I added a commentary edition of the game. This is exactly the same as v1.2 except I added 2” of margins on either side and added a bunch of red-text notes, development history, commentary, and self-criticism. Get it in the downloads!
A few typo, bad reference, and bad copy/paste fixes.
Some layout normalization on Frame spreads re: right-page spacing.
I also made a chost about how I’d convert APOCALYPSE FRAME to diceless here. (At some point I’m going to clean that up and add other variant rule ideas I’ve been kicking around. Compiling The Infected World and updating Ballad of Industrial Gods come first though for APOCALYPSE FRAME work.)
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.
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.
A reorganized body text, with a manuscript edited by Marx Shepherd
A full relayout
Art by Galen Pejeau and Mykell Pledger
A few minor additions and rules changes
If you have the game, you now have the final release version as well!
As per tradition, there was a release-version typo found on Efficient which has now been fixed in v1.0.1. (I’ll have the epub updated as well in a bit.)
We’re coming up on the 1 year anniversary of APOCALYPSE FRAME v0.1 (which was also my first published game)! So let’s talk about AF v1.0, which I’ve been pretty quiet about up until now. (And especially who I’m working with!)
Book Contents
First off, what’s going to be in it? This seems like it has an obvious answer: the core book has been out for a year. And that’s mostly right, but my plan is to add on some ACES HIGH stuff at the end as Advanced Rules. (Having them as separate documents made more sense for a digital-only release but that’s not going to be the case forever. Plus I think AH has a lot of stuff I consider “core” to the experience, like Crisis Advances and Tyrants.)
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!
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! 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.
