Update - 01/08/2020
Hello everyone, here I am with another Monday update! This past week I have been focused on the new Seekers Beyond the Shroud scenario for you guys, "Trees are people too". In it, you are sent to the Woods of Maine by Causa Scientiae to investigate some loggers reporting finding human body parts within freshly cut trees. How did they get there, and most importantly, why? I'm excited to share this story with you guys, I think it's a cool idea so I hope I can do it justice! As usual, you can expect to have to make some tough choices...
Aside from that, I've been working on Under Ashen Skies a bit more. I've been compiling all the info I need to send Dave for him to make the character sheets. This is probably the most complex character sheet you'll ever see, and it's going to be 2 or 3 pages long. Between the Time Track, the different Investigation and Exploration Tracks, the paper doll for the gear, and the typical list of Attributes, Skills, Talents, etc., there's really a lot to keep an eye on, and I want to make sure the character sheet reflects that. It's your game interface, and we all know how crucial is to have all the necessary information in front of you, presented in a clear way. I'm basically done with it so I hope I'll be able to send it to Dave soon. I just don't want to leave out anything important! Once we have the character sheets, I may start with a light alpha playtesting, to check how character creation feels and maybe the combat as well. Once I get the random gear generation rules down (can't wait to get into that, it's going to be complex but exciting to create!), I'll be very close to having a playable game, sans the story bits. Fingers crossed!
Not much more to tell right now, I'm just waiting on the Narrative Playbook covers, as usual (Matt said he's actually waiting for the print to answer about a few other stuff as well, like the Mystic Punks and UVG cover stuff... that print has really dropped the ball). I'm 99% sure that Seekers will be on sale this week, which is very cool, so that's something to look forward to!
That's all for now, more news coming next week!
Comments (2)
Will this Under Ashen Skies have narrative elements or just a straight dungeon crawler?
There will be some narrative elements, but as a randomly generated game it's tricky to add them without making them repetitive. There's the overall arching narrative of you trying to discover who you were and what's going on in the town, but the core of the game is a dungeon crawler, more than anything. Think of it as Diablo, you have a story, there are some characters you meet, but the game is about running around killing stuff and chasing the perfect drop. I aim for that style of gameplay. Of course, for that to work the combat has to be relatively fast and fun, so we'll have to hone it during playtesting! So far I'm very happy with it, and I have planned interesting enemies to make encounters very cool and varied. Each enemy will have its own reaction table (or at least that's the plan, I'm planning on working on that next), and paired with interesting combat effects and a deep character creation system, I think this will be a very fun game. It feels like a tabletop game, without the tiles and minis. We'll see how it evolves, though!