Overdue March Update
about 1 year ago – Sat, Mar 04, 2023 at 12:59:31 AM

Hey Drifters, 

I want to first apologize for the lack of updates, and I appreciate those reaching out for said updates. As time went by, I thought I had already published a post around the holidays, but looking back that doesn't seem to be the case.  

As you probably could have guessed, life's been hectic to say the least. On the business side, dealing with Not only having a baby (now 10 months old), but also during that period I had been laid off, unemployed, moved, and found a new job (which is a great opportunity but busier than my last role). 

But we still have a project to finish, so where are we at:

TLDR: if you don't read anything past this point, I'm working on adapting the basic rules to the corebook. No core systems have changed, so at this point its just a layout race to finish. I hope to have a final PDF out this month. 

Approval to proceed

Back in Nov/Dec I was able to meet with the Heart Machine team and review the designs we had created just to get the green light on our designs and direction. This was a major holdup as getting a meeting with the HLD team was very difficult (esp with Breaker in the works).

One of these major complications was when Heart Machine revealed the world map for Hyper Light Breaker (HLB). 

We were already planning on building specific setting regions, and so we had to learn more about this map and what we could do with it, and the implications of other lore reveals that have emerged during Breaker (as it's my goal to ensure that the game remains aligned as close as possible). 

New Art

I'm still getting new artwork to full the book with, so I'll showcase a few more pieces as they've come in. Most notably:

(all illustrated by Koit Paales/@farlander)

Sprite Designer

I just want to feature this Fan-made HLD sprite generator by CyrolisDev, which allows you to build character sprites for your game! Its a great project, and we're looking to support it (like more character piece assets) so that you can create your own original HLD characters!

B-Sides Fragments: EP by Disasterpeace: 

If you've missed the downloads updates in Backerkit, you might have missed the B-sides Fragments EP by Disasterpeace, this is already available to download (my favorite being piano-last general).

Book Wise and Timeline

I've been really working to get this out as soon as I humanly can with my own time limitations. Right now my focus is the corebook, which at this point is just going through each page and implementing improvements from the Basic Rules (which I'm considering final at this point). 

Plan to have another update this month so stay tuned. Thank you all for your patience.

Andreas

v8 Basic Rules and Interactive Character Sheet
almost 2 years ago – Fri, Jul 15, 2022 at 12:46:30 AM

Hey Drifters, 

I apologize for the late post, but its been a hectic few months. I wanted to use this post to go over the mechanics of the game and where things have finally ended up at, so everyone can be on the same page with where the game is at. 

To start off, the basic rules I'm considering done at this point (sans a few line edits here and there), and this is not a small document. It's a whole 180-page booklet that could stand as a full product of its own. And we're still expanding that with the corebook. Part of the size of the basic rules comes down to the method we presented the rules as an effort to clean everything up, in addition, the page size was designed at 6.25x8 in.

Everyone has access to the basic rules and can get it on their backerkit downloads or from our website.

So what do we have?

Drifters

All drifters are composed similarly to our favorite Drifter, but expanded slightly. On the left you see our Disciplines and thresholds. Disciplines are skill groupings, and thresholds are the values you need to meet or beat in order to get that outcome. This means there are three possible outcomes to any rolll. They are Fortune-a full success (top number), Temperance-a partial or success at consequence (bottom number), and if you fail to beat temperance you get a Judgment result (failure or success at full consequence).

A large majority of actions drifters perform will use their Energy to perform. Once you pay the cost of an action (if any) and make a roll, you can also spend your energy to boost your roll result, increasing the value akin to your grit or nerve score. If you're performing an action using a discipline in which an ally is specialized in, they can choose to help you out, by spending their energy to help boost your roll (at their rate), this is known as helpful assist.

Other resource include, 

•  Dashes (you have two dash charges), that you can spend to move or reduce damage
•  Woe, a sort of stress and bad luck track that increases over time, until it reaches a breaking point (where you will roll against your tested stat, which is the highest threshold of all disciplines)
•  Components & Ingredients: crafting resources that you collect on your travels that can be used for crafting, powering or enhancing some abilities, or even used to create a general effect
•  Protection and Resistance: Two different kinds of armor that reduce damage taken in different phases. Protection can be used to reduce damage taken in the Combat Phase, and Resistance can be used to reduce damage in all other phases (primarily Travel and Exploration phases) 

Then your drifter has Equipment and Ability Slots. 

3 general talents, 1 dash talent, and 1 passive talent, alongside 4 equipment slots.  You start with a limited number of talents and equipment and you gain more as you advance (spending bits to acquire advancements).  Once slotted, you can only swap your equipment or talents until you enter the downtime phase.

As you adventure you will accumulate Corruption, this is the Drifters Sickness we experience in the game, and how you want to represent it is up to you. The only truth is, once you fill your track up with corruption, the time comes to retire your character in a way you find fitting, whether its a quiet end, a blaze of glory, or something else.  

