Update - 10/06/2024

Hello, everyone! How was your weekend? I did the usual: write, go out for a bit, and continue our D&D 4e campaign. I've been running a sandbox campaign for a few months now in my own setting, and it's been pretty fun! At least my players seem to enjoy it so far, and since I don't have much time to prepare, the sandbox nature of it really allows me to adapt to what they're planning on doing at the moment.

Last week I finally cracked the crafting code for Carnage & Aether. I really went back and forth a lot, developing a few different systems in parallel, but I think the one I've decided to keep (you can read the post I created about it here a couple of days ago) seems to work pretty nicely. The other big alternative was to create a large selection of pre-generated gear, and let players just pick which one they wanted. But I think that using the Properties system ties the game closer to Ker Nethalas, and it allows for more personalization. I'm currently working on adapting the Masteries so they can work with tactical grid-based combat, and once I'm done with that I can go back to the arena chapter and wrap up the Patron rules. I will also ask David to start working on the character sheet, now that I have all the details he'll need.

Last week I also decided to ask Richard (author of Over War) to write the random trial rules for Ruthless Heavens, Boundless Fate. I started doing it myself and realized I was really not feeling it, so instead of forcing myself and half-assing it, I thought that Richard would be a good fit for it. He's an excellent writer and RPG designer, and he wrote the RHBF quickstart so he's already familiar with the book. I gave him all my notes and what I had written so far, and he's already working on it. I'm sure it's going to be great!

It feels great to be able to offload stuff this way, so I can focus on what I'm enjoying at the moment. I'm really having fun with Carnage & Aether (even though it's a lot of work), and it's presenting a series of problems that I never encountered while writing an RPG, so it's really interesting from a design point of view. My biggest fear is not being able to bring all the new elements into Ker Nethalas, which was one of my design goals from the very beginning. I guess I could just grab all the monsters from KN and use them for C&A, but somehow it doesn't feel right, thematically speaking. There are of course some enemies that will appear in both games, but having every single creature from an unknown necropolis appear on an arena in the surface is just weird. Yes, I have an in-game justification for it, and it's that the arena organizers sometimes capture creatures from Ker Nethalas for their fights, but I also want to be able to showcase some of the creatures from the surface world.

The problem is, in order to make KN compatible with the new tactical combat, the bestiary must be adapted to tactical combat. There are tons of enemy actions that make no sense in a grid, or that are too vague and just don't work. I also need to adapt the Masteries, but that's something I'm already working on, since they are a part of C&A's crafting. My gut reaction is to release C&A as it is, make sure it's a good game that can stand on its own, and then down the like release a booklet with all the KN creatures converted to tactical combat. But if you guys have a better idea, I'm all ears!

So that's it for now, I'll be keeping myself busy the whole week with more C&A, trying to wrap it up this month. I'm really close to being able to start playtesting, most likely in 2 weeks or so.

Have a great week!