What am I currently working on?
Hello, everyone! It's been a while since I posted a public update here, so it's about time! I just wanted to share with you all my current projects.
As you all know, Ruthless Heavens, Boundless Fate funded last month. Since then, I've been tweaking things, working with the illustrators to add the missing art, and most of all, working on the stretch goal content: the randomly generated Trials. I actually decided to work with Richard Kelly for this, since he is the one who wrote the RHBF quickstart, and is an excellent RPG designer with lots of experience. So I gave him all my notes and design goals for this, and he started working. This was weeks ago, of course, and now the text is done! The result is almost 30 pages of random tables to generate all sorts of Trials, from the typical "endure a number of enemy waves", to attempting to summon a creature, break peace between factions, and more. Lots of cool options there, so both solo players and GMs without time to prep can get a game going with just a few rolls! These new rules include tables to randomly generate creatures and traps, as well, so believe me, they are packed with useful stuff!
I am now working on the layout for these new rules, and I expect to be done soon. Still, the game is at least a month away from being truly done because there are still quite a few illustrations to be done, and that takes time! It's going to be absolutely gorgeous once it's all done, though!
Aside from that, I've been working very hard on Carnage & Aether: Revenants of Veldonia, the tactical arena game set in the world of Ker Nethalas. As some of you already know, this game is largely compatible with Ker Nethalas: it uses the same core rules, and the same combat. What changes is the gear and Mastery implementation, as well as adding a layer of grid-based tactical combat. My initial goal was to make C&A kind of a tactical expansion for KN, but I realized that this wasn't really achievable, without having to take all gear, Masteries, enemies, and some encounters and events from Ker Nethalas and converting them to tactical combat. Now, this is perfectly doable, but it didn't make much sense in the context of an arena game. Why would anyone need dungeon exploration details in a game focused on arena fights? Yes, you can definitely take all the C&A Masteries, the tactical rules, and the enemies, and use them in Ker Nethalas, because as I said these are sister games with 100% compatible core rules. Combat works exactly the same (with the added Stamina system in C&A to deal with tactical combat actions), and so do conditions, damage, Health, making checks... everything. But since there are no Overseers in C&A (there are Elite enemies, which work a bit differently than Overseers), that sort of stuff wouldn't work on KN. I fully expect industrious players to adapt the few elements from C&A that don't match into KN, but I can't in good faith claim that you can use C&A to play KN tactically, because even if it's possible, there are elements that just aren't there.
So my goal is to, down the line, release a sort of "bridge" expansion to fully link C&A and KN. This would mean taking all the enemies and Masteries (most of which are already present in C&A, by the way!), but most importantly, gear and those elements that are truly unique to a dungeon survival experience, and adapting them to tactical combat mechanics. I think it's very important that C&A stands by itself as a good game, instead of just as a KN expansion. I'm super proud of how the game is turning out so far, I think it has a lot of depth and interesting mechanics that I haven't seen in other games. Evocatus and higher tier Patreon members will be able to see it for themselves very soon, as I'm planning on sharing the first half of the book (sans art, that's still WIP) next week!
So as you see, I'm keeping myself busy! I'm actually really close to being able to start playtesting C&A, and I'm super excited to do so. I'll share my experiences with you guys when I can!
Alex.