September 13, 2024
Last time I did a brainstorm session like this was for Persona: 1, 2, 3. This one's way shorter though. The idea is to flesh out some kind of specific JRPG-inspired campaign structure for Valiant Horizon.
So let's say there's these crystals, right? Used to be 12 of them - nowadays there's, uh, let's say 3-5 PCs crystals remaining. Each of them has the power to maintain the last few villages that stand in the world and prevent them from being swallowed up by the darkness that has consumed the rest. The crystals' power is not infinite. Every decade since the beginning of known history, each crystal chooses a Hero: someone to carry on its legacy to perform the Ritual of Rebirth at the origin of life, which imbues the crystal with their soul for the sake of all. The herald of life then returns their crystals to their village to maintain it until next time. There's never been any resistance on the road of rebirth: it's still hallowed ground, after all.
...July 9, 2024
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.
- A bunch of enemies stuff.
- Enemies can no longer use the same ability more than once in a turn.
- New enemy action type: Prepare, which gives them advantage on their next roll this round.
- Elites all have 2 abilities to account for the above. This should make them a bit more interesting to play against (and run) at higher tiers especially when they have 3+ actions.
- Fixed/tweaked a few enemy abilities while I was there.
- Pulled out the most important Narrator advice onto its own page.
- Character sheet is now in the document! As it should have been from the start, frankly.
Until next time!
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February 5, 2024
*Before I release the extra edition that tacks on like 2 more posts.
In Part 1 we established what kind of game we're using. In Part 2 we tied together Valiant Horizon's class system with the tarot thing Persona has going on. In this final installment (because at this point more beyond what I'm covering here would involve just making the thing) we're gonna think about using what we set up in part 2 for a session and campaign structure.
...February 4, 2024
So we started poking at turning Valiant Horizon into Persona in Part 1 by establishing initial premises of what even this kind of game is like. It's got a lot of the DNA of urban fantasy/masquerade style games (WoD, Unknown Armies, etc) but with a very different emphasis, and especially the fact that there's a harder divide between the two "halves". Now we start digging in to what we want to do with that.
...February 3, 2024
I'm thinking about Persona* a lot lately, partially because P3 Reload is out and I kind of want to play it but also it's $70 so fuck that shit. But partially it's because I realized while putting together the playlist for Valiant Horizon how well the two concepts overlaid with each other with only a little reflavoring/stretching:
*3-5. I know 2 has its fans but I've never played it and honestly it's a little longer in the tooth than I have patience for nowadays. I'm sure 1 has its adherents too but I don't know them.
...January 23, 2024
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).
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January 21, 2024
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. I styled it as kind of the “brains of the operation” or the “puppetmaster” - a lot of its abilities focus on planning, logic, tactics, strategy, or unexpected preparedness.
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January 18, 2024
Hi there!
Valiant Horizon v1.0 is coming out on January 23rd! So we’re devlogging fast now.
As noted in #1, all role/sub-role talk is referring to Total//Effect’s role and sub-role concepts.
The Knight
Once of the martial ideas I wanted to replicate was someone who is just absolutely steadfast in every sense: physically and otherwise. I knew I wanted a Knight somewhere too - I just inherently like the idea of a warrior defined by dedication. (Not in like the historical sense, of course, but in the fantastical/romantic sense.) It seemed like a good pairing, and all of its tales and much of its skillset pertain to one or the other. (One of its suggested Exhaust abilities, “Swear an oath that anyone will believe”, is probably one of my favorites that I’ve written.)
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January 16, 2024
Hi there!
Valiant Horizon v1.0 is coming out on January 23rd! So I’d better get moving on these devlogs.
As noted in #1, all role/sub-role talk is referring to Total//Effect’s role and sub-role concepts.
The Earthmagus
All of my mages (the -magus classes specifically) are just a little off from what people expect. “Earth” is probably the most skipped element in video games on top of that - you see fire/ice/lightning a lot, and earth sometimes comes in as like “acid” or some similar cop-out like that. This makes sense if you’re only making up elemental attacks and not trying to hit something more core to the concept/trying to make something that feels like it belongs to the world. But I don’t want any of the magic in this world to be solely for combat - they all had to feel like they were like, part of the world in some way. So Earthmagus’s Tales are about understanding, addressing and nurturing the land, and their iconic portrait is a farmer or tender of some sort.
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December 21, 2023
Hi there! Long time no see!
Now that Valiant Horizon is nearing full release, this is #3 in our design series. We’re back with the Commander and Dark Knight.
As noted in #1, all role/sub-role talk is referring to Total//Effect’s role and sub-role concepts.
The Commander
To get the elephant out of the room, yes, I came at this starting with the 4E warlord by way of its less acclaimed distant cousin, the 13th Age commander. More specifically, I took a crack at this idea starting in 36th Way. 13th Age/36th Way’s Commander have two resource-generating class features indicating focus: Weigh the Odds, which lets you reliably generate the resource you need, but is purely non-offensive; or Fight from the Front, which is a melee attack that generates the resource on a hit. (More on Commander here.) So we had two concepts of:
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