#playtest material

[rpgsandbox]

Kobold Press’s Project Black Flag playtesting is already underway, and the deadline for feedback on the first packet (character building) is imminent.

Download the packet at DriveThruRPG:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/426952/Project-Black-Flag-Playtest-Packet-1-Lineage--Heritage

or from here:

https://d2qwlo0rgdq9bs.cloudfront.net/Black+Flag+Playtest+Packet+1.pdf

Feedback form:

https://koboldpress.com/project-black-flag-playtest-packet-1-feedback/

[another-rpg-sideblog]

Unearthed Arcana: Giant Options

Download the pdf from this link.

[keganexe]

Meet The Agents of Rot

I've been working on Blister City, an upcoming far future setting guide for playing survivors on the last city of Mars, for what feels like an eternity now. I want to start sharing some of my favorite factions, npcs, locations, and mechanics from the guide just so I have something to point to if folks want to know more about it as I ever approach finishing the game.

Follow that link up above if you want some basic information on Mars and the setting, because I'm gonna dive right in like you know everything else already.

So first up, lets meet one of my favorite factions, The Agents of Rot.

Who Are the Agents of Rot?

In the simplest form, The Agents are a doomsday cult devoted to the teachings of a long dead and unnamed scholar. They believe the destruction of humanity is already happening, and unstoppable; and they long only prepare everyone for the oncoming end times, without any desire to hasten the coming end.

In 2143, The Agents of Rot first landed in the city of Ambition (which would later become Blister City) after having been chased off earth by The Crusade for their heretical religious beliefs. With them came the first of the Prophet Machines, cobbled together old tech that spits out endless streams of numbers and letters, from which adherents claim the future can be known and prepared for. Upon their arrival to Mars, The Agents had a dire portent, Mars would fall in 2191.

Their portents were ignored, but history would go on too stare back in wonder as their preaching was true. Down to the minute. Ultimate Mars does fall, and today The Agents of Rot occupy a strange space in the city, their heretical beliefs seemingly true, but their message still unpopular for the folks in the last city.

Where Are the Agents of Rot?

In The Mids, the second layer of the three layer Blister City, sits The Smokestack District. In The Lowers, directly under this district the industry of the Blister is booming. Miasma is refined, plasteel is produced, and the toxic smoke of industry pushes up through the levels unstopped by those with the power to demand better.

It is in the worst of this toxic runoff we find The Smokestack District, and herein find some of the worst of the city. The folks who call The Smokestacks home are a combination of those with the expensive lung bionics that make breathing here safe, trading a lifetime of debt for an opportunity to live in an apartment they can afford; and those chased out by the rest of the city, largely unmodified and suffering short lives as the air toxicity kills slowly but painfully and surely.

In The Smokestack District you can find The Rot Chapel, one of few wooden buildings in the city, although the building itself is dilapidated, rotting, and covered in soot. A walk through the church shows mildewed religious statues, sitting undisturbed next to rack after rack of advanced computers; each beeping away at impossible maths. Cries echo out across the church as more prophets discover portents of the future in the hodgepodge of numbers lighting up across screens.

The Agents of Rot in Play

In Blister City, you can find yourself working alongside or against any number of factions in the city, each with a list of pros and cons for helping or harming them. While the factions usually only provide these boons and banes during missions for or against them, The Agents of Rot instead always provide boons and banes for players.

If You Make an Ally of The Agents

+1: The Agents consider you a fledgling acolyte of their faith. Rot Shops are open to you, as are their churches for those looking to lay low.

+2: The Agents consider you a true believer. You gain a discount in Rot Shops, and gain access to their medical centers.

+3: The Agents have begun to see prophecies of you. Once ever you can go to them, and have them tell you a terrible but true fact about events yet to happen.

If You Make an Enemy of The Agents

-1: The Agents of Rot are scared of you and your crew. You are actively turned away from Rot Churches and Rot Shops, violently if necessary.

-2: The Agents consider you persona non grata, and take to the streets preaching of the dangers of being near you, and your allies.

-3: The Agents have begun to see prophecies of you, and it terrifies them. The Agents pool all of their resources, and will hire whoever it takes to kill you, and challenge the hands of fate.

Final Thoughts

The Agents of Rot are but one of 25 named factions, and have (like all the factions do) complicated ties to the city and the other factions. They frequently find themselves allied with The Children of The Red Sands, other religious outsiders to the city; and working against The Rusakli, a quiet order of well liked healers who The Prophet Machines keep spitting out warnings against.

