension high, low, or spending to 0.

I’ll be rolling these changes forward to Infected World content when I drop Territory as well.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

v0.1.2 released!

Wed, 27 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

v0.1.2 is out! Some notes on what changed:

Relayout to 6” x 9”, made the font a bit smaller. If I print this, it’ll be hardcover, so there’s no sense staying too constrained.
Made attribute changes as per this post.
- Made changes to the attribute spreads of the various Backgrounds to account for these changes. Each one now starts good at a unique combination of two Attributes.
Made a major change to how combat turns work - it’s now PC goes, NPC goes, back and forth. Yet another step away from LUMEN.
Added a bunch more weapons.
Made tweaks to enemies and changed how they were formatted. Now, conditions for using each ability are less nebulous and more precise. (This is preparation for GMless stuff.)
Changed formatting and terminology a bit so weapon/enemy ability entries are more concise.
Other little things.

Also, I’ve enabled community copies! Including one for everyone who’d bought it up to this point - thanks so much for your support for a game in progress!

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

v0.3.9 release!

Sun, 10 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! This is a fairly minor release. Here’s the list of changes:

Changed the formatting of Systems to put Support/Offensive next to the name instead of in tags. This has been a long time coming because it’s been consistently confusing for people who aren’t familiar.
Fixed the MX-BEACON entry in ACES HIGH (the Armaments/Modular Systems were all messed up).
Made the Tyrant Barrier a little bit better.

In an effort to have less files on the page, I’ll be zipping up each individual book’s pages/spreads/epub versions.

And while you’re here: The Infected World, an expansion/content season for APOCALYPSE FRAME, is out! It’s got a lot of neat stuff about area mapping/creation and more Ace options, and it’ll be getting more over the next three months. You’ve got until the end of the month to get it at $9.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Wilderness: Mapping the Infected World

Tue, 05 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! I’m going to show how the map for Wilderness works. The goal of the map is to provide a tangibility to the world itself and inspire the fiction of a mission.

Placing the two main hubs

The first step is defining where The Collective and whatever the nearest Republic city, town, base, or settlement is. (There could also be more than one, but there should be at least one prominent one - it was a factory, after all.)

To start, we define hexes for each (R and C on this map) and draw a road (dotted line) between the two. The road doesn’t have to be fully direct, so ours won’t be.

And to zoom in on The Collective (because that’s what we’re focusing on):

Defining hexes

Defining a hex involves 3 rolls (or choices, as the case may be):

Determine the Primary Theme
Determine the Secondary Theme
Check for major details

Themes are all done via d6 rolls on the below table:

Infected or Wasteland. Mutated or alien wilderness, with flora and fauna unrecognizable, or an area forcibly scoured.
Overgrown. An explosion of flora, abandoned and untamed, with fauna to match. Maybe a forest or jungle.
Elevation Change. Some major change in elevation, enough to it difficult for most vehicles to pass. Maybe hills, a mountain, a ravine, or a sinkhole.
Flat Area. A manmade or natural flat area, like a pasture or a disconnected, old freeway.
Ruins. A building, set of buildings, or set of vehicles that’s been destroyed and abandoned. People might still live here.
Settlement. Untouched pre-Infection structures or rebuilt structures. It’s likely that someone lives here, or that it’s being used as a base or outpost. This could potentially be a major settlement.

Detail is a similar die roll, but only 1’s and 6’s matter. A 1 means some natural or alien landmark (like an enormous tree, or a river, or some alien plant that’s taken root). A 6 means some manmade landmark (like a monument, a major road, or a prominent building).

For areas close to a major settlement (The Collective and that adjoining Republic settlement count), roll twice and take the higher for Primary Theme and Detail. For areas further out, roll twice and take the lower for Primary Theme and Detail. For areas that are in between, roll one die for Primary Theme and Detail. (Secondary theme is always one die.)

Mapping The Collective

For each of these two major settlements we’re defining from the outset, you’re supposed to define everything within 2 hexes of each settlement. In theory, you could do 18 of these, but it’s strongly suggested you do 6 of these and apply them to 3 hexes each (rolling Details individually though for each of those 3 hexes). We’ll just do The Collective right now.

I’ll lay this one out fully so it’s clear and skip to the rolls/results for the other 5.

Primary Theme: 2d6 = (6, 1) = 6 for Settlement.
Secondary Theme: 1d6 = 4 for Flat Area.
Details: 2d6 = (6, 2) = 6, 2d6 = (3, 3) = 3, 2d6 = (4, 5) = 5 for one manmade detail between the three hexes.

We’ll define this as what used to be a suburban tracked-housing neighborhood, possibly originally designed as homes for workers of the factory that would become the Collective, or possibly long before that. The manmade detail is that they’re built around a big shopping mall, since turned into some kind of depot.

And for the others:

3, 1, 5, 3, 3. Elevation change primary, infected/wasteland secondary, no details. We’ll say this is a huge ravine where Infected materials were quarantined when the area around the factory was retaken. Nobody goes there, for the most part…and who knows if The Republic was fully successful in containing it.
4, 6, 4, 4, 4. Flat primary, settlement secondary, no details. This is probably a good one for the stretch of highway leading out of the area, with roadside buildings that were kept in good shape by Republic forces.
6, 5, 6, 2, 6. Settlement primary, Ruins secondary, two manmade details. We’ll now decide that The Collective wasn’t always a factory, maybe it was a bigger town that was converted into a factory area (and that first residential area was suburbs). This was the more downtown/city center kind of area, albeit with a few districts leveled from fighting, largely converted into warehousing and hangars using the intact infrastructure. The two manmade details are a major overpass that stretches across two hexes, leading to the highway out of town and to destroyed areas that no longer exist.
5, 5, 5, 5, 4. Ruins primary/secondary, no details. This was an portion of that downtown area that got fully destroyed. The overpass used to lead here, but it was broken off when the rest of it was destroyed years ago.
6, 1, 3, 5, 6. Settlement primary, infected/wasteland secondary, one manmade detail. An settlement in a burnt-out area sounds like where you’d keep a prisoner-based workforce - we’ll say that the previous residential area had been used as barracks for Republic guards keeping the factory running, whereas this was a similar, adjoining neighborhood that was half-destroyed to prevent an Infection outbreak and was subsequently “restored”. The manmade detail is a watchtower constructed to keep an eye on workers, now used to keep an eye on the road.

So this is what the map looks like now!

(And you’d repeat this for the Republic settlement.)

We’ve constructed a narrative around The Collective from these rolls! This hex-definition method is used both at the start of a campaign and during a campaign: every time a mission is located outside The Collective at an unknown area, that hex is defined. This not only provides some immediate hooks for a mission but also helps create a greater sense of permanency over time.

Check out The Infected World if this was of any interest to you! There’s some extra stuff attached to this, but you’ll have to get it to see what it is. I’ll be expanding these mechanics further with subsequent modules as well.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Adding fari pregens!

Sun, 03 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! I just added pregen sheets for Fari, a free and open-source VTT! It’s already got a generic sheet here but this pre-fills that sheet with values for each stock model Frame, which makes it easier to get started. They’re all customizable as well, so you can keep using the sheet throughout a campaign!

To use these:

Go to https://fari.app (this doesn’t involve signing up in any way)
Click My Binder (button at the top left), then click Characters on the menu that pops up.
Click Import, then pick the pregen of your choosing.

You’ll be able to change a lot of fields by default, but you can modify this sheet more fully by toggling Advanced Mode.

Enjoy!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Attributes

Fri, 11 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! Wanted to think out loud about how attributes work. It’s been awhile since I thought out loud about design stuff.

Attributes: A history

So Attributes (or Approaches) are a standard LUMEN feature: they usually describe the way you’re going to tackle some obstacle and you roll that number of dice. In a typical LUMEN game that’s usually where they start and end. There are typically three of them.

In APOCALYPSE FRAME I took this a little further by having them add to resources: Vigor, Tension, and Ammo. This feels pretty good in practice, so I wanted to carry that idea a little further.

The original version of ANOINTED that I quickly mocked up had three Attributes: Strength, Skill, and Knowledge. How this worked was:

Strength added to Health and Capacity (max equip weight before penalty).
Skill added to Stamina (actions used to be strictly 2, then moved to infinite, then moved to the current situation).
Knowledge added to Focus and Grace uses (it used to heal a flat amount and have varying uses rather than the opposite).

Strength, Skill, and Knowledge also added to Move Harm.

After mocking up what some characters looked like with this, I decided it didn’t feel great:

There are no “classes” as such so the net effect was that there weren’t very many “builds”. I’m not looking for wild diversity of options here because Armaments take care of most of that but it felt a little more weightless than I’d like.
Harm based off of an attribute made it mostly obnoxious to do anything other than harm = attribute or multiple of attribute, which makes it hard to keep numbers low and I want to keep numbers low.
I like the idea of there being two kinds of magic that feel different, keying off of two different stats. I think that’s an interesting tension that mirrors the dex vs str dichotomy - even Bloodborne does this a little with bloodtinge vs arcane and it’s cool.

I like that every attribute gates both resources and is required for weapons, I briefly considered splitting this to 6 stats (“active” vs “passive” for each) and decided against it. So I added one and split out some capability. This brings us to our current setup with 4 stats:

Prowess: Health and Capacity, required for heavy weapons. (I moved away from Strength because I try to avoid alliteration in parallel structures like Attributes.)
Skill: Number of actions, required for skilled weapons.
Conviction: How powerful Embodying Grace is, required for using prayer talismans.
Knowledge: Focus, required for using rune sorcery implements.

Attribute thoughts for the future

I think this works, but can still be improved. My current reservations with this are as follows:

Stamina being static while so many other things (including number of actions) aren’t feels limiting in a weird way.
Same with number of uses of Grace.
It’s a little weird that all spellcasters want Conviction so badly because it increases their Focus restoration.

So I’m thinking I’m going to tweak these around a bit in the following way (Prowess/Skill are the same).

Conviction: Stamina, number of uses of Grace.
Knowledge: Focus, amount of Health and Focus restoration from Grace.

For this configuration, this is what each Attribute brings to the table:

Prowess: Contributes durability. Prowess Armaments are typically high-stamina but action-efficient.
Skill: Contributes flexibility and mobility (spending actions to move/use items/embody Grace makes more sense at high Skill). Skill Armaments typically benefit from the ability to use multiple actions.
Conviction: Contributes short-term (stamina) and long-term (Grace uses) endurance. Conviction Armaments typically provide utility (healing, buffs, etc) or indirect offense (staggering/debuffing instead of damage, etc).
Knowledge: Contributes to special offense and recovery. Knowledge Armaments typically provide direct magical offense or directly offensive buffs.

So each combo of two stats has a general playstyle “orientation” based on typical Armaments/usage:

Prowess/Skill: Great durability and mobility/flexibility.
Prowess/Conviction: Great durability, staying power, and utility.
Prowess/Knowledge: Great durability and the ability to use maneuvers frequently.
Skill/Conviction: High utility and flexibility.
Skill/Knowledge: Great mixed offense.
Conviction/Knowledge: Best/most spellcasting.

Eventually I want to introduce things that specifically reward all of these combined approaches as well as make specialized (one-attribute) approaches feel rewarding through high-requirement abilities. The plan is to make Attributes beyond 5 soft-scale with 2 memories needed to raise each, to a max of 10, to encourage this a bit. I’m also probably going to bring back some +Harm/Effect for high Attributes for certain Armaments too and tweak various tags/abilities.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

v0.1.1 released!

Thu, 10 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

v0.1.1 is out! Most importantly in this updates is the fact that it now has an epub release. I also tweaked a few things across the board though - typos, oddities, inconsistencies, and one or two “feels better” style changes.

I’ll be doing more substantial changes over the next few weeks, so stay tuned.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

v0.3.8 release! And price increase.

Sat, 12 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! As you can guess by the title, I’ve got two sets of news. I’ll start with the fun one, some minor updates.

Core Updates

Arc Mortar got a clause stating that its Harm isn’t reduced by anything that isn’t Armor or Shields. This is because of edge case interactions that came up such as Long Range Optics or the Interfering tag reducing Harm when used with it. (It also has Piercing by default so it typically ignores Shields in most cases, but that’s worded as such so there’s no confusion about interaction with things like Praetorian’s Tyrant Trait.)
Colossus type enemies got some clarification and additional guidance, and the indicators for number of parts are labeled as such now.
- World Serpent got buffed and should be far more in line with the Consul.
Tangible rewards are suggested for each mission type instead of just being implied.

ACES HIGH updates

System Breakthrough got a wording fix (it said third instead of second because of how System tags used to work).
Tyrant Traits are explicitly noted to override wording of Ace traits, tags, or Systems when in conflict. Normally conflicts like this are biased towards Aces but Tyrants are supposed to be a special case that forces Aces to change tactics and this goes along with that.

Price update

APOCALYPSE FRAME is now $15 instead of $10. This is a reflection of how much more polished it is compared to its original release in addition to the free expansion bundled with it, which was not originally considered in the price. I’ve been considering doing this for awhile and finally decided to go for it. I’ll likely raise the price again later once it’s at v1.0 as well.

Since I kind of sprung this on people, it’ll be on sale for its original price of $10 until the end of February. And of course, I’ll be trickling in Community Copies as usual (130 claimed as of this post! Wild to think about.)

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

How to run APOCALYPSE FRAME on roll20

Sat, 08 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

(Updated 5/13/22)

Hi there! Not a development log for once. This is just a thread about how to run AF online on roll20. (There’s no character sheet for roll20 yet, but making one is on my backlog.)

After running this in person for months, my home group has gone remote again, at least for now. This isn’t a problem - we’d played remote for about a year and change until everyone was vaccinated - but last time we played remote, we weren’t playing something that needed a grid. We are now.

So let’s talk about how to set an AF game up on roll20.

Tokens

Get a few tokens ready. Any tokens you prepare first will make your life easier (you’ll see later).

I recommend green for Vigor, blue for Tension, red for Ammo. That way the stat bars stack vertically like the character sheets in the book: Vigor on top, Tension in the middle, Ammo on the bottom.

Set names/nameplates, set stats, make those stats visible (it has to have a minimum and a maximum listed for the token stat bar to show up). I recommend making one token for each distinct kind of enemy you intend to use in addition to one per Ace.

The Map

Now, we need to make the map into hexes. Click the blue page icon near the top right of the screen (which says Page Toolbar on mouseover), and when it drops down, click the gear next to the page you’re on (which says Page Settings).

Once in that page, scroll down to Grid, then click the dropdown that says “Square”. You’ll see options for Hex (V) and Hex (H), choose your preference.

Once you can see hexes on the map, upload the below picture like it’s a token, then, holding alt, drag it onto the map. This is going to be your background.

(Rotate it 90 degrees first if you’re using horizontal hexes.)

Still holding alt, drag the corner out and make it as big as you like - each hex should cover about 5-7 hexes’ worth of area. Right-click it -> Layer -> To Map. You should now see the grid lines again - go back to your grid settings and make the opacity 0. Now you have a grid that has a bunch of snap points for every hex.

This is also a good time to increase the map size vertically.

**Outdated instructions (version prior to 5/13/22)**

Once in that page, scroll down to Grid, then click the dropdown that says “Square”. You’ll see options for Hex (V) and Hex (H), choose your preference. Then, set the Cell Width multiplier, which starts at 1, to something larger (2.5 - 3 is probably best.)

If you made tokens earlier, the advantage is that they’re now all the appropriate size of “smaller than the grid”. If you bring in new tokens, roll20 will unhelpfully scale new tokens with that Cell Width. If you have to do it anyway (which happens at least 1/session for me), hold alt while dragging the new token onto the map and while resizing and it won’t just snap to the grid size.

This is also a good time to increase the map size vertically.

Keep an enemy token of every kind and any info you want to display about them at the bottom of the map, cordoned off. If you want to make more, copy/paste them - if you’ve already set them up with stats this’ll be easy.

