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Charles Simon

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A member registered Sep 29, 2018 · View creator page →

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I don't have plans for those platforms currently CrestWork, but when I run the game for a remote group we use Role (https://app.playrole.com/). Role has many of the same features as Roll20, including integrated dice rollers in the playbooks and handouts/maps/tokens and the like, and I have a template for Hello World that has the player and crew playbooks already built with handouts and district maps and such.

If you or anyone else would like me to copy you a room off my template to use for yourself, I would be happy to! Just reach out to me via either twitter DM or email (my contact details are here: https://umbralaeronaut.itch.io/).

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I would rule that you absolutely can use the second half of Ignite to perform a final function before deresolution, even when you are doing it to yourself through Conduit. The two special abilities were written this way to hint at this interaction. It's perhaps debatable just how much extra "story" impact a PC can throw in with a normal function roll in their last breath after they've already just been responsible for one of the World-bending Authorities, but I'm sure that maximizing this interaction will be a fun challenge for somebody. 

However (rule as written) I would want that function roll to be one of the 9 ordinary actions on the player sheet. Conduit could maybe be written a bit better to reflect this, but the end-of-scene Deresolution is intended to be the cost paid to access the ability (even though you pay the price afterward).  You've got me thinking though about a possible rewrite that does permit the player to just reflexively Authority when they are on their way out of the door... or at least clarifies this interaction a bit so that Conduit has a more clear opportunity cost. 

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Very fair questions all around. As it mentions in the chapter, the Memory system is an abstraction that models a particular "feel" (any equipment system is to some degree), and what this one is best at modeling is the cinematic dynamic of a character who goes into a situation (mostly the Score) and reveals the various pieces of equipment they brought along with them to the "viewers" right at the instant they are needed. So Ziggy has the right idea: the system generally assumes there is a plan (revealed to us at the table retroactively) around how your user has allocated their memory slots prior to breaking in the door on a Score, and that most of your Memory slots are previously accounted for: whether in equipment we haven't yet seen or, if your User had to relieve stress recently, in treasured high-fidelity memories they haven't yet found the time to unload in a safe location. So what about things that were not part of the loadout "plan" that my user had in mind when they suited up this cycle?

Here's my approach. If the player's user has empty Memory slots they haven't used yet, then this is easy: they can mark those slots with the thing they've acquired in the middle of the score, and we will just say that this was always part of the plan! Having some spare room to stash stuff on the run was in the cards all along for this Score. So that slot is now filled like normal, we're still seeing "the plan" unfold, it just happens to be with things they picked up in the moment instead of things they brought along with them.

BUT, if the player doesn't have empty Memory slots and they really want to make room, I would also let them throw away things to pick up other things on the fly. In this case the slots marked on their Memory track don't go up, but they would cross out existing pieces of Gear and write in new entries in a blank space to make up the balance. For example: "I tossed my Intrusion Kit so I could snatch this guy's encrypted Coinpurse."

Basically as the GM your discretion trumps the rules anytime it needs to.  You should absolutely let players do this from time to time, using your discretion as to how this affects the fiction at the table. If it feels like your Memory system is getting abused, you can always start to ask tough questions of the players!

"Hey so... you're actually cool with dropping your Intrusion Kit and leaving it around here? Doesn't that kit have all kinds of identifying information and incriminating details from you on it's timeline?" If they insist on leaving their stuff laying around all the time anyway, well... at least they can't say you didn't warn them when that starts to come back to bite them! One simple and easy consequence is to just assess gear left behind in the Score as an extra point of Heat or two during the Payoff segment. Alternatively, you can get even more devious with it. Does an enemy faction get hold of your stuff? Does this let them start a Long-Term Clock to break the code on your crew's ways and means? Will this, on a long-enough timescale, result in your security protocols getting owned by malefactors, or sold out on the information exchange? Gear integrity can be serious business in World!

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These are great questions to ask about Archives, and the answers your table comes up with should give you a lot of fun technical ideas for how to use the Archives and timeline to flesh out the mechanics of how World works. I really think you are both on the right track, so I won't speak much to the setting stuff: you've already got this.

