Last time I made a post about mechanics I talked about the Grid. Now I’m…still talking about The Grid, kind of! But it’s a different one this time. Home-ship construction is something that had been on our minds since the beginning. Originally it was going to be kicked to the final version! But we had a lot of backer items created that we wanted and so this was a good opportunity to make an initial system out of it. ...
Hi there! v1.1 of Valiant Horizon is out! This includes: Tweaked Create an Opening downward because it was Too Good By Far. Clarification of interaction of inverse with resist/vulnerable (it does the thing you’d expect and reverses the step to do less or more Harm respectively). Clarification on if moving to far counts as two near movements for the purpose of anything that cares (yes). Clarification on encounter composition and scaling: Upgraded composition to its own page with an example and some extra advice and dedicated an entire page to scaling to make it clear what’s going on there. ...
Stamina is a resource I bolted onto both the RUNE engine and the NULL/CIPHER healthless idea for Valiant Horizon Tactics. It’s a very major change to how a RUNE-like does things. Notably it’s also not really a Valiant Horizon idea, it’s kind of something that came off of neither game. So what’s up with that? One prior that bears notice is that Stamina was in the earliest Total//Effect prototype version I made: it was going to be like 13th Age recoveries/4E healing surges but also usable for restoring used abilities to form a kind of generic “dungeon attrition” resource. ...
Hi there! First off, a little update to this quickstart. A few big changes: Gaining your Background doesn’t give you a smattering of Attributes anymore. Instead, you get to grab another Trait. This can be another Profession’s thing, something from things that hint at a less savory Profession, or things that indicate where you came from. To support the latter two categories, there’s 7 more traits now. More Attributes is something you’ll gain by proper leveling later past this level-0 quickstart. ...
Hi there! 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! Until next time! (Read the original on itch here!)
(This is a companion piece to Gila RPGs/Spencer Campbell’s recent stream about healthless TTRPGs, which is well worth your time if you have an hour to spend and goes into VH tactics a little itself, because the original impetus was based on his idea of healthless TTRPGs prior to this video. It would probably also be good to be a little familiar with RUNE! But I think everything makes enough sense if you aren’t. ...
Hi there! I made a big update to how Liminal Void works! You can see some previews of what I did in my newsletter post here. The big changes are: Static Assets from Profession/Background are out, attribute spending is in. You have 3 Attributes, of which a Profession gives you 5 and a Background gives you 3 more. You can spend them to use them as Assets and regain them by taking various painkillers and stimulants and supplements, which is probably extremely healthy and good for you. ...
Hi there! v1.1 is here! It brings a few major changes: Formatting Increased page size slightly. Various typo-fixes. Tightening up of layout. Combat Rules Missiles. Deploy now states the deployment range for missiles (0-1). Direct now lets you move 8 missiles by default instead of 5. Direct now states clearly when missiles count as “armed” (i.e. when they automatically attack if their target gets within range 0). Missiles are now slightly easier to shoot down by default (3+ instead of 4+). ...
Valiant Horizon v1.0 is finally out! Some big changes: 12 incredible illustrations by Charlotte Laskowski! Editing and revision by Marx Shepherd! And some smaller ones: Swarm enemies don’t exist anymore and Prime enemies are a bit different. Relationship rolls are now reversed so high rolls are good. Various little fixes, typos, and tweaks. Thanks so much to everyone who backed the game! I’ll have news about a season pass soon. And for everyone’s generosity, I added one community copy for everyone who bought it (and a few more on top). ...
Hi there! Last class overview devlog, because after these two we’re out of core classes! Introducing the final two, Tactician and Windmagus. Just in time for the full release on January 23rd! The Tactician From the start, I wanted one full-support class - not just for mechanical reasons, but thematically, I wanted someone whose almost exclusive role was to support and boost allies. As mentioned in the Commander overview, I’ve had the idea of Tactician via 36th Way Weigh the Odds Commander via 13th Age Commander via 4E warlord in my head for awhile, and I knew I wanted something like it here - so tying it to full-support made sense. ...