It’s a play-by-post fantasy RPG with expansionist (and particularly, weight gain) themes.
How is it different from Nirulea or Voracious?
A bunch of different way! First of all, it hews closer to traditional fantasy games than Voracious in atmosphere, but abandons a lot of the mainstays of D&D-like games (no “strength dex con” type stats, no level-ups, no ). It’s a little more realistic than either of those titles in terms of character stomach capacities (or at least… should be, at first, until magic and very advanced characters come into play). And weight, rather than just being a number, is tied to its own character progression that can be a hindrance or an asset, depending on how you play.
When will it be done?
DONE? Hard to say. PLAYABLE? I’m shooting for mid-February, though who knows if that’s achievable with my schedule. Then I’ll start an alpha playtest.
If you have questions about the game, go ahead and post them below!
I noticed in the rules it mentioned having some stuff beyond weight gain like pregnancy. Are you planning to incorporate those into skills or badges, or will they be more something that occurs “outside” of the scope of the hard written rules?
Also, am I right in imagining the badges as almost some kind of a skill tree?
Pregnancy/Other Expansion themes are a planned eventuality-- I intend to tie motherhood to a major “goddess worship” religion at some point-- but probably won’t be hard-wired into the initial game. I’ve already bitten off a lot to chew.
The badges are more like… Achievements, to pinch a different video game concept. They’re the main mechanism by which you improve skills and the willpower types. I wouldn’t call them a skill tree because, while some of them are likely to be realized sequentially, none of them technically requires another.
The Fat Maps are built a little more like a traditional “skill tree,” with nodes that you spend points on to get to the next node. That way the perks for having really huge boobs are behind a wall of smaller boob upgrades and maybe some penalties, for example.
This sounds good so far. Can’t wait to see it in action.
I am wondering about one thing. Can characters change temperaments through some serious character development? Some, significant event that might change their life forever?
Wow, this is looking cool! Love looking at new systems, and the spells and cultural background info for the races is great. Look forward to seeing more!
One question I have is if the Diablerie corruption-charts exist yet? It’s listed as 100%(ish) complete, but it says the tables would be after the spells and they are not. And I know you must just be shocked I’d be interested in that particular skill :p. It and Glamour look the most interesting to me at the moment, but everything there looks cool.
Pretty sure you’re not the only one interested. If I had to guess, there’s going to be a lot of people dabbling in Diablerie whenever a playtest happens.
I’ve a couple more questions now, mainly involving the abilities. Will the player characters know exactly what each ability is capable of doing upon receiving it, and will they be able to learn of the abilities through research?
Liking the look of this so far, so sign me up for the first tests~ I’ll have a better read through stuff when I’m less spaced out. Do you have any plans for additional /custom races, out of curiosity.
Will player characters know exactly what their own abilities are capable of?
I’ll leave this largely up to player discretion. Obviously, Betty the Blacksmith doesn’t know what the hell action dice are, but she probably feels pretty confident in her reflexes if she gets the Alacrity ability from gaining a rank in Agility. It can be fun to play a character who doesn’t know their own limits, but the rules won’t artificially force that on anyone.
Can players learn
The Scholarship skill has a built-in research mechanic. Glamour and Diablerie, particularly, are attached to the Fairy Lore and Demonology specializations of the Scholarship skill.
Please note that the Glamour and Diablerie skills cover the powers that mortal characters can learn. Actual faeries and demons may have some abilities beyond or related to those, which a scholarship character might also have extra insight into.
I think I’m satisfied with the races as they exist through the alpha at least, but it’s always possible I’ll expand them somewhere down the line.
Does the Cacophony power require an attack roll of any sort, or does it auto-hit? Even if it does need to hit, it seems pretty strong. Looking at the char creation rules, 3 damage would 1-shot most characters, and this selectively hit’s everyone up to medium range. If it auto hits… ouch.
