pickled-dice

[pickled-dice]

I’ve heard about shadowrun but never got to play it myself. I don’t even know the first thing about that system

Update on spells. Currently, there are 150/500 (30%) spells written out. Levels 1-6 of Ruination and 1-4 of everything else. I was talking with a coworker and they gave me a really good idea. During playtesting, the rulebook will be a pdf that gets updated as playtesting goes on. Meaning that I can add content as I go. So I don't need to write out like hundreds of special items, I can add them later. This will let playtesting begin earlier. For now, lemme tell y'all about one of the more interesting spells I've written out: Spellprint When you cast the spell, you are aware of any spells that have been cast within a 50 ft. radius over the last 3 days. You also know what spells they were. That's not the cool part though, the cool part ties into an ability called "Harmonic Resonance". Using harmonic resonance you can identify a creature's magic signature. And when you cast Spellprint, if you know a creature's magic signature, you can tell if they had casted any of the spells you detected, and if so, exactly which ones. Essentially, you're fingerprinting with magic. You think "Johnny McFirestarter" started the fire and you know his signature? Cast spellprint and yup, johnny cast fireball and burned the orphanage down. This spell will be great for detectives.

[pickled-dice]

Update on spells. Currently, there are 150/500 (30%) spells written out. Levels 1-6 of Ruination and 1-4 of everything else. I was talking with a coworker and they gave me a really good idea. During playtesting, the rulebook will be a pdf that gets updated as playtesting goes on. Meaning that I can add content as I go. So I don't need to write out like hundreds of special items, I can add them later. This will let playtesting begin earlier. For now, lemme tell y'all about one of the more interesting spells I've written out: Spellprint When you cast the spell, you are aware of any spells that have been cast within a 50 ft. radius over the last 3 days. You also know what spells they were. That's not the cool part though, the cool part ties into an ability called "Harmonic Resonance". Using harmonic resonance you can identify a creature's magic signature. And when you cast Spellprint, if you know a creature's magic signature, you can tell if they had casted any of the spells you detected, and if so, exactly which ones. Essentially, you're fingerprinting with magic. You think "Johnny McFirestarter" started the fire and you know his signature? Cast spellprint and yup, johnny cast fireball and burned the orphanage down. This spell will be great for detectives.

[pickled-dice]

Hey all, a lot of personal stuff has gotten in the way of the development process, but I am still trying my best to make steady progress. Currently I have Levels 1-4 of both Ruination and Fortification done. That is 56/500 spells written out, or 11.2%. Initially I was just trying to do it type by type, so do all the ruination, then all the fortification, and blah blah blah. But that turned out to be incredibly tedious and kinda boring ngl. So I think from now on I'm going to going level by level, type by type. So tomorrow i'll do Levels 1-4 of restoration, then 1-4 of conjuration, and so on and so forth. Until then, let me tell you about the lore behind a pretty interesting spell called "Reaper's Expedition". The spell is simple, it lowers the amount of time an undead can exist by a number of hours equal to your Fortification bonus x 5. Why can undead only exist for a certain amount of time? Its not cause they rot or anything like that, no. Something else kills them LONG before they ever get the chance. And that thing, is a Reaper. Reapers are the things that make sure that most forms of resurrection don't work, they are the protectors of death. If something is alive that shouldn't be, within 14 days, a Reaper is going to kill it. It also goes the opposite way, if something is about to die that shouldn't, you best fuckin believe a Reaper is gonna protect that thing, and they never fail. The Hands of Fate in general (the Reapers, the Azhi, and the Dahaka) are basically completely unknown. Chances are, there could be one right next to you, and you'd never know, unless you were their quarry. They are completely unseen, completely intangible, completely invisible even to high level divination. If you see one, chances are, you are fucked. I plan on making stat sheets for all the hands of fate, but that doesn't necessarily mean they can be fought. Your only real chance is to run.

