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Yes you can! But luck often swings back the other way, haha.

Yeah if you don’t play it as a journaling game, it goes pretty quickly. The husbirb got through a playthrough that was a week-ish long in a little less than half an hour, and that was with me explaining stuff a lot at the beginning. By day 3 he had all the locks memorized and was zooming along, haha.

Play the game from “memory”? 😉

Aww I'm glad! Husbirb worked hard on the art, too, so it makes me happy that people like how it turned out. I think the "printer friendly" cover looks pretty cool.

It's an idea that has been floating around awhile and I wanted to try it since this rulebook is pretty short. I'm planning on doing a LOA stream soon but I like the idea of shorts to preview the audiobook tracks!

This is so fun!! Maybe I'll use this for my own playthrough soon. Thank you so much for taking the time! I love that the game inspired something new.

Oh yeah! So you basically roll and see which lock best matches what you rolled, then you push your luck or spend Memory if nothing matches. It's still pretty tough, though. Nobody in my life who's played it has lasted longer than a week. :'D

Love this so much, thank you for sharing it!!

Oh, you caught me! This is what happens when a math teacher writes a game, ahaha. I love this whole write-up! I did take a lot of that into consideration when calculating probabilities and such while internally playtesting and refining the rules. 😉 

I’m happy to work on a print-friendly version! Do you think it’s worth doing both layouts that way or just the single pages?

👀 Very interested in the minor artifact subsystem…!

Thank you so much!! 😊 

Oh yes! That was before I put the reward up haha. If you let me know which 2 names and which tables, I’ll add them.

We’re so glad that you’re enjoying your experience!! These reports and feedback give me so much motivation, you have no idea 😭 

Replayability was really important to me. Often I play solo TTRPGs which, while fun, have little to no replayability because once you’ve seen all the prompts once, it’ll feel samey no matter what you do. That’s not a design flaw per se, but I really wanted Ballads to have a lot of random elements that make each campaign feel different—in the same way that there are thousands upon thousands of different romantic fantasy stories that may have similar elements, but are each a unique sort of story.

Oh, those name tables will all eventually be d100 tables haha, I just put down the 66 names I have so far so the tables would just be down and in a usable state. I know the probability isn’t the same for all the names at the moment, but I figured people could just pick a name if they so desired.

Oh no, Platonic, Antagonistic, and Romantic are all on separate tables for that reason. A Platonic relationship will eventually hit the negatives for Favor because once they’re to 0 Fate, you have to start subtracting from Favor. At that point either you use an Endeavor or two to salvage the relationship, or use a Transition to show the friendship going sour. Regression scenes are optional, which lets you decide which of those you’d prefer. Endeavors can help a lot because you can write them a letter and then visit, which can add quite a bit of Favor! 

So much has happened already, wow! But since your character has 1 year to change their fate that also kinda makes sense, haha.

Subtracting Favor should always be going down, though. If they’re already at -1 Favor and like you less, it’ll be -2. Whereas Fate going down towards 0 shows that they’re not really thinking about you and you have less chances to meet, if that makes sense! That’s why Favor can be negative, but Fate cannot. Often, having lower Fate is more devastating because a lot of prompts throw you with the SCs that have higher Fate. That’s why for Reconciliation, it’s up to the player whether they want to subtract 1 from Fate or Favor for a relationship that’s fading.

Fixed the restaurant table (it started off at d6, then I came up with more stuff), Endeavors list, and the relationship transition table. Thanks so much!!

The thing with SCs is they're meant to be more important characters. Think of a TV show where there's a difference between the main character's friends they see in every episode vs side characters that only appear every once in a while. Side characters (NPCs in this case) also don't get much character development. 

The rules for the Reconciliation Phase allow you to choose between losing Fate or Favor. So maybe Fate goes down because your MC meets this character less and less, or Favor goes down because the character's annoyed that your MC hasn't reached out to them lately. That's what I was going for. You don't necessarily have to "downgrade" them if you don't want to. If an SC drops off your list, it doesn't mean they don't exist anymore, just that you're on like an acquaintance level. They'd just drop to 0 Fate eventually which means you never really meet. But I also think that would be a great time for a Regression scene, which would likely be a meaningful scene that adds +1 Fate anyway! There's a lot of room to maneuver. My goal was to capture the nuance of different types of character relationships as best as I could. So whatever feels right for that particular relationship narrative-wise should be what you go with.

Also, my thinking is that -1 Favor is showing that it's 1 away from 0. They slightly dislike you or are irked by you, but it's pretty close to being neutral.

Giving that Endeavors list a lot of thought. I think once the text is in Layout, it might be nice to put them all together and like...indent them or color code them to distinguish the different types. You're right that there's not THAT many. It should work!

Again, thank you so much for the feedback and fun play reports!! It's giving me a lot to think about and iterate on. 

WAIT THIS IS SO COOL!! WAH!

It might not be possible unless the game makes mega-bucks, but the artist HAS expressed interest in designing a Ballads tarot deck...

Too true… There’s so many cool ones on Kickstarter, too. 🫠 

I think I’ve done the vast majority of work on Ballads on stream, haha. 🤓 Hope you got a cool deck!

Yes, you can play through half the year now! 🤗 And some were things I’d been considering for a while, too. Thanks again for your feedback!!

Aww man I meant to fix that before the 0.11 release, but forgot to. I have now split the tables so that they don't get cut off, which will be reflected in the next version, coming very soon! Like, later today!

I read your play report out loud on stream and everyone loves where this is going. Definitely keep us posted! I have no idea how you're going to get your half-sister out of this mess, but I hope you manage.

Yeah, I definitely can relate to that feeling of WHAT HAPPENS NEXT! It's where writing little bullet points of what happens can be really helpful.

I had that text in the "Ballad flow" section, but I've added it to the SC section as well, and moved the SC section to be after the Prologue. I think this helps the rules flow better, so thank you so much again for the feedback!

You're 100% correct in your interpretation of the relationship progression rules! Both Fate and Favor have to match to trigger the change. I have added this more explicitly in the explanation for that section so that it's more clear, as it's a very important part of the game.

Hey! Thank you so much for this thought-out, detailed feedback. I really love that you’re enjoying character/SC creation, which is one of my favorite parts of the game, too.

I’m definitely taking your thoughts on the section order into consideration. The current order is by no means final and I have myself encountered the same difficulties while playtesting. Before the layout is made, I’m just trying to write all the rules and tables and have it be complete content-wise. My next priority will be arranging things in an order that makes sense.

I think you’re right about it “making sense” for NPC/SC stuff to be after the prologue, though. I think I’ll have it be more “if needed, create at least 2 SCs” post-prologue instead of what it is now. I’ll change the order for the next release, which is coming soon! I’m just finishing up the last set of major arcana summer tables. 🥳

Thank you again for playing and taking the time to give your feedback!! It’s much-appreciated and really helps my motivation! 🔥 

Had a great time playing this, though sad I didn’t get to use any of my counter trinkets. I streamed my playthrough and the VOD is below for your perusal!

Good day! As you play through your ballads as the game is in development, play let us know here if you have any feedback or suggestions! In particular, we want to hear if your characters and playthroughs feel balanced and if you're having fun. 😉