[transsurlee]

so much is happening on the 26th how does anyone expect me to do ANYTHING

[corvuscorona]

hey. hey. hey. hey. hey so in ff16 they give you a flash step that goes forward but when you're a big monster (happens for setpiece boss fights only) they give you a roller skating move that goes sideways instead. but then there's a fight where they give your monster form a forwards flash step too.

and IN THAT SAME BOSS FIGHT, you need to do it Twice in a row to close the distance between "outside the big AOE attack" and "guy you need to punch after he does the AOE" & this sums up basically everything you need to know about how AGGRESSIVELY MEDIOCRE the combat really is in this game.

anybody who tells you it's good is either lying or is remembering 1 of like 2 and a half really nicely-tuned fights, one of which was optional. and the health bars were still too fucking stubborn in all of them.

[hoppinglegs]

God Alexis asking James if she wants to pet her eidolon and him saying no is so much funnier when you know that Alexis's Eidolon is explicitly inspired by HDM's daemons

[corpsecravings]

CHTHONIC TIEFLINGS REAL CONFIRMED

[cutesilyo]

you know how there was a running theme with the NPC encounters in hades? that sisyphus, eurydice, and patroclus were all involved in stories about being unable to escape death?

and its something thats explicitly discussed within hades itself, at least for sisyphus and eurydice. sisyphus had attempted to cheat death three times, one of the most notable being when he bound thanatos in chains. orpheus had found a way to bring eurydice back to life, but couldn't follow through with completing hades' challenge. achilles had a prophecy hanging over him during the war; die in glory at troy or live long unremembered. he chose the war and patroclus followed. they didn't survive. they are all different manifestations of the axiom zagreus is fighting against: that in hades, there is no escape.

so i was thinking. in the hades 2 playtest, we get dialogue from nemesis about how mortals had it better during kronos' time. we get dialogue from arachne too, about being distrustful toward the gods because of her curse.

i wonder if the running theme for the npcs in hades 2 will be people maligned by the gods in some shape or form.

arachne is already confirmed as the npc encounter for erebus. proud athena cursed her into being a spider. will we see victims of a love gone wrong in the next biome, like daphne perhaps? will we see those offered up for sacrifice just to appease the gods, such as andromeda or iphigenia? maybe those who were killed, perhaps unjustly so, because they dared fly too close to the heavens, like bellerophon or icarus? demigods that were cursed because of their birth, ala heracles? its long been a joke that the greek myths are just full of people suffering because of the incomprehensible acts of the gods. if hades 2 goes down this route, theres a lot of material to draw inspiration from.

and its an especially interesting direction because we know that its kronos waiting for us down the line. kronos, who ruled the golden age. when it comes to those wronged by the gods, you cant get much worse than being waged war against, your mountain stronghold so damaged from the attack that it loses height, and then being cut up into tiny pieces.

kronos, the crooked one. i bet he'd have a hell of a time trying to convince melinoe that the gods cant be trusted. and melinoe would be surrounded by all these narratives that would just prove his point.

just like how zagreus was in hades, who was surrounded by all these narratives about how death had no escape. and yet, his story is about how life and love bloom despite it. i cant wait to see what melinoe is fighting against now.

[salamencerobot]

Recent seasons of hermitcraft, while still showcasing individual projects, have become more and more community-focused.

And nothing embodies that more than VintageBeef's Hermitcraft TCG project.

Because as an outsider, you hear about this and assume it's a solo project made by someone with wayyy too much time on his hands (like most hermit projects)

But if you actually watch the videos? The other hermits are scrambling to help in any way. Multiple hermits donate materials, for example Grian donating lapis blocks and Gem donating an entire monument's worth of prismarine (well, letting him borrow it). Keralis giving him wings and rockets and MASSIVELY cutting down the time it takes to make maps. Xisuma installing a plugin to let Beef add flavor text. Etho and Xb doing the first playtest. A group of hermits coming over to help with map cleanup, and Tango donating beacons. I haven't gotten to that part of his series yet but I know more people help with setting up the shop and the arenas and everything and its just

The hermitcraft TCG is a labor of love not just because it's showing Beef's love for his community but because it was aided by his community's love for him.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Alright, guess it’s time to address the apocalyptic legal elephant in the room:

For those who might not know, WotC plans were leaked to “update” the OGL in what is basically a scorched earth policy with regards to 3rd party material/creators in the hopes of cutting out the competition and forcing people to use their new products. 