[pickled-dice]

Sadly, I do not have as many spells done as I wanted to in two days. Currently its only 22 out of the 500 written. But I have good reason. I got a nasty laceration at work so practically all of my day was spent with a quickly thrown together dressing around my finger as I waited for someone to be able to drive me to urgent care. I got 3 stitches and i'm alright now though. Currently i've just gotten through the first 2 levels of Ruination spells, which are the simple ones. Stuff like Frostbite, which is a piece of ice you launch at a target. Or Gale Whip which is a bit of wind that snaps through the air, cutting your opponent. Once we hit higher levels I'll have some more interesting stuff to talk about. Until then, this has been my update to let y'all know i'm still alive and working on the game.

[pickled-dice]

Guess what bitches. Every. Single. Goddamn. Spell. is outlined. This now includes all 220 ruination spells. (That's a lot of ways to kill a man). I have been spending the past few days coming up with those (and playing a fuckton of Halo) because it didn't feel right to start writing with an incomplete list. Now that I have that complete list, I can actually finally start writing. It's gonna take a while, but I have everything there, all the concepts, all I gotta do is actually add the flesh to it. In writing out and organising all the spells, i have changed how I'm gonna distribute levels between the spells, like, which spells are which level. Instead of 2 spells per level per school, there are now more spells the lower the level. Levels 1-5 have 3 spells each. Levels 6-15 have 2 spells each. Levels 16-20 have 1 spell each. Ruination is still 1 spell per level per damage type though. So if you want to play a mage who specialises in a specific damage type, like a pyromancer or cryomancer, you will have options.

[pickled-dice]

Since i’m gonna be writing out spells for several days. I figured now would be the perfect time to expand further on the lore of Iris and Iron (the primary settings of Fate Be Damned and Under Iron Eyes). Today i'll be talking about a monster, the Majin. Majin are people who give up themselves and their freedom to a stronger being (such as Weirds, Devils, even minor Gods) in return for power. This power comes in the form of their unique type of shapeshifting. A majin, upon creation, no longer considers their human form their true form. Their true form is now a large, hunched, bipedal predator.

Credit: "Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider" by Daarken (From Magic: The Gathering)

They can swap between these two forms at will, typically using their human form to interact with people when needed, and using their monstrous form when they want or need to kill something. Majin can acquire new forms by consuming people. After devouring someone, a majin can take their form, perfectly mimicking their voice as well. Majin on their own are very strong monsters, but 99% of the time when you encounter one, they're being ordered around by some other person. A majin is completely incapable of disobeying the orders of their master as long as the beast maintains control over their actions. If the majin's master dies without releasing control over it, the majin goes feral and is stuck in their monstrous form until they're either killed or their mind is dominated again by a sufficiently powerful mage. Majin are one of the favoured tools of the Broken God, Azmodeus. Though not as favoured as his "children" the Lokir. But we'll talk about him and the Lokir later on.

[pickled-dice]

I officially have every non-ruination spell outlined. All the illusion spells, all the divination spells, all the restoration spells, all of it. Outlining the rest of the ruination spells will probably take me about 1-2 days. Then i'll need to write them all out which will probably take a few more days. We are in the point of development that I call "The Really Slow Times". Big catalogues and lists, where each entry needs special care to make. First is spells, then unique items, then monsters in a separate document. After all of that is done (which will be a while), I'll see about creating a public repository for these pdf's so people can playtest these games, tell me stuff that's wrong, give me suggestions, all that. In the meantime, let me tell you my favourite spell i've come up with today. It's an illusion spell called "False Prophecy". It works really similarly to a divination spell called "Prophecy". Basically, you give a creature 3 glimpses into the future, that they can interpret however. Whether they believe it or not is entirely up to them. Here's the thing, all 3 of those glimpses into the future are entirely made up by the caster. The key thing is the target doesn't know that the prophecy isn't an actual prophecy and is just some random bullshit you made up. To the untrained mind, the spells are identical. So if you cast it on someone really paranoid, you can get them to take whatever drastic action you want by selectively showing them their "future". This is perfect for high level illusionists who just wanna sow chaos.

