November 4, 2022
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.
...November 4, 2022
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.
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November 2, 2022
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:
...October 31, 2022
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.
...September 2, 2022
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.
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August 29, 2022
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.
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August 9, 2022
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.)
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August 5, 2022
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!)
...August 1, 2022
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!
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July 26, 2022
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.
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