As someone who lived through the 4th edition/pathfinder schism, the situation is laughably similar:  D&D is flourishing more than it ever has (thanks primarily to the OGL) but the execs at Hasbro want more of the money spent on the hobby to wind up in their pockets. Oblivious to the fact that the opensource nature of the game is what draws people to it,  they task the design team with creating a proprietary virtual tabletop through which they can sell d&d content without having to worry about books or pdfs being pirated. This rightfully outrages the fandom and burns every scrap of good will they had towards WotC, resulting in a dead edition that’s maligned years afterword as folks hop to the newer, easier game system. 

The thing that’s different this time is that the d&d playerbase has grown exponentially since the days of the first OGL, with 5th edition being the easiest version of the game to run/pick up and so many resources online, there’s almost no barrier to entry besides finding a stable/accommodating group.   Hell, with the explosive popularity of liveplay series you don’t even need to be actively playing in order to be in the fandom.  All of these people are networked together in a fandom hivemind spread across twitter/reddit/youtube and WotC just made an enemy of every single one of them with its shameless and destructive cashgrab.  No streamer or 3rd party publisher wants to give Hasbro 25% of their revenue, to say nothing of having their project “cancelled” if WotC sees it as a threat to any of their current projects ( see the huge number of spelljammer materials published after the company dropped the ball). 

It took about two years after the announcement of 4th edition for Paizo to come out with pathfinder, and I have no doubt the OGL leak kickstarted every major 3rd party publisher brainstorming some legally distinct version of the 5e ruleset. In the coming months I expect to see a number of these surrogate systems floating around the internet in much the same way that the onednd playtest content, but spurred on with the added “fuck you Hasbro” energy. After that, it’s only a matter of time till one of the big streamers picks up one of these systems and popularizes it, not wanting to pay the 25%tithe to WotC. Personally my money’s on Critical Role: they were one of the major factors in popularizing 5th edition and they’ve got the fandom pull to legitimize any claimant to the throne. 

To step away from playing oracle for a bit, I’d like to finish up this post by dunking on WotC:  

*ahem*

HOW FUCKING DUMB TO YOU HAVE TO BE TO TURN YOUR ENTIRE CUSTOMER BASE AGAINST YOU IN ONE NIGHT? This is some new coke/Reynolds pamphlet/invading Russia in winter levels of shooting yourself in the foot. Wizards was on shaky ground to begin with given that they’re coming off a series of notably disappointing products AND trying to launch a new edition/virtual tabletop/battlepass system, but to follow that up with a retroactive rules change that lets them outright steal from or shut down creators? It’s laughable.  Maybe, MAYBE they could have made this work if they were knocking it out of the park with new releases every year and cultivating a base of diehard WotC loyalists, but the fact of the matter is that aside from the brand name, the hobby has largely passed them by. Everything that Wizards does, from player options to settings to monsters to rules modules, someone else does better because they’re willing to take risks and put in the effort. Aside from the elegant simplicity of 5e’s base system, I can count maybe two pieces of actual game design (piety from Theros, ship combat from Saltmash) that I consider usable at my table, which is SAYING SOMETHING considering we’re nearing the end of the game’s ten year golden age. 

I know we’ll weather this storm, we always have, and regardless of what happens I still know my friends and I will enjoy gathering around the table and slinging dice even though we might not be playing “dungeons and dragons” in a couple years time.  I’ll keep my eye on the horizon, and let you know where I find safe harbour.

[sahonithereadwolf]

"Protect the Sacred's first complete playtest is here! Protect the Sacred is a anticolonial pulp adventure game that looks to emulate the mood and tone of the pulp movement beyond just as the globe-trekking adventure of stories like Indiana Jones, Johnny Quest, and Tomb Raider, but also pulp as horror, mystery, sci-fi, drama, and even romance.

In Protect The Sacred you work as a member of The Memento Group, an organization that, nominally, is an international nonprofit who is mostly interested in historical preservation, cultural outreach, and the building and support of museums and landmarks. As well as deconstructing and interrogating the colonial legacies of various academias and how they continue into today.

In truth, while they do that work and more, they are also a community-facing resource of specialists who look to protect, preserve, and reclaim a world of magic, monsters, and mystical artifacts on behalf of who they belong to and on that community's terms. Because for the Players of Protect The Sacred, all the intangibles of culture are all so very tangible.