But since you brought up the nature of the Restore function and the examples in the Function section, I figure that I would say some things about the philosophy of assigning Complications as a GM. Restore, just like any other function that the players try to do when there are interesting or dangerous obstacles in their path, is fallible in various ways. So it might just be that while there are versions of the Safe that have what the user wanted in it (i.e. the 6 result on the die roll that the player missed in their dice roll), for some reason in the moment they weren't able to line things up. As GM when you get a result of a 5 or less, you have a lot of freedom to narrate how things go less than perfectly. One way to describe Complications is to emphasize the challenge of taking action under all the pressure that the users are in during a score... things like Time (are guards about to stumble on us as we fumble with the safe? Does that make it harder to do things perfectly?) or Deniability (can I mess with the safe in a way that doesn't make it obvious what I did? Does my user make an error through an overabundance of caution?).

When I GM for a Forged in the Dark game, during Scores I find an effective approach to my Complications is to emphasize the powers and capabilities of the opposition  (in preference over narrating the players bungling things or failing on their own terms). This way the players are assured that while their users are powerful and capable, the factions they are going after are just as strong and just as cautious as them. I did my best to showcase this style of consequence in the function sample scenarios, which is why you might be seeing complications that seem a bit complicated. "Why not just tell the players that it didn't work because they did badly?" is a non-starter a lot of the time both because it can be demoralizing for some players, but just as importantly because it often doesn't advance the action in a dynamic way!

Don't forget also the most important part of a Forged in the Dark game: the ability of the players to Resist any consequence they don't like! The player in the example scenario might next say "You know what, I think that my user won't take no for an answer. I'll make every effort to beat their security because I really want to get what's inside the safe! I can just resist that Reduced Effect consequence and push on through the distractions... we see beads of sweat form on my user's brow as his focus narrows to a pinprick." Then they would roll some dice (based on the surrounding fiction, this could be either a Stability, Resolution, or a Computation resistance!) and maybe take a little bit of stress, but they get what they want!


graphical update to the Resistance section in the player handouts that will roll out with the next small patch... and yeah, this photo of it has a typo lol

In the new update, there is a Syndicate faction added ["the Directory"] which expands a little bit on some of these concepts! You can also find a little discussion of this in the Black Hats starting scenario, which uses that faction as a big part of the scenario.  Thank you both for raising this question, it helped me think through the implications of the setting a bit.



We used to have a series of videos on the San Jenaro Coop twitch channel (incidentally the same group that helped Erik run the Brinkwood crowdfunding campaign, if you are familiar!) but, unfortunately, those VODs expired a while ago. I feel like the latest version of the game has a much healthier collection of random tables and prompts, but I definitely agree it needs even more and we aim to have that done before the project is final.

All that said, I will be running some playtests of the game to celebrate the new version releasing this week, and depending on willingness of others and technology we might record them.... this is far from a promise, it's a distant possibility at best.

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These are all excellent! I honestly read this whole thing and I don't think I can disagree with your read on any of these functions, or the examples you used for them.
Archives and restore has always been a bit nebulous within the rules text, but for the next version of the rules I'm doing my best to give more guidance for those (even though alternative reads of the functions are always welcome). Here's a preview of the page spread on the Restore function and archives in general (if it's tough to read try right-click and viewing in a new tab).



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The question of how much time to devote to a score is one of the great mysteries of GMing a Forged game! My personal take is that a Score lasts as long as it feels like it should, and you should feel guided by the fiction at the table. If it feels like things are going too well, consider introducing a mid-Score twist (those are always fun! There are tables to roll on for ideas for these in the Player Handouts by the way). If it is going badly and the players want to cut their losses, maybe give them an obstacle or two to consider and then let them get out.


You already have planned out some potential challenges and considerations that the crew of players would have to face for your score... that's excellent! That sketch of the score you have is about the upper limit of my own planning for an average score. I would usually usher the players into making the Engagement Roll, then based on that introduce one of the challenges I had planned: their initial glimpse at the situation on the ground. Then carry on based on what happens, tease the prize when it feels like they've earned it, keep things moving and don't bog down too hard in a single challenge (unless the players are really into it! Sometimes the score becomes about the duel between your Breaker and the enemy's top enforcer, and that's ok too).

