Hi there! I’m gonna reveal class art every week and talk about their design as I do. I’m gonna go start to end alphabetically, so meet the Bard and the Berserker!

On roles and sub-roles

I’m going to be talking about roles a lot in these posts. This is because I designed every class using Total//Effect’s role and sub-role concepts as a basis. Each class has three sub-roles: two from one role and one from another. The sub-role indicated in text with bold is the “primary” focus, and each class has a primary sub-role that no other class has. I also have an image highlighting them for each class!

Hi there!

I’ve uploaded the third new Class, made possible by a very generous backer. Meet the Astrologer!

• The Astrologer is a stargazing, prophetic hero.
• It can easily provide full support via re-rolls, Advantage, and Disadvantage.
• It has a lot of effects that mark or apply to locations, letting it shape the battlefield.

It’s in that backer classes PDF. Enjoy!

(If you want to up your pledge to get one of these, itch doesn’t really do that unfortunately. But if you just buy Just The Game again, add enough to it to get to the higher tier, and let me know on discord/social media/by email, I’ll count it.)

Hi there!

This post is about the various mechanical choices made in Valiant Horizon at a very high level. I group these into three categories: Diceless mechanics (stuff that works), Roll for Magnitude mechanics (stuff that works but you roll to see how much), and Roll for Success mechanics (stuff that works if a roll goes your way).

Diceless

The simplest kind of mechanic. This is what Assets, Exhausting Assets, and Burdens are:

Hi there!

I’ve uploaded the second new Class, made possible by a very generous backer. Meet the Assassin!

• The Assassin is a deadly, subtle hero.
• It can choose to gain bonuses to its Total against debuffed enemies, with the caveat that the debuffs are removed afterwards.
• It’s a great combination of deadly and mobile, with debuffs and “finishers” - moves that cap out at extremely high Totals, but provide incredible rewards if met.
• It’s technical and really shines with good teamwork!

It’s in the now-updated backer classes PDF (labeled 7-31), along with the previous backer class, the Adept. Enjoy!

Hi there!

I’ve uploaded the first new Class, made possible by a very generous backer. Meet the Adept!

• The Adept is a skilled, highly-trained hero.
• It combos off of self-buffing/taking self-targeting utility actions.
• It gets a lot out of taking/being given extra actions.
• It’s the most mobile class I’ve written thus far!

It’s in that backer classes PDF. Enjoy!

(If you want to up your pledge to get one of these, itch doesn’t really do that unfortunately. But if you just buy Just The Game again, add enough to it to get to the higher tier, and let me know on discord/social media/by email, I’ll count it.)

Hi there! I’ve just released ANOINTED v0.2! This has:

• A revamped combat system that removes dice entirely. (You can see a preview of my initial formulation here, I changed a few things from there but that’s the general idea.)
• At long last, rules for exploration!
• A tutorial region. If I did it right, it should hopefully give you some idea of how to play the game!

Give it a play, let me know what you think. It’s solo-friendly!

Hi there!

I’ve uploaded the PDF compilation of all 4 season pass modules into one coherent book. Everything should be up to date with v1.1 (hence the title).

Epub version coming soon.

Until next time!

Hi there! v1.1 is out. It’s nothing big:

• A few clarifications in a few spots.
• 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.)

Hi there!

I just released version 2 of NANO after a little testing and tweaking. My main takeaway is that it needed to be a little more play-to-lose.

• Surviving 7 days is framed closer to a partial victory (and can also be a loss). (This encourages people to go for Breakthroughs rather than only putting out fires.)
• All actions ding you on at least Fatigue on anything but Harmonize. (It was far too easy prior to lean on Prepare/Progress especially, but also I wanted to preserve the general flow of “you can do however many things you like as long as you think you can keep it up” to encourage people riding the razor’s edge of an Error.)
  • All Resists now have Gain 1 Fatigue as their Harmonize (Sustain is now 2/3 for its Synchronize/Interfere).
  • Prepare’s Synchronize is now +2 but gains Fatigue.
  • Progress’s Synchronize now provokes a Resist.

Until next time!

Hi there!

I put out a v2 of this quickstart. It has the following changes:

• Has a slightly more proper cover now for both the rules and quickstart scenario!
• Made a few typo/clarification fixes
• Added a few things to the quickstart that came up in play (nothing big, just “you can try doing this” kind of stuff)

Until next time!