Introducing: Haunted Arms

I decided that my big project for 2014 (aside from the first set of supplements for Unity Underground) is going to be Haunted Arms, a dark fantasy rpg that will use the same system as Unity.

You can check out the current version of the character creation booklet right here (be warned, it's still very error ridden and filled with text artifacts from Unity). This, combined with the Unity Underground gamma rules, should be enough to get a solid feel for the game.

I just started running my second series of home playtests for the game. It's too early to determine "how it's going" but I expect many drastic changes and returns to the drawing board. The first series of playtests back in Kansas City seemed to split the testers pretty evenly between love and hate ;)

Illustrations
I'm very excited to be working with Abigail Larson to develop the visual style for the game. Abigail has a wonderfully distinct style and it fits perfectly with the Haunted Arms aesthetic.

 

Abigail's original sketch for the knight class.

 

 

The final illustration for the knight class.

Concept for the female version of the knight.

 

"Fairy amber" specimens. You can slot these coveted artifacts into your weapons and armor to imbue them with magical potency.

What's it like?
Basically, this is my version of D&D. It's not a retroclone, but it is pretty heavily informed by the OSR movement. It will be very much like Unity Underground, but grittier.

I'm drawing a lot of inspiration from Darklands (the computer game), the original Quake, the Dark Souls/Demon's Souls series, the Diablo series, Brotherhood of the Wolf, and the Warhammer universe. I've also noticed influence creep in from Anne McCaffrey and China Mieville, both of whom I've been reading recently.

Like its sister game, Haunted Arms will focus on fast-paced combat and resource management paired with streamlined, minimalist rules. It will feature a human-centric setting (no elfy/dwarfy stuff) with a very gloomy cosmological outlook.

More updates soon.

'bout time for a Unity update

Arg! I've neglected the blog for long enough. There's a bunch of stuff brewing. Here's the lowdown:

I've wrapped up my final home playtest for Unity Underground and I've been working on finalizing the game for release. Right now, I'm in the middle of tweaking the content and layout of the equipment section in book 2:

I was sort of shooting to launch our Kickstarter campaign in April. Ha! I'm not going to put a date on it now other than to say it will be "soonish." I want to have the book entirely done before we go to Kickstarter. (The campaign we did for Don't Walk in Winter Wood taught me that it's better not to have finishing work to do with all the added pressure of a successful KS campaign hanging over your head.) I'm still weighing various ideas about how the KS will work, but in general I'm wanting to keep it fairly simple without a lot of crazy extras (there will be some extras, but I don't want to get carried away).

The text itself is just about ready for an editor. I have an editor in mind, but I have not approached them yet. That will be happening fairly soon. Once the edit is underway, I'll be concentrating on the last bits of art direction (my main concern currently is that we're a bit behind where we need to be on art) and securing a printer (which is a crucial step to get our pricing scheme right on KS).

I'm hoping that a good portion of this finishing work will be done by the end of June, but as I said: "soonish" is good enough estimate for now ;)

Of course, now that the thing is almost finished it triggers a whole cascade of insecurities in my head:

• "Will anyone back this?"
• "Is this worth all the time you've put into it?"
• "Dude, like five people are actually going to play this . . ."
• "It's not story gamey enough for story gamers and not traditional enough for traditional gamers. This game has no audience."

Of course, these are extremely familiar doubts that have come up every single time I've finished a project. I've learned to accept that those sorts of thoughts are going to happen and keep on working, but about once a week I hit a point where I'm fairly certain I should just quit. (BTW, for any other creative types out there, I highly recommend The War of Art by Steven Pressfield as a great tool to combat this kind of thinking).

At the end of the day all I can say is that I'm making something that I personally love. These days I have a pretty pragmatic approach to game design, I want to make things so that I have them to use at my own table. Even if I am the only audience for this game, I'm pretty excited to see it finally take shape.

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Tomorrow, I blog about the other big project I'm working on . . .

My Unity Notebooks

The Battle Rages On

The playtesting of Unity Underground continues. This week my Monday group found a game-breaking bug and I got to sit in on a buddy's skype session. Changes have ensued. Here are a couple of highlights from the ongoing changelog:

Bio-Sludge and Scrap turned out to be broken: This is the aforementioned game breaker that my Monday group discovered. See, they came across an abandoned construction site. By the internal logic of the game there should have been practically unlimited amounts of Scrap (2nd Offense, pg. 21) left at the site. Given that "Visit the Black Market" is a downtime action, they saw no reason that they shouldn't plop down and instantly make tons of money. Now, there are various ways in the game that you can legitimately make a ton of green in a short amount of time (and there are lots of sinks for that money to drain into), but this felt broken. Primarily because, in the post-apocalyptic Outlands where the PCs spend most of their time in the game, sites like this (brimming with scrap) would be everywhere.

