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.

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.

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. 

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.

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:

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!

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.

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. 

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

• 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.

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.