Update - 22/01/2023
Hello, and welcome to another weekly update! I hope everyone had a great weekend, mine was spent writing and fixing lots of typos and other mistakes in Godshard (thanks, Snowkeep!). I think this week I'll submit it to DTRPG, and look into printing options to make a few offset copies.
According to Phil we should have the finished PDF for Across a Thousand Dead Worlds this week, so I cannot wait! This means that while we go over it with the community, I'll be working on finalizing all the sheets and other aids that are almost a requirement to play a game with so many moving parts as this one. I can't express enough how much I want to move to the printing phase of this project, we should have been done months ago and here we are, a year later and still working on it... I thought I couldn't have come more prepared into it, considering the game was written and playtested by the time the KS was over, but there's always something lurking around the corner, ready to mess up all my plans. After this I must admit I'm super weary of working again on large projects that require a KS, at least not if I'm in charge of everything. I might move to releasing smaller projects by myself, and leave larger ones, such as ATDW or Empire Undying, to a publisher. We'll see.
So how are you guys liking Godshard? I know a few of you have been playing it already, so I'm super excited about hearing your thoughts. I'll be updating the PDF here on Patreon very soon, to include the many fixes and tweaks that have gone into it these last few days. Once Godshard is properly completed I'll refocus on Riftbreakers. This weekend was very productive and I managed to finish the character creation rules. I'm super excited to play the game myself, because I think it's going to be a lot of fun. I'm trying lots of new ideas and systems, trying to make the gameplay super fast and tight. The whole game was the result of me wanting to replicate the feeling of an MMO such as World of Warcraft, but as a TT RPG. The first piece to achieve that is having a cool character progression. In Riftbreakers, you start by picking one of four Hearts available to you during the "tutorial" area:
- The Arcane Heart allows you to use powers typically associated with spellcasters: magic shield, magic bolt, telekinesis, that sort of stuff.
- The Might Heart is for those who want to play as a warrior, combining mobility with two-hand weapon fighting.
- The Shadow Heart as you can imagine is for a rogue type of gameplay: backstab, hide in the shadows, even teleport from one shadow to another.
- The Restoration Heart is your typical healer, with some buffing and damage included as well.
For now, I've included ten different Hearts. Characters choose four among all the available ones, with each Heart allowing you to pick five among the fifteen Abilities they offer you, so even if two characters chose the same Hearts, they could end up playing very differently. Some of the other Hearts are less typical, such as the Time Heart, for interesting crowd control and buffing/debuffing, or the Blade Heart, which is kind of an agile sword master with lots of cool attacks and moves.
All the Abilities use either Stamina or Aether to be cast, so there's an aspect of resource management that I think makes things more interesting. Of course, this is based on MMOs so you can expect to be gulping down mana potions and equipping gear that increases your Stamina pool, etc.
I have a lot of other cool things to talk about, but I'll leave it for the next update, this is already getting too long! So yeah, this week I'll wrap up Godshard, hopefully share the final ATDW PDF, and work on Riftbreakers. Lots to do!
Have a great week, everyone!