Advancing the Game

 We have updates for you all today!

We have significant updates to the rule book, and Appendices five and nine.

The introduction, Rules, and Appendices have all had some minor formatting updates.

We've switched the versioning of the rules from a version number to a simple date.

As to the future, we're chipping away at the finished version of the Greenskin Bestiary, and hope it will be finished soon!

In the treasure chest, you find... [rolls on the table]...

I had some difficulty with rendering the core rules to PDF. This was sue to a corrupted version of the sample quest map on page three.

I'd decided to make printable map sheets, and so used this opportunity to re-create this image from scratch, and re-render the book as a PDF.

There are no rules changes or wording changes. Literally, it's just the image and the specific file.

We've also updated the fancy and printer-destroying versions of the missing summary sheets, and the new blank mapping sheet.

Finally, we have double-spread (A3) foldable covers for every booklet.

Another expecition brings treasure from the dungeon foul

Bestiary Parts 12-14 have been updated to "text only" versions, but are ready to go!

We've updated Part 01 and Part 07.

Honestly expected that to take a LOT longer, given how long previous sections took, but I guess that practice makes perfect.

We also have an updated Book 00, and an updated Appendix I, as Slev had a bright idea.

While Slev has  had a further bright idea, this will, for now, take the back seat while the graphics for the Bestiary and Campaign 02 are sorted.

And now for something (not) completely different

Slev too a break from exiting reams of text this weekend, to noodle about with some graphics instead. He promisses he'll get back to work on the remaining text soon.

In the meantime, here is a taste of what's to come when the graphical updates start across the entire set of books!

Just a preview, but you get the idea!

Beware, For Here Be Monsters!

I've just uploaded several Bestiary updates, and a Quest book!

Quest Book II - The Return of the Litchemaster has not had any graphical magic applied to it, and it still a play-test document, but there's enough material there to allow it to be played with some work.

When it comes to the Bestiary, the unfinished books have been uploaded in one of two states.

Parts 4-11 are "text only", that is, they need only the graphics and accompanying layout, but are otherwise ready.

Parts 12+ are currently "rough draft", which is literally my working notes. They can be parsed, but it's heavy going!

My next job is to update those remaining Bestiary parts to Text Only status, then I can get on with the missing graphics.

More Updates!

OK, so I'm a natural blond & I uploaded some out of date files in error yesterday. Also one file was malformed, as my converter decided it didn't like ONE page for no adequately explored reason.

We're all up-to-date now!

I'll be working behind the scenes, my priorities being to complete the draft versions of Lichemaster and the remaining Bestiaries, then to get the graphical magic sorted out for those.

Returning to the Dungeon

Well, after a very unusual time in town, we're finally back to the dungeon!

Work on the project has continued behind the scenes and a huge swathe of updates are now live.

Due to popular request, I have also uploaded draft versions of most of the missing material. I hope to have the rest of the in-progress material uploaded in the next couple of days.

I'd like to thank everyone who's sent kind words and asked after the project over the last couple of years. It's nice to know I'm appreciated!

News and How to Block an Attack

We’ve been plugging away on bestiaries behind the scenes, but major developments in Real Life (TM) (e.g. 3 months building work on Slev's house) has put us behind schedule.

In the meantime, I’ve been asked about how “block” works. There’s two sides to this, where you get block from, and how to use it.

Using Block

When you use a Block, you reduce all damage from one hit to zero. Just one. Not all of them for one turn, like with a Fate Point. Just the one.

This is useful if there is only one enemy who can attack you, or if every other enemy has already failed to hurt you, since they allow you to preserve your precious Fate Points for other eventualities.

Gaining Block

Block can come from several sources. Here’s the rub, each source can only give you Block once.

Some items grant Block, such as a Lucky Charm. Once that Block has been used, it’s gone for the rest of the Expedition, even if you hand the item to someone else.

Some abilities grant you Block in certain circumstances. Once you’ve used that ability, that’s it. If you gain “Block with Chainmail”, you have one Block point available while you’re wearing Chainmail. Once you’ve used that Block, it’s gone for the rest of the Expedition.

