@Harrow I’m glad you like it! It seems to work as intended, my player loved playing a scotsman slave. I actually started writing the playbook before i’d even seen Heahmund, based on both athelstan but also Yidu. The only painpoint currently is he forgot about his XP trigger both sessions, so I’m wondering since it is mandatory if I can make space for it in the usual XP area somehow. I never usually forgot when I played blades with vengeful hmmm.
I’m definitely looking to run more playtests, so if you have a group let me know - though beware I am in Australia so timezones can be tricky. Also if you want to organise your own playtest, I’m happy to send the full alpha rules where I’m up to, as long as your group can record the test somehow (voice or full stream preferably, but text and sheets aceptable).
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Hello ! this looks excellent
First of all sorry for my English, it’s pretty bad.
I’m also working on a hack about Vikings, but it’s dark fantasy in a Low Magic (for humans) Midgard.
It’s a combination of the two things I like the most, Steampunk and Norse mythology.
The system has been working well so far, but we are still testing. The idea is that through a mineral with almost magical properties (bifrost, obvious) the people of Midgard create drakkars that fly (dirigibles are made with dragon skin, obvious) and begin to conquer and enter other realms.
The idea is that in addition to sharing the “Company Sheet” that establishes what kind of group they are and what they are dedicated to, players can establish colonies in the new realms to extract unique resources from there or even have a fleet of Drakkars. All this I have in rules (in Spanish) but we still have to play test this part. As soon as I translate it into English, I upload it.
I’ll keep track of this that looks great!
PD: The game name is Drakkars on the Sky
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I really like your approach to settlements. I am working with a similar “earned” approach to tier, but using crew goals instead of plots.
From a design perspective, why did you select the number of plots in a decreasing amount per advance? (8 tier 1, 6 tier 2…)
I went the opposite way - faster initial advancement. 2 projects to advance to tier 1, 4 projects to advance to tier 1, 6 to tier 3. My reasoning is that the scale of the increase isn’t linear. Local-regional-national-global influence.
Thoughts?
@Franco_Bianchini that sounds super rad! I haven worked out how colonies will work just yet, I may be a project type for the Crew type dedicated to expansion. I’m defintely trying to lean away from the magical element, so I’m glad that there’s a hack out ere for that!
@ebrunsell
Yeah the numbers are still very early alphatest. My rationale is actually tied to power level and making PCs make hard choices. The options for tier 1 plots are basically the same power level as single crew upgrades from BitD, and I want crews to be able to access most of the generic ones and some of their crew specific ones. As tier goes up, their power goes up, and the crew will have to narrow their focus: do we get the shipyard so we can do higher tier international missions without acquiring a fleet, or do we get access to our 4th dots (like mastery). there will be more options they can’t take.
That said, the roll mechanic will scale in a way that means the hiegher tier content may feel rushed compared to drawn out low tier content… and I’m not sure if that’s a problem? I think probably the most interesting stuff happens at tier 1&2, and 3-finish is mostly wish fulfillment or destruction…
This is tied heavily to my rework of entanglements - they mostly affect or interfere with project development (occasionally even help), and will get more severe with tier, which may curb the creep. Also every Fame shield completed incurs a major event, all bad, kinda like story acts. Fame1 might be a friend betraying you, fame6 is literally an all out invasion of your territory and if you survive you win basically.
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That makes sense - you might also be able to tie scores to some of the higher tier options. I find it interesting that we are also thinking similarly about entanglements & Fame. My fantasy hack uses Fame & Glory as a combined Rep & Heat / Tier mechanic. The entanglements are the price of fame – generally positive, but often inconvenient.
@MuffinManifesto hows this coming along? sounds amazing. First thing i thought when i played this game was this would make an amazing Viking Age game.
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I did a second playtest of character creation, which was fun - I’m satisfied all that is working as intended.
Unfortunately actual development time has been on hold because of other projects, but I’m keen to get back to it soon. A lot of what needs doing right now is heaps and heaps of hole-filling. What do the other 3 community types look like, what other projects and missions can they all go on, what are their special ability options etc.