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.
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.
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!)
So some of my early playtest feedback is that melee feels less good than range which...yeah, tactics games are sure like that, huh! I'm fixing to handle this in a few ways right now.
The obvious moves first:
Lower the utility of Far range attacks. (This is even more pronounced because 3/6 of my players have abilities that hit to Far - basically almost all of the ones in the book. It's a good stress test at least!) Far range support is probably fine.
Add movement to a lot of powers. I'd done this with some of the later classes I designed (self-buff powers, for example, are usually move + buff) but the older ones could stand to have that energy too.
I’d been iterating on ANOINTED briefly over the past 6 months or so, and thinking about it more recently because of Dungeon23/ANOINTED23. As such I’ve finally gotten enough done that I’ve released a v0.1.4.
Brief list of changes:
Defenses are all now wildly different.
Armor is now subtractive rather than the previous situation, and all Armor now has a Poise to it.
The old system was fine but created a bunch of weird problems.
This gives it a little more going on than previously.
Shields are now basically “you gain a better PD/MD/Poise while blocking, but drain stamina”.
Dodge’s 4-5 result now lets you reroll but spend another Stamina instead of its previous thing. (Gets that good “mash dodge button” feel to it.)
Parry now only works on a 6. Makes it way more uncertain for what you get.
Stagger is way less bad than it was, now it just strips defenses.
Rebalanced all equipment/spells/enemies based on this (and gave them little outlines so they pop a bit better). They’ll probably need another pass once I do more testing.
You can see all my ANOINTED23 stuff here! I’m making a region per day. (I’m also putting dailies on my discord.)
Monday, 2/6: Point 5, the Camp A siege engine. If you get here, you can use it on any adjacent point - 4, 6, 7, or 9 - to (hopefully) instantly kill several enemies there. If you get a direct hit on the ballista at Point 7 (we'll get to it in a few days, but it prevents travel to/from point 7 except via point 9), it's destroyed. You can use this to soften up a few difficult fights.
Tuesday, 2/7: Wrote up a Holy Knight, a variant on the standard Knight enemy in ANOINTED, to differentiate Camp B a little bit. It has a single-strike attack instead of a combo and uses Invocation of Vigilance to add stagger resist instead of having a Guard ability.
Wednesday, 2/8: Point 6, midfield skirmish. A Knight and some Spearmen are squaring off against a Holy Knight and some Spearmen. Disposition by default is that they attack you, but a good roll can make half or all of them keep fighting among themselves instead of you. There's a Bonfire here, so you can reset the freeze clock without taking Harm if you clear the point.
Thursday, 2/9: Herald's Flagpole. A heavier than usual polearm, it has a Stance move that allows the user and nearby allies to regain Health and shake off Stagger.
Friday, 2/10: Point 9, Camp B forward command. A Holy Knight and some archers are picking off a few spearmen and guard dogs here. Once the dust clears, you can get that Flagpole here.
Saturday, 2/11: Point 7, the Ballista and crew. As noted, this makes travel very difficult between 7 and any point other than 9 (it's a "roll and if you don't get a 6 you die" situation). Two Holy Knights and some archers are here. Once combat is done, you can permanently destroy the Ballista.
Sunday, 2/12: Point 10, the far sanctuary. Very similar to Point 1's, and it bears the same exact inscription: A stone altar sits here, largely untouched with time, with the inscription: "Pray for these warriors, that they may achieve victory over their foes for the cause of righteousness." I like parallelism.
This week I'm tackling the area boss (General Ingrid, Camp B leader) as well as the remaining Point 8, and then doing cleanup for the rest of the month.
v1.0.2 is out! A few more typos fixed, and the character sheet should print a little better (stuff is further from the edges).
Also, have a setpiece on me! This is one I made to end out my home campaign - feel free to use it for yours!
A flying fortress big enough to blot out the sun, its pointed prow clearly designed for
intimidation. On its underside, enormous energy cannons create brief light sources of
their own as they crackle violently to annihilate anything that would dare to stand in
its way. This is the Republic’s Jupiter-class platform. It’s designed to destroy cities.
February 1-5 brought us the start of the Eternal Battlefield of Karus.
Wednesday, 2/1: Point 1, the Sanctuary. I didn't fuck up this time so it's first day. A stone altar sits here, largely untouched with time, with the inscription: "Pray for these warriors, that they may achieve victory over their foes for the cause of righteousness." (This is obviously talking about the eternal battle but also I'm doing a thing. Get back to me at Point 10.)
Thursday, 2/2: Point 2, the southern gate of Camp A. (I'll come up with some names later.) The flank of this camp has not been guarded strongly in quite some time. This has an intro fight: 1 + #Anointed Spearmen/Archers, split half and half. Disposition is Default Aggressive, 5-6 Distracted: as mentioned, it's not very well guarded.
Friday, 2/3: Point 4, Camp A's center. The narrow camp is heavily guarded. A catapult is visible to the north. There's a fight here with 1 + #Anointed Spearmen and 1 + #Anointed Knights: Knights are tough, so this one's pretty rough, especially solo; however, there's an "escape" hex on the far end of the camp. Disposition is Default Defensive, 4-5 Aggressive, 6 Unaware: each Unaware gives you an opportunity to either launch a surprise attack or move up 2 hexes towards that "escape" and ticks the area clock once. (If you make it to the catapult at Point 5, you'll have a better shot at defeating this group.)
Saturday, 2/4: Wrote up a Guard Dog. It's similar to a Dreg but a little stronger and more aggressive at range 1, but similarly frail.
Health 4, no defenses/Poise
Leap: Rng 0, Phys 2, Advance 3, Quick 1
Bite: Rng 0, Phys 2, Advance 1, Combo 2
Savage: Rng 0, Phys 2, Combo 3
Prioritizes least armored.
Sunday, 2/5: Point 3, the far end of Camp A with kennels. It takes 4 ticks to travel to or from here from Point 2, 2 ticks from anywhere else. (Might make this 2 across the board, it's an 8-tick clock so 4 might be a bit much.) 2 Archers + #Anointed guard dogs are here: the dogs are in kennels until they take their turn, which makes it harder to attack them directly.
So far so good! (And I've done two since then, obviously, but we'll get there next week.)