I also like to give a rook icon to Armored enemies for easy visual acknowledgement. For Shields, I like to use one of the colored dots. You can display a number on an icon by mousing over the selected icon and typing the number.

I highly suggest you set up a drop zone. This is just somewhere to put various drops: unrolled, Materials, Tension, Vigor. When an enemy is taken out, put them into the unrolled bin. When drops are rolled, put the appropriate number of enemy tokens from unrolled into the appropriate bin. When they’re claimed, delete the tokens.

General tips

To roll X dice and take the highest, /roll Xd6kh1 is the command you want. (If rolling 0 dice, /roll 2d6kl1.)

When rolling drops, roll d3’s (1 = materials, 2 = tension, 3 = Vigor). It’s the same thing and you’ll be able to pick them out faster because 1’s, 2’s, and 3’s are going to be colored differently.

To make tokens not snap when either scaling or moving them, hold down alt as you drag them. This can be pretty helpful when trying to put multiple tokens on the same hex because otherwise they just stack.

As a GM, you can see every player’s various stats. Players can’t see each other’s or yours unless you hit the three dots next to the bar -> Player Permissions -> See. If you want the text on the bars as well, Text Overlay -> Everyone (click the dropdown, then press down arrow and enter - the dropdown is bugged and will usually close if you try to mouse over to the option). I find it helpful to make nameplates for each token and make them visible by clicking that Nameplate box (same thing, look for 3 dots -> Player Permissions -> See). Make sure as the GM that you ask everyone if they can see each other’s stuff because it won’t be obvious to you!

Hopefully this was helpful. Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

v0.3.6-7 release!

Tue, 04 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! A few minor changes now that I’m getting some new eyes on the game (and now that I’m actually playing it instead of just running). v0.3.6 was the first 3 of these only so I figured it wasn’t worth a devlog, but the others are enough to justify.

A bunch of typos and copy/paste errors were fixed.
I still had the 0-Tension rule in (gain 1 if you end the turn at 0), which was supposed to be taken out in favor of build traits. It’s removed now.
Charge and Charge+ have been improved to not care about other Armaments with them. This gives a lot more flexibility and allows a lot of Armament combos that weren’t really viable before.
Impulsive now gives +1 Harm only at 0-1 Tension instead of under half. (Impulsive+ is the same.) The way it was made perfect sense when players didn’t start combat at max - 3 Tension but now that they do the “under half” condition was basically always on until they took Frame Damage. 0-1 still makes it valuable (especially for heavies) but it’s not quite as good as it was.
Some Armament tag swaps. After doing an inventory of tags, I found I was overusing a few.
- Gatling: Loses Burst, gains Invigorating. Burst doesn’t really make sense at low dice and I wanted it as a default tag for the more “assault rifle” build weapons. Invigorating gives Gatling a good reason to be used even if you’re not leaning on Spin Up.
- Recoilless Rifle: Loses Piercing, gains Near. Recoilless Rifle and Rocket Launcher are kind of swapping positions. Now, Recoilless is a bit more versatile range-wise while still gaining a benefit at longer range. It didn’t really feel like it had a role before, now it feels like a heavier scout rifle and that’s a good place for it. (For now, anyway.)
- Rocket Launcher: Loses Near, gains Incendiary. Rocket Launcher now feels more like a proper long-range explosive to tie in with Grenade Launcher and doesn’t overlap so much with Marksman Rifle.
- Kinetic Cannon: Loses Piercing, gains Impulsive. Piercing was a bit of an oddball on this one to begin with, and it felt like it needed something extra to be in the conversation with other heavier Close Armaments.

That’s all for now. Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

v0.3.5 release!

Mon, 27 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! Just released an update that covers a few things.

Wording

Updated wording in a few places for clarity. Thanks very much to False Idol Workshop for help with this!

Armaments

This is kind of granular, so feel free to skip forward. Short version is a lot of Armaments got buffed.

So the bigger change I made here was updating Armaments. I got thinking about this change while doing playtesting for the NOVA Faction Turn as well as watching LX-DRAGONSLAYER (as a nearly dedicated Close attacker) at work. The biggest change is that I changed how the farthest Range tags were weighted: Far is weighted higher Harm-wise than Near, which is weighted higher than Close. This is something I’d acknowledged in Systems with my rebalance but only recently decided it was worth doing with Armaments: it’s much more action-intensive to attack at closer ranges than farther ranges, so closer-oriented weapons are stronger and more reliable. While I was there I made a bunch of changes to various Armaments. This is a slight change to like 3/4 of Armaments, so I’ll go over each.

First, the non-tag changes:

Assault Rifle, Carbine, Handcannon, Kinetic Cannon, Machinegun, Grenade Launcher, Laser Rifle, Revolver Cannon, Shotgun, Shiv, Handgun, Superheated Spear, Laser Cannon, and Spread Launcher gain +1 die.
Gatling, Plasma Blade, Shiv: +1 Harm.
Grenade Launcher: -1 Harm.

These changes notably bring half of the 1-die Armaments to 2 dice, and bring half of the existing 3-die Armaments (Assault Rifle, Handcannon, Handgun) to 4 dice. (Grenade Launcher was awkward at 1 die, especially because it’s getting Splash back, and -1 Harm is more than a fine recompense.) Plasma Blade is currently a 5 Harm Armament as well.

Now, tag changes:

Handcannon lost Close but gained Hot. This basically makes it an improved Handgun and ties it, the Handgun, and the Revolver Cannon together thematically (they all have Hot because mech pistols are cool).
Grenade Launcher regained Splash, because it was a very awkward design.
Plasma Blade gained Charge, which makes it a lot more viable with the Charge change.
Shotgun gained Near but lost Mobile.
- Shotgun, Machinegun, and Grenade Launcher now have a pretty similar vibe, but with various levels of Splash proc chance vs. direct damage, which makes all of them feel better for it.
Shiv lost Invigorating. It’s now 2 Harm, 4 dice, Close and that’s it. Very simple, but very effective.
Superheated Spear lost Piercing/Hot and gained Polished+. Makes it feel a little more interesting (especially for light Frames, and especially for DRAGONSLAYER who will frequently be self-damaging via Straining) and Piercing/Hot didn’t feel very appropriate.
Energy Spike lost Energy but gained Distracting+ and Mobile+. It didn’t have much character prior, now it feels like a proper electrified melee weapon.
Laser Cannon is the same, but the Overheat change makes it a lot more viable to spam, which works better with Spin Up+.
Shell Cannon lost Scoped but gained Charge+. This makes it a little less of just a pure sniper and a little more aggressive for builds who might only want to use it once per turn.

Finally, stock model Frames got rearranged a bit thanks to various changes.

H1-VANGUARD lost the Electrolaser but gained the Recoilless Rifle. It’s frequently going to be at Far so that makes sense.
H2-LANCER lost the Recoilless Rifle but gained the Grenade Launcher. With the Handcannon change it needed to gain something and Recoilless Rifle was always a weird fit for LANCER, which is more of a close-range attacker. Grenade Launcher is more its speed in that regard.
H3-ANGLER lost the Grenade Launcher in favor of the Electrolaser. Suppression Targeting really calls for a reliable Far-range weapon to tag specific nasty enemies and Electrolaser fit the bill. Grenade Launcher was a bit too redundant with Shotgun as well.

Various other changes

Kinetic Drive Motor’s wording is a little less awkward. I’d had it that way for a very particular edge case (Exit Thrusters) and I decided it wasn’t worth the extra wording to avoid it, it’s better if it’s more readable.
Numida/VELITE-2 now has 2 Shields instead of 1 Armor. It’s supposed to be a light skirmisher so this feels a little better and gives the Republic a Shielded enemy to bring that mechanic into play.
ePub version now has Backup Armaments. Oops.

That’s all for now. Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Design notes: The Fading Step

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! I’m going to highlight something that I think turned out pretty well with BURNOUT: the Fade check mechanic, which is the “primary” mechanical system of BURNOUT. It’s the thing that controls, well, the burning out of the Sunwell. I don’t think I’m anywhere close to the first person who’s done something like this, but I want to highlight something that worked because I think it’s a neat twist on the existing LUMEN dice mechanic as well as something that can produce a lot of interesting and diverse outcomes.

Framing Devices and Mechanics

BURNOUT, as a whole, is a campaign set up as a framing device. It only intersects a little with NOVA’s actual moment to moment gameplay. I wanted a few things going into it:

Don’t Be a Buzzkill For the Actual Game: NOVA is what it is, power level-wise, and I don’t want to step on that - I just want to make it more tense around the edges. I like to think of introducing these aspects to a NOVA campaign like writing a high-power superhero story: introducing an explicit Kryptonite-esque deadly weakness or limiting their capabilities is a boring solution, but giving Sparks situations where they have to use their high power intelligently and to the fullest of their abilities to help people other than themselves is good. There are a few things that intersect with the actual gameplay (Dimming a Spark, +Draw if they go Dormant too much) but it’s mostly on the margins and can easily be removed if that’s your inclination. I’m not going to talk about this part as much, but it’s worth a mention because it was intentional.
Long-Term: If you’re making something intended to frame the space around a mission-based game, it has to matter in the future and over time. There needs to be an ebb and flow.
Short-Term: If things only matter in the long run, though, it’s going to seem distant and out of your hands or inevitable and not worth worrying about. That ebb and flow has to matter. There needs to be some stuff that happens immediately.
Make decisions feel different: Whether or not they end at the same place, decisions made in the metagame phase need to feel like they matter and have different outcomes. If decisions are going to exist, they should feel like they need to.

Long-Term: Intensity, Draw, and Fading

The first of these is handled by the general Intensity and Draw mechanic. To summarize those:

Intensity can be Bright, Healthy, Waning, Dim, or Exhausted. (Exhausted, as you might guess, is the failure state - not a terminal one for the campaign, but still.) In mechanical terms this mostly controls how high a roll can go (each step is correlated with a decreasing number of dice).
Draw is how much power is taken up/taken up over time. This correlates with how far the Sparks go for missions, whether or not enemies who are attacking the city have been addressed, etc. (And one other factor: we’ll get to it later.) It’s usually somewhere between 2 and 4 during a mission at the start of the campaign depending on how many complicating factors are present but it can go as low as 1 or as high as 6+ depending on what happens.
The Fade check incorporates both of those. You roll the number of dice indicated by Intensity, take the highest, and compare it to Draw. If it’s lower than Draw, the Sunwell is overextended and its Intensity fades by a step.

In the course of the campaign, you have access to sun shards, which can Kindle it back to Healthy from Waning/Dim, or Kindle to Bright from Healthy. So a lot of the meta-choice in the long-term concerns these.

Short-term: City consequences

But that’s all long-term stuff, and it’s pretty procedural without other mechanics: save sun shards, wait until it’s Dim, and then bring it back up to Healthy. Or bring it to Bright, because more dice is a higher result and that will often outpace Draw. I wanted a reason consider not doing the “optimal” thing for sun shard expenditure. That’s where city consequences come in.

In addition to comparing to Draw, when rolling a Fade check, you also look at the actual die result, split into three bands in NOVA/LUMEN fashion:

5-6 means no city consequences.
3-4 means a city consequence.
1-2 would normally mean a failure with consequence, but in this case since “failure” is handled by Draw, in this case it means more consequences or a critical consequence.

City consequences are basically bad things that happen to the people of the city or to its infrastructure. This can range from defenses being destroyed to lighting going dim to people going missing. These are things that, presumably, a Spark wouldn’t want to happen in-character. Critical consequences are worse versions of these: so in the case of lighting, a consequence might be that public lighting is unreliable while a critical consequence might be that public lighting doesn’t work anymore and central-function lighting is unreliable.

Now, this gives a non-mechanical incentive to be liberal with Kindling: less dice means more low rolls means more bad things to the people that the Sparks are fighting for. This is independent from Draw, so while you can stay afloat at low Intensity if you just keep Draw low, you’re still going to create city consequences.

Now, this would normally mean that the strategy would be to get to Bright as quickly as possible and stay there, because more dice solves both problems. But…

The Aforementioned Draw Caveat

At Bright, Draw is increased. The narrative reason for this is that The City enjoys their reprieve when they can: it’s kind of the opposite of negative consequences.

The mechanical reason is that this provides another kind of choice with regards to sun shard expenditure. You can choose to keep the city at Bright as much as possible to avoid consequences, but it will drop in Intensity much more frequently as a result, leading to “wasted” or “inefficient” sun shard uses. But what price is worth keeping everyone happy and safe, really? If you want to avoid city consequences as much as possible, this is the best option, but it’s the option most vulnerable to bad luck.

Summary

So to bring those factors together, this creates four outcomes from any given Fade check:

Long-term and short-term success: The Sunwell doesn’t fade and there are no or few consequences.
Long-term success and short-term failure: The Sunwell doesn’t fade because Draw was kept low, but consequences happen.
Long-term failure and short-term success: No or few consequences happen, but because Draw was high, the Sunwell fades.
Long-term and short-term failure: The Sunwell fades and consequences happen.

This also causes you to develop a strategy with regards to sun shard expenditure.

Be judicious: Use them only when the Sunwell is Dim, or when they’d be wasted anyway, and take the consequences that come.
Be a spendthrift: Keep the Sunwell Bright as much as possible to maximize die values/avoid consequences at the cost of spending far more sun shards.
Something in between: Exactly what it says. Try to keep it Healthy and occasionally Bright but don’t go too out of your way.

These also interact with various other aspects that we didn’t go into here:

Types of Missions: These Fade check mechanics have a big impact on what kind of mission you decide to take. Do you try to keep Draw low by taking closer missions and favoring defensive missions? Do you aim for something that’s more likely to have a sun shard but has higher draw? Do you ignore both of those in favor of meta-progression via Breakthroughs?
Distance: The farther away from the City’s light, the more Draw is used between you leaving and returning. But farther missions also have a higher chance of having a sun shard available during that mission.
Sun Shard Usage: You can gain the ability to use sun shards to further advance the Research clock early on, which then adds another wrinkle to the expenditure question. Is it worth it to speed up progression rather than save them for a series of terrible rolls?

Anyway, thanks for reading! If any of this sounds cool, pick up BURNOUT now! It’s on sale through the end of #NOVAjam.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

ACES HIGH released!

Wed, 15 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! At long last, ACES HIGH is out! In it you’ll find:

6 Experimental Armaments, 6 Experimental Modular Systems, and 3 Experimental Frames (which include new Integral Systems, Integral Traits, and Build Traits).
Some notes on running APOCALYPSE FRAME as a campaign, including Crisis Advances (making your enemies stronger over time, including 3 new standard enemies) and Ace Advances (new benefits and functionality to improve your Aces over time).
Tyrants! These are dangerous prey for a Strike Team - they’re nasty boss enemies you can use for special occasions that are meant to be treated as equals. 10 Tyrants are included, as well as advice on making your own.

Best of all, it’s free to anyone who has APOCALYPSE FRAME. You’ll see it in your downloads: if you have the base game you should have ACES HIGH. This is because these are all things I wanted to be part of the core experience but would clutter up the game significantly if you’re not already at least a little familiar with it. It didn’t feel like a complete experience in the way I’d envisioned it without their inclusion. That said, each of those 3 sections is also largely independent/modular, so you can pick and choose what you’d prefer to use or not use to your satisfaction.

You can see previous devlogs about it here:

Note that between #3 and #4, v0.3 released, which caused a significant rewrite. That’s one of several reasons why it’s been so long!

Let me know what you think. Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

v0.3.3 release!

Sat, 11 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! Some minor changes prior to ACES HIGH releasing.

Look and Feel

Everything has been revamped a bit visually. I have a real bold font now!
Fixed a few typos/similar.

