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!

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!

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.

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.

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:

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!

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!

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!

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.

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!