Happy New Year’s Eve! One last update for 2024, as the Shifting Wastes claim another year.

This update has centered on adding some significant new NPC factions (Raiders & Bandits) and improving explanations throughout.

Changelog

v0.9.2 2024-12-31

• Added bandit creature type (a bit of them sneaked into the previous version, but we’ll pretend we didn’t see that, they weren’t ready yet)
• Added raider creature type
• Fixed Size 2 creatures that were mistakenly assigned Size 3 carry capacities
• The “Bedlam” mind type has been rewritten, instead of psionic vulnerability, they take it directly to wounds, and instead of having 0 INT and positive ATH they have no social stats and use STR for ATH, leaving INT unspecified
• Removed text shadows from H2, H3, and H4 headings; I noticed it was distracting in the final PDF docs
• Tweaked the language for carry capacity, removed resource limits, added consequences for being overloaded
• Removed free healer’s kit from quickstart, dying is part of the adventure’s character progression after all
• Fixed the Giftcursed quickstart character having duplicate stats, completely revamped its stats
• Tweaked other quickstart character stats, particularly the Psion
• Added a short summary of what each quickstart character is good at based on their stats alone
• Changed the column layout in the bestiary so that more creatures have their headings at the top of the page, this also keeps more of a creature’s stats on the same page with the heading, which makes it much easier to find what you’re looking for
• Simplified description of the Fading status in the Status Effects table, as it was a poor summary of what was already in the Vitals section
• Added basic descriptions for Attributes and Skills
• Added Training Limit for Talents/Specialties keyed off INT
• Homogenized “Strain Max” to “Max Strain” and highlighted it properly in all of the text
• Removed the “maximum” qualifier from derived stats
• Fixed the Lifesense technique being mislabeled
• Removed “Resist Checks” from the Exert ability text because STR isn’t used for Resists
• Completely rewrote the Conflict Overview table and Check Difficulty & Threshold tables to be more approachable and useful to players
• Highlighted the entire Difficulty text instead of just the number
• Difficulty now highlighted differently for harder and easier adjustments
• Fixed Navigation sometimes being listed as using WIT rather than INT
• Changed the special-purpose Dowsing specialty to use EMP instead of WIT
• Added a few more Specialties to the “Standard” list
• Specified that the harder difficulty for recovery checks is only for untrained users
• Fixed the Threshold section which mistakenly claimed that a “lower” Threshold is better when it should have said “higher”
• Merged Wrestle into Athletics
• Added dice columns to Specialties and Training tables to make rolling up NPCs quicker
• Tweaked language around Pyramid interior features, now themes cover all interior features, and open the options up to what was formerly just “walls” being able to be something else
• Added new quote styles for the Quickstart narration vs the narrator throughout the rest of the document, also added a new quote style for The Xynwrithian Book of Proverbs
• Renamed the subheadings in the Heritages chapter to remove “heritage” being repeated constantly and to better group the different super-types/traits
• Highlighted the important rows of tables like Difficulty and Terrain so the defaults are more clear
• Added a section explaining the different quote styles
• Removed an old (unstyled) aside which talked about the game being designed for 3 players because of the iconic characters, but was no longer relevant due to the quickstart section
• Moved some text from the Heritage section to the Advancement section where it is more relevant, and expanded on it
• Fixed a few typos which were real words, just the wrong words
• Split up the raiders old-timer intro, put one under their behavior
• Removed the heritage Tier override, it took up space and opened up a variety of potentially major issues down the line
• Modified the Quickstart intro, broke it into chunks, one for the GM and one for the players so each can be addressed individually. Directed the GM to read some of the core rules.
• Introduced Xynwrith proper, and a little about the factions outside of Kel
• Renamed Thief to Scout to better convey their role and abilities
• Homogenized “porcupine caterpillar” to “porcupillar”
• Updated passage hazards table, improved formatting, simplified hazards
• Added “Innate Instinct” for creatures, to avoid having to add a bunch of single-purpose Specialties so that every creature is more likely to make their basic attacks
• Fixed old term “Trail”, replaced with “Uneven”
• Cleaned up Pyramid Items tables, now instead of seeming to be self-referential with “Items” they now use the term “Equipment”
• Collapsed the two different Pyramid Item explanations into a single one
• Renamed Agua & Vittles Equipment section to Supplies to match the Pyramid name for those items
• Initial simplified ethos/drive mechanic added
• Discovered that the Recovery section was not imported into the manuscript properly, fixed the missing words, and restructured it to make it easier to find things and better explained
• Added glossary