If the score feels like it's running too long, don't be afraid to cut some content and keep it short. Every few sessions I sometimes ask my players how they feel about the length of recent scores (as well as other thoughts they have about the game). Sometimes scores can be very short, and sometimes they want to be longer and more involved. One of the things I try to ask in the middle of sessions is "How important does this feel like it should be to your user? Is this a big scene or just a simple challenge?" If a scene or a score or an adversary is very important to the story they players want to tell, we can take more time with it and zoom in the action a bit.

There have been some Forged games that attempt to formalize the procedure. The example that comes to mind for me is Sig: City of Blades (link to a DriveThru RPG store page) where every score always begins with 3 essential clocks named "Politics, Profit, and Peril" which basically guide the length of the score. The Politics clock represents the actual objective of the score (in Sig, every score is always about securing a claim through some means), and I believe that it's length is determined by the GM based on how difficult the task initially appears to be. The Profit clock is basically a wager on the part of the crew as to how much money they want to make while attempting to achieve the political objective. And the Peril clock is some kind of impending threat that, once the clock completes, forces the crew to disengage (and potentially forego either their Political or Profit goal clocks if they were not yet filled).

Off the top of my head I don't remember exactly how player actions map onto these clocks... it might not be the normal routine where a "Standard" effect is 2 ticks and a "Great" is 3, for example. I think it was more like the GM would add 1 tick when a major task has been accomplished. To be clear I haven't tried this method myself, though my gut feel is that it would be a little too rigid and reductive for my tastes. Still, the concept can be useful if you want to have more structure!

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The Administration deserves more writing than it currently has in terms of pinning down it's structure and goals, but striking the correct balance is always on the fore of my thoughts and to a large extent I do want this sort of exploration to be table-specific and fit the desires of a given group... similar to how big-picture questions about the nature of, say, Leviathans or the Immortal Emperor are left up to the table to decide upon (or ignore) in Blades. It's very possible for a crew to go many sessions without interacting with the Administration (unless they're actively seeking them out or doing a LOT of high-intensity scores that send them shooting up the Chaos track), and by the time they do that group may have a stronger individualized idea for their conception of World and what Admin needs to be for them.

As was true in Blades, a favorite GMing technique of mine is to solicit guesses or ideas from the whole table of players, as the discovery of your version of the setting is best done in a collaborative format. Not all questions in a Forged in the Dark game are best answered in the text.

What you do with the Board is up to you (and I would also hope the player who takes that Special Ability gets input of their own), but the origin point of the idea is inspired from the video game CONTROL. In case you haven't played it, and you're comfortable with light spoilers for an action game from a few years ago, the following article does a good job summarizing the presentation of that game's "Board"  as well as one very reasonable interpretation of it's themes: https://www.vice.com/en/article/j5ypj3/control-the-board-pyramid

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There is a hint of this theme in the top-level server description page for Sirius (PDF page 86 of the HW_Book in spread format). Users who have chosen to opt out of the “memory game” are called Innocents and there are at least enough of them to be statistically-significant.  They aren’t currently elaborated on much, but you’re already on the right track with these questions: one can infer that existence without long-term memory makes them live a sort of Groundhog Day-like existence.

Every user has at least enough embedded processing and temporary recall ability (call it RAM if you like) to consciously observe their surroundings and follow through on short-term decisions and goals. I’m sure many, if not most, Innocents have at least a couple of fond recollections they haven’t gotten rid of or overwritten, they just aren’t actively pursuing more or maintaining a coherent self-aware timeline outside of the immediate present. For some users this is enough, although for obvious reasons they might have trouble explaining their justification if you asked how they arrived that decision for themselves!  Obviously, ownership of Memory storage allows for the development of a more complicated and self-aware long-term identity, and the majority of users described in the book are looking to acquire memories or at least hold onto the ones that they have and maintain a continuity of self-aware existence.

Anyway, the concept of the Innocents is not yet fully developed, at least in part because their motivations don’t obviously make for either great PCs or easily- understood antagonists, but I’m interested to hear how you choose to integrate them into your personal take on the setting. They will get more fully-fleshed out at some point.

the Council and the Revisionists should both have a starting cohort, and I'll make an update fairly soon that fixes them. Feel free to define as you wish for now, but I'll be giving the Revisionists an Expert (who the crew then gets to define) while the Council will start with a Cohort of Tracers (I'm aware that this will result in a "control" council start that gives them 2 starting gangs, the intent is to use my post-update bug-fix update bring the Black Hats and Dynasty up to the level of the two new crews by giving them an additional choice of bonus at creation).