Armaments

Grenade Launcher swapped Splash for Close. Splash only operates on a 6 now so it’s not nearly as helpful on a Grenade Launcher. Close/Near with Incendiary, however, is situationally very useful.
Default loadout switch: Gatling on H1-VANGUARD was switched with Electrolaser on L3-GLADIATOR. Gatling didn’t make much sense on the VANGUARD because Focused+Spin Up really wants something with decent Tension. This switch also makes VANGUARD more Far oriented and GLADIATOR more Close/Near oriented, which both make a lot of sense.

Systems

Afterburner no longer has Efficient. It was a little too obvious of a choice.
Pulse Laser can optionally hit Far for 1. It needed something to distinguish itself from Plasma Cannon.

Please let me know if I missed anything. ACES HIGH is coming soon! I’m testing a few things still. In the meantime I’ve been churning on NOVA: BURNOUT, so keep an eye out for that - it’s right around the corner.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Druid and Necromancer

Sat, 27 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! This time, I’m talking about Druid and Necromancer! Two weird 13 True Ways classes that I did weird things to. Both are (in my opinion) way more interesting than their initial incarnations.

The Original Druid

The original druid is almost certainly the least functional class in 13th Age. It’s hard to summarize the ways in which it’s a mess, but in short: tons of spells, separated spell lists/progressions, no class features/default spell list but it used two-tier Talents. I liked the general thrust of each set of Talents - it really did its best to try to pull together the million different things Druids are associated with in fantasy games - but the end result was deeply incoherent and you could easily make a useless character.

The Remade Druid

Step 1 was redefining what core capabilities even are for Druids. Given that they’re kind of/sort of in the Divine mold, my instinct was to modify Cleric default abilities. So they, similarly, have two spells built in: Regeneration, borrowed from the Wild Healer talent from the original Druid, and Geomancy, inspired by the Terrain Caster talent from the original Druid. The first gives healing over time, the second does damage with a type and rider depending on your current terrain. Druid also has a few noncombat things built in: Augury gives a divination ability, and Naturalism lets you try to communicate with plants and animals. This gives it more of a fundamental “what can every Druid do” that the original lacked.

Step 2 was reconsidering Talents. I liked the approach of Talents defining what parts of Druidhood your character is into, just not the multiple-tier approach. So I went with a bunch of individual, standalone talents and a 3-4-5 talent progression. Of the original talents, I used all of them in some way. For almost all of them, they had a pretty 1:1 comparison. For Elemental Caster, though, I split it into four Talents because it was way too broad. (Also I added Plant Tamer because there wasn’t a plant one and why not?) Most of the Talents add some feature to Naturalism and let you use it for different things - for instance, the elemental ones allow manipulation of that element. This makes Druids feel pretty different in practice depending on what they picked.

You can see the final Druid here!

The Original Necromancer

The original was the 13 True Ways class I changed the least, because it was largely effective as-is. It had a few gimmicks, such as having true Summons and Wasting Away - having Constitution was a detriment, and having negative Constitution was a benefit.

The Remade Necromancer

Despite the fundamentals being mostly good (I had to adjust their base HP values to make Wasting Away work but that was fairly minor), I made some significant changes, the biggest one being the addition of Blasphemy.

The idea behind Blasphemy came from the original Necromancer’s Unholy Blast: you could reduce escalation to gain a better effect. Escalation is the representation of momentum, and the typical Necromancer in my mind is someone where you’re not sure which side they’re on. Blasphemy, in this sense, represents the fact that they’re going a little too far: they’re doing things that are upsetting, shocking, or heretical. When they go a little too far, it ruins the vibe - some of that forward momentum gets halted or reversed. So I leaned into that and made it a core class feature. Many Necromancies have Blaspheme X+ on them. This is a special kind of standard roll (like Saves, Sustains, etc): if you roll less than or equal to X, you either reduce escalation by 1 or lose a recovery. This isn’t for everyone, and as such there’s a way around it: any of them can take Redeemer to remove this from Summon spells and later reduce the damage dice of other spells to remove it from those. If you want to lean in, though, Lust for Power and Souldrinker allow you to.

As for their Necromancies, I kept Summon spells the way they were, unlike similar Companion/Summon spells in Ranger/Druid - they’re independent units you control at the end of your turn. This made them feel a little more distinct and expendable. Necromancers now have a little more in the way of support abilities too. Positive-Vitality Necromancer is now more of a thing in the way that it wasn’t for the original.

You can see the final Necromancer here!

Alchemist, the only class I wrote from nearly-nothing, is next! I’m also going to talk about why I’m not including Chaos Mage or Occultist. And that’ll wrap up classes.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Expansion Chat 4: The result of me pulling the rug out from under myself

Fri, 26 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

So as you’ve noticed, it’s been awhile since expansion chat. Mostly I just hadn’t been touching it since the v0.3 update - it was content-complete, but it needed testing - also I was releasing 36th Way and launching my site which took up a lot of my time and brainpower. And it turned out that a little distance from it did it some good. So let’s talk about it.

Experimental Loadouts

Original Loadout Post

So the general idea of Drawback Tags was good, and I kept that. But I decided that the existing system of “add more tags, or add Harm” was insufficient on its own. It’s balanced but you get into situations where Armaments especially end up with far too many tags. So I made a few changes:

Superior Tags as a counterpart to Drawback Tags. These are all (Tag Name)+, where they’re enhanced versions of core tags. You can only get these on an Armament by adding a Drawback Tag as a third enhancement tier or by manufacturing an Experimental Armament (5/6 of them have at least one).
As mentioned above, unless from an Experimental Armament, Superior Tags are only available through a third, expensive upgrade. This provides something important, which is more things to buy in the lategame. (There’ll be even more in later expansions.)

Systems got a bigger change: much like in v0.3 in general, there was a shift to a tag system that’s built in, similar to Armaments. Drawback/Superior tags were added to Systems, but with the change that some of the Superior tags aren’t increments of existing tags - some of them are unique tags. This owes to the previously-acknowledged fact that each System has unique parameters so simple numeric boosts .

In addition to using the changed Armaments/Systems as above, Experimental Frames are now more interesting on another parameter: each of them has the lowest possible value for a given Resource (MX has the lowest possible Ammo, LX has the lowest possible Vigor, and HX has the lowest possible Tension). This makes each of them feel a little off-balance and lopsided, which is intentional. They’ve got enough good stuff baked in to make up for it.

Campaigns

Original Campaign Post

Campaign stuff is mostly unchanged. One thing I added was intermediate advances - if as a GM you feel your players aren’t caught up enough, you can add a half-strength advance after a Crisis Mission. This gives a little more flexibility and give-and-take outside of the expected Crisis/Moonshot velocity.

Tyrants

Original Tyrant Post

The big thing with Tyrants is that they need a bit more survivability. The Tension/Ammo split gives any given Ace a lot more flexibility to unload a ton of resources at once, which is very fun but provides issues when your main target is one specific enemy. Also low-accuracy Armaments mean you can see pretty massive Harm spikes.

I’ve implemented one change already to help with this: Tyrant Interrupts are now split into Tyrant Reactions (which work as noted) and Tyrant Interrupts, which are the thing noted but Tyrants can spend an extra Tension to have it happen before the inciting action in question. It’s still not quite enough, though, so I’m planning to add more - both through straight Vigor increases and traits.

And that should be all for now! Hopefully the next devlog is about release.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Commander and Monk

Mon, 15 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

Last time, I wrapped up the original 13th Age core classes. Now I’ll be talking about my Commander and Monk refreshes. Both of them had seeds of the Power dynamic I took to other classes, but both were changed drastically!

The Original Commander

The original Commander is interesting. It’s very clearly 13th Age’s answer to Warlord, which is cool because Warlord was cool and it’s an idea worth exploring. It has command points, which operates similarly to the standard Power that I gave everything in the sense that it powers Commands. You can gain Command through Fight from the Front (attack, if it hits gain) or Weigh the Odds (no-roll gain). It shares that Commands list with Tactics, though, which are (mostly quick/interrupt action) Daily/Recharge abilities. So most of the Commanders I ever saw were actually multiclasses with classes that rarely used their quick action, like offense Paladins. Oops.

As a tangent, I’m not including multiclassing. It’s pretty janky in 13th Age and I don’t terribly like the concept in general, it cheapens classes. I feel like most multiclass concepts can be represented by more classes with a proper array of class options.

Its talents really weren’t much to speak of either, mostly being able to fight better or various little bonuses.

The Remade Commander, version 1

I figured this was a good candidate to draw everything into Talents and make it a 5-Talent class, where the Talents grant Commands. The first remake was just that. Command is a sub-Power like Momentum, only it’s only gained through Weigh the Odds and Fight from the Front. Each Talent granted an ability that cost a certain number of Command or Prowess (an Order). Daily abilities were in Talent feats. Weigh the Odds and Fight from the Front were similar to before. The big difference is that Commander would now have fighting capabilities (and to a lesser extent, defenses) similar to a Paladin by default. This means that you don’t have to spend Talents making the latter good. It wasn’t the best, though, and I realized that it really needed more to it. Cleric was already a simple support class, I didn’t yet have a more technical support class. So I went back to the drawing board and pulled from Druid (which we haven’t talked about yet. Soon).

The Remade Commander, current version

Weigh the Odds and Fight from the Front received a little more backing: Fight from the Front gains 1 Command on any Natural 9+, hit/miss, while Weigh the Odds gains 2 Command, allows for Interrupt Orders, and gives a discount on the next Order.

The advantage of actually moving the ball forward on damage far outweighs getting more reliable Command, especially since Commanders have decent Volition and good damage, so Weigh the Odds needed something drastic.

Each Talent gives three abilities. One is the base “Spend X Command/Prowess” ability that the Talent is named after: Strike Now, Hit Harder, Press the Advantage, etc. It also has two other abilities that are expanded versions of the first. One kind is Daily, and these are always Standard action expansions on the theme. The last kind is unique to Commander: it involves spending all of your remaining Prowess and Command, and gains a rider if the amount you spend outstrips your typical maximum Prowess.

This kind of Order creates another distinction between Weigh the Odds and Fight from the Front: Commanders who lean on the former will likely have that high amount of Prowess + Command to spend to gain the rider, while frontline commanders probably won’t.

It’s got a lot more going for it now, and easily stands toe to toe with other support classes while being its own thing.

You can see it in its final form here!

The Original Monk

Now, onto Monk. The original Monk had a lot going on. Multi-Ability Dependency, for one, which is obviously not a problem for 36th Way. But it also had a lot worth looking at. Ki by default could be used to raise or lower a natural result. Monk also defined JAB, PUNCH, and KICK as light/medium/heavy attacks, because 13th Age still cared about weapons in particular. It had Barbarian-like tiered talents, of which Adventurer/Champion all came with a Ki power - something you could spend 1 Ki to do. It also had Seven Deadly Secret talents, which were exclusive to use in a fight - I was thinking of these too for Paladin Oath Talents.

Monk also came with Forms, which made up the bulk of their abilities. Each Form had three attacks: an Opener, a Flow, and a Finishing Attack. They had increasing amounts of power in that order and could only be used in that order. This is a neat idea but it caused problems because most of their damage curve only makes sense every third turn. Also it restricts actions even more than a lot of at-will focused classes and makes “can’t move/act” style conditions even more crippling.

The Remade Monk

My first move on the redesign was to give them a custom Power - Ki, as before. This acts as kind of the combination of all three of Prowess, Guile, and Focus - it can be used to prevent attacks against any defense - and it can be used to alter a roll’s natural result. You can also spend a Standard to regain Ki.

This was because Monk has a LOT of Ki abilities and the basic ability needed to have that going on to compete. It also went well with Augmentations once I redesigned that system, but that was a happy accident. Whatever works though!

Next was flattening down a lot of the class’s hairier features. No more tiered talents (let Barbarian keep those) but Secret Talents still stayed (although, instead of making them fight-exclusive, I just made them exclusive, because that makes way more sense). I also added more Secret Talents: Drunken Master, which was inspired by a beta ability that got cut, and Forbidden Flame, inspired by an uninspiring “grab a spell” talent that Monk already had. And Temple Blade got an overhaul. (Most of the others aren’t too different.)

Forms were flattened down too. Each Form now grants an At-Will ability and either a Daily ability, a Ki ability, or a passive ability (similar to Bard Performances). This means that a Monk can swing their Daily ability pool up or down at their leisure. The non-Daily abilities are pretty good, all in all, so it’s a decent trade-off (unlike most of these kinds of things).

And that’s all of Monk! It’s got a lot of the same cool flavor but its abilities match way better with the reality of play.

You can see it in its final form here!

Next time! Druid and Necromancer! The last of the 13 True Ways classes I’m including. (I’ll have a brief diversion about the ones I’m not including at some point too). Then Alchemist, then classes are over!

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Sorcerer and Bard

Fri, 05 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! Here to talk about two more classes, Sorcerer and Bard. This’ll round out the original 13th Age core classes (I think).

The Original Sorcerer

13th Age Sorcerer has a few interesting things going on. Breath Weapon/Chain are types of spells, and class feature-wise the main thing that isn’t just a type of spell is Gather Power, which lets you waste an action this turn to double damage the next turn (which lets you stretch out dailies). Most of its talents tie back to the heritage idea. Ultimately, though, it’s a fairly standard casting class.

The Remade Sorcerer, version 1

One goal of this system was to get rid of the complicated caster/simple non-caster trope. This requires complicated non-casters and simple casters, and Sorcerer seemed like a good candidate for the latter.

I took the design pattern from Ranger/Paladin/Cleric/Rogue of “some active at-wills baked in” and ran with it. In addition to Gather Power (which now gave 2 Advantage instead of the previous bonus), each Sorcerer had two spells: Sorcerous Ray, a single-target attack, and Sorcerous Burst, an area attack, of which both had a spend 1 Focus ability. Their source of daily abilities was Talents: most of them presented a daily ability that allowed for an improvement of one of those two base spells. (I included a few Talents that suggest backgrounds, like Blood Ties and Arcane Mentor, but most are generic so you can imply your own heritage.)

The Remade Sorcerer, current version

This was mechanically balanced but basically every Sorcerer felt the same. So when I was redoing Paladin and Ranger, I redid Sorcerer in a similar way. You have two Manifestations at Adventurer Tier, +1 per Tier. Sorcerous Ray turned into Directed Fury and Sorcerous Burst turned into Outburst, and I added a few less direct ones (condition-adding Manifestations in addition to more support-focused Manifestations - Sorcerer can go a lot of different directions now).

I brought the Breath Weapon concept back as Resounding Manifestation. (It was a Talent in version 1, but that didn’t make much sense.) As a Daily ability, you can designate one Manifestation as Resounding, which means every turn afterwards you can make an 11+ save to repeat it (including with any Daily spend abilities, or as a quick action if it has none).

Each Talent still does what they do, but all except Arcane Mentor now grant a daily ability or extra Relationship die (and Arcane Mentor has a strong passive ability). So it’s got a reasonable complement of abilities, and Gather Power helps stretch each daily.

You can see it in its final form here!

The Original Bard

The original bard is probably one of the most powerful classes in original 13th Age. It’s got Battle Cries (which are at-will flexible-attack abilities), Songs, and Spells (and separate tracks for numbers of Battle Cries and Songs/Spells), and it can steal extra Spells from other classes. It’s honestly kind of a mess.

The Remade Bard, version 1

When remaking the Bard, I wanted to make it more distinct and its own thing. (Usually the original one would end up just being an offensive caster.) Of the three of those things, Spells are the least interesting, so they went away. I renamed Battle Cries to Flourishes, but they largely worked the same, and lumped them and Songs under Performances. (A few of the staples, like Song of Courage, were originally baked in but eventually I pulled them out and put them in the standard Performance pool.)

This ran into a major problem that the original also had: focusing on Flourishes is neither very good nor very interesting. So I remade Bard with that in mind.

The Remade Bard, current version

In the current version, all Flourishes are quick-action abilities with a Style rider. The base ability is what it is, but the Style rider kicks in in one of three cases: if it’s used with an ability that creates Flourishes (all bards get one, Stylish Strike, and can get others from Performances), if the Flourish is used as a standard action, or if the bard spends 1 Guile. This means that in most cases, the bard will be able to make an attack, use a Flourish, and either start/sustain a song or use another Flourish.

Performances got reconcepted. One of the major flaws I noticed is that there was a “correct” ratio of Flourishes to Songs because you want to maximize daily abilities while still having enough Flourishes. So I used a format where each Performance is a combination of one daily/recharge and one at-will ability.

This is the same tech I used for the Ranger rewrite, and I’ve used it for a few classes we haven’t talked about yet as well.

Most of the daily/recharge abilities are Bardsongs, but some are Flourishes; most of the at-will abilities are Flourishes, but some are Spells that are alternatives to Stylish Strike. This gives a little more flexibility for focusing on one or the other or using both.

You can see it in its final form here!

That’s all for now! Next up, the first two 13 True Ways classes I added: Commander and Monk.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

v0.3.1 release!

Fri, 05 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! Based on my feedback from 0.3.0 I released a balance, metagame, and accessiblity update.

Integral Traits

A few Integral Traits received minor tweaks:

Hairpin Controls (L1-RECON) now only works on the first 4 rolled in a turn.
- It was a little too consistent with high-dice attacks.
CQC Plating (L3-GLADIATOR) is now Riot Shielding and does the opposite - it grants +1 Armor vs Near/Far attacks.
- This is a more useful bonus overall and makes more sense given L3’s Big Shield characteristic.
Long-Range Optics (M2-ARCHER) now allows them to extend their Far range to 3 hexes with a die/Harm penalty when no enemies are in Close/Near.
- This makes their Trait more distinct from the Scoped add-on and lets them have something no other Frame has.

Integral and Modular Systems

I made a few changes to Systems based on two observations: longer-range Systems are more powerful/useful than shorter-range Systems and Near/Far range area-attack Systems are very powerful.

To the first end, close-range Systems were buffed as necessary:

Flamethrower (H2-LANCER) is now 3 Harm but has Limited.
- This makes it more distinct from Point Defense Cannons.
Point Defense Cannons now have Piercing.
- They didn’t need much, this mostly just makes using them more reliable against shielded enemies.
Shoulder Spear has +1 Harm (5 total).
Reactor Backdraft has +2 instead of +1 Harm when at half or less Vigor.
- These should bring them in line with similar offerings at higher ranges.

To the second end, some various ranged area attack systems were nerfed:

Net Launcher (H3-ANGLER) now targets one Near area instead of two.
- It was still way too good! Especially with the v0.3+ Tension/Ammo split.
Arc Mortar is now 2 Harm instead of 3 Harm. It loses Limited but gains Piercing.
- Less harm but no Limited means you can achieve a similar effect by spending more ammo, which is fine. Piercing removal makes it a little more reliable, which is good given enemies have a chance to react to it.
High-Explosive Missile is now Sniper Cannon and loses its area-attack potential (just deals 3 Harm).
- It was good on its own merits without that, Far-range System damage is very powerful.

Based on these changes I rearranged a few of the default layouts for Frames as well.

Armament Tags

Focused gives +1 Harm at greater than half instead of maximum Tension.
- As per the first Other change below, Aces will be at lower than maximum Tension basically all the time.
Mobile gives +1 Harm instead of +1 die and needs at least two moves before it kicks in.
- +1 die and just one move is too easy with how Tension works now to offset low-die Armaments. Now you have to have spent at least 1 Tension or 1 Ammo for it to be active.
Splash does its thing on a 6 only.
- This brings it in line with, for instance, Burst.
Incendiary now creates a fire-based Hazard instead.
- Makes it a little more distinct from Splash.

Other

Aces stabilize at Max - 3 Tension between combats by default.
- This cuts down on first-round alpha strikes a bit (which then slows the tone of the whole combat).
Enemy changes:
- The “main” Colossus parts (Consul Control Center, World Serpent Head) have gotten a Vigor buff. They just died too fast.
- Added a new move for Prime enemies, Purge, which lets them clear conditions.
Some campaign changes (pacing-related changes to the various Clocks/etc around crises):
- Crisis Clocks are now 2 segments, but each clock gets cleared when one fills.
- GMs are encouraged to use a Crisis to “upgrade” a Standard Mission.
- This means a Crisis will happen roughly every 3/4 missions by default.
Added an epub version!

As always, happy to answer any questions. Let me know!

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Separate charsheet/card sheet!

Wed, 03 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

In addition to the PDFs, I added a separate character sheet and card sheet. The former is self-explanatory, the latter provides a template for condition cards and ability cards. (They’re both already in the core book, this is mostly for convenience/having them as a separate smaller file).

Enjoy!

(Read the original on itch here!)

v1.0 is live!

Tue, 02 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It’s out! Go get it!

At long last, after just under two years of development, 36th Way is live! You can either get it here on itch for PDF/ePub or you can read the entire SRD online at my new site.

Next steps

I’m going to be taking feedback as to minor changes - probably typos/term update errors at this point but who knows - while making APOCALYPSE FRAME updates/the expansion release.

After that, though, I intend to return to this - probably by making settings/etc for people to use! I’ve got a few ideas on that front, and I have class/enemy/mechanics ideas that I’m itching to return to…

I’m also going to keep making devlogs in the interim!

Let me know how you like it!

Feel free to reach out to me on twitter/by email about it! I’d love to hear from people enjoying it, that’s been my primary goal from the moment I decided to release this instead of shelving it.

(Read the original on itch here!)

Barbarian, Ranger, and Paladin

Sat, 30 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! I'm going to talk about some of the simplest classes in the original 13th Age - Barbarian, Ranger, and Paladin - and how they changed.

The Original Barbarian

Barbarian was one of the most dirt-simple classes possible in the original. You had Rage, which was a Recharge 16+ ability, and aside from that you mostly just did basic attacks. The unique thing it had was tiered talents, which was just that some unlocked at high tiers. It was kind of effective when it popped off, but boring most of the time. So my goal was to make it more interesting on average.

The Remade Barbarian, version 1

In my initial attempt, Rage was a 1 Prowess/turn spend that added 1d4 to the natural result of your attack rolls. Talents were basically the same. They also had Frenzy, which let them be perma-Softened in exchange for Prowess back. That was fine, but not terribly interesting in the other direction: instead of very effective when it went off and kind of whatever when it didn't, it was just uniformly ok. And it didn't have room for multiple distinct builds, either, and that's been a requirement for every class I redesign. So very late in development (like a year after designing it) I came back to it with the intent of fixing both.

The Remade Barbarian, current version

Rage and Frenzy both got scrapped. Rage now gives 1 Advantage on attacks and 3x crits when activated until it's ended, but gives all enemies 1 Advantage to hit you. Simple, but always effective. Frenzy is their equivalent of 13th Age Rage: it's a Daily (and can be Recharge) spike. When you Frenzy, instead of attack roll Advantage being "take the highest 3", it's "add all of them" - so if you have 2 Advantage, you're rolling 5d6 to hit. It has two drawbacks: one, you lose 1 Recovery at the end of every turn, and two, you can't turn it off until the encounter is over. You're either bringing the temple down or yourself, but someone's going down hard.

Original Barbarian talents (which were largely inherited for the rewrite) were either "be better at recoveries" or "do more offense", which is fine but not very distinct. I added three Talents that added more dimensions: Heedless Advance, Bloody Wake, and Cold Fury.

One category I wanted them to be able to be good at was mobility. Heedless Advance gives them a new quick action At-Will/Spend 1 Prowess: You move immediately, halving any OA damage. Feats do things like make this an Interrupt and prevent interception. On a related note, Bloody Wake lets them deal damage to anyone they approach or go away from - it encourages a Barbarian to crash around the battlefield. Combos well with Heedless Advance, as you might guess, but also works just fine as an offensive talent.

The secondary thing I wanted them to be good at was being Defensive - taking hits for others. Barbarian's always been good at bouncing back with recoveries so I wanted them to be able to leverage that. Cold Fury is a new Talent that lets them make Rage more defensive. They don't give enemies Advantage while Raging, but their Advantage on attacks only counts against enemies who have attacked them in the last round - so they want to be intercepting a lot. This goes well with mobility options as well as their "make recoveries/defenses better" talents. So now Barbarian has three major focus areas: pure offense, high mobility, and survival/defense. A lot going on. And it still keeps its signature Tiered Talents.

The Original Ranger

Ranger's next, and it was also originally very, very simple. The original 13th Age Ranger literally had no non-Talent class features! Most of its talents were either double attacking, minor bonuses, crit bonuses, or Animal Companion which was terrible and boring.

The Remade Ranger, version 1

When redesigning Ranger, I was struck with a weird question: What even is a Ranger supposed to be? Two weapons and/or a bow I guess?

Something about the wilderness? Sure. So that was the basic conceit for my original remake.

It had two main class features. One was Double Strike, which was an At-Will that did two attacks with reduced damage. The other was Hunter's Instinct, which added advantage to some things in the wilderness. Talents were for the most part either variations on the original ones or variations on Double Strike, with each providing a daily ability in Feats. Simple enough. Too simple, even. So later on, I went back to the drawing board.

Many classes had abilities to gain other classes' spells. I got rid of these because I felt they distracted from the core concept. Also "grab a caster's class feature" was usually the best and most interesting Talent you could take, which is a bad sign!

The Remade Ranger, current version

As alluded to above, I didn't feel like "attacks twice" is something worth hanging a class around. So my second attempt was focused on survivalism and hunting, and would be an attempt to add a few more dimensions to it.

I used a design pattern more similar to Fighter with its Maneuvers: a pool of abilities that you can pick, but you get more at subsequent tiers. Ranger's are called Hunting Styles. Unlike Fighter, though, each of these came with both an At-Will and a Daily ability. Double Strike got put here, as did all its Variation Talents. They also got a few built-in class features that make them better at leading expeditions.

This opened up more interesting Ranger builds. You can focus on melee, ranged, or both (one Hunting Style encourages mixing the two) and they'll play out differently. In most cases they're focused on direct offense, but they can easily dip their toes into defense or control.

The Original Paladin

Finally, Paladin. Original Paladin was weird, in that it wasn't a lot to write home about on paper, but it kinda worked anyway. Its main class feature was Smite, which was a fantastic offensive move. (Maybe a little too fantastic - Paladin probably worked better for offense than defense.) It didn't have much in the way of defensive abilities baked in, but a few Talents helped with that - Bastion, Paladin's Challenge, etc. It also had the aforementioned "grab a Cleric thing" abilities which, boo, hiss, most interesting ability they could take, etc.

The Remade Paladin, version 1

My original design was to take that happy accident of Smite being pretty good for pure-offense and maintain that while giving it a bit more of a baked in focus. Its design pattern was this: two Spend 1 Prowess class features and 3-5 Talents that would provide daily abilities. The features in question were Smite, which was pretty similar to the original, and Bastion, which got upgraded from Talent. Speaking of Talents, I upgraded a gimmick it had (two Talents that were exclusive) to a class feature: Oath Talents, of which you could take one at first.

The Remade Paladin, current version

This design worked on paper, but just wasn't very interesting. So I went with a different approach closer to how Fighter works.

Paladin has a pool of abilities called Devotions that were kind of like Maneuvers, but were each Spend 1 Prowess abilities - so closer to some Fighter Talents than Maneuvers. These range from things that used to be Talents (Challenge, Lay on Hands) to new debuff abilities.They also gained a feature that was very Fightery: Exalt. This is like Showstopper with two major changes: one, it's 11+ Recharge but you only get extra Recharge rolls when a bad thing happens to you or an ally. Two, instead of Talents getting Exalt abilities, Devotions do. Oath Talents were expanded based on this, and a few talents were added to replace ones that got promoted to Devotion.

So at the end of the day, Paladin is way more interesting to play for pure-offense, pure-defense, the combination of the two, or one of those plus support.

And that's all! Keep an eye out for the release coming very soon! I'll keep doing these afterwards as well until I've gone over the whole thing. Next is probably Sorcerer and Bard.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

The Rogue and The Wizard

Sat, 23 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! Today, I'm talking Rogue and Wizard. I'm going to stop promising any of these will be short, but Rogue was, so I just kept going to round out the initial 4.

The Original Rogue

Rogue has always had a weird vibe. It's one of the few 13th Age classes to have a "spell list" as a non-spellcaster. (And you'll note that they don't do the weird spell slot thing. Almost like it could have been that way all along...) It's got Momentum, which is a fun idea - it's an on/off switch where if you hit an enemy you get it and if you get hit you lose it, but while you have it you can use powers that key off of it. One problem I ran into with this was that if your rogue never hits, you don't gain it. Also there's only so much they can do with low defenses to keep it, even with their various powers. So my initial step was to reorient how Momentum works.

The Remade Rogue

Rogue's version of Prowess/Focus is Guile. Momentum acts like extra Guile. You gain 1 every time you hit or succeed at a Dicey Move, and you lose all of your Momentum when you're hit or fail at a Dicey Move. So even if you can't hit, you can still use stuff by spending Guile.

To avoid this, Rogue's got a few things built in. They have low AC, but they're a little better at avoiding harm by active play. Evasive Strike is now one of their two at-wills (next to Sneak Attack), on a hit it allows a pop-off that prevents re-engagement. Uncanny Dodge is a new (well, old, but new again) feature they get: when they're unengaged or have 1+ Momentum, ranged attacks against them gain 1 Disadvantage. (I noticed that there was basically nothing their engagement stuff could do to avoid this, it's a direct response). They've also got a few Interrupt Tricks that help a bit with that.

For most other classes, I've separated Daily/At-Will choice. But with Rogue it's never been as much of a problem, probably because its various class features cover a multitude of sins. Related, Rogue kind of fails my "everyone has pacing abilities" rule. I think I'm fine with that, because their Momentum stuff is a lot already and I don't want to overload characters. In testing it's never been a problem so that's fine by me.

Aside from that, the main thing I did was adding a secondary focus for them - debuffing. They have more powers that add conditions, and Cunning now makes various conditions last past 1 round. This allows for a kind of Rogue that doesn't strictly revolve around Sneak Attack.

Like I said, shorter than usual. So let's talk about Wizard.

The Original Wizard

Original 13th Age Wizard was very powerful for a lot of reasons, but especially because the math in the original had some major problems re: caster attacks vs various defenses in general. I wanted Wizard to feel like the people who really Get How Magic Works while not being OP. It also had both Cantrips and Utility Spells, which...well, that had to go. Trying to move away from that.

The Remade Wizard, version 1

The first remake had a few things going on. On the combat side, they have Cyclic Spells (the idea was stolen from the 13A ability of the same name but it's mostly different). They get an Escalation-like counter (Cycle) that starts at a random 1d6 and ticks up every round. When it hits a multiple of 6, spells you cast on that turn get a bonus. Overworld Advantage is now Arcane Proximity, when they're close to something very magical their dailies become recharge and Cycle increases by 1d3 instead of 1 (so it's faster but can skip). They also have Cantrips. These aren't secondary, but are fully baked into the class as a feature and are tied to every Talent. These basically just extend the Wizard Skill (and this approach would be applied to other classes later). The original Talent/Spell setup was not too far off from the original. They had various talents that augmented various things and spells were some combination of at-will, at-will/spend Focus, and Daily.

The Remade Wizard, current version

But I was never 100% satisfied with this. It failed a major test, which is that you can very easily build a useless/boring Wizard initially. Plus it just doesn't feel very wizardy, y'know? Hard to pin it down. I wanted it to feel more academic than it did. So I went back to the drawing board later after designing some other classes and approached it from Talents, like Cleric did. It's a good design pattern for classes that have specialized domains (and for Wizard, I was thinking of Specialist Schools in that way). I also approached it with an idea that was tried in 13A (in my opinion quite unsuccessfully, we'll get to it later) with Druid: tiered talents. Each talent is broken up into two talents, Initiate and Specialist. This means that you can either take half of three of them or one full and one half. You can't take the latter without the former. So you can have 3 Initiate Talents or two Initiates and a Specialist.