[pickled-dice]

Ignoring the easier Ruination spells, we are 62% of the way there towards having all of the base FBD/UIE spells outlined. We've got all 40 enchantment spells outlined and more than 20 spells of all other types (besides illusion) outlined. My favourite spell i've outlined today is probably "Rune Trap". Essentially, how it works is you target a rune you've made with the spell. When a specific trigger happens (that you have full control over) the rune activates. That's the whole spell. So imagine, you come across a MASSIVE circular stone door. Legends say behind this door is a treasure trove that you couldn't spend in a thousand lifetimes. And you, being a greedy little goober, went on a treasure hunt to find it. After some puzzles, you open the door, and you are greeted by a veritable mountain of gold. You go in, and next to the door, you see a heart in a jar, weird. Anyways, you get to stuffing burlap sacks full of gold, not noticing the sound of the door closing behind you. Once it shuts with a loud crash, you look behind you and see the other side of the door is absolutely covered in a massive arcane rune. Your mind races, wondering what just happened. And then you remember the heart right next to the door. And suddenly it clicks, as from the rune comes the spell "Supernova", evaporating you instantly. There's definitely way more creative uses for it. But thats the one that I thought of.

[pickled-dice]

Today has been good progress on spells. Been doing a LOT of inspirational reading. Currently we are at 108 spells between concepts and actual written out ones. That's a little bit more than 1/5 of what I want. 220 of the spells i want are for Ruination which are primarily damaging and otherwise destructive spells. These are a lot easier to come up with than utility spells so the number isn't super daunting. The reason there are so many is because i want people to be able to play single element mages and have spells available at every level for their favourite damage type. My favourite spell concept I've come up with today is a higher end Divination spell called "Rehearsal". Essentially, you cast it, and at some point in the future (i'm thinking it only lasts like, an hour at max) you can "reverse time" by 10 seconds (1 round). This time reversal is flavoured as, you saw what happened during the round, and now have the opportunity to change it. Unless you take action to change something prior to your turn, everything will happen as it did. And then on your turn, you can do whatever. After your turn, any turn you directly affected can also do whatever. Right now, since its just a concept, its rules are really loosey goosey with nothing really set in stone yet. But that's probably one of my favourite spells i've come up with as of now.

[pickled-dice]

I did not get much progress done yesterday. My dog peed on my bed and I spent the entire night washing sheets. But there is good news. Guess who's games have official logos now!

I am so so happy with these. Today, once I get my bed cleaned, its gonna be a lot of brainstorming spell ideas. Currently I have about 1/5 of the amount i want done. It's gonna be tedious to say the least.

[pickled-dice]

Today was some pretty good progress. Finished the section on reading monster stat sheets, and I finished the section on "ailments". So basically, injuries, diseases, and poisons. Injuries are optional rules you can do to add some more survival elements and "realism" to your games. They come in 2 flavours, temporary and permanent. Temporary injuries are received when you just take a particularly nasty hit in combat. If a hit reduces you from max health to below half, that probably nets you a neat little temporary injury. You can get a particularly deep cut, giving you the heavy bleeding status effect. You can get your leg broken, giving you the broken status effect. The Keeper can make up their owns but there's a few example injuries like that. Permanent injuries are received when you go down in combat, but survive. You could get an arm or leg lopped off. Lose an eye. Maybe your lungs get fucked up and your stamina gets axed. Maybe you walk out with tinnitus. Those are a couple of the examples. The diseases are less interesting I will admit. Probably the most interesting is Red Rage. Basically you can become so bloodthirsty that your bloodlust literally forms into a parasite within your body that turns you into a lycanthrope. If this happens its pretty hard to come out of, but if you do, congrats, you're a lycanthrope now. But you also have a new npc (or pc, depends on how you look at it) because guess what bitch, that parasite can talk to you. Its kinda like Eddie Brock and Venom. The poisons took a while but I like how they turned out. They come in 3 varieties, edible, contact, and venom. Each with 4 levels of severity. My favourites are probably dawn weed extract and wyvern venom. Dawn weed extract makes you trip the fuck out. It also makes your emotions extremely volatile, giving you the afraid, enraged, joyful, and sorrowful status effects at random for the entire duration. Wyvern venom fully paralyses you over the course of 3 rounds. Once you're paralysed, it goes after your internal organs and stops those. Say goodbye to breathing and blood flow. If you're gonna fight a wyvern, be sure to grab a couple doses of the anti-venom if you can. Cause if you get stung and you don't have that, good luck.