Yeah, the inversion lab wording change was mostly to try to explain how a player would even go about using it in the game. It's tough with the word count in the claim bubbles, but I still want to allow it to do fun things like you propose. I'll try to figure out a way to leave it open- ended  while also prompting the imagination. 

These are some great ideas for the Revisionists.  That example for the Inversion Lab is really good, and exactly the type of thing I would love to see players at the table use it for.

The Memory Tomb has a similar format to claims in the Black Hats and Dynasty which also provide a bonus to various functions while the players are taking action on their "home turf." It's up to you and the table to negotiate the exact prerequisites to get those bonuses, as they are deliberately written loose. Really the primary goal was to make the player's headquarters feel gradually more personalized and under their control (this is especially true for the Dynasty, which can rack up a lot of bonuses for fighting on home turf).  This is important since the Entanglement table in downtime includes a few results that prompt a "home invasion" scenario where the crew's HQ or Claims can come under attack. In the specific example of the Memory Tomb, it might not exactly provided combat bonuses, but it's definitely good for research and information gathering... maybe that's something the crew might desperately need to do while under siege from an enemy? That could be a cool scene.

Message in a Bottle is definitely one of the most challenging special abilities for the reader in HW, but I think you've got the idea. It's deliberately nebulous, but the implication is that one of your crew (perhaps even a crew member not yet created?) is the Mysterious Stranger, from your future (or maybe a bad future, and they're trying to save you from it?). The Revisionists are full of this sort of thing, where the mechanical bonus is here for you to drape your own story over.

Stable Loops is exactly as you say in my imagination. It's a Flashback, except the cost is different because it's a Flashback you have not done yet. The memory cost may be the computational strain on the user of memorizing the scenario, the precise timestamps, and the exact circumstances which need to be altered in the future so they can seamlessly "save themselves" in the past. At the table, you might frame the scene as a kind of Flash-Forward, where the player narrates how an older version of their character goes back in time to help themselves in this present moment... but basically framed in the same way at the table as an ordinary flashback.

In general I knew for my recent update that the themes of HW can be a little esoteric, and so one of the goals was to throw in some actionable prompts for adventure lines and story hooks to help get everyone's imagination stirring. And yeah, the Revisionists are pretty crazy conceptually so they need the help most of all out of my existing crew types.

To that end, the Player Handouts section has score prompts now! These are towards the back of the PDF in the GM handouts area. Here's some examples from the Revisionists page (Black Hats and Dynasty also have their own tables, the Council will get one with my next update).



Hey Ziggy!


I think your example with the floating airship is spot-on, highlighting how your crew might use Compile or Format in different ways to achieve their goals. I would only add as clarification that the Rep cost of the Authority function puts the crew down to 0 (or close to 0) rep, meaning they have to earn that Rep back before they can Tier Up. You probably already figured that but I wasn't sure if the writing in my Authority chapter is clear enough on that front. It's similar to the notion of the "Weak" vs. "Strong" Hold that a crew in BitD has, where aside from narrative function it makes the crew go up the Rep track twice for each Tier Up. In HW, if a crew just really likes doing Authority functions it might delay them from Tiering up (there are a lot more ways to spend Rep in HW in general).


Well, I was going to drop a preview, but time was short and so I just went and finished them out!  You can now check out the Council and the Revisionists in the latest upload (they're in the new Player Handouts).  Full writeups in the main HW Book document will follow soon!

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Those are strong ideas! One thing players also do is just make a new User character, and introduce them as a switch-hitter who fills in temporarily with the crew while their PC is on the stack (this is common in Blades as well, which uses Incarceration as a potential outcome that can also take a PC out of the game for lengthy periods). Depending on how "hard" the GM and players like to play the system, it's possible to chew through PCs! This can be used to tell a generational story about the founding members of the crew and how the torch gets passed as they fade out of the story and get replaced by fresher blood. It's not necessary to play the game that way, