Hello!

It's been a while since I've posted something regarding the game's development, so I wanted to post a general update. I've been working a lot on the game in the past few weeks, and I'm around the final steps of releasing the next version. I need to finish up some numbers and tables, update the Play Aids to reflect the changes coming with this update, and finish proofreading before its release.

There is A LOT coming with the next update. A lot of age-old issues that have seen some entire reworks, ideas that I've had in my mental backlog that needed to be addressed, and a bunch of small QoL changes to improve the experience of the main aspects of the game. Let's break them down a bit:

Clarity & Writing Rules

Clarity has been a major issue for me in the past. In a way, it still is. Being able to properly communicate concepts through the rules and descriptions of the game is a complicated balance between showcasing the rules and having a well written structure, knowing when to mention things that pertain to the narrative, and when to focus completely on the mechanical aspect of the rules - specially tricky when both are intertwined.

One of the biggest issues I've had with clarity was knowing exactly when and what to roll, because the structure I had created was a bit too vague to accurately pinpoint how to approach them. Many of the changes coming with the next update try to solve this issue of clarity by adding new sections and by reworking old concepts into more transparent ones, and internally playtesting them has proved to me that I've gone down the right path.

Outside of the writing of the rules themselves, I noticed that I had been overlooking some major gaps in the rules that needed to be addressed, so I've done my part to try and give proper support to emergent situations that didn't have any structure before. A lot of this update hinges on writing better rules.

Character Growth & Investment

One thing I noticed over various playtests was that Players were having a hard time wrapping their head around certain concepts, and making a lot of suggestions regarding growth and difference between characters. The binary nature of the Bonuses system meant that you could easily tell apart sources of different things playing out in your chances, but in truth, the illusion of binary investment and horizontal progress was actually creating some major dissonance between what was really happening and how I presented it. I realized that certain aspects of each character's Traits and Skills were not actually being as relevant or as deep as I wanted them to be, and it created a general level of confusion at the table, namely, going over each individual bonus whenever Players needed to make a dice roll. Every single time. For over a year.

In response to this, I decided to adopt a more classical and direct approach of fewer, tiered bonuses. This allowed me to focus on a handful of more well defined elements that you could invest into, and recreate the freeform concepts of the past iterations into a more tangible character creation benefit instead of something to vaguely reference at various points of the campaign. The concept of having three tiers of investment has been in my head for a while, but I hadn't been able to really bring it to life until I changed the dice resolution mechanic with the last update.

Polishing the Journey Rules

The amount of time invested into the creation of the Journey rules isn't exactly a secret. It took about a year of trying out different models and researching various other games in order to form an amalgam of concepts and mechanics that would fit the game. What resulted was a very well developed but super rough approach to travel that, while it has some issues of its own, i'm actually quite happy with.

What I needed to do from that point onwards was simply to observe and write down weak points of the experience to try and polish them further, streamline some concepts and reinforce some others. Journey Rules have seen no changes to their general structure, but have gotten a bunch of small quality of life changes that make the process of journey planning and play a more approachable and flexible aspect of the game. Some rules have been simplified, some others have been given proper support and explanation, others have changed slightly, and new options to customize them to your own experience have been added.

All in all, I think I've managed to achive what I wanted out of them.

Skirmishes, Damage and Death

I don't talk much about combat, but it's one of my favorite aspects of the game. Still, I thought it had some weak points here and there that needed to be addressed. Starting a confrontation and going through combat proved to be a bit messy and unreliable in some aspects, and the solutions were already in the game, in the form of secondary, alternative rules and other hidden notes. The new rules take into account the use of Zones, and have been properly expanded in order to accomodate to this new structure. Action economy has seen changes, action types of various kinds have seen changes, there's a lot to talk about. The game has a much better developed tactical structure now, and I'm really happy to have found a middle ground between fast, cinematic combat and tactical investment.

Some rules regarding damage had to be addressed. The fact that I had three separate "HP Bars" has been a problem for some time, and this was jointly addressed by my attempts to fix the 3-bar issue and the clarity of attribute rules. It's been simplified a lot now, and adjacent rules regarding damage have been thoroughly updated to adjust to this.

Damage types had some weird relationships between them, as well! Which led me to do two things: merge damage types that were essentially doing the same thing, and expand on damage types that were being left behind and that could create unique relationships with damage. Non-Lethal damage in particular has been given a lot more focused support this time around, making the act of subduing enemies a very real and viable strategy.

Monsters

While changing basic rules of play, I accidentally neglected and completely broke the structure of Monster creation. What essentially started as just fixing a numbers game turned into a fully fledged revision of monster design and presentation, which I had not originally planned to include in this update. So, hooray!

Magic & Fighting Rules

Magic is in a good spot. It's always been. So much in fact, that the unique structure used in Magic Traditions offered some very real benefits to martial play, so I've decided to adapt its structure to expand into fighting styles as well. Combat Styles, later renamed into Martial Disciplines, suffered of one of the many issues of clarity and presentation I've talked above: aimlessness. Combat Styles were originally conceived as fully freeform ventures, but that meant that there was very little room for growth and specialization, which has been addressed with this new structure.

When it comes to magic, some things have been cleaned up and polished, but nothing much. It remains one of the most solid aspects of the game right now. However, one of them was clearly suffering from old concepts mixed with lack of clarity: Theurgy. As such, Theurgy has seen a bit of polish as to how it's handled by the rules. Just half a page of changes, and yet it completely changes the way the archetype works for the better. I genuinely think this is the most accurate representation of how it was supposed to work since the very beginning, following its initial concept masterfully. I'm quite happy for that.

And a lot more!

There's way too much stuff to talk about. Keep an eye out for the next update, which should drop sometime in the next week or two. I still need to do some final proofreading and cleanup, but it's almost done. It feels almost like a complete game. What comes next is paving the way for the beta, which I'm sure I'll be able to share some more info on later down the line.

As such, I've decided, at least for now, that this version will be the LAST Alpha update the game will see before jumping onto Beta. I'm quite excited for that prospect, though it makes me quite nervous. I'm happy to see how far the game has come.

Thank you for your support.