Play as adventurers armed with folkloric magic power, deeply rooted in their connections to the culture around them. From wielding a legendary magical item, to practicing a cultrual magic, to taking the form of the fiercest monsters from your people's stories.

Explore the mythic realms talked about in the legends of heroes and gods as part of the Grand Outside, a magical otherworld in a mutually affecting relationship with the material. Explore a secret wizards nightmarket for clues and rumors on a trail for a stolen remains. Brave impossible and strange dungeons formed by stories that need to be told and stare truth straight in the eyes. Plan a heist to steal back the pilfered and stolen.

In this game I look to ask people to consider themselves, their relationship to culture, and what it looks like. I want you to consider and think on the meaning and value of the stories, lessons, and skills we pass on to others. I want to ask how we could challenge the ways we build and engage with history and these stories. This is a game where you fist fight fascism in many forms. It's a game about telling stories and building heroes. Are you ready to Protect the Sacred?" --- Information about joining the playtest can be found in the link! I'm excited to show y'all what I've been working on for about 2 and a half years.

[rpgsandbox]

The fourth playtest packet for Kobold Press’s Project Black Flag (now known as Tales of the Valiant) - Kobolds and Smallfolk - is now available. The deadline for feedback is Friday, July 14.

Download the packet at DriveThruRPG:

or from here:

Feedback form:

[idrellegames]

Wayfarer 2024 Roadmap

It’s the start of a new year and I’m excited to announce my plans for Wayfarer’s development.

The primary focus for 2024 is finishing Episode 3 and starting Episode 4. My goal has always been to get the alpha build to the point where it is one episode ahead of the public build, and forcing my way through this period has been very difficult. Episode 3 has turned into a more challenging endeavour than I anticipated due to its sheer size and complexity. I did not intend to take over a year to finish it, but if I’ve learned anything from the creative process it’s that it is unpredictable and things never go according to plan.

The 2024 roadmap is for an idealized scenario. I am hoping I have given myself enough wiggle room should things go off-course. With that in mind, the plan for the last 6 months of the years is an estimate and will likely change. Regardless, the goal remains the same: finish Episode 3, finish Episode 4, and release Episode 3 publicly.

Winter • January to March

This quarter will be focused on finishing the next stages of Episode 3. Episode 3 is divided into 4 parts:

Part 1: the beginning of the episode, following the routes that occur if the player ends Episode 2 with Aeran or Veyer. This part is finished and was added to the alpha build in May 2023. It includes over 300,000 words of playable content.

Part 2: the beginning of the episode, following the routes that occur if the player ends Episode 2 with Melchior, alone, or drunk. This part was skipped over and will be returned to at a later date.

Part 3: the middle of the episode, split into three different routes that eventually bottleneck at a specific point. This part is currently in-progress, with Route 1 nearing completion.

Part 4: the episode finale

January and February will be devoted to writing Episode 3 Part 3, which includes finishing Route 1 and completing Routes 2 and 3. In March, I will code that material and playtest it. Once it has been thoroughly playtested, it will be added to the alpha build (playable on my Patreon).

March will also see an update to the public build. Patch 2.7. will not add any new content, but it will patch reported bugs in Episodes 1 and 2 and update some quality of life issues.

Spring • April to June

This quarter will be focused on writing Episode 3 Part 2, the Episode 3 finale, and coding and playtesting all of the remaining material. Should all go according to plan, the Episode 3 alpha will be finished at the end of June. All routes will be playable for members of my Patreon.

The next round of playtester applications will open in May. Playtesters are volunteers who play the alpha build in search of bugs, continuity errors, and typos. They get first access to new content, and updates and patches before anyone else does. Because Wayfarer’s gameplay includes hundreds of choices and many, many variations that build on each other, playing multiple times and checking different options is essential for testing to ensure each area of the game functions as intended.

In June bonus content (short stories, writing tutorials, worldbuilding and lore posts, etc) will return to my Patreon. It is currently on a break, but the backlog of extras and specials are available to members of the Apprentice tier.

Summer • July to September

If the Episode 3 alpha is finished on time, this quarter will start the development of Episode 4. Episode 4 is divided into three separate routes that have no-crossover and each feature a main companion. Alexia’s (Route A) will be worked on in August and Ren’s (Route B) will be worked on in September.

This is an estimated timeline and is subject to change.