Each Initiate Talent gives one of two cantrips associated with that school and an At-Will/Spend 1 Focus ability. (Wizard has no unqualified At-Will abilities as of this version other than Cycle Advance, which just bumps the Cycle by 1 and gives a little secondary thing). Each Specialist talent improves that At-Will/Spend 1 ability, gives the other cantrip, and gives some major bonus when casting a certain kind of spell (like buffs, or attacks vs MD/PD). So the generalist gains more options for at-will spells but has less depth towards a certain kind of spell, while the specialist ends up being biased towards certain specific things but they're a little better. And either way they all gain access to the Wizard spell list, which is now all Daily/Recharge.

And that's the core 4! That's what I started the design with - those 4 classes. I was satisfied with them enough to keep going, so next I designed the next 4: Paladin, Ranger, Barbarian, and Bard.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

The Cleric

Tue, 19 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! I'm going to be talking about the Cleric redesign. It's not as much as the Fighter changes so this should be shorter.

The Original

First, the original Cleric. I love the general setup it has: all Talents represent Domains and it has Spells. Simple, but effective. What's not to love? Well, it was a little too good, mostly. Each Talent gave you a daily ability, and on top of that you got a bunch of very effective spells, and you could easily have similar offensive capability to Fighter/Paladin. It wasn't quite the classic 3.X CoDZilla or anything but it was definitely in that conversation.

Spells in general had some weird qualities in 13th Age compared to, for instance, weapons. For one, they do different things at each level, compared to weapons that scale with level. The leveled spell slot thing always struck me as a quadratic-caster kind of thing. So they're both changed now. A given ability (only Wizards get Spells, Clerics have Miracles) now scales with level rather than an arbitrary spell slot, and there aren't spell slots of arbitrary levels - you just have a set number of abilities of your level or lower.

The Remake

A secondary goal with these class redesigns that I had was to add some evenness to the daily/not-daily situation with regards to ability choice. The idea is to make it so there's not a wrong way to build a class and even out the ability to pace encounters. My conclusion was as follows: offload some shared "encounter" abilities to use a similar power pool (Focus, in the Cleric's case), have Talents/Domains determine at-will abilities, save daily/recharge abilities for Miracles.

Let's start with those "encounter" abilities. Original Cleric had Heal, which was a 2/encounter simple recovery ability. The clear move was to make that run off of Focus instead of simply be 2/encounter and add some more stuff to give options to split Focus. I also wanted to add something for Clerics who weren't going to focus on healing quite as much (they'll inevitably do a little, but it's a question of emphasis). So Clerics now have Channel Positive and Channel Negative. The former is basically Heal, but Channel Negative is a quick-action attack that gains/gives Disadvantage if you attack with this and also something else in the same turn. (It started as a pretty normal Standard action ability but I accidentally typoed it and decided I liked it better as a quick so I scaled it down.) This way a Cleric who wants to be a little more offensive but lean on standard-action buffs can still keep up pressure. The alternative was changing those buffs to be quick-action but this felt a little more distinctive.

For Domains/Talents, each one gives a passive or Focus ability and an At-Will. These range from offense (Sun/Zeal gets Javelin of Faith) to more utility (Healing/Structure has one that gives Temporary HP) to others (a few are basic attacks with an extra benefit.)

As for Miracles, they mostly work as-is. The Cleric gets less of them than most but they're largely straightforward and effective. Where possible, Advantage/Disadvantage is leveraged for buffs and debuffs instead of various bonuses.

And that's all! Rogue is up next. To give a little preview of that, I leaned harder into the Momentum idea for it.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

The Fighter

Sat, 16 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! Today I'm going to talk about classes. Specifically the one that started it all: Fighter. I've always said you can judge One Of These by how good their Fighter is and I think mine's pretty good.

The Original

So 13th Age Fighter is one of my favorite classes in it! I was always happy to meet it halfway and figure out how to best make one when I was originally playing one. But I'm fully willing to admit that it misses the mark. I loved the concept - Talents as encounter powers/passives, Maneuvers as actives feels good. It's why I kept coming back when I played even when it didn't always pan out the way I wanted it to. I wanted to replicate that "feels-good" quality while picking up where it left off.

The Remake

So Fighter, much like in 13th Age, is always pretty defensive - high AC, high HP, more recoveries - and good at locking down enemies. Much like 13th Age, you can skew towards defense or a few kinds of offense, with Talents and Maneuvers keying off/enhanced by certain Stances.

The Talents and Maneuvers are similar to what they were originally, but each has a twist. Each Talent that was a per-encounter Talent instead pulls from a pool called Prowess. You have 3, 4, or 5 Prowess by default depending on what Tier you're in. This evens out to about the same usage, but gives you more flexibility to pick Talents that don't match your intended offensive or defensive role.

I liked how this point pool worked so much I stole it for every class going forward, with different uses and different names.

As for Maneuvers, I ditched the Flexible Attack concept. There are eight maneuvers, each of which is an At-Will ability. You get two for every Tier (+ two more if you take the Style Master talent). They each do something different and some are intended for specific playstyles.

I used to have limits on these based on the type of weapon, back in the stone ages when I was using actual weapon types instead of Stances - like you had to have a sword/axe to use Slash, etc - but I ditched those pretty quick because they were pointless and annoying.

Some of them are a basic attack but with an extra benefit. Others have more "utility", like being more defensive, allowing pop-offs, conditions, or multiple targets. In every case, they have an even/odd or 13+ condition which, if it doesn't proc, can be forced to proc with Prowess.

So that covers At-Will and Encounter. But part of what I wanted to do here was make every class capable of Daily abilities. One trap that a lot of (non-4E) games run into is only allowing some classes to control the flow/pace of an adventuring day and I didn't want that to happen.

So Fighter gets Showstopper. Every Talent has a Showstopper entry. When Showstopper is used, you pick one of those abilities and activate it.

Showstopper is a Recharge 13+ normally. But there's a catch: if you Crit, you can roll it in addition to at a quick rest. At higher tiers, if you drop enemies you get rerolls too. Also feats make it easier if you want to lean into that.

Showstopper example: Power Attack normally adds 1d4 or 1d6 x Level damage to an attack (so 1d8+1d4 x Level or 1d10+1d6 based on stance). With Showstopper, it makes both the base and extra dice d10s or d12s (so 2d10 or 2d12). Quite a difference! And keep in mind Advantage and Relationship Dice also make it easier to Crit, or succeed at Recharges - it'll keep coming back.

So that's the general sketch of Fighter. It's been tweaked a bit to make certain playstyles more or less viable but on the whole it's stayed consistent - I never felt like it needed an overhaul. Three of my original "test run" four classes stayed consistent. (One changed a lot.) Next class I wrote was Cleric, so that's what I'll cover next.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Character Creation

Tue, 12 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! Last time, I covered the basic stuff that goes into each character. Now, we're going to go over what you need to make a character. There's really not much to it (which is the point!) so this one should be short.

In general there are five steps. All but one of them (Class, which we'll dive into last) barely involve mechanics in the Crunchy Game sense - rather they're about defining how you interact with the world.

Constraints
Concept and One Unique Thing
Background
Class
Relationships

Constraints

Constraints is just "what kind of setting your character is being made in, and what can you do/not do." Extremely basic stuff, but it's worth a double check, especially if your setting isn't just "standard fantasy" - this can help inform concepts and such. This is where Icons or Factions get defined too. Who are the power players in the setting? Are they more centralized into Icons (for more heroic fantasy) or more distributed into Factions (lower fantasy)? This informs the possibility space, so locking that down early is good.

Constraints (as the first step) is a good place to start safety check-ins, too - it's a good time to cover what everyone wants out of the game. This is part of why it's the first thing - to set the tone as early as possible.

Concept and One Unique Thing

Concept is...well, what's your character's concept? That's all. Figure out what character you want to be playing in the most broad sense. At this point define your One Unique Thing - this is mostly free-form, but there's some guidance provided as to what will make a good one. Your OUT is supposed to inform the setting, there's no wrong answer (beyond any set in Constraints).

As noted in my last post, you'll get a Skill from your OUT - that's all for mechanics so far though.

Background

Background is something in the character's past that informs them. This is supposed to be separate from the One Unique Thing. Background is a replacement for Race/Ancestry - you could use one as your Background, but only if there's something more than physicality attached. You can just as easily pick a culture, an origin, a type of place (like city/plains), a former status (noble, for instance), or a former profession.

Background, like One Unique Thing, provides a Skill. We'll pick an encounter power that goes along with your Background later, but that's all. Since we've gone and killed ability scores, no sense in having more. All of that is saved for your Class.

Relationships

Relationships are usually last, but I'm going to skip ahead because I have more to talk about for Classes. As mentioned in my last post, Relationships are comprised of an Icon/Faction and Positive or Negative. It defines how they feel about YOU - you're a known quantity, at least on their periphery. You can decide how and why. You pick out three of these at first level, more later.

Class

Finally, the bulk of the mechanics. This is where I wanted to center things the most because a Class is supposed to define how your character most interacts with the world. I'm not going to get into each class (saved for next post) but each has a slightly different approach.

Off the bat, most class Attributes (your combat bits) are set by the class itself, no decisions needed. You do get a choice between one of two bonuses on top of what each class normally gets, but that's it. Your real customization is more qualitative than quantitative.
Next step is drilling down into Talents. Each class gets 3 Talents at first level (some classes can get 4-5 later). These can be passive abilities, active abilities, or both. What a Talent means varies by class depending on what other abilities and class features they have.
After that, you choose one Perk per level. If you've played one of these and know what Feats are, they're that, but they're called Perks because Feats is a dumb name. Unlike most versions of things like this, though, these mostly augment Class Features/Talents. No huge list.
Finally, pick out Abilities - spells, miracles, maneuvers, tricks, etc - if your class has them. (Most classes do.) This is probably a good place to pick your Background power as well. And that's all!

The goal of reorienting things in this way was to put more emphasis on qualitatives than quantitatives - the what of a character rather than the how much. (Not that the latter doesn't exist, but it's mostly baked in.) Next time, I'm going to talk about a lot more what - I'm going to give a brief overview of a lot of the 14 classes (not sure how many, depends on how much I have to say about each) and their development history.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

v0.3 release!

Mon, 11 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! As promised, v0.3 is done! This one was a more extensive change than v0.2. See the devlogs tagged as v0.2 -> v0.3 for more details on why I made any given change.

Resources

A third resource, Ammo, has been added to Frames. Tension and Ammo are distinguished from each other as follows:
- You may spend Tension to gain another action on your turn or reroll an attack. Tension is regained from Drops as usual (as well as from certain Build Traits). You can no longer use Tension to reroll Attribute rolls.
- You may spend Ammo to use an Integral or Modular System. Ammo is not typically regained until the end of the mission.
Resources on each Frame have been tweaked to account for this.

Attributes

Attributes no longer govern attack rolls. However, they add to your Frame's maximum resources:
- Drive adds to maximum Vigor
- Speed adds to maximum Tension
- Control adds to maximum Ammo
For 3/6 kinds of Frame Damage, something that didn't take a roll now takes a specific kind of Attribute roll instead of asking for one in general.
You can now set your Attributes to 2/2/2.

Traits

Each Frame now has a Build Trait. In this release, this is either Light Build, Medium Build, or Heavy Build.
- These tie into Vigor and Tension, further differentiating Heavy, Medium, and Light Frames.

Armaments

Armaments now have a number of dice listed next to each. This is the number of dice you roll (barring any changes from traits, tags, conditions, etc) when attacking with that Armament.
- Each Armament and Backup Armament was rebalanced with this (and general variety) in mind.
Six new Armaments have been added, bringing the total to 18 Armaments.
Some tags now do different things.

Systems

Systems now use tags by default.
Six new Modular Systems have been added, bringing the total to 18 Modular Systems.
Some existing Modular Systems were altered.

Frame Damage

Leg, Shoulder, and Core damage now indicate which Attribute gets rolled.
In addition to the standard Vigor/Tension restoration and +max Tension, you regain 1 Ammo when you gain Frame Damage.

Other

Changed the example round of combat based on the updated ruleset.
Advancement has been tweaked slightly (you can now buy into non-random tag advancement earlier).
Some enemies were tweaked a bit.
I'm sure I did changed something I forgot to mention here.

Quality of Life

Both Pages and Spreads are now available.
- I may experiment with other formats for
Rearranged where Frame information lives.
- After descriptions, everything for each stock model Frame is simply listed out in one spread.
- Traits and Integral Systems are listed in the next few pages.
- At the end of the book, each Frame has two sheets: one that's a pregen stock model with Attributes pre-assigned and extra Resources pre-calculated (and what every tag/term does listed), and one that's empty (with dotted-line boxes for filling in your maximums based on your Attributes). Both have extra dotted lines on Tension (in a more faded gray) to account for Frame Damage.

I'm going to be rethinking the ACES HIGH content (at least the Ace-facing equipment stuff) based on these changes, but also I'm focusing on releasing my 36th Way SRD and that's going to happen first, so stay tuned.

Enjoy!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Basic Attributes

Fri, 08 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! I'm gonna talk about a lot of the other basics now - Attributes, Skills, and Icon relationships.

Death to Ability Scores

So ability scores in 13th Age and its predecessors are awful. I don't like them, and in 13th Age especially they're basically vestigial. They act mostly as a gate for certain classes, as half of the noncombat calculation (alongside Backgrounds), and a way to screw up chargen. There's a few other things they do for combat, but it's not much of interest. They add to defenses, HP, and some classes do something with a non-main Ability Score every once in awhile. There's no reason these values couldn't be set, say, by class for the most part.

They're also pretty restrictive and build in gross implications as to the nature of what kind of character you can make in many ways, especially where fantasy races come in. More on that later. The long and the short of it is they add little and take away a lot.

So as alluded, most of those kinds of things are just set by your class now. There's two new Attributes, Volition and Vitality. Volition adds to your level when you're making an attack. Vitality adds to HP/level and recoveries like Constitution did. Everything else is just direct changes to a certain defense, initiative, etc. There's no reason it couldn't have always been this simple! (Well, there are reasons, but they're bad.) But either way, those changes are almost entirely focused on your class choice.

There's a choice between two bonuses to Attributes you can get, and certain Talent/perk/etc options can boost certain ones, but ultimately most of those are static by class. Mechanically, this gives us a lot! For one, you don't have to build in expectations either way of balancing encounters around main attack stat maxed vs. people just picking stuff or rolling for attributes or whatever - your numbers will mostly be what they are, so the main things that matter are more interesting: Beyond class choice, things like talent choice, power choice, perk choice, etc will provide more of a determining factor than "did you do the numbers right" choices.

Skills and Standard Usage

So, ok, we've gotten rid of Attributes, How does out of combat stuff work? Well, I was never the hugest fan of Backgrounds in 13th Age either. In my experience, everyone either had a 4 or 5 in one. Plus usages were tied to those ability scores, which, again, death to them.

Also the name Background is a) confusing and b) I stole it for something better.

So they're now Skills. To use them normally, when something that could use one comes up, you roll 3d6 + level + your skill bonus (can be +2, +3, or +4). That's it! How do you get them? Well, you have them by default based on big choices you've made.

Your class gives you a skill. If you're a Fighter, you can roll +Fighter to do Fighter stuff and so on. (You're encouraged to customize the skill's name/focus as well, like Rogue could be Swashbuckler or Thief.)
Your Background - there's no races anymore, this is the closest thing to it and we'll go over it more later - gives you one as well. If you were a city slicker, for instance, or a wasteland bandit, this is where that ties in. (You also get an Encounter power of your choice from your Background, but that's it. No attribute boosts or anything. The sky's the limit - pick whatever makes the most sense for you. It's pretty open.)
Your One Unique Thing. Based on whatever it is you came up with, you know/can do something. You can roll +OUT bonus for things where that matters. This ties your OUT into the game mechanics in a way that the original didn't do!

