Update - 14/04/2025

Hello, and welcome to another weekly update! I hope you all had a great weekend. I spent mine working on Riftbreakers 2e, but I did dedicate a bit of free time to work on a new setting I'm building for a future Rolemaster campaign I want to run for my friends. I'm using the Tome of Worldbuilding, following it very closely, just to try something different. It's a fun exercise! I don't even know if I'll actually use the setting I'm creating once I'm done, but I'm having fun.

With Riftbreakers, I spent most of the week figuring out the new Companion system. Companions are all combat-focused now, even though they each have a Trait that will boost one of your Skills out of combat. They are all completely randomly generated, and you can only take one with you. The game now scales to the number of PCs and Companions, so no more forcing you to play in groups of three. Companions are added to your Ability Loadout (i.e. your combat deck), and you can "summon" them into a fight that way. I think it's a fun system, and it integrates very nicely with the rest of combat mechanics. You can no longer hire Companions, though, as they are obtained via class rewards. Since they are no longer mandatory to have, I want to make getting one something special and fun. The idea is that you'll have a stable of Companions to choose from, and depending on what you do, you'll take one or another with you.

Next comes the revamping of how Rifts works. I have a few ideas I want to try, so I'm guessing this will keep me busy the whole week. I was confident I'd have the game done before the month's over, but I'm afraid it doesn't look that way, since I keep changing and adding things. The most important thing is to get it right, though! If I don't finish it this month, it will be really close to being done, though. Oh yeah, here's the new cover!

In other news, our fellow Order member Gwydion has a new video series focusing on indie solo RPG creators, and he decided to start it with an episode dedicated to my work. Check it out!

Oh yeah, and before I forget, I will start with the pre-orders for the Machine Gods offset copies tomorrow, most likely! This will be both for the Core Rules and the Voidspire Territories books. You'll be able to purchase each separately, or both together in a bundle! I'm really excited to do so, I spoke with the printer and they told me they'll ship the books next week already! I hope they send me some photos soon.

So that's it for this week, now it's back to work for me. I can't wait to start playtesting Riftbreakers 2e. Have a great week!