Grand Expedition now on Screentop - 100% free

What the title says - for those who don't prefer Tabletop Simulator, The Grand Expedition is now available on Screentop.gg.  If you want to try out the game without downloading anything and without paying for the platform, now's your chance.  Although you'll have to grab the manual off of Scribd.

Magic items for Neon Knights

 I'm still around, I promise!  Just busy with other things the past few weeks, rather than game stuff.

In theory I'm supposed to have been working on getting The Grand Expedition ported over to Screentop.gg, but that's going very slowly while I learn their system.  So today I focused instead on Neon Knights, which I haven't touched in a little bit.  Had a pretty good day of it too.  I was specifically focusing on the chapter which would be "magic items" in a traditional fantasy game.  Instead, for NK it's "technomagic," i.e. things that look like '80s sci-fi or cyberpunk but work through a combination of magic and lost technology.  These are all lost treasures of a golden age that ended long before the NK time period, and which cannot be recreated at present.

The biggest category, which is what I wrote up today, is cartridges.  Yes, like in your old video game console, but a different size so you can plug it into the hilt of your sword if you want to.  An item has to have a port for you to plug the cartridge into, but if it does, then the cartridge gives it magical bonuses.  And the same cartridge can be plugged into different kinds of items, with the bonus changing depending on the specific item, but keeping with the theme represented by its title.

Earthdawn has a cool system where significant magic items have "key knowledges," bits of significant information about the item (e.g. who created it, what epic battle it was used in, etc), and if a PC learns one of these facts and invests some xp into it they unlock new powers for that item, or upgrade existing powers.  I'm doing the same thing here with cartridges.  I haven't thought of a good in-game term for it yet ("key knowledge" doesn't feel right, and "unlock" sounds too much like modern software rather than 1980s), but the idea is still there.  And it's not just learning facts either - that might be part of it, but you also have to do some sort of action which affects the magic inside the cartridge.  Here's the example that I wrote for the rulebook:

A cartridge called "Lightning Arc" would initially let you spend a fate point to invoke the Lightning Arc Aspect.  Some possible upgrades, and their requirements, include:

• Three free invokes per day - this requires the cartridge (and the item it is plugged into) to be left in the branches of the iron tree at the peak of Demon’s Worry Mountain
• Another Aspect, called Blinding Flash - this requires the user to speak a particular incantation while holding the cartridge up toward the sun at its highest point
• Once per day, the ability to teleport instantly to any spot the user can see, up to a hundred yards away - this requires the cartridge to be plugged into a specific machine that was used by its creator in the Before times, and which might still be found in the ruins of their factory

So, just like in Earthdawn, upgrading your magic items isn't just a matter of leveling up or spending enough gold, it can be serious adventure fodder itself.

That's where I am for now.  I still need to write something about other technomagic items, and I've got a few ideas for that, but I think that what's left will be less than half of the chapter overall.

a quick follow-up to the last post

 Took longer than it should have (as always), but the TTS module for The Grand Expedition has finally been updated with everything I talked about in the last post.  Next step is to learn how to create a game in either Screentop or Tabletopia and then create a module there as well.  I don't look forward to the extra work, but now that I know these options exist it would be nice for people to be able to test the game completely free.  No idea how long it will be before this is operational, but I'll post a link once it exists.

significant revisions

 Following from the playtest notes I got a couple weeks ago (see my previous post), and subsequent solo testing, I've spent a good chunk of time over the last few days updating the rulebook and all of the Exploration cards.  The big changes I'm implementing are 1) exploring a new hex is a free action that happens automatically when you move into it, and 2) Loot is based solely on your action, not on the card that you drew.

I really liked the way (1) worked out in my solo test after the feedback I got, since it meant that more exploring could get done each turn, and there was no more of the hassle with someone moving into a new hex with their last action and then needing to wait until next turn to actually explore it.  This was a relatively small revision in terms of changing the text, though a much bigger one for how it affects the game.