This gives you three dimensions baked into your character - current occupation, previous history, distinguishing characteristic - that let you really sculpt what you want your character to be good at. (Or you can just stick to using 1 or 2 of them and that'll be fine - the game will absolutely still work if you just don't use one of them. But it's there if you want it!)

Special Skill Uses

So I mentioned normal uses earlier. There are two special uses you can do too - Pushing your Limits and Embracing your Flaws.

Pushing your Limits is my answer to 13th Age Rituals, which were a cool freeform thing you could do - if you had spells to burn. If not, well, should have been a caster, shouldn't you? And that sucks. So I baked that into the skill system itself for anyone to use.
The simple use is that you can spend 1 daily resource - a 5/6 relationship die, a recovery, or a daily/recharge power - to gain 2 Advantage on a skill roll. If it fails anyway, you can spend another one to have it succeed, but you gain a Twist (in 13th Age, a Complication). The complex use is that you can use it to have any skill produce arbitrary effects. The sky's the limit on this - whatever weird thing you can think of that sounds like a stretch for normal usage, this is how you can do it. Same stipulations apply and the DC is high. This lets everyone get in on that fun! It also makes non-combat encounters more interesting - you get to choose whether or not you want to spend resources to ensure certain things happen, and that'll have a tangible effect if and when you get into combat later.

The other half is Embracing your Flaws. When you're doing something you feel like your character shouldn't be as good at for a Skill that covers it, you can Embrace your Flaws. You take 2 Disadvantage on it. If it succeeds anyway, you get a daily resource back! A lesser version of this is used as kind of a player-GM compromise for skills that halfway fit but not quite - you simply take 1 Disadvantage on it. Every 13th Age table I was at had a similar houserule in to speed up GM/player bargaining so I figured I'd build it in.

Relationship Dice

Finally, last thing I want to talk about are relationship dice. Getting them is nearly the same - pick Icons, pick Positive or Negative, roll them at the start of the day.

13th age vets will note I took out Complicated. This is mostly because my experience with it was that players mostly used it to hedge or treated it as Neutral. It's way more interesting to me if you have to declare affirmatively either way for an Icon.

I was never wild about how relationship dice worked in 13th Age - they were a cool idea, but they felt very disconnected from the mechanics of the game itself. If you rolled a 5/6 on these dice at the beginning of the day, something cool happened. If not, better luck next time. If only there were some way to connect them to the mechanics of the game...something to do with d6's. Like the new, non-d20 main mechanic of the game...

Relationship dice now act as a kind of hero/action points, almost. You roll them at the beginning of the day. High ones can be used to replace your dice. Low ones can replace enemies' dice. You're encouraged to find a way to tie the Icon in to the usage when you use it.

The one big difference between Positive and Negative is in how Twists are generated. In the original, it was on any 5, but that's because only 5's and 6's mattered. Now that they all matter we can't do that. So I made it a difference depending on positive vs. negative. If you use a rolled 1 from a Positive Relationship, you generate a Twist. If you use a rolled 6 from a Negative Relationship, you generate one too. This lets them feel a bit different in addition to their narrative differences - for Negative it leans more towards making your enemies worse, while for Positive it leans more towards making you better.

And that's all! Until next time, when I talk about chargen and maybe dip into classes or something!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Developing the Basic Mechanics

Thu, 07 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! I'm going to be writing a bunch of devlogs about everything in 36th Way, in pretty much the order I developed it. This one's about the most basic mechanics of 36th Way: rolls, Advantage, and Disadvantage.

Why 3d6?

13th Age uses a 1d20 in a fairly typical way for most things: roll it, add your level and maybe 1 or 2 other things, see if it's bigger than something else. I've never liked the d20 in any game. So when I started this project it was the first thing to go. 3d6 has the same average as 1d20 (10.5) so it seemed like a logical choice - and especially because at the time I thought I was just going to change the die, a few mechanics, and the starting 4 classes and keep everything else the same. That didn't last, obviously.

As a foundation, 3d6 has a nice bell curve. It even works pretty cleanly with 13th Age's Natural 6+/11+/16+ mechanics: if you swap in 9+/11+/13+, you get the same 25%/50%/75% proc rate. But as you'll notice by those tightened values, 50% of rolls are going to fall in that 9-12 range. This will provide a much more even result. And you can gather that each +1 in that range is equivalent to about 12-13%, which means that if most of the numbers you're trying to hit land in that range, things like escalation are about 2.5x as powerful as they are with a d20. This means the pacing feels a little better and the spare +1 you get here and there feels more meaningful. (It also means the math needs tightening up in general, but that's not worth diving in too deep yet.) Crits and crit fails are less frequent - I set the former at Natural 17+ (~2.3%) and the latter at Natural 3 (~0.5%) - but we'll get back to that in a bit because it's not that simple when you bring in Advantage and Disadvantage.

Advantage and Disadvantage

Let's talk about those now. Regarding those spare +1's, I wanted to get rid of them for the most part - at least the in-combat ones. Re-calculating added values sucks and someone's bound to do the math wrong, forget something, or take awhile sorting it out. I liked the idea of Advantage and Disadvantage - that is, roll a d20 twice and take the highest one or lowest one - but I always felt it wasn't granular enough. But, we're using 3d6 and not 1d20! So we can do something like that but more granular.

So I did. If you gain a number of Advantage, you roll that many extra dice and take the highest 3 (or the 3 of your choice if you're fancy). Likewise, if you gain a number of Disadvantage, you roll that many extra dice and take the lowest 3. The advantage (haha) to this works on a few levels. For one, you don't have to recalculate anything, just roll more dice and take the good or bad ones. It's pretty fast, especially with a dice roller like roll20 that can do it for you! And comparing to d20 Advantage, you can stack a few up, which allows for different values of granularity, as I'd noted earlier. You can have up to 3 either way (so you end up with "roll twice as much, take the highest/lowest half").

A second observation is that it ties in well with Natural X+/X- mechanics. The breakpoints for most of those are 9+ and 13+, and 1 Advantage/Disadvantage puts the average of a 3d6 roll at about 13 and 9, respectively. This means that Natural 13+ effects will happen at a 50% rate instead of a 25% rate with 1 Advantage, and Natural 9+ effects will happen will happen at a 50% rate instead of a 75% rate with 1 Disadvantage. So not only does it add to your roll, it changes those frequencies! Speaking of frequencies, the final observation is that it changes crit chance. Giving your allies Advantage makes them crit way more - about 2x, 5x, and 9x respectively. And it's an even steeper reduction for Disadvantage. All of this means that support is a crucial role!

Next time!

So that's the absolute basics for resolution. Watch out for my next post, in which I'll talk about the basic building blocks of a character - no attributes, no race, all killer, no filler. Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Thoughts about v0.2 -> v0.3: Resources, Systems, and Size

Sat, 02 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! I want to talk a bit about one of the bigger v0.3 changes: Ammo. That is to say, I'm adding it. If you haven't read my initial 0.3 post and my Armaments and Dice post please do! But to recap, Tension is being split into Tension and Ammo: Tension handles rerolls and grants extra actions, while Ammo is used to activate Systems. Tension can be regained by Drops (and by another method - we'll get there), while Ammo is either only restored upon return or during some kind of mid-mission supply cache discovery. So that means each Frame has 3 Resources, Vigor/Tension/Ammo, which do very different things.

The Value of 1 Resource

In my initial estimation for v0.1/v0.2, 1 Tension was worth 2 Vigor. The reason for this is simple: each System activation was worth about ~2 actions, and higher Tension meant greater control over how and when to use those System Activations. (If you’re wondering why I changed from default LUMEN’s move+action to two generic actions, this is why: the System abilities felt so strong that it seemed like Armaments were taking a major backstage when they only mattered once per turn, which was a shame to me because tagging is such a cool system.) More control over powerful, unavoidable actions that exist outside of the action economy in an equally renewable resource is very good! This is where those initial values came from: 10/3 Heavy, 8/4 Medium, and 6/5 Light leads to that counterbalance.

So let's compare that to the current situation:

1 Vigor's value is fairly obvious, so that's our baseline.
1 Tension's value is worth 1 action, very literally. That's part of where I got the idea!
1 Ammo is worth 2 Actions for much the same reason Tension was, but it's harder to get back than the other two.

These are fairly comparable! So that makes balancing Frame Resources a lot easier - we can pick a number and distribute Resources 1:1 from there. But let's talk about Systems first.

Systems and System Changes

So now that Ammo's a more precious resource, we have to reassess which Systems are worth spending it. (Keep in mind, spending 1 Ammo is worth 2 Actions, and you can get 1 Action just by using a Tension.) I considered each Integral and Modular system, and made some adjustments. Well, it was the same adjustment, for the most part: the weakest links were usually support actions that were offensive and did 0 Harm or did a trace amount of Harm. So as a start I increased that Harm value for a lot of them or added Harm.

I'd made a secondary decision when revamping the Armaments that I wanted to go up to 18 Modular Systems: I really liked how loadouts were starting to look when every Armament was unique. To give myself a little space for this, I reversed a previous decision and added tags in for Armaments as part of default configuration. So instead of "This ignores Armor" wording, a System could just have an Energy tag and that would be that. This led to some interesting ideas - a few of them are alternate versions of existing Systems, in that they have a lesser generic effect but have various beneficial tags that help in other ways (like usability at 0 Ammo).

Some of them were also split in function: Jump Thrusters (move to Near, 1 Harm at the start or end) were split into two (both still move to Near, but whether you deal Harm at the beginning or end is the split, and it's increased to 2 Harm - enough to take out a light or damaged medium enemy). I ended up with a total of 6 Support and 12 Offensive Modular Systems, with a 3/6 split for Integral Systems, which seems like a perfectly healthy split.

Does Ammo make 100% sense when applying it to support systems? Probably not. Do I care? Maybe. I’ll give it some thought.

Now that we've taken that into consideration, let's talk about default loadouts for resources.

Frame Resource Loadouts and Size

My first attempt at resources was just to add an amount of Ammo opposite the amount of Tension: so 5 Heavy, 4 Medium, 3 Light. But that meant Light had a major disparity. So to make up for that, I added 3 Tension to Light and 1 to Medium and subtracted 1 from Heavy:

Medium: 8 Vigor, 5 Tension, 4 Ammo
Light: 6 Vigor, 8 Tension, 3 Ammo
Heavy: 10 Vigor, 2 Tension, 5 Ammo

It's a start. But keeping in mind that we're going to be adding Attributes to these later as well (for a total of +6), that's a little high. So I ditched these general values and started over.

I started with 15 to distribute: 14 as the "base" amount, with 1 reserved for customization by Division and Attributes added on top (for a total of 21). For a starting point, I decided what the lowest Tension and Ammo I wanted was: taking into account that both would have at least 1 from Attributes, I decided that the lowest Tension on a Heavy should be 3 (so 2 + attribute) and the lowest Ammo on a Light should be 4 (so 3 + Attribute). For bare-minimum amounts this isn't too unreasonable, and you'll get quite a bit out of having them that low (because it means 5 is spread among the other attributes). By default, it was also way too much of a swing between "impossible to kill" and "extremely easy to kill". I decided I'd rather pare the Tension disparity down, leading me to:

Medium: 6 Vigor, 4 Tension, 4 Ammo
Light: 5 Vigor, 6 Tension, 3 Ammo
Heavy: 7 Vigor, 2 Tension, 5 Ammo

For that extra 1, I added it to Vigor for Sword Frames, Tension for Arrow Frames, and Ammo for Shield Frames. Differentiating Divisions' favored Frames was something I wanted to do before but it didn't really make sense before this. And after that, you'd add Attributes: 6 for a total of 21. This means that the practical range for each of these is practically:

Medium: 7-10 Vigor, 5-8 Tension, 5-8 Ammo
Light: 6-9 Vigor, 7-10 Tension, 4-7 Ammo
Heavy: 8-11 Vigor, 3-6 Tension, 6-9 Ammo

That feels pretty good for Tension vs Ammo - I want them to have a similar number of Cool Stuff Spending Points - but doesn’t feel terribly different for Vigor. So I considered how to emphasize Size, and I settled on Drops (or at least the act of regaining Vigor/Tension). In playtesting, I noticed that it rarely mattered what people's maxes for Vigor and Tension were after a few rounds - eventually it was much more about how much they had left, who needed some right now, etc. So I came up with a Trait for each Size that takes this into consideration:

Medium: Before Drops are allocated, regain 1 Vigor and 1 Tension.
Light: Before Drops are allocated, regain 2 Tension.
Heavy: Before Drops are allocated, regain 2 Vigor.

This is a problem that the world's most popular RPG has in a lot of editions for HP, and various editions/variants on it have solved this issue by attaching different HP recovery values to different classes. 13th Age in particular comes to mind because I'd worked on an overhaul of it prior to starting APOCALYPSE FRAME - each class has a different amount for recoveries, so when they're asked to heal using a recovery, they get more out of it - Fighters get more out of healing than Wizards and so on. I considered leaning harder into the 13A recovery concept and having those traits instead double the appropriate kind of drop the first 1-2 times they received one per round, but decided that was way slower to sort out at the table and too reliant on having ~2 drops per player per turn.

So based on this, you have something that has a little more give and take. A Heavy is more likely to get risky with Vigor to avoid moving, while a Light is much more likely to burn hot on Tension to get another attack in or get out of range, because both know they'll get theirs back - but they have to rely solely on drops for the other, which informs what they'd rather be doing. All of them are roughly in the same maximum range now, and that's good: Division tendencies and Attributes aren’t the sole determiner but they’re a huge part and that feels right to me, offhand. (I might change it later though.)

This one was a little bit of a jump-around, so thanks for sticking with me. Hopefully next time I check in I'll have v0.3 ready.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Thoughts about v0.2 -> v0.3: Armaments and Dice

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

As noted in my last post, one of the things I'm changing in v0.3 is Attack rolls keying off Armaments. I'm going to dive deeper into that here, think out loud about the balance involved, and see where that gets us in general. There's a bunch of math ahead. You've been warned! I promise it's going somewhere though.

Dice and Probability

I covered this a bit in my first devlog about v0.2's Attributes. The most important part, though, is the probability for each number of dice (0 and 4 won't come up much, but mostly for comparison):

0 dice is 55% fail with consequence, 33% succeed with consequence, 11% succeed without consequence (0 is roll two, take the lower).
1 die is 33% across the board for each outcome.
2 dice is 11% fail with consequence, 33% succeed with consequence, 55% succeed without consequence.
3 dice is 4% fail with consequence, 26% succeed with consequence, 70% succeed without consequence.
4 dice is 1% fail with consequence, 19% succeed with consequence, 80% succeed without consequence.

So now that we're differentiating between these on an Armament-by-Armament basis, I'm going to consider the two things we care about most here: the chance to deal Harm (that is, hit: to roll 3-6) and the chance to avoid a consequence when rolling (that is, roll 5-6).

1 die to 2 dice gives ~22% higher chance to deal Harm, ~22% higher chance to avoid a consequence. (0 to 1 is the same.)
2 dice to 3 dice gives ~7% higher chance to deal Harm, ~15% higher chance to avoid a consequence.
3 dice to 4 dice gives ~3% higher chance to deal Harm, ~10% higher chance to avoid a consequence.

As you can see, the value of 1 die has very significant returns initially, but tapers off quickly for dealing Harm (less quickly for avoiding consequences). This is something we're going to keep in mind going forward.

