Late update this week. I'm sleepy. Thankfully, it's a holiday weekend here and I don't have to work tomorrow.

• The first few pages of the starter campaign are finished!
• We got several new artworks incoming for the player's guide. Thanks to my artist folks for working so quickly. :)
• We're now up to 55 total pages for the player's guide. I suspect this thing will be 100+ pages by the time I include all the base content, character sheets, tables, and the glossary.
• Ran Session 1 of the online-only...

Aaaand another week comes to a close. This week's focus has been enemy design and properly writing out the scripted starter campaign, since my online playgroup has their first real gameplay session this coming Thursday. Have I been using the fear of appearing unprepared for the session to motivate me to get things done? Maybe... :')

• Up to 80 weapons & items for the gear catalog. Had to add a few entries to fill some roles that would be needed for certain interactions/campaign mechanics. What do I...

Not a lot to talk about this week. For the most part, I decided to give myself a small break and indulge in some of my other hobbies. I did however host the first session for our online-only playtest. The players got to introduce themselves and create their characters.

Since I don't have much else to talk about, I wanted to give a shoutout to Taiga Miniatures and their Kickstarter collab w/ Tom Bloom for Magnagothica: Maleghast. I'm a big fan of Tom Bloom's work, and seeing his warbands be brought to...

Thinking about adding a cursed item to my game that doesn't actually do anything (mechanically, at least) so the GM can just arbitrarily decide what it does based upon the campaign/setting...

It is miserably hot here at the moment and my AC is begging for mercy as it's struggling to keep up. Here's what I've been up to this week:

• We're now up to 75 weapons & items in the gear catalog. Since I've still had pretty good luck cooking up ideas, I'm going to aim for 100 for the public playtest. (scope creep, much?)
• Decided to change the critical hit mechanics from a simple "deal double damage" to a "roll another attack" system. On average it's less than 2x damage, but it does open the...

Wha-bam! That's 10 weeks of solid work and a lot has been accomplished. Currently:

• The book cover is done!!! It's finally starting to feel like this project is coming together.
• We're now up to 63 weapons & items in the gear catalog.
• 6 out of 6 player classes are finished and ready for playtesting.
• I've started formalizing the skills and stat blocks for the first 3 Others.
• A 4th illustrator just agreed to join my little team. (Thanks everyone for artist recommendations)
• All the most recent...

This is not a drill!

Huge shoutout to Camellia van den Heuvel for her work on this. She absolutely knocked it out of the park on bringing my concept to life. Check out the full illustration here

Kinda low energy this week... need more caffiene.

• We're now up to 60 weapons & items in the gear catalog. Been adding to the list whenever something pops into my head.
• Finished 4/6 player classes. Only 2 left to finish.
• Formalized some of the setting info for GMs to use.
• Experimented with rules for vehicles & power armor. Dunno if this will make it into the playtest, but it was a good design exercise.
• Up to 43 pages written on the playtest document.

Things I've said while drunk:

"Guys, I can't feel the ground"

"What if phone was spelled with an F?"

"I found this rock, do you wanna touch it?"

"Is cereal soup?"

So if you've not seen any of my posts before, I'm developing a post-apocalyptic ttrpg from the ground up. I am aiming to release a playtesting pdf (for free) around December/January... so I'm curious, how many of ya'll Cybrarians would be interested?

I can't stand how much of a slop-fest mainstream social media is these days, and I'm already not great at self-promoting, so ya'll are likely going to be the first people in line lol.

Since December will be here before I know it, here's what I'm committing...

Your party of adventurers stumble across this dusty old book.... would you use it?

Wax-Sealed Tome

“Ash-crowned, star-spawned, eldest-dead. Lord Behemoth answers only the call of those who have known true loss. To them he offers nothing, for nothing could ever mend such a heart. Instead he takes; fear, anger, grief, til only blissful oblivion remains. Make way the Lord of Loss.”

ACTION:

Break the seal, speak the words, summon Behemoth. This Action is final, absolute, and cannot be...

I almost forgot to post an update for this week! Whoops!

• We're now up to 53 weapons & items in the gear catalog. Really been enjoying designing this stuff.
• Made some adjustments to the Tag system and removed a few status effects that felt redundant.
• Aaaaaalmost done with the last 3 classes. They need a little more refinement to round them out / make them feel cohesive.
• Refined the quick start rules.
• Up to 40 pages written on the playtest document. Been running into some writer's block.

Didn't get up to anything too crazy this week:

• Focused on the gear catalog, with 42 Weapons & Items designed. Was only planning on releasing 50 for the public playtest, but might do more.
• Started tinkering with boss stat blocks and game mechanics.
• Tinkered with a web-based map to make it easier to play games virtually, such as over Discord.
• Just received another of the finished illustrations.

Hey horror fans! I wanna talk about the Others, the monsters the GM gets to play against the party in The Veil is Torn. Each one is based upon an established horror trope, and each has a specific method for being defeated. I only have 4 thought up currently, and would like to have 6 for the full release, so if you have any ideas/suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Genre: Biological Horror

Monster: a sentient, parasitic fungus that mutates its victims.

Gameplay: zombie apocalypse. Players have...

I keep trying to come up with names for in-setting scary megacorps, only to discover there are companies with those very names already in existence...

Something, something "life imitating art", I guess.

Nothing too much to update ya'll on this week, but I have plenty of things moving behind the scenes:

• Redesigned how weapons function to make each category feel unique.
  • Melee can attack fleeing enemies without spending an action.
  • Firearms can aim outside their max range, but have disadvantage when doing so.
  • Spells cause you to gain Void, eventually eating into your health once your Void meter is full.
• Built out some standardized weapon keywords to add some sub-themes to...

So this week, I've been tinkering with the different categories of weapons that players can utilize. I wasn't happy with the original setup, so I'm completely redesigning... all of them, lol. And honestly, they feel better, at least conceptually. Nothing I have here is particularly revolutionary, but I feel like they now each have defined playstyles.

▪︎

Melee

High damage, but typically can only hit enemies adjacent to your miniature. Since you will often spend a turn closing the distance to your...

We've been making some progress this week! So far...

• Finished the Trinket system for player character creation
• Finished the Quirk system for player character creation
• Implemented better balance between Stress, Void, and Corruption meters
• Updated the digital character sheet to incorporate everything above
• 37 (total) pages written for the playtest document
• First draft of the book cover received (maybe you saw it in my earlier post :) )

Also, here is the link to...

It's been a slow week with little progress made. Worked on a lot of various things, but nothing actually finished...

• 3 artists hired. Finished artworks coming soon.
• Worked on Trinkets & Quirks for character creation. Almost done.
• Played around with some boss designs, just nothing of interest to show off.

TViT Dev Update 03

Making steady progress!

• 3 of 6 player classes refined and ready for public playtesting.
• Built the 1st draft of a website for The Veil is Torn! HTML is cool, but also I hate it at the same time (because I'm not good at it).
• Made some revisions to the web-based character sheet, and set it up within that website.
• 2 artists hired and in talks with a 3rd. First art piece is almost done!
• 33 (total) pages written for the playtest document.