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!

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.

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.)

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!

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.

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!

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.

(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.

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!