As promised, the compilation is (finally) here!
June 14, 2023
(Read the original on itch here!)
Blog Posts
v1.1 release! Some extremely preliminary diceless rules!
May 29, 2023
Diceless but it's APOCALYPSE FRAME, or: I Do Love The Token But I Am Now Worrying In A Different Tangential Existential Way
May 16, 2023
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.
...Removing/Reducing Dice in ANOINTED, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Token
May 15, 2023
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.
...Liminal Void: Professions (like Classes but not really). What are we doing here?
May 3, 2023
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).
...Dungeon23/ANOINTED23, March and April roundup (oops)
May 2, 2023
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.
...v2 released!
April 20, 2023
Liminal Void updates: Advancement is hard and weird
April 6, 2023
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.
...ANOINTED23 Week 9
March 9, 2023
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.
...Liminal Void rambling: ships, ship combat, and ship “combat“.
March 2, 2023
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!)
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