Balancing against More or Less Dice

So let's think about balance for a second. These are a few Armaments from v0.2:

Plasma Torch: 2 Harm, Close, Energy
Assault Rifle: 2 Harm, Near, Burst
Sniper Rifle: 2 Harm, Far, Stationary

These are pretty well balanced with each other, clearly! Each does the same Harm, has one Range where it operates, and has something that gives it a bit of an edge Harm-wise (ignores Armor, does 1 extra when a 6 is rolled, does 1 extra when staying still). As I've mentioned in previous devlogs, when writing Armaments, I kept a 3 Harm balance in mind (base Harm, plus each tag is roughly 0.5 Harm). They're not terribly distinct from one another - we'll get to that later - but there's a baseline.

Something to keep in mind while reading onward is the value of Harm. Typically light enemies will have 2 Vigor, medium enemies will have 3 Vigor, and heavy enemies will have 4 Vigor and either Armor or Shields. So baseline Armaments are balanced to very frequently take out light enemies, sometimes take out medium enemies, and need a few hits for heavy enemies. Prime enemies can have 6+ Vigor per Restoration, though, and Tyrants can have 10+, so high-Harm attacks aren't overkill against all enemies, just a lot of them.

Now, with this in mind, what's the value of a die? My first step is to boil those two datapoints (increased chance to harm and increased chance to avoid consequence) down to one. We need a basis and both of those are important so I'm just going to add those two percentages. This gives us:

1 to 2 dice: ~22% + ~22% = ~45% or so. (0 to 1 is the same.)
2 to 3 dice: ~7% + ~15% = ~22% or so.
3 to 4 dice: ~3% + ~10% = ~13% or so.

The game up until this point has been balanced around characters using 3 dice swinging with ~3 Harm equivalent. I'm going to fudge these upward a little (45% up to 50%, 22% up to 33%) and apply those percentages to our 3 Harm equivalence:

Going from 3 dice to 2 dice is worth +1 Harm (33%), and
Going from 2 dice to 1 die is worth +1.5 Harm (50%), so
Going from 3 dice to 1 die is worth +2.5 Harm (83%)

This ends up a little skewed in favor of less dice because we fudged upward twice. If you were taking the original two values at face value and rounding to closest you'd get something like +0.6 Harm for 2 dice and +2 Harm for 1 die. But in my experience, it's way more interesting to give players an incentive to increase their level of risk. We're presumably playing to create interesting situations and risk is interesting.

This opens up a ton of options for Armament entries!

Armament Diversity

Let's look at those v0.2 Armaments again and think about how they distinguish:

Plasma Torch: 2 Harm, Close, Energy.
- Close-range weapon that ignores Armor.
Assault Rifle: 2 Harm, Near, Burst.
- Near-range weapon that does more Harm if you roll well.
Sniper Rifle: 2 Harm, Far, Stationary.
- Far-range weapon that does more Harm if targets come to you.

They certainly are balanced...probably to a fault. When balancing in this manner, you're going to get two Harm-equivalent entries:

1 Harm, 4 tags
2 Harm, 2 tags

Of the v0.2 weapons, 2 are the first and 10 are the second. This has been a sticking point with me while watching playtesting: they kind of all look the same, even if the various tags correspond better or worse to various playstyles, enemies, etc. so it's harder for players to scan the list and see what they want out of an Armament.

Now let's look at what those 3 Armaments look like with our changes:

Plasma Blade: 1 die, 4 Harm, Close, Energy, Piercing
- Feels like a mech sword now! Will reliably one-shot the majority of Standard enemies, Energy and Piercing let it ignore any non-Vigor defense. That said, it has to hit to deal that Harm, and consequences will add up.
Assault Rifle: 3 dice, 2 Harm, Near, Burst
- This is the same as the v0.2 entry, but now reliability and accuracy are a featured quality instead of the presumed default.
Sniper Rifle: 2 dice, 3 Harm, Far, Stationary
- Enough damage to one-shot medium enemies if it hits, but less accuracy if you're moving around - a few tags now add +1 die instead of +1 Harm when their condition is met and Stationary is one of them.

These are much more distinct from each other! And if our balance metric holds, they're fairly comparable. I'll have to playtest this to see how it goes, of course - the one thing that immediately strikes me is that effects that add dice are worth more when you're at less dice, so keeping an eye on those is a good plan, but that's also true of effects that remove dice (like Sensor damage). From initial eyeballing, though, it doesn't look too far off. Our Harm-equivalence list now looks like:

3 dice, 1 Harm, 4 tags
3 dice, 2 Harm, 2 tags
2 dice, 2 Harm, 4 tags
2 dice, 3 Harm, 2 tags
1 die, 4 Harm, 3 tags
1 die, 5 Harm, 1 tags (won't use this one, 1 tag is going to just be a single range tag and that's boring)

Thanks to this increased diversity of options, I can reasonably increase the Stock Model Armament roster to a list of 18 instead of 12. This means that every stock Frame will now come standard with two Armaments that no other Frame comes with.

And that's mostly that for now. I'll probably be thinking about adding Ammo and System changes next.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Thoughts about v0.2 -> v0.3: Let's get weirder

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

So as alluded to, I have some ideas about what I want to do next to core. I came to these conclusions both by playtesting the game (and by replaying Armored Core) to get a handle on what kind of feeling I wanted to capture. Right now AF is pretty close to LUMEN CORE in a few particular areas, and these changes would do quite a bit to push that further away. Let's get a bit weird with it.

Size and Resources

So right now Frames have two major resources: Vigor and Tension, which are pretty standard LUMEN. Light Frames have more of the latter, Heavy Frames have more of the former, Medium Frames have a mix. This obviously plays pretty well, because it's very close to LIGHT.

It's never really sat well with me for AF, though, and replaying Armored Core helped me clarify why. A resource point in a LUMEN game typically represents one awesome thing a PC can do outside of their typical actions (move/attack, two actions like AF, etc). However, that doesn't quite work in a mech setting. Ideally, Light Frames can do things like move around quickly and attack more, Heavy Frames are implacably raining down fire with enormous weapons, and Medium Frames are somewhere in between. So they should all have an equal-ish amount of cool stuff, it's just apportioned differently.

I've been thinking about two sets of non-Health Resources since I read the excellent PIONEERS, in which each PC has two resources: Impulse and Kit. Impulse is a measure of energy or momentum, while Kit is an abstract measure of loadout preparedness. I love this dichotomy! I love it so much that I'm stealing it.

Well, kind of: In PIONEERS, they're used in kind of similar ways to fuel powers of a specific type and are restored by drops (as per standard LUMEN). What I'm thinking of is a little different:

Tension, the resource you should be familiar with, is now more constrained in scope. You can spend 1 for rerolls or to gain another action (Attack, Move, Sprint, or Interact) on your turn. It's restored as per current APOCALYPSE FRAME via Drops. (Light and maybe Medium Frames might also get a little passive regen before drops. This'll probably be counterbalanced by Heavy/Medium Frames getting some passive Vigor regen before drops.)
Ammo (or maybe Munitions, or Fuel, or something else - I'm just going to call it Ammo for now) is the new resource. It's closer to old Tension: you can spend 1 to activate an Integral or Modular System. You might have guessed based on my Drops note for Tension, but Drops are where it differs: Ammo isn't restored until the end of a mission or unless you find some way to resupply in the field.

This has certain implications for Frame size:

Light Frames are low-Vigor, high-Tension, low-Ammo - they can move and attack much more freely, and can avoid consequences from rolls more easily, but have less capability for heavy weaponry.
Heavy Frames are high-Vigor, low-Tension, high-Ammo - they can't move around as much to avoid Harm but they have more capacity to unload on enemies.
Medium Frames strike a balance between the two.

This will obviously have implications on a lot of things, like starting values and certain Integral and Modular Systems - there's going to need to be some re-balancing for various things and certain Systems (mostly those that provide movement) will need either replacement or a total change.

I mentioned consequences with Light Frames, because...

Attacks, Attributes, and Armaments

Attributes for Attacks never sat fully well with me in APOCALYPSE FRAME. They're great out of combat, but in combat every player I watched rolled whatever their maximum was, always. I tried to make this a little more interesting by tying Attribute sets to Armaments, but that mostly just constrains choice, and that's either not terribly meaningful or not terribly fun.

As in the last section, the distinction made itself more clear to me when playing Armored Core again: a lot of the things covered by Attribute rolls (hits, misses, consequences) are covered better by the weapon itself. Weapons can have properties that make them easier or harder to use effectively without trading damage - different velocity, different precision, different effective range, etc - and properties that make weapons that are harder to use effectively worth it, like higher damage, greater ability to pierce defenses, better rates of fire, and so on. This is the kind of thing that can differentiate weapons in the same class. (Armored Core ties a bit of this to Arms parts but I made a conscious decision to treat Frames as complete units rather than interchangeable parts so I'm not going there.)

The conclusion I landed on was to decouple Attributes from Attack rolls. Instead, each Armament has the amount of dice you roll listed in its entry, with less dice meaning the Armament will have more Harm/Tags. This also has a very helpful side effect: it allows for a lot more diversity among Armaments, which was something I'd flagged as a concern after some testing.

Do Attributes do anything in combat then? Well...

Attributes as Resource Emphasis

The three Attributes, Drive/Speed/Control, map decently well to our new three Resources:

Drive is a measure of how forceful a character is. It maps to Vigor: higher Vigor allows a character to be less cautious, more direct.
Speed is a measure of how reflexive and fast a character is. It maps to Tension: higher Tension allows more flexibility in movement and offense.
Control is a measure of how thoughtful and prepared you are. It maps to Ammo: higher Ammo means you had the foresight and planning to stock up.

So my naive approach for the moment is adding the Attributes outright to your maximum Resource pools: thus, a character with 3 Drive, 2 Speed, and 1 Control would have +3 Vigor, +2 Tension, and +1 Ammo. This means that in combat, rather than Attributes mapping to description of actions, they map to the nature of actions you can take as defined by the expenditure of those resources. (I'll probably also re-enable 2/2/2 and 1/1/4 arrays, being split across the board or heavily slanted towards one of them feel like more meaningful choices in this paradigm.)

Those are my current plans, I'm going to give them a shot and we'll see how it comes out. Given the nature of the changes, ACES HIGH will come out after they're done and after it's been tweaked to account for them.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Slight change of plans!

Tue, 28 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

Sorry for the radio silence. I've been working at ACES HIGH and also preparing a different project (to be announced shortly)! ACES HIGH is basically done pre-editing in its current incarnation. But "current incarnation" is the key.

I've been thinking about the core mechanics and I'm going to make a few major changes to how certain things work - something that'll take things further away from core LUMEN and lean a little more some mecha concepts I wanted to emphasize. I decided that it would probably be more confusing to release it as-is given that fact. So my goal is to release an update to the core book, and once those changes are settled, propagate those changes to ACES HIGH. I'll make a follow-up post detailing the concepts there.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Expansion Chat 3: Tyrants

Tue, 14 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there!

Tyrants were the biggest reason I decided to fast-track this expansion over creating premade missions. If you'd been paying attention to v0.1.0, you might have noticed that Prime enemies got a downgrade between versions. This is because originally Prime enemies were supposed to fill the role that Tyrants currently fill. But as I playtested, I decided they needed to be their own thing.

A Tyrant is a serious enemy. They're strongly recommended for only Crisis or Moonshot missions. Their presence is supposed to be similar to encountering an opposing Armored Core in...well, Armored Core - recurring/named enemies who generally evenly match or overpower the player(s). Given the nature of a game that expects several Aces in a given mission, however, they're more powerful in some respects.

Why "Tyrant"?

I went through a lot of names for these, especially Enemy Aces. I settled on Tyrant for a few reasons. Primarily, it's because I want to emphasize the themes of APOCALYPSE FRAME - unlike Armored Core, they're not Aces' equals. In most cases, one of them is a threat to an entire Strike Team, and in some cases The Collective as a whole. So they needed a name that differentiated them from an Ace.

I took the idea of the name from Xenoblade Chronicles X, which has been a consistent inspiration for a few very key things. In there, it's used as a term for in-world minibosses. But here, it's more connected to the theme - they're personified oppressors, cruel faces to the otherwise mostly faceless and monolithic Republic. The Ace Program is an in-universe thing, and so is the Tyrant Program - it was developed as an intentionally cruel, oppressive, and overwhelming response to the successful Ace Program.

(And for the record, the other Factions have Tyrant-class enemies as well. Tyrant-class Claw Apexes are overwhelmingly powerful veteran hunters, Wildlife Tyrant-class enemies are mutant or alien threats that destroy ecosystems and food chains, and Independent Tyrants are usually ex-Republic Tyrants or ex-Collective Aces who decided to attach themselves to a settlement or become mercenaries. But as with many things, The Republic is the main antagonist, so the term is oriented towards them.)

But what separates them from Prime enemies, aside from bigger numbers?

Tyrant Restorations

Prime enemies are already vicious when they take a Restoration upon being defeated. When they replenish their Vigor and become active again, they immediately act in addition to any other GM Turn actions, and if they have no Restorations left they can use Desperation Moves on the GM Turn. Since Tyrants are expanded Prime enemies, that all still happens, but something else happens as well.

A Tyrant Restoration also gives the Tyrant a bonus. This is a simple bonus, but usually related to survival: extra Vigor, extra Armor, etc. It especially means that the Tyrant's Desperate status lasts longer and gives them more opportunities to punish Aces.

Tyrant Interrupts

The nature of LUMEN games is that it's pretty easy for PCs to focus down enemies unless you put some kind of limit on Power use. In testing, I found that that's pretty much exactly what happened. Prime enemies were somewhat resistant to this in that you couldn't focus them down entirely - they got to come back once, typically - but mostly that meant they got focused down over the course of 2 rounds instead of just one. So I wanted something that fundamentally changed that relationship. Thus, Tyrant Interrupts.

When a Tyrant takes Harm, they get a special Activation called a Tyrant Interrupt. It's more restricted, but it happens after any instance of Harm - including ones that already provoke a response, like 3-4 roll results. This means that attacking them - or using Systems on them - always has consequences. This also ties into Tyrant Restorations, as increased durability means more chances for Interrupts.

Tyrants will put Aces on the defensive and force even the most careless Strike Team to take notice. Sparing but effective use can fully alter the tone of a mission, and repeated encounters with a Tyrant can lead to grudges and drama - which is exactly what you want out of encounters with a recurring, powerful enemy.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Expansion chat 2: Campaigns

Thu, 09 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! In this post I'm going to be talking about the Campaigns section of the upcoming Aces High. Specifically, the mechanical bits: Crisis Advances and Moonshot Advances.

Crisis Advances

The idea behind Crisis Missions is that they're intended to add points of challenge and tension to an otherwise power fantasy-oriented game. But when the consequences are simply narrative, this can create a disconnect when the Aces' actions are otherwise unaffected by these encounters that are supposed to signify increasing danger to the place they call home.

To solve this, I considered my previous inspiration from XCOM (and X-COM, for that matter). When I was formulating the idea for Crisis Missions, I realized quickly that I was thinking largely of Terror Missions from XCOM - more difficult missions that force you to defend something against assault rather than simply doing business as usual. Part of what made them so stressful, though, was that you would often encounter new or nastier enemies that would subsequently show up on normal missions. I wanted to recapture that feeling and make sure that Aces would start to feel it.

Crisis Advances are permanent changes to enemies. This is usually something small, like a secondary attack, an important tag added to an attack or a defensive increase, but they will definitely add up over time and can easily change the context in which they operate. To give an example, here are the sample Crisis Advances for Legionnaires:

Legionnaires gain the following Attack: 
- Service Gladius: 2 Harm, Close 
Legionnaires gain 1 Vigor.

The first of these gives them a Close attack option, allowing them to more readily retaliate against Aces who favor Close attacks and be more aggressive against Aces who favor Far attacks. The second puts them just out of range of several Systems' damage, forcing Aces to be a bit more strategic to ensure they're taking out targets efficiently.