[pickled-dice]

I was at my actual job for most of the day so I wasn't able to do a crazy amount today. But I have been brainstorming a new monster stat sheet template. For 2 big reasons: 1. the original was really close to D&D 5e's and it felt like plagiarism to look at. 2. someone commented on a previous post about the monster level system and I decided "fuck it, i'm gonna find a different way to convey this without so much fuckin math" So in the time I've been home i've written a few pages of the rulebook and have been trying to cobble together a monster stat sheet. And I have one that I actually like. And here it is

This new template is both more compact and better able to convey the information the game might require. It might undergo changes in the future. But this is what my 1AM brain settled on for now. If y'all wanna see it filled out with an example monster, here's your basic Brigand enemy.

With that done, i should probably be able to finish all of Volume 5 except the catalogue of special items cause there's a lot of those, and im saving those, and spells, for last.

[pickled-dice]

Today I have finally solved a problem I have had for almost as long as i've been working on this project (so a long ass time). Here's what my problem was. Spells deal too much damage. You might be thinking "easy fix? reduce the damage." but no, its not that simple. Level 19 and 20 spells are supposed to be the most powerful spells, they should fuck shit up, so having a Level 20 spell deal an average of 60 damage is out of the question. It wasn't until recently, when I was revisiting and revising the spells from a couple years ago that the solution to the problem finally came to me. It's not that the spells were dealing too much damage, its that they were too easy to cast. In Fate Be Damned, the resource you use to cast spells is called "Essence", its basically your mana. And at the start of each of your turns, you restore an amount of it equal to your Arcana bonus, provided you didn't cast a spell on your previous turn. That right there was the problem, you can restore your Essence every round (10 seconds). So I changed it. Essence now behaves a bit more like Magic Health rather than Magic Stamina. Instead of restoring it at the start of each turn, you restore it with rest. You restore an amount equal to your Physical bonus (min 1) for each hour of Active Rest, and you restore an amount equal to your Arcana bonus (min 2) for each hour of Complete Rest. This one small change fixed basically the ENTIRE problem. Previously, say you had a Physical score of 15, and Level 15 Arcana. After you cast a Level 20 spell, you could regain that Essence in 2 minutes and 10 seconds. Not very fast in a combat, but extremely fucking fast in the DPS department, especially with the other spells you can cast in the meantime. It also makes no goddamn sense thematically. Imagine you're fighting a wizard, he blows up a fuckin city block, you survive somehow, and a little over 2 minutes later, HE DOES IT AGAIN. That's broken. Now lets compare to the current version, with those same stats. After you cast that Level 20 spell, you need AT LEAST 12 hours of Complete Rest or 20 hours of Active Rest to regain all the Essence you spent. After that wizard blasts that city block, they are gonna be completely gassed out of magic for the rest of the day. I like this new system way more both thematically and mechanically. So wizards, brush up on those sword skills, you might need it.

[pickled-dice]

Today was a way more chill work day than yesterday. Still got a decent amount done but I didn't work for 10 hours straight this time lol. Today I transferred over all of the abilities and spells I had from the old "rulebook draft" (which i'm calling my junk drawer). I formatted them in the current style, and looked through all of the abilities, making tweaks and changing wording where needed. With that said, the first half of the table of contents is all green babyyyyy

Tomorrow is going to be looking through what spells I do have, tweaking them, and changing wording where needed. And then after that I will leave that chapter alone until the end. I got some buddies who have been helping me with spell ideas while i work on the rest of the book. It's taken me about 8-ish days to get this far. Probably another 8 for the meat of volumes 4-6. Then however fuckin long spells and special items take. Then we'll see about playtesting. God if I ever somehow get the money to commission all the art i want for this game i am going to be PSYCHED! Until tomorrow nerds.