(2) should be unpacked in a little more detail.  The old rule was that when you drew a card it would tell you how much Loot was attached.  Beating it with Fight meant you got all the Loot, beating it with Evade (which used to be called Escape) meant you might get some of the Loot if you rolled high enough, and beating it with Negotiate meant you got no Loot, in exchange for whatever the other bonus is that that card gives.  If the card is still there at the end of your turn, and still has any Loot left, then the Loot cards stay with it for others to plunder later on.  Now the new rule is that Exploration cards do not have any Loot attached to them.  Instead, beating it with Fight means you get Loot cards equal to the Zone that you're in, beating it with Negotiate means you get 1 Loot (plus whatever is the Negotiate benefit for that card), and beating it with Evade means you get 1 Loot, plus the possibility of more if you roll high enough.  Testing so far shows that this runs faster and helps address the balance issues I've been struggling with, since players who emphasize Negotiate or Evade rather than Fight aren't going to be falling so far behind now with collecting Loot.  With regard to updating the text, this one is considerably more work since it means almost every single Exploration card needs to be changed.

Besides that, there's also the usual round of cleaning up errors and ambiguities that I didn't catch before, since there are always a handful of those.

Next step - Fame adjustments based on the Zone.  Other player suggested that it should be printed on each relevant card instead of being a flat +2 for Zone 3 and +4 for Zone 4, both so it will be easier to remember and also so I can fiddle with the numbers for individual cards.  The more I think about it the more I'm on board with this idea, but it is going to be significantly more work to figure out the details and update the cards accordingly...

TGE playtest notes

 No, I'm not going to dump everything here, just sharing some thoughts that are going to feed into upcoming revisions (and also providing evidence that I am actually still working on this game).  I've had a hard enough time getting other people to help me test the game out, but yesterday I did have someone and we ran a 2-player session, which highlighted the need for some modifications when running the game with only two players.  The main issue is that it's very easy for both players to just strike out in different directions and never interact with each other for the rest of the game.  In theory that's okay if that's what they want to do, but then it's harder to adjust if circumstances change (as in yesterday's game where a powerful Threat suddenly showed up and we were too far apart to help each other with it).  The solution I'm thinking of for right now is that for any ability which depends on another player being nearby, including the basic option to give a bonus or penalty on another player's roll, the distance that counts as "nearby" will increase when there are only two players.

One other problem that reasserted itself during this test session was that of Fight being the god stat.  The other player and I had both chosen teams which start with low Fight scores, and as a result we both had a hard time collecting Loot with which to buy upgrades.  A player who started with more Fight would have quickly surpassed both of us, unless they got really unlucky with the dice and/or cards.  So the other biggest change that I have planned right now is to give out some Loot on any successful roll, while still having the chance to get more with a good Fight or Escape* roll (but not as much as under the current setup).

*oh, and Escape might get renamed to Sneak or something like that - I'm not 100% sure yet but it's sounding better the more I think about it

Whatever I'm rolling, it certainly isn't Quick

 Well I said I was using this blog to document whatever work I'm doing on my games, so I guess I might as well document the little bit that I did today.  Main thing was copying over the milestone rules from FAE and translating them into my prose and tone.  I was hoping that would turn into momentum for more of the stuff I'm actually coming up with myself, but no luck - only other thing I managed to add before I ran out of steam was a short paragraph about Steeds, and a note to myself to maybe add an option for a Steed bonus of some sort when you hit milestones.  At least I'm more or less done with the part that's getting copied from FAE, except that I still haven't decided if I'm keeping the approaches from that book or coming up with my own.  I'd like to do my own for this but I'm having a hell of a time thinking of anything that isn't covered better by the basic six in FAE.  Maybe I'll get some 11th-hour inspiration for that.  In the meantime I'll keep plugging away with what I have so far.  Right now I'm thinking the next part will be just focusing on the Steed rules until they look good, but we'll see what happens.

Office Coffee - it's here! (sort of)

 So that dumb viciously fun game I thought of a couple days ago is now complete and ready for testing.  The complete rules take up less than a page, and even factoring in all the time I spent digging through clipart for my dice icons it only took me about 48 hours to complete this (compared to the, I don't remember, maybe 18-24 months that it took me to complete The Grand Expedition).  I ordered blank dice but they won't be here for a week or two, so no prototype just yet, but in the meantime there's a print-and-play version right here.  You'll need a big pile of d6s (30-48, depending on number of players), but the rest of it is there in that nice little pdf.  Give it a look and let me know what you think.