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I'm glad you dig it. I'm happy to hear you are using it for a campaign. That's awesome! All of these images are public domain and most came from this Twitter thread by Gontijo from a few years back: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1404499027513774080.html

Definitely! As long as you are taking the Soldier turns in the same order each time, you are good. Nothing stopping solo play with more Soldiers (you'll just likely want to bump the Difficulty up to match the higher squad total). And yea, 4 Soldiers is the intended maximum. 

Love this! It's already really nice, especially for folks who are used to doing a bit of post-processing. I could see myself creating something here and then crunching it up a bit in Affinity/Photoshop and then using it in a TTRPG adventure, for sure. Great work!

An expert plan, perfectly executed! Sounds like some wild, chaotic fun. Thanks for playing!

Thanks for playing! I'm glad it's been fun. Right now, difficulty does not scale to the amount of Soldiers (meaning the doing the highest difficulty with just 1 or 2 Soldiers is likely to be near impossible, for example). I am planning a v1.1 update before I take the game to print so I may add a few more difficulties or a scaling option as well.

Thanks for playing (and for the play report)!

Dang, I love a good changelog.

Tonight, I ran a brief playtest of the first portion of an upcoming starter adventure I'm hoping to get out in the February update. Here's a play report: In their final semester at the Academy and after months of training and studying, the Tacticians begin their final exams - 2 weeks of field exercises held in the regions surrounding the Academy. 

Joined by their advisor Professor Dekkin Von Lopesbane, an aging and boisterous hippofolk professor (and graduate of the First Class of Tacticians) led Quablin, a Blobish Mage and Helios, the Flame-Touched Cleric of Solara, through their trials. 

First, they were put in a equal footing fight against several Imperial Army troops who had traveled from the White-Walled City of Ahm as part of an annual rivalry contest between the groups. The Tacticians pride themselves on winning (more often than not).

Over 4 Rounds, Helios and Quablin managed to take out the soldiers, 1 Archer and 1 Spearman (both EL1 enemies), but Helios was nearly brought down and Quablin was tapped out of good combat options by the end. A challenging fight, especially with no healing abilities between the two of them. 

The duo took 1 XP for the successful battle, but had fought rather disjointed and did not receive any RP for teamwork during the fight. The two were definitely an odd, not completely happy with one another duo at this point, with various barbs being thrown by Helios especially during the fight. 

Next, Von Lopesbane brought the group to Penelope Thunderberry, a broad and muscular dwarven woman and one of the Academy's esteemed Beastmasters, who summoned a number of wolves for the two of them and other groups of nearby Tacticians to fight in a simulated nighttime attack.

Over 2 high damage Rounds, Helios and Quablin took out the Wolf (EL2) but only through smart use of their shields, clever backstabs, and an ideal Stupor by Quablin. Otherwise, either would have been taken out in a single hit given the wolf's penchant for backstabs due to its high speed. 

The duo took their 2nd point of XP and advanced to Level 2. They also took 1 RP due to their Stupor and spear Backstab combo that greatly shifted the fight in their favor. After the first battle's barbs, this time the duo learned to play to each other's strengths as varied as they may be. 

As the advisors were bringing out a midday lunch spread, a pair of huge Griffins (EL5) swooped down, attempting to feed off the field full of students and professors. Chaos broke out and Von Lopesbane, with a mouthful of melon, was hauled up by one griffin and carried off, towards the northern horizon! 

Next session: The Search For Dekking Von Lopesbane!

[GM/Designer Notes: This adventure is intended to act as a tutorial for, first, the combat and then, second, exploration, interacting with the world and NPCs, and more intense combat which will be coming in the next session(s). The battles here were crafted in line with the equivalent EL to CL guidance using rules as currently written but were varied by equal combatants in the first and one very strong (comparatively to the Tacticians) combatant but with the Tacticians having a numbers advantage. I definitely took a solid handful of notes for new areas to tweak and clarify the rules to help dodge some confusing situations.]

More to come (that you'll hopefully enjoy)!

Thanks for the review! 

Oh, no worries! It's always a worthwhile reminder when it comes to accessibility. 

The STRENGTH description under Aptitudes should read “lift” instead of “life”

It's also come to my attention that while there is a mention that Abilities are exhausted upon use in battle, it isn't made explicitly clear. This will be corrected in the next update. For players, this is the intended rule: "Abilities may be used once per battle after which they are Exhausted and may no longer be used (unless recharged in rare cases typically via magic items, potions, and environmental effects)."