So lets get into that, 

Phases 

We broke up the mechanics of Drifter into 4 phases to help facilitate roleplay in those kinds of scenes

Downtime - While in town or resting, you enter the downtime phase, this can be used for general town RP as well as recovering, crafting and so forth. Each drifter gains downtime slots which they can spend however they see fit.  

Travel - Set up on a hexgrid overworld, for each hex you want to travel the players make a contribution  to the travel at hand, picking a skill or action, and rolling to see the outcome and stiching each players actions together to tell a story of that long distance travel (outcomes of these rolls can be mechanical or simply just narrative) 

Exploration - As the drifters discover and delve into ruins and broken down facilities we pull out the Delve deck to help create these unique spaces. Each of these hex-shaped cards have different prompts on them, from Challenge Room, Safe Room, Lore Room, Delve Feature, Discovery, etc. In which you can create and dynamically create a unique delve on the fly (or prepare one in advance). To go even a step further, there are lock and key cards as well, in which keys (maguffin triggers) are required to open locked tiles (almost like a zelda dungeon). This is probably the loosest of phases, as it encapsulates a lot of rp and skills and can jump in and out of both Combat and Downtime phases. 

Combat

Probably everyones favorite of the phases. This phase took a lot of work to get it to feel right and ensure that the tight 3x3 combat grid we set up feels unique and interesting to fight and maneuver in. 

How it works is that (commonly) all drifters start on one side, and all adversaries start on the other side of the board. There is no initiative, rather it takes turns, between players and adversaries. Once a drifter takes their turn, that player cannot act again until all other drifters have taken a turn, and this is true for the adversaries as well (with exception to bosses). 

When players act, instead of triggering consequences, they generate Consequence Points (CP), which is a pool that adversaries can spend to boost the effect of their actions (but cannot spend more than their Adversity Level). All adversaries have an ability list, and can perform two actions (typically a move and attack, though they could attack twice). 

Then we get to the bosses, they are unique not only for their more health, and power, but also for their Arena Ability, at the start of the player round, an arrangement of tiles are highlighted/selected/marked, and upon the end of the player round (when all players have acted) the bosses' arena ability triggers. This allows for some unique things to take place, forcing players to maneuver and use their abilities and synergies in interesting ways.  

Anyways, this was a 'quick' wrap around about what we've got going on. I'm working on updating the files as we speak so keep an eye out for updates to grab the latest basic rules and characters sheets. 

We also have a lets play and a podcast play lined up, so I'll be sharing those as they're released. 

I'll be posting more updates as we go, its been a crazy two months for me (from having a child, getting covid, selling a house, and now moving) but things are moving. 

My work now is focusing on the corebook and updating the abilities to the new combat economy. 

Thank you for your support and continued patience, I am happy to answer any questions, and will have more to share soon. (also for those who like the art I'm thinking I'll be making everything available for people to pull and use. 

Happy Drifting 

Andreas 

A weird situation
almost 2 years ago – Thu, Jul 14, 2022 at 12:51:25 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Feb Update
about 2 years ago – Thu, Feb 17, 2022 at 11:09:10 PM

Hey Drifters!

I realize it's been a while since I've put out an update, and thank you for those who reached out for me to post one.  

Progress.

Progress has been slow (as life, and the pandemic are ongoing, as well as the sporadic assistance that I've been able to secure), but nevertheless progress is being made day by day.  If you've downloaded the PDF from the MWG store (or on the discord), you would have seen a number of updates come for the basic rules as we finalized the language and layout of everything. (I realize that the basic rules uploaded to backerkit is v1_1, while we're currently on v7).

I have one last update for the basic rules at which point I am calling it printer complete. This is a revision on the Combat Phase chapter which will better describe and illustrate the steps of how the combat phase works ( in addition to include an example of combat, as per popular request). 

Beginning Printing. 

So this might sound a bit odd, but with the imminent completion of the basic rules, we can start the processes of producing the Collectors box all of it's contents. This is being done by a separate company who is producing the corebook, becuase all of the items in the box warrant that it needs to be created and shipped by a board game manufacturer  (simply because of the addition of counters and die).  Only thing that needs to be touched up at this point for the basic rules is the Reference Sheets and Character Sheet, but that can happen in tandem as we submit and approve files for the combat boards, hex cards, and decks.  

This naturally brings us to our next point,

The Corebook

I am still finishing up the corebook, and I do expect it to be done soon, then a pass to the editors for a review.  About the time I will be relasing the print ready verison of the Basic Rules I will be reaching out to Backers regarding some of their contributions (so stay tuned, or ping me in discord). 

My main driver and schedule that is pressing on me is a simultaneous print run that I am coordinating, which currently includes 6 other book projects we're printing and Drifter being one of them. (and saving on international freight due to the madness of freight these days). 

and Finally, 

Thank you for your support. I know many of you on the discord have been receptive and amazing in talking about presentation and testing, which have been a huge help. 