The Tricky Part

Where this gets complicated is where these two rules come together.

Let’s say you have “Block with Chainmail”, and have found a suit of magical chainmail that grants you Block itself. This gives you two Blocks. And if you don’t remove said Chainmail for the entire Expedition, there is no further complication beyond that.

However, if we get to the point where you change and swap armour and other such, things can be complicated. In the above example, the Chainmail is supplying two points of Block. If I use one point of Block from it, and then pass it to another Hero, you chose retroactively how you spent it. You basically have to decide then if you gained the point you used from “Block with Chainmail” or from “this Chainmail has Block”. If the latter, the other person cannot use that ability this expedition.

This may seem like it is open to abuse, but in practice, the player will spend time agonising over the order of spending Block points only when these edge cases occur.

Casting the Scroll of Updating

Today we uploaded the play-test version of another classic Quest: The Eyes of Chaos.

Over the last month we've had a few updates. There's very little changed in the actual rules, but this should make things clearer.

The changes:

The Rules
Page 12: Movement rules clarified.

Appendix IV
Ransacking & Minor Treasure: Typo fixed

Appendix V
Random Events table:various point clarified, some others adjusted for ballence and/or to ensure they're always relevent.

Appendix X
Clarified Luck.

The Winds of Magic

Today I’m going to talk about Mystic Powers; that is, Spells and Prayers. A few people have asked about this.

Mechanically, Spells work almost identically to the original game. With a few minor caveats and clean-ups for edge cases, we then added Abilities to grant a range of casting techniques.

The original material gave us details for four of the eight Colleges of Magic. Unfortunately, they were all very different mechanically, from the number of different Spell Components they used, to the number of Spells available. I thus first added additional Spells to take them up to twelve per college. I then adjusted the Spell Components to mirror the distributions from the Bright College. This then left me needing to create another four Colleges, which were heavily inspired by the Warhammer background.

However, it turned out that, even with them costing less to learn, opportunity cost left a lot of the more marginal spells ignored by the players. They were just found to be not worthwhile.  I thus embarked on a MAJOR re-writing of the Spells, to make every Cantrip roughly equal with the others, and likewise every Ritual was made to be broadly equal. This had the added bonus that each type of Spell could then have the same cost to learn, leaving less clutter on the Spell Books.

The four different magic specialisation paths (Conjurer, Enchanter, Mage, & Sorcerer) allowed us to give variations on HOW magic was cast. They took some balancing. The power enhancements of the Mage where found to be too narrow, and where widened. The Enchanter’s pre-cast spells where made slightly cheaper, but he lost the “Wisdom” ability and +1 Int modifier, hence giving a greater focus on the pre-cast spells. The extra casts available to the Sorcerer originally had a risk attached, but this was removed.

The hardest to balance was the Conjurer. Removing “Wisdom” and the +1 Int modifier certainly helped, and Channelling’s penalty on healing Spells did likewise. However, the increase in Fame (to offset the reduced costs of adventuring) and Experience (to offset the extra castings available) really brought the path to balance.

Priests where my next port of call. It was decided that the power of a Blessing should be slightly less than that of a Cantrip Spell, and a Litany should be less powerful still. Like the Spells, Prayers were made to all have similar power levels by type. The two variant priest types (Cleric and Chaplain) gave some nice variety as to how Priests could work.

Putting Faith Points into place to power the Spells made the Priest subtly different from the Wizard. However, it did mean that we had to come up with a way for a Priest to increase the number of Faith available. This proved problematic to balance with just money and Experience. It was then I realised that the Priest’s powers having a fixed number of uses was akin to the Enchanter’s pre-casting abilities, and thus we changed the Experience costs of some Priest advances to be Fame costs instead. This forms a nice balance as the Priest must pay for their powers regardless of if they are used, but always has a free choice of how to use them. The Fame cost prevents the Priest from advancing too fast, since they will bankrupt themselves otherwise.