Your request is granted! Here's the Official and Public Tacticians of Ahm Discord: https://discord.gg/cXHESEN3Ps

After getting a few requests, I have repurposed a once-private playtesting Discord into the Official and Public Tacticians of Ahm server. Come hang out if you'd like to talk about the game, look for a group, need clarification on any rules and more!

https://discord.gg/cXHESEN3Ps

Here's the Youtube version as well: 

Thanks for checking the game out! I'm glad it's up your alley. 

That exact accessibility concern you described is on my list of future updates (it's listed in the game doc itself) and should be coming sooner than later in the process. The plan right now is to go with the color and pattern combo similar to what you described here. 

I'm also looking into ways to do alt text descriptions of the patterns and such for folks too (but that one is likely a bit further down the road).

I have a playtest discord from earlier in development I'm planning to revamp for everyone to start joining publicly. Hopefully going to get invites/links up for it later this week! I wasn't sure how many folks would be interested. Glad to see you are tho!

Thanks for watching it! I'm hoping to do more in this vein, both more in-depth explainers/rules walkthroughs and also lore videos and such in the future!

I was on a livestream with The Weekly Scroll earlier this afternoon discussing all things Tacticians of Ahm.

Check it out HERE (Twitch Archive) if you'd like a deep dive into the design beginnings, motivations, and all the stuff I'm excited about!

I missed adding this explicitly to the text, but if you use the link near the center of page 8 of the v0.8 Rulebook doc to access the character sheet digitally, it will take you to a Digital Tools folder that I intend to add to as development continues! I just added 4 simple character tokens, using the class art seen on the cover to that same folder. Over time, I'll be adding more and more digital goodies there as I get in new art and am able to fit it alongside the rest of the project progress.

This will be addressed more outwardly in the first update next month.

For now, enjoy the tokens! - Christian

If you have gotten a chance to bring Tacticians of Ahm to the (physical or virtual) table and would like to let me know how your experience went (both good and bad), the following Google Form is the best way to do that (and the best way for me to track and consider it during future development).

Feedback Form (v0.8)

Thanks!

Please post any errors you find in the text in this thread for me to correct down the line (and to see if they have already been added to the list).

Most of these will be discovered and corrected by later rounds of editing so please do not feel the need to post anything here.

Thanks for playing! Sounds like a great time!

Thanks for playing!

😌

I may do something like this later into the new years for St. John's. I've been taking a lot of walks since moving here and there's seriously so many strange little monuments and odd nooks and crannies. Would make for a great weird places zine, I think.

I love how varied and sometimes weird the stuff is in here! Really fun mix of favorite media with just... a weird local building and a creepy hallway. The best kind of annual review! 

Thanks for checking it out! I'm excited to do it again next year for sure!

Thanks! It was a ton of fun to do. I'd missed doing this more casual/personal style of zine and take some time to hand draw the zine covers was a lot of fun too.

I had a great time playing this recently! The whole thing is really flavorful and just cool! My character was basically a Destiny warlock wielding a laser-firing prism blade who died in heroic combat against a demon terrorizing a shifting plane of a forming planet. My allies took up my sword to cut them down and win the day! Tons of good stuff in a seemingly small package.

Beautiful pieces! I could see someone making a wonderful bestiary or fleshing out an adventure nicely with these.

Thanks! I'm glad it landed. That's the feeling I was hoping to create - those early internet days of getting a link or an AIM message from a friend where it seemed like anything could be possible and it was hard to verify much of anything.

Thanks! I would love to do a full on old-school website in this style filled with this kinda stuff. Maybe one day!

Haha, I'm sad to report I'm only human after all.

That's just an accidental repeat. Oops!

Yea, I'm not sure what happened there (this was a pretty quick one as part of a game jam). I'd go with "6. New life has sprung from your remains. What kind of thing is it that grows up from this place? TIME NEVER STOPS."

That'd be awesome! Please report back with how your session goes if you are able. I'd love to hear about it.

Thank for checking out the game! 

You could definitely roll with those stat changes at your table, but the way they are in the text here was intentional on my part. Sacrifice is a tricky stat but being a solo, selfish focused character in my mind means you are willing to coss more lines and give up the few things you have (because you aren't attached to many things/people) - it also means you are more likely in key moments to sacrifice yourself, because few folks rely on you, you have nothing more to lose, etc. That's how I see it anyway! Fighting for others lowers your sacrifice because of your attachments - you won't throw your ally to the wolves, you won't sacrifice yourself and leave your family to fend for themselves, etc. Higher sacrifice, in my mind, is about what you have to lose. The less to lose, the higher the sacrifice and the more lines you'll cross. The more to lose, the less likely you are to cross those lines, let others and yourself die, etc.

I like your extra Struggle creation questions too! I was adhering to a 2-page limit here so that's why I didn't dig in further, but those are all good questions if you want to create an even richer Struggle.