[pickled-dice]

Okay i couldn't sleep knowing they weren't there so i added them right now.

Volume 2 is officially done! It's covered skill checks, healing, combat, spellcasting, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Today I spent about 10 hours working on the combat section and the spellcasting section. If I had to highlight just one thing, it'd probably be the most recent thing, Runes. In my game, you can cast the normal way where you go "abracadabra" and the guy explodes. Or you can prepare and inscribe that spell into a rune to surprise explode the guy. Basically how it works is you take a piece of chalk or a chisel or something and you begin to inscribe a rune onto a surface as you put the spell into the rune. Once you're done, as long as you're conscious and within a mile of the rune, you can activate it. No action or nothing required. Literally just a mental "its go time" and the rune activates. This should hopefully really reward preparation. It lets mages set traps that aren't dedicated trap spells, lets them make contingency plans, etc. Imagine going to a dangerous meeting, and just in case, you draw a rune with the swap spell on a sack of grain, and put the sack in a window overlooking the meeting place. Then, when shit goes sour, you activate the rune, target yourself, and where you were, there's a sack of grain, and you just got a head start. Or, imagine, you're going to ambush a caravan on the side of the road, so you draw a fuckton of runes loaded with the shimmering dart spell on fenceposts. Then, when the caravan passes by, you activate them, killing all of the guards and maiming a couple caravan hands.

[pickled-dice]

It appears I forgot the sections about explaining spell types and levelling up (very very important). I will add those tomorrow as i work on volumes 3. Until then, sleepy time

Volume 2 is officially done! It's covered skill checks, healing, combat, spellcasting, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Today I spent about 10 hours working on the combat section and the spellcasting section. If I had to highlight just one thing, it'd probably be the most recent thing, Runes. In my game, you can cast the normal way where you go "abracadabra" and the guy explodes. Or you can prepare and inscribe that spell into a rune to surprise explode the guy. Basically how it works is you take a piece of chalk or a chisel or something and you begin to inscribe a rune onto a surface as you put the spell into the rune. Once you're done, as long as you're conscious and within a mile of the rune, you can activate it. No action or nothing required. Literally just a mental "its go time" and the rune activates. This should hopefully really reward preparation. It lets mages set traps that aren't dedicated trap spells, lets them make contingency plans, etc. Imagine going to a dangerous meeting, and just in case, you draw a rune with the swap spell on a sack of grain, and put the sack in a window overlooking the meeting place. Then, when shit goes sour, you activate the rune, target yourself, and where you were, there's a sack of grain, and you just got a head start. Or, imagine, you're going to ambush a caravan on the side of the road, so you draw a fuckton of runes loaded with the shimmering dart spell on fenceposts. Then, when the caravan passes by, you activate them, killing all of the guards and maiming a couple caravan hands.

[pickled-dice]

Volume 2 is officially done! It's covered skill checks, healing, combat, spellcasting, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Today I spent about 10 hours working on the combat section and the spellcasting section. If I had to highlight just one thing, it'd probably be the most recent thing, Runes. In my game, you can cast the normal way where you go "abracadabra" and the guy explodes. Or you can prepare and inscribe that spell into a rune to surprise explode the guy. Basically how it works is you take a piece of chalk or a chisel or something and you begin to inscribe a rune onto a surface as you put the spell into the rune. Once you're done, as long as you're conscious and within a mile of the rune, you can activate it. No action or nothing required. Literally just a mental "its go time" and the rune activates. This should hopefully really reward preparation. It lets mages set traps that aren't dedicated trap spells, lets them make contingency plans, etc. Imagine going to a dangerous meeting, and just in case, you draw a rune with the swap spell on a sack of grain, and put the sack in a window overlooking the meeting place. Then, when shit goes sour, you activate the rune, target yourself, and where you were, there's a sack of grain, and you just got a head start. Or, imagine, you're going to ambush a caravan on the side of the road, so you draw a fuckton of runes loaded with the shimmering dart spell on fenceposts. Then, when the caravan passes by, you activate them, killing all of the guards and maiming a couple caravan hands.