The solution: the fix for this is pretty simple. I'm removing Scrap/Bio-Sludge from the game entirely (as a mechanical element. There's obviously still "scrap" and "sludge" in the world). I think the DIY/Pharma system works fine without having the player spend a super cheap/prevalent resource, given that you're already "spending" the resources of time and safety (you're taking a chance on a random encounter).

Another fix is that the downtime action "Visit the Black Market" will be limited to populated settlements. This makes sense and I think it will prevent similar problems from arising.

We needed clear guidelines for dealing with the occupants of vehicles: It's pretty common for Unity Underground cells to construct their own super vehicle/mobile base. It's happened in pretty much every campaign I've run, across different iterations of the system, all the way back to the beginning. My Monday group is no different and it turned out that we needed more codified rules for how the occupants of a vehicle could interact with external characters/vehicles/targets. Here's what I came up with:

When you make a vehicle, choose one of the following:

Your vehicle is Enclosed.
- Occupants cannot be targeted.
- Occupants can attack external targets, but the attack roll is a Hail Mary.

Your vehicle is Partially Enclosed.
- Occupants can be targeted, but the attack roll is a Hail Mary.
- Occupants can attack external targets, but the attack roll is a Difficult.

Your vehicle is Open.
- Occupants can be targeted, but the attack roll is Difficult.
- Occupants can attack external targets at no penalty.

This distinction is noted in the vehicle's basic description. For example, a "Razorback" APC would be an Enclosed Land Vehicle. A "Sentinel" Hovercopter would be a Partially Enclosed Aerial Vehicle. A normal car would be an Open Land Vehicle, etc . . . .

These provisions do not affect Mounted weapons, which can always be used by the vehicle's crew at no penalty.

This is as-of-yet untested, but I like it. It covers the issue pretty comprehensively without adding much complexity.

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That's it for now. I'll probably throw up some more playtest notes next week. In the mean time, feel free to take a look at the game and let me know what you think!

Playtest Report

We've had some great feedback on the gamma playtest docs for Unity Underground. Thanks to everyone who has sent in comments so far. I've already got a few changes in mind:

Stuff That's Likely To Change
Panic: I think I'm going to remove Panic from the game entirely. The rules are a bit flawed, but more importantly I don't think that they really fit the tone of the game. Panic is one of those things that has survived in a relatively neglected state since the very first drafts of the game. It's time to let it go.

Removing panic has ramifications in several areas of the rules (an adjustment to the psychic backlash table, replacement of the Induce Panic psychic power, etc).

Apportation: Will only affect willing targets and inanimate objects. This was already a thing, but somehow didn't make it into the gamma draft.

Brainwash: Will probably be limited to targets you can see rather than targets who can hear your voice.

The Brawler Class: After some discussion with my buddy Trevor, I think gamma version of the brawler is a tad underpowered. I'm thinking the brawler's Fury ability should read "Your unarmed melee attacks have a damage rating equal to your Strength stat +1." This one extra point of damage makes a big difference to the brawler's effectiveness against common armored opponents such as Union Peacekeepers (a brawler with 5 strength would be able to take out a PK with a single attack, which is a big deal for an attack-oriented class).

Vehicle Creation: In the gamma draft, the vehicle creation section doesn't have rules for determining a vehicle's Speed. The rule is this: Vehicles have a Speed of 6" by default. Every additional 6" of Speed adds 4G to the vehicle's cost. Adding Speed to an existing vehicle costs 8G per 6".

Organization: Over on Story Games, Jonathan Walton had some really good suggestions about how  I could better organize the content of 1st Offense. The idea is to introduce the rules concepts in the same order that they would generally occur during play.

I also think that I could do a more thorough job explaining the phases and scenes in the final game.

Others have pointed out some issues with the order in which some of the rules concepts are introduced. There's some rogue terminology that is used before it has been properly defined, stuff like that. Easy, but important fixes.

We're Still Looking For Feedback!
If you're interested in taking a look, the files are HERE. Read 'em, play 'em, and tell us about 'em. You can send your thoughts to redmoonmedicineshow at gmail dot com. 

Thanks again!