Are abilities that grant permanent stat boosts like Feast of the Fallen going to be common? On character creation, one gets 9 willpower points. (3 + 2 + 1 base + 1 choice + 2 temperament). A few permanent uses of Feast would increase power pretty significantly, dependion on how quickly willpower can be gained though badges and the like. Although thinking about it, Diabolist power costs often sap focus-willpower permanently, so maybe it evens out. And also irrevocably mark them as a diabolist, pending that mutation chart. (I like mutation charts, can’t wait to see that :).
Cacophony is an auto-hit, though note that it does cost a pretty big pile of action dice to use.
A starting BanQuesT character is not much more badass than any random commoner, so it makes sense for a demonic power to potentially one-shot them. Though do consider that 50% of all characters are only taking 1 Focus damage, which is especially relevant for an AoE power. Also, there are a few powers in the game (currently unreleased) that let you ignore the first time you’d take Focus damage.
Even with characters who have some more experience under their belts, my hope for when we start playtesting is that most combats will go pretty quickly. 1-3 posts from everyone involved means, in most play-by-post situations, that the combat takes about a week or more. So I think the damage is probably in line? We’ll find out! Hard to say exactly how strong melee attacks will be, since it will partially depend on how defensively your enemies are fighting.
It IS a good ability, but I tried not to write any bad ones.
Some characters will start with more than 9 Willpower thanks to boosts from skills. Willpower is also a pretty common badge reward.
That said, FotF was written a long while back and definitely needs to be slightly toned down. I’m going to change it so you can only increase your Willpower if the dead enemy had a higher maximum total than you. You get tougher from eating a dragon heart, but not from eating 20 kobold hearts.
You get tougher from eating a dragon heart, but not from eating 20 kobold hearts.
[Temptation] - Kobold Hearts ;D
Looking at the new stuff, particularly the Arms section, I like how the action dice costs/benefits with abilities are thematically beneficial to different races. The Zweihand Style, for example, benefits an Ogre a ton by letting them auto-roll an 8 on one of their dice! (A goblin too, for those who feel hilarious :). On the flip side, an Elf get’s a lot more out of Swordplay style, and an arrogant pointy eared bastard could make Perfect Strike’s for days with the Satisfaction refinement.
I’ve actually really wanted to do a campaign in an RPG system that was approaching the point of normalized weight gain. By that I mean a campaign in which characters gaining weight/expanding is simply a thing that can happen, rather than being either the focus of the campaign or a random aberration. A setting where it’s as normal as downing a healing potion. Pretty often it’ll come up and a ton of storyline attention doesn’t need to be drawn to it, but some sessions will go without any of it being relevant. I feel like that’s the first step into bringing that kind of stuff into the light of day/slightly more mainstream gaming
This seems like it might be a step in the right direction for that, and I appreciate that. It’s still largely focused on the weight aspects, but not to the point of ignoring the traditional adventuring aspects of an RPG.
Can we get a blurb somewhere that explains all of the terminology you’re using with the action dice? I understand the simple action pools like 4d4 and 7d2, but there’s some other things like adding 0d1~3 or “tucking” an action die that I’m not 100% sure what those mean. I tried skimming the core rules again, but I didn’t see those explained anywhere. It’d just be nice to have those all laid out in one place since they’re not all common dice things in most systems (or at least not any that I’ve played).
That information is mostly under the “Common Actions” heading, but I’ll transplant the “tuck” part of the glossary to the Character Elements section on action dice, too. The tilde~ symbol is explained under the attack action but I’ll reexplain it when I add the equipment section.
I’ve tried to stay fairly organized but the presentation of information is one of the more challenging elements of RPG design. You want the rules to proceed in a natural order for learning purposes but also for players to be able to reference half-remembered rules quickly…
This looks really intriguing! I’m a fan of realistic-ish WG and of fantasy settings, so it’s exactly my cup of tea. I would love to play once it’s ready for some playtesting.