For thsoe who havent seen, I understand this can seem out of the blue or even frustrating and I get that. Sometimes projects don't go as planned and even scope creep happens. Heck, at this point I never even anticipated that we'd develop out the Basic Rules to be its own beautiful product (which is free for everyone), and here we are. But in the end, we are making progress and the game is being better for it.

If you're not happy and just want a refund and want to get out. Please just send me a PM, I'll gladly provide a full refund.  

Thank you all for your support. We're almost there, as this drifter undertakes his own battle against Judgment. 

Andreas

MWG Discord

Final Mechanics Update + Editing Progress
over 2 years ago – Wed, Aug 18, 2021 at 03:57:17 AM

Hey Drifters! 

I know it's been a while since my last update, and I know I tend to heads-down until I have something to show off. I do appreciate the pings and questions about development as they do remind me that you are interested in hearing progress and updates no matter how small, especially when I get carried away in the development process.  

(as a TLDR,  new download emails will be going out today or tomorrow, with digital delivery hopeful in 0ctober, with print aiming at Jan, but international freight is a mess.  Also the setting book is delayed-release, separate from the game book. And this week I'll post an explainer to the final game rules)

What's been going on?

For the most part, it's been targeted playtests and writing out the Basic Rules.

So why the Basic Rules?  This started as a brand new document because for all the work that we had put into the Game Book I wanted to make sure:

• We had a presentable version that can replace the freely available basic rules
• That we checked all of the abilities, concepts, and mechanics, and ensured that they were consistent with the final rules of the game (for instance we had some abilities that still had ability scores in them)
• And finally, be a guide that would we can reference as a master doc when refining the corebook. 

Now, it wasn't completely from scratch, as some of the writing was taken and deconstructed allowing me to simplify the concepts to a short consumable level. 

Also, super thank you to all the awesome fans in the discord (you can join here), if you ever have questions about the mechanics, or want updates I do try to always be available to answer things there as its far easier than interactions on Kickstarter. 

What do we have?

•  BasicRules  

I'm about to push an update of the Basic Rules. This will contain all the rules needed to play Drifter. The main differentiating factor here is art and options content (ie not a lot of equipment, talents or adversaries, because you don't need those to get started).  I do want to make this doc pretty and have 'some' art in it to better represent the game, but those will come a bit later. In addition, I do want a starting adventure put in there, but I'm going to have someone else design it. 

An update should go out tonight or tomorrow

•  Delve Deck 

A week or two ago I had silently added the Delve Deck to your downloads. There are two kinds of decks, the Base Deck and the Extended Deck (the printed one will be the extended, and you all get the digital extended). 

The Base Deck is the one that comes with the Basic Rules and allow for core gameplay. The Extended deck will have a few more illustrated variants of the cards, as well as have more door /lock /key variants. Most of the cards have been illustrated for the extended deck, I think we're going to have Rose illustrate a few more options.  I also just need to explore them, so I can get this out in the next week or two (as most of my efforts have been focused on getting the core foundation of the game finalized. )

• Combat Boards

A few more boards have been made available, special thanks to Dani's amazing work. With the basic rules, I've included this (the above) combat board, and for the extended combat boards (what backers are getting) They have access to all the boards, I think there are only two-three left until we've made all the boards we've planned. 

• Fragments EP

I need to check in with Disasterpiece on this, we're around the delivery deadline for it, so I should have this very soon for you all. 

Mechanics/The Game

In a following post, I'll do an explainer of all the games mechanics and how it works

Physical Delivery

The hardest part, and probably the part you want to know the most about.

Right off the bat, I am aiming to have the Digital portions of the gamebook (and the box elements) all completed this year, optimistically I am aiming to have the corebook completed by October. This means, with physical product that'd leave us to likely around Jan 2022 for delivery. That said, global freight has been a huge mess lately, with costs ever rising. Currently, I am not concerned about funds to getting the book printed and fulfilled to you all, rather its how much time is it going to take to get all the books where they need to be. 

Then there's the setting book (physical and digital) we haven't talked about this much because a lot of my time has been focused on the gamebook, and quite frankly, development has paused while getting everything nailed down. Part of this was due to covid and bad project management on my behalf (as open deadlines just means work falls by the wayside). So the setting book will be delayed and delivered separately from the game book as a later release (no additional shipping for backers).  A lot of sections of the setting book have been written, whilst others are work in progress. 

Progress Continues

I want to thank everyone for their continued patience, but as noted we're pretty much at the final stretch of development, and of course with the final stretch of any project, its the hardest part of the entire thing.  

If you have questions, Id be happy to answer them as best I can. 

And of course, with all posts, comes a little bit of art this time from Farlander, Alex, and Nightmargin 

Thank you again, 

Andreas