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.