Right now the examples given are largely focused on enhancing existing enemies. In the future, though, I want to go even further back to the XCOM concept and introduce new standard enemies.

Crisis Advances are offset by...

Moonshot Advances

So another XCOM aspect I wanted to emphasize was their tech tree. As time goes on, you end up researching and developing new equipment and better capabilities that re-contextualize encounters and make it clear that you're making progress. Moonshot Advances are my way of replicating that steady growth. This concept was broached in the core book very briefly, but this section makes it more explicit: when you complete a Moonshot Mission, you get one of these.

I've broken this down into three categories:

Ability Increase (your base abilities are simply made better)
Tech Expansion (you have access to new stuff)
Capability Increase (you can do something you couldn't do before)

In general, players should get 2-3 of these per Moonshot Mission. You're heavily encouraged to cater Moonshot Advances to the mission - this allows you to tie the Aces' increased ability to The Collective doing something important.

Here's a sample:

Survival Boot Camp

Associated Missions: Any Moonshot Mission that involves an explicit assault, like capturing a long-term resource for The Collective or storming a major outpost, or any Moonshot Mission that involves noticeable casualties or damage.

Description: After debriefings following (the Mission), a gap was identified in training. Every pilot and Ace is required to attend a boot camp focused specifically on self-protection and preparation for anything. You’ll thank us later. 

Benefits:

Exceptional Spirit: +2 Maximum Vigor
Backup Plan: Aces can now pre-configure which Backup Armament is loaded for a given Armament. They may add Tags to Backup Armaments as if they were standard Armaments (the “stock model” costs 0 Materials).

The idea is that a less interesting but still useful upgrade (Exceptional Spirit) is paired with one that increases options and allows for different loadout strategies (Backup Plan). This means that an Advance less likely to be the equivalent of a "dead level" but can always provide a degree of freshness and novelty. It also means that you can introduce noncombat benefits without them seeming like a waste of an Advance.

That's all for this section. The next and final one for this expansion is about Tyrants. Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Expansion chat 1: Experimental Loadouts

Sat, 04 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! I'm going to both announce a supplement to APOCALYPSE FRAME core, tentatively titled Aces High, and also talk a little bit about one part of it. The supplement is going to be bundled in free with the core book because it contains stuff I feel is necessary to an experience that feels complete. (Also, it gives you an idea of what I'll include in future non-bundled supplements.) You can see my current overview spread for it below:

In this post I'm going to be talking about Experimental Loadouts: Armaments, Modules, and Frames that are powerful but have drawbacks or configurations that require great care to use properly. Armaments will be the biggest focus because they have the biggest change.

Armament Balancing

To talk about the Armament changes I've made, it's going to be helpful to talk about my baseline. I've alluded to it in the past, but to be explicit about it, core Armaments are balanced around a 3-Harm baseline, where each Tag (range or otherwise) counts as 0.5 Harm. This means that Armaments tend to fall into one of three categories:

2 Harm/1 Range/1 Tag
2 Harm/2 Ranges
1 Harm/2 Ranges/2 Tags

This works well as a balanced baseline for the core game, but I'm looking to add a little unbalance for this supplement. So, Drawback Tags.

Experimental Armaments and Drawback Tags

The idea of Tags that are purely negative is present in LUMEN and LIGHT, though they're not so explicit as the Tags in APOCALYPSE FRAME. Some of those I turned into positive tags (Charge, Stationary) but others I had simply omitted in favor of having only positive Tags. For this supplement, though, I'm bringing them back. A Drawback Tag is one that's purely negative. An example of one that I fleshed out from LIGHT is Reload:

Reload: After attacking with this, if the attack provokes a consequence, this Armament can’t be used again until the Ace spends an action reloading it.

This is something that isn't debilitating to use, but has a chance to create problems afterwards. Others will provide penalties on use or force rolls on things that don't normally need rolls (similar to how Frame Damage works).

To use these tags, I'm pricing them at -1 Harm, so they can be offset by either +1 Harm or two Tags. To demonstrate their use, some Stock Models are provided, each of which has one Drawback Tag. To preview the one associated with Reload:

Kinetic Shotgun (Drive/Speed) : 2 Harm, Close/Near, Splash, Charge, Reload . A Kinetic Cannon rebuilt for spraying shrapnel with the same force. Its feed mechanism frequently jams.

This one is recognizable if you're familiar with the core Armaments: as the description and name suggest, it's the Kinetic Cannon but with the Reload Drawback Tag offset by the Near and Splash tags from Shotgun.

Experimental Modular Systems

Modular Systems are more complicated. Each one's function is semi-unique, so leaning on Tags isn't ideal - instead, they'll simply have drawbacks baked into their usage on a case by case basis. Here's a preview of one:

Gatling Laser: Fire energy bursts in short succession, putting strain on your internal battery. Deal 3 Harm to 2 enemies at Near. This ignores Armor. You can’t use Vigor or Tension drops during the GM Turn this round.

This allows the Ace to decide when to really lay on the hurt - it's essentially a two-target version of Precision Laser - but it puts them at noticeable risk and reduces their Tension for next turn.

Experimental Frames

Finally, three new Frames (one medium, one light, one heavy) will be included. Each has one of the aforementioned Stock Models and one of the aforementioned Modular Systems. In addition, each will have a fairly opinionated theme/usage case based on its Integral Trait/System - much like everything else in this supplement thus far, it'll be hard to use to its full potential by a new player. To give a preview of one of the three:

MX-BEACON: A new model, encased in eye-catching chrome, originally designed as a prototype to test the limits of energy-based weaponry. Its output is impressive, but it can easily overwhelm itself.

How to Incorporate These

Finally, some guidance as to how to include these into your game is included - both access to them in general as well as acquisition (such as adding a randomized Drawback tag to gain a benefit). This ties in strongly with the next devlog I'll put out on the stuff that's coming for Campaigns.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

v0.2 release!

Tue, 31 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! As promised, I'm releasing an update to APOCALYPSE FRAME after some re-reading, testing, and thinking about the system. In addition to general cleanup, the changes are as follows:

Attributes

Attributes for every character are now 3 in one Attribute, 2 in another, and 1 in a third. Between missions, you can swap your 3 for your 2 and your 2 for your 1. See the devlog here for my thoughts on the matter. Suggested Attributes for the 3 Arrow Frames have been altered to account for this.

Integral Systems and Traits

L2-BRAWLER's Kinetic Discharge and H3-ANGLER's Net Launcher have been made slightly weaker. Kinetic Discharge in particular has had its downside made more apparent. I talked about this change a little here.
M3-SENTINEL's Support Drones now takes effect at the end of the turn and affects the Ace as well. This is to enable the player to rely less on other people getting into position to get the effect (and hopefully reduces the need for intensive planning/quarterbacking ).

Armaments

Shotgun and Machinegun gained Piercing. This brings them both to the same Harm/Tag parity that everything else is balanced around, gives more access to Piercing (previously only the Gauss Cannon had it) and makes attacking groups of Shielded enemies less tedious.
Scoped and Sighted tags now only add +1 Harm if enemies aren't in the other two ranges.
Aimed, Forceful, and Quick tags no longer exist. See here for more information. They've been replaced with 3 different tags (Critical, Distracting, Impulsive).
Three Backup Armaments have been added: Shiv, Handgun, Revolver. These mostly come into play when the new Frame Damage option on a 4 forces you to replace an Armament with one (because it's been damaged). In addition to accessing them via Frame Damage, you can also choose to switch to one of these mid-Mission before or after making an Attack action. You can't switch back until after the Mission, though, so be careful!

Modular Systems

Directional Reactor Vents now does extra 1 Harm (not 2) at half or less Vigor (not Tension) and ignores Armor. This separates it more fully from Metal-Piercing Blade and leaves mechanical space for both to compete. Previously, it was almost certainly better than Metal-Piercing Blade, and especially with L2-BRAWLER.

Frame Damage

Frame Damage for 1-3 has been changed as described here.
In addition, Frame Damage on a 4 now disables the Armament and forces a change to a Backup Weapon that matches one of its range tags.

The GM Turn

During the Enemy Activation phase on the GM Turn, the first Activation per enemy per turn allows two Moves. This is a middle ground between one and two Activations per Ace (as discussed here) and allows enemies to do things like move into range and shoot in the same GM Turn without providing the potential for 8-10 attacks on a tactically inept party (bear in mind that any given enemy may only attack once per GM Turn).

Enemies

Made some enemy Moves explicit to give a GM a ballpark as to what's appropriate.
Added a few new enemies: one kind of Wildlife and four kinds of "generic" enemies that could be used in several circumstances.
Loadouts for several enemies have changed.
Prime enemies were rebalanced to have lower Vigor/damage. In general they've been changed to be less of a special thing for named characters and more of a general "leader" or "boss" style enemy (and guidance for how to use them has changed to match).

As for mechanics for serious, named threats, well...stay tuned.

Enjoy!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Thoughts about v0.1 -> v0.2: Frame changes and enemy changes

Thu, 26 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! I’m going to talk about some changes to enemies, as well as two minor changes to Frame abilities.

Enemies

The biggest change to enemies is going to be the number of activations on the GM Turn. Prior to this, the GM would take a number of Moves on the GM Turn equal to the number of Aces. With the amount of tools Aces have at their disposal, however, this doesn’t end up being enough to make much of a dent relative to the number of Drops with a modicum of smart play. The solution is to double the number of Moves taken on the GM Turn. Given the restriction on any given enemy attacking more than once per GM Turn, this doesn’t have much of an impact on suboptimal play, but it makes sure something can happen. This needs more testing at high numbers of PCs, naturally, and Colossus enemies should be given another look given this change.

Additionally, Prime enemy Vigor is going to get another look. I will likely end up splitting Prime enemies into two tiers, with one being for “boss” enemies and the other being for explicitly named enemies.

Frame changes

There will be changes to the Integral Systems of two Frames: L2-BRAWLER and H3-ANGLER.

L2-BRAWLER’s ability is going to simply get a small reduction in Harm.

H3-ANGLER is more complicated, as its ability is less direct: it pulls in everything Near. On its own this is decently powerful, but it gets far more powerful when combined with anything that can hit all enemies Close to a point (Splash tag, PDC, Rocket launcher, etc). So to make this less effective, two changes are going to be made:

Enemies only get moved if they take Harm from it. This means it’s ineffective against Armor and unreliable against Shields.
Reduce the number of areas that get pulled in to 2-3 Near hexes. This makes it far less efficient.

There will probably be more changes to both as I look at them more.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

Thoughts about v0.1 -> v0.2: Frame Damage and Tags

Sun, 22 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! As promised, I’m going to talk about some other things that will be rebalanced for v0.2: Frame Damage and (a handful of) Tags. Some of these were revelations I had while testing, but others were a function of considering how things came together more closely.

Frame Damage

Frame Damage is the consequence of losing all of your Vigor. It’s intended to show wear and tear on a Frame that’s taken significant punishment and raise stakes in combat. However, it’s designed to avoid “death spirals”: this is why Vigor and Tension are restored to full and max Tension goes up. It also provides a nice arc in combat, in which a Frame that’s been taken out can come back restored and ready.

That said, it needs to have some teeth to work. Unfortunately, the first 3 potential rolls (-1 Drive, -1 Speed, and -1 Control) are lacking in consequences compared to the last 3 (reduce Harm of an Armament, require a roll for a Modular System, same but for Integral). With how Attributes work, there’s a very good chance that the Attribute reduction isn’t going to mean much in the moment. Each of them needs something a little stronger. So they will be changed to something like:

Superstructure Damage: -2 Max Vigor. All non-Armament Drive rolls have -1 die.
Leg Damage: Move and Sprint actions require an Attribute roll. All non-Armament Speed rolls have -1 die.
Sensor Damage: Armament Attribute rolls have -1 die. All non-Armament Control rolls have -1 die.

This has effects that correspond to the feel of the given types of Frame Damage while being meaningful in their own right.

With regard to Armament Harm reduction, it doesn’t feel meaningful enough. That option will likely replace the Armament with a backup weapon (probably a 1 Harm weapon with Close, Near, or Far - the Armored Core backup weapons come to mind as good inspirations).

Thoughts about v0.1 -> v0.2: Attributes

Sun, 15 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi there! I’m going to be releasing dev logs for my process periodically. Especially as the game progresses and gets more content, it’ll probably make some decisions (in the past and future) make more sense. Hopefully it’s of some use to someone!

Attributes in v0.1

In v0.1, the LUMEN Force/Flow/Focus attributes, Drive/Speed/Control, must simply total to 6 - minimum 1, maximum 4. This means you’d get the various permutations of three arrays: 4/1/1, 3/2/1, and 2/2/2. Now, for reference, given that the values we’re looking at are 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6:

1 die is 33% across the board for each outcome.
2 dice is 11% fail with consequence, 33% succeed with consequence, 55% succeed without consequence.
3 dice is 4% fail with consequence, 26% succeed with consequence, 70% succeed without consequence.
4 dice is 1% fail with consequence, 19% succeed with consequence, 80% succeed without consequence.

So part of my goal from the beginning has been to make sure every available statline makes sense. I had started with 7 attributes, but in my initial round of local testing, my conclusion was that players who chose a 4 were simply more advantaged than those who didn’t and didn’t have to give much up for it. So in an effort to curb this I added two changes: I reduced the number of attributes to 6 and added Attribute designations to each Armament (with two potential attributes each). This would mean that 4-havers would be forced into 1’s in their other two attributes, greatly hampering them out of combat and in combat (because they’d only be able to use 8/12 Armament types effectively). It also has the side effect of making the different attributes feel different mechanically.

My conclusion, however, was that this simply isn’t enough. Out of combat they could be covered by other specialists. In combat, being Armament-limited in this fashion wasn’t that big a deal.

Attributes in v0.2

And so we come to my final conclusion: Maximum is now 3. Easy, each character now has a good/ok/mediocre line. But what about the 2/2/2 generalist? Well, they don’t get a whole lot out of this either over a 3/2/1. So my conclusion is that characters at the start of the game have to have 3/2/1 stat lines and can swap 3/2 or 2/1 between missions during downtime. This means nobody at the start of the game is accidentally setting themselves up for failure.

But I’m not letting that be the final word on it. I love the idea of artificial limits being broken. One of the things I’m going to be emphasizing for future content is the use of expanded sidegrade options and context shifts as rewards. So maybe a 4/1/1 with a caveat or a 2/2/2 with a bonus will ride again!

I’m also going to be looking into how Frame Damage works. If anything but your main attribute is hit, it doesn’t mean nearly as much as it should. I’ll be aiming to address that in the future.

Until next time!

(Read the original on itch here!)

First post! And later expectations.

Fri, 13 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This is the first development log post for APOCALYPSE FRAME! Thanks for taking the time to read it, and thanks so much if you've purchased/downloaded the game. Please let me know what you think!

v0.1 of the game was released!

A fully playable version of the game is released! It's got enough content to last a group a good while, advice that will help a GM run both long-form and short-form games, and ideas to help spur creativity.

Planned patches/updates

I'm going to be seeing how people feel about the game as it is and reviewing feedback over the next few weeks. You can expect a mechanical update sometime in early September.

Missions

My vision of what a base package for APOCALYPSE FRAME should include feels incomplete without some kind of premade content to run out of the box, so right now I'm planning to include some premade Missions. The minimum I want to include is one Standard Mission, one Crisis Mission, and one Moonshot Mission. These will be added on to the base game (though I expect I'll create more as a separate product). I'm hoping to release at least some of this content at the same time as the aforementioned mechanics patch.

Future Content

In the future, I'm aiming to release more to support both player and GM options (more Frames, more Armaments, more Systems, more tags, more enemies). I also want to support the existing campaign infrastructure more fully - I have some ideas as to how to ratchet up tension within a longer-term campaign that I want to explore. As I solidify ideas for that I'll be posting about it here.

That's all for now!

(Read the original on itch here!)