#breakheart

[cts-games]

Breakheart: Dev Diary 1

Game Structure Overview

To help keep me focused on working on the game and trying to meet my self imposed deadline of having some kind of PDF preview document by August, I'm going to try to maintain having a weekly devlog discussing the game and its various mechanics. Or bi-weekly, if one per week ends up being too much. I guess this is also the formal announcement of the name of this game, Breakheart.

This week, I'll be discussing the overall structure of a campaign.

A Cluster functions similarly to how a Team/Squad sheet functions in Forged in the Dark games. It has its own dedicated sheet, resource management, upgrades, etc. All players in that cluster gain the benefits of the various advancements they collect for their Cluster. Recommended clustersize is roughly 2-3 play groups. Since playgroups are recommended to be 3-5 players, the typical Cluster size will be about 10 players. Meanwhile if the campaign is made up of just a bunch of solo players, it might make sense to have smaller Clusters of 3-5 people. Just keep in mind that the more players in a Cluster, the more conflict there may be when selecting advancements and upgrades for the group.

Breakheart is designed to theoretically be able to function with any group size. From being able to run it as a solo game, all the way up to running it with several hundred players. I think actually expecting the second option is a bit of a lofty goal, and don't expect it to be a common way to run the game. Hell, just having a hundred people having ever played the game would be a delight and far greater than I dare to hope for a indie ttrpg release. But, I still want to structure it that way, just to have it as an option, as the game will be designed with Open Table Play in mind. This will be accomplished through what I am calling Clusters.

Clusters

Clusters are only meant to divide resources, NOT players. While players are bound to a specific Cluster, this does NOT limit who they can play with in a campaign, only where their upgrades go. It's just designed to make the logistics easier to manage and helps keep a hypothetical campaign of 100 players from just buying every single upgrade after a single mission, or one player spending 100 players worth of communal resources at once.

Open Table Play

The game itself follows a fairly standard West Marches / Open Table style format. Though uh... I certainly aim to be a little less colonial than West Marches was. Players work together to figure out when they have time to play a single session together, and then they do so, bringing back resources and reporting any important findings to the whole campaign in whichever predetermined way all the players of the campaign have decided, be it group text chat, discord, a dedicated tumblr sidelong they submit play reports to, actual play videos, whatever.

All sessions run concurrently, using an episodic format. Each session acts as a different plot line in the 'Episode', and each character can only take part in one adventure per Episode. Once the Episode has concluded, an Intermission starts. This is where downtime actions take place. Characters can recover between adventures and spend their loot on various advancements or upgrades for their Cluster.

It is fine for a player to have multiple characters, but they should probably keep them in separate clusters as much as possible. In this way, more active players can join more games, while less active players can pick up games here and there where they can. Alternatively, it could be fun to have an optional rule where each player has their own Cluster for all their characters, and players just make as many characters as they want to go on adventures with, but this will not be the default mode of play.

GM-Agnostic(ish)

The system itself will be GM-Agnostic, with sessions being playable solo or co-op, though the Solo/Co-op Rules can absolutely just be ignored and replaced with an actual GM. GMless should work fine for smaller campaigns, but ones made up of multiple Clusters may need a Organizor/Facilitator to help keep the persistent world between different play groups more organized.

At the end of the day, a group is always free to just run a Breakheart campaign using only a single Cluster, with a dedicated GM, and play the game as a more traditional TTRPG.

[hanz0z0]

It´s like a superpower.

[abbiebruce56]

Nunca entenderé tu trato conmigo, ¿me amas un día y al otro no existo?

Quizás creé una fantasía en mi mente en dónde me querías y solo éramos tu y yo. Hubiese deseado que me hablaras claro desde un principio, tal vez hubiera salvado a mi corazón de este inmenso dolor

[gandurileandroginului]

So the new chapter of Under The Black Cherry is now available on Wattpad!

https://www.wattpad.com/1359547573-under-the-black-cherry-chapter-7-night-trespassers

[meesarart]

(via Cracked Love Framed Art Print by meesara)

[cnamonboy]

calm down everything will be fine... you think ? Maybe one day all this sadness will no longer be there. maybe one day I'll give up.

[sweetdreamer9]

Ya me canse de tener sentimientos debería poder tener el corazón de piedra y no sentir nada , siempre termino mal , ya me canse de superar personas q solo viene a mi vida y se aprovechan de mi , Será q algún día alguien se quedara conmigo solo por ser yo .