Fall • October to December

The last quarter will see the end of Episode 4’s development. This includes Calla’s route (Route C) and additional coding and playtesting. A second round of playtester applications will open in October. If all goes well, December will see the release of the Episode 4 alpha on Patreon and Episode 3 will launch on the public build.

This is an estimated timeline and is subject to change.

[publishinggoblin]

Finally making its way to crowdfunding, Confluence: The Living Archive now has a landing page for our October 2024 Backerkit project! Click here and you can sign up to be notified on our launch next year!

Confluence is a ridiculous project. This TTRPG features a fantastic system for making your characters to go experience all that Ajurea, the land of Confluence, has to offer, but it also features diegetic Atlases (yes plural) that are massive books at 9 1/2x11". Diegetic meaning in-world, as if they were written by, used by, and doodled in by people from the world.

Some mechanics will be in the mechanics books, the catalog, but some will only be findable in particular locations within the Atlases, prompting you to explore the world at the table, and take pieces of the world into your character through unique regional specialties and traits.

We have been working on this for a while, a team of 14+, and are working our way through our playtests now, and making sure the material we put forward is everything you need to really delve into the incredible world of Ajurea. Come check out our team, see more art, and more over on the website!

[jkcorellia]

Forgive the very Bad visualization (but unfortunately the playtest materials didn't include a visualization so here we are), but I am really enjoying what I've read of the Daggerheart playtest so far, in particular their Domains and how they inform your character's class. There are nine core classes in the game, each of which sits at the intersection of two of the nine mystical "domains".

These domains govern different aspects of a character's abilities, both broadly/narratively (e.g. the Sage domain governs connection to nature) and mechanically - at character creation, a player selects 2 domain cards, which contain significant character abilities, from their 2 available domains (1 from each or 2 from 1). It's a really neat way of adding some flavor to character creation.

It also (because I am who I am) makes me wonder what a character class that "crosses the wheel" would look like. What about a Midnight/Valor-based class? Or Sage/Blade?

Anyway. Good shit. This is really fun so far.

[ostrichmonkey-games]

Anyways, speaking of working on games, how about some Stampede Wasteland updates;

Working on a carousing table;

Also a little table to inspire GMs when they need to whip up a last second mission;

And the highlight of this post, rules for tracking Resources and rules for tracking money. Resources first.

The goal was to come up with an abstracted way of keeping track of the more mundane supplies and stuff that PCs are going to need without having to worry about actually keeping track of things. So, behold, either you have it or you don't.

Resources Each player has an abstract, binary pool of Resources. This covers rations, water, fuel, bullets. All the bare necessities. If it is ever in question whether you have Resources or not, roll+Hits marked. On a success, you’re out of what you need. You either have Resources or you don’t. There’s no in between. 

And now for wealth. Originally, I had a pretty standard "this sort of things costs this much" and "this job might reward this much". But here's the thing, coming up with actual monetary values sucks and I hate doing it! Also, given that supplies are abstract, why shouldn't money be abstract? Internal consistency is nice.

So, two birds one stone, I ripped out the original "wealth system" and replaced it with the following;

Cash Each player has an abstract pool of cash on hand at any given moment. The exact amount doesn’t matter. You can have No Money, A Little Money, A Lot of Money, or More Money Than You Could Ever Imagine (you cannot actually ever have this much money, bummer).  Each time you gain A Little Money, mark one slot on the track (10 slots). Once the track is filled up, you have A Lot of Money.  If you have A Little Money, you can always afford things that cost A Little Money. Same for A Lot of Money. If a situation ever arises where you might lose money, roll+money slots marked vs 20. On a success, you’re good. On a miss, step down one wealth level.  Money is tracked individually, but you can give a slot of Money to someone else if you really want. Cash rewards go to whoever is the agreed upon treasurer. Hope you trust them. If a character ever dies with wealth on them, half the number of marked money slots can be recovered from their remains, rounded down to a minimum of zero.  Nobody starts the game with any money.

Ultimately, how much money you have wasn't going to matter in the game beyond bookkeeping, just whether or not you had enough. And this subsystem represents that better. I ended up going with "roll+money slots marked" as the "modifier" to the roll because it makes some sense that the more cash you have, the harder it is to lose it all.

Still plugging away at the GM facing material, but honestly, almost all the player-facing stuff is done (and I'm going to be doing some small playtesting, before maybe opening it up some. We'll see.), and it is nice to get closer and closer to text-complete.