[andsauruss]

Te recuerdo conmigo en el jardín trasero, sólo viendo el cielo

Pero también te recuerdo molesto, evitando lo nuestro

Recuerdo tus besos

Y cómo nunca fuimos honestos

Cuánto nos ofendimos

Todo lo que reímos

Estar contigo era una montaña rusa, una que siempre fue confusa

Recuerdo los lugares a los que fuimos

Tu abrazos cuando tenía frío

Recuerdo cómo me dijiste que siempre me amarías

Pero que necesitaba tener más empatía

Te recuerdo dejando el orgullo, y pidiendo disculpas

Y al final, te recuerdo dejándome a oscuras...

[createmydreamblog]

„Bo rodzina to nie tylko więzy krwi” Hej kochani wracam i wrzucam wam recenzję! ❤️ Jak spędziliście długi weekend? 🔥 Bo u mnie było świetnie! ♥️ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Czy może być jeszcze bardziej niebezpiecznie, dziwnie i niesamowicie? Z Dorą Wilk zawsze! O to nasz kochany trumwirat jedzie do Trójprzymierza, by rozwikłać zagadkę umierających wampirów, po drodze okaże się, że to nie jedyna sprawa, ktorą muszą rozwiązać. Zatem Gajusz coś ukrywa, wampiry wychodzą na słońce, Baal wpada zrobić śniadanko, watacha się rozpada, Mironowi odbija, a Dora w oku cyklonu. Jakby nie fakt, że chciała pomóc wampirom z Trójprzymierza, ocalić synów to jeszcze okazuje się, że jej moce nie są tak skuteczne. Kiedy okazuje się, że moc alfy zawiodła, a ona sama prawie umarła przez jakąś wewnętrzną watache w jej stadzie to Miron zrzuca bombę. Oj jak ja miałam ochotę go wtedy udusić. No błagam takie jest jej życie, poświęca się dla bliskich, a ten stwierdza, że boi się ją stracić, więc odchodzi. No raczej stracisz ją za taką akcję niż jak będziesz przy niej. Biedna dziewczyna stara się być twardą i rozwiązać obie zagadki. Czemu wampiry wychodzą na słońce skoro to nie jest wcale dogasanie oraz co się dzieje z watachą i kto ją psuje od środka. Teraz musi zrozumieć co tak naprawdę jest ważne i musi podjąć decyzję czy się poświęci, czy wciąż będzie się kryć za tytulem honorowej alfy. Będzie zawierać nowe sojusze, wprowadzać nowe porządki i będzie walczyć ze swoim złamanym sercem 😢 Czy poradzi sobie z byciem alfą? Czy uratuje wampiry? I co najważniejsze czy odzyska Mirona? Wiele zadań i wiele pytań, a tak mało odpowiedzi. Jednak Dora zawsze spada na cztery łapy i może tym razem też się wykaraska z kłopotów. Uwierzcie tu też będą sceny, które was zaskoczą. Na pewno bawić się będzie świetnie. Dla mnie 10/10 ⭐ #book #recenzja #blog #anetajadowska #dorawilk #trójprzymierze #fight #blood #werewolf #vampires #witch #happy #smile #read #wszystkozostajewrodzinie #family #breakheart #dream #dark (w: Torun, Poland) https://www.instagram.com/p/Ck_1Di2IHIF/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[birsavid]

No lo sé...

Tengo muchas ganas de llorar...

[cts-games]

Breakheart: Dev Diary 3

The strengths of Fused System games

Last week dev diary (moving took more out of me than i thought, as did dealing with a very persistent TERF harassing me over on my main tumblr, I talked about Fused Systems and how to achieve synergy between the two systems used in the game. As a reminder, 'Fused System' is a term I entirely made up, to describe the TTRPG design niche of taking two games and jamming them together with duct tape, and 'Synergy' is just a buzzword for my game design neuroses and making sure certain things line up (such as using a consistent resolution system), even if no one else seems to care.

This week, I'll be expanding on the Synergy I'll be adding to the game, and why I chose Anima: Prime and Last Stand specifically as the basis for this project.

As mentioned before, the thing about ICON that made it feel like it falls short, was the lack of connective tissue. It felt too obvious in play that you were just switching between two different games.

Last week dev diary, I pointed to the dissimilar dice of the two games as part of the issue, and indeed, it can be part of it. However, it's far from the full story. A game doesn't NEED to use the same mechanical resolution across both of its modes. Indeed, the split between Combat Resolution and Out-of-Combat Resolution mechanics are one of the praised aspects of Stars Without Number.

However, in SWN you are still working off of a single character sheet. In ICON you are working off of two seperate character sheets, one for combat and one for out of combat. Nothing between the two sheets are shared (outside of XP and Dust)

The actual cause of this lack of synergy runs much deeper. NOTHING between the two sides of the game interact with each other. How would one go about fixing this for ICON? I'm not so sure. The two systems don't seem to actually get along. It's a large part of the reason I don't think it's viable to just take any two games and mash them together.

Resource Management in Anima: Prime and Last Stand

As the heading suggests, Anima: Prime and Last Stand both have a shared focus on one particular part of their gameplay: Resource Management.

In Anima: Prime, players have 3 Resource pools they keep tokens in (usually just the dice you will be rolling, because tokens are spent to gain dice 1:1), called the Action Pool, Strike Pool, and Charge Pool.

Each pool has a specific use for what it allows the player to do with their character. Action Pool dice are spent on Manuevers, the big flashy attacks that look pretty but don't actually move the narrative forward on their own. After a Manuever, dice that rolled a 3-5 are moved to the Strike Pool, and dice that rolled a 6 go to the Charge Pool.

Strike Pool dice are spent to make the kinds of attacks that DO push the narrative forward. The attacks that inflict lasting Wounds, and drive the opponent closer to defeat. They are also spent on Achievement actions that allow you to accomplish Goals during conflict, changing your relative narrative positioning, or even offering alternative win conditions for a conflict.

The Charge Pool is used to fund abilities that enhance the effects of your strikes. Many of the games powers use Charge Dice to offer a variety of effects, from healing to adding elemental damage to attacks to inflicting status conditions. They are hard to obtain but can be used to great effect.

Last Stand, on the other hand, only has a single Token Pool, but does have a highly recommended optional rule for a second pool, which ties into the initiavite system. Initiative in This second pool, the Combat Bribe, gains one token at the start of every combat round, and at the start of any round players can choose to delay their action until after the NPCs all act, to add all the tokens in their Combat Bribe to their Token Pool. This helps improve the token economy while also adding more tactical depth to combat by choosing when you actually gain those tokens.

Finding and Creating System Synergy in Breakheart

All of this comes together to demonstrate why I chose these two systems, and why I'm hunting this synergy. After all, what's the point of hunting for these compatibilities between systems if there isn't a way to utilize it? TRICK QUESTION: I design games for fun, and you don't need an ulterior motive to have fun. Though, luckily, in this case there is an additional benefit.

DESIGN SPACE!

Design space is a nebulous term, made all the less clear by the enshitification of Google leading to any attempts to look up the term to instead redirect you to CNC machines (as in the machines that cut stuff into specific shapes, not half the trans gals I follow on tumblr).

I layman's terms, design space is just a description of how much a developer can do with their own system, with the limitations they have placed. For example, Breakheart only uses 10-sided dice, and doesn’t use them as percentile dice. This limits my design space by preventing me from doing things like "Add an extra d4 to your roll" or having effects with a percentage chance to trigger (unless that chance is a multiple of 10%).

Again, just changing both systems to use the same dice isn't enough to create synergy on its own. It creates consistency, sure, but it restricts your design space and limits your games potential. Instead you need to find places where the design spaces of both games overlaps, and elements from both games can contribute to each other. For Breakheart, the focus of this synergy is in two places: Wounds and Resources.

Wounds

Wounds are fairly basic and easy to grasp. In Anima: Prime, players have 3(ish) Wounds that they can take before being taken out. In Last Stand, players have about 20(ish) points divided across 4 stats that determine how strong they are, but also use these stats as HP. If a stat is reduced to 0 then you lose your bonus when rolling that stat.

Obviously, 20 and 3 are not numbers that are close together, and would be hard to mesh together. Sure, you could finagle it so that wounds applied some amount of damage, or receiving a certain amount of damage will count as a wound, but this is insufficient in my view. Again, it feels two much like playing two entirely separate games. However, 4 and 3 are MUCH closer to each other. Just have wounds tied to eaxh stat. This also helps provide some clarity for an oft misunderstood mechanic in Last Stand, where players think they use only their current HP as a bonus to their rolls, which is incorrect.

Now, when a stat is reduced to 0 that stat becomes Wounded, and Wounds are what negate the bonus on the roll. Outside of combat you don't need to focus on the minutiae of tracking individual HP, and so instead you just deal directly with wounds. This also means enemy statblocks can be compatible with both subsystems without needing to have two different sets of stats for each mode of play.

Resources

The other place the games overlaps is in their resource management. By combining aspects of each system, both games benefit. Players have 3 pools, now renamed to Action, Attack, and Amplify, because I am not immune to the draw of alliteration. Tokens are moved between these pools or spent when activating various abilities. However, these tokens ALSO have their own Innate effects that activate while they are in a specific pool.

Tokens in your Action Pool represent your stamina and you draw from this pool to fill the other ones. Tokens in the Attack Pool represent your ability to harm others and are spent to make attacks in both Conflict and Combat phases. Tokens in the Amplify Pool represent your ability to aid others or enhance yourself, and are spent on additional effects in Conflict phases and on non-damaging effects in Combat phases.

In Conflict phases (the Combat portion of Anima: Prime), tokens generally flow from the Action Pool into the Attack Pool, with the occasional token going into Amplify instead. This supports those scenes strengths, focusing on intense but fast Combat that still has a tactical element through its resource management.

In Combat phases (the combat portion of Last Stand), this flow is switched, with tokens now flowing from the Action Pool into the Amplify Pool (functioning as the Combat Bribe mechanic from Last Stand), and from there either being spent or moved to the Attack Pool. This leads to the more drawn out and thoughtful combats of the grid-based combat. It's also my hope that by making non-damaging actions easier to build resources for, those actions will become more attractive and the game will promote a more collaborative team-based style of play, as opposed to just a focus on maximizing damage output.

Tokens can also have their own effects, just like in Last Stand. This is where the design space of Breakheart REALLY shines through the strongest in my opinion. Each non-basic Token now has 2 tags on it, as well as a passive effect. The first tag determines what phases the token is active in (Conflict or Combat, though theoretically there could be some that affect Character scenes as well), and the second tag determines what pools the token is active in (Action/Attack/Amplify/All).

Tokens can also have different effects in different phases. Poison is a status condition present in both games, and is mostly the same for both, but with some minor changes to account for how the systems interact. A Poison Token would have the following effect:

[Combat - Attack] At the start of your turn, take 1 Poison damage.

[Conflict - Any] At the start of your turn, lose 1 Token from your Action Pool.

This opens up some fun new design spaces that weren't previously possible in either game. You can have enemies with a 'Slow Acting Poison' attack that adds Poison counters to the players Amplify Pool. Now players have a choice. Do they move the tokens into their Attack Pool causing it to activate immediately but letting it fuel their stronger attacks? Do they use their actions for some non-damaging action to spend it before it starts causing trouble? Do they leave it where it is and try to find a way to get rid of it before the next Conflict where it will activate regardless of what Pool it's in?

An extremely basic attack leads to a huge split in possible options for the player. Creating design spaces like this, in my opinion, is where Fused System games can really excel and are something I would love to see more often. The overlap of these systems can offer so much potential, and I am so excited to explore it.

[hanz0z0]

my fault.

[arabronx]

¿Listos para ver a Interpol? Sobrinos, aun están a tiempo de vestir una ilustración de @ivanjuarezart x @arabronx.style . De venta en nuestra tienda en línea Link in Bio . . #madein #arabronx🐿 #pulpsong #romancepulp #pulpmagazine #stvalentinesday #tshirt #design #ilustraunacancion #ilustración #ilustracionmexico #collage #collageart #digitalart #vectorart #artistsoninstagram #breakheart💔 #breakheart #lovesongs #hechoenmexico #consumelocalmx #diseño #arabronx por #arabronxstyle🐿 #interpol #interpolnyc #interpolband #cmere #interpolfans (at CDMX) https://www.instagram.com/p/CeCD_YcuXpC/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[bokatan]

breakheart banks → watauga safehouse

technically my second attempt with this settlement but the last one bugged out when the cell refreshed- this one is more stable and I’ve made some changes I liked more. This is where my robotics/junk trader & companion oc, Delta, sets up shop after clearing the location with my sole Reed. the settlement itself is primarily home to a handful of robots and cats since Delta’s frequently on the road, but it doubles as a Railroad safehouse and frequently has other agents, synths, & other allies staying there temporarily.

some details + interiors under the cut

shop, supply storage, bathroom/laundry room, & power armor station

main house: interior

guest cabin: interior(will likely be tweaked- needs more beds)

[amnyatas]

okay so i did her face mockup the same as last night but i honestly don't hate the one i picked for the beta test???

also did an outfit mockup vs the one i picked for the beta, i think with the bigger hair the elf ears would actually look fantastic? idk!

[meesarart]

(via "Cracked Love" Tote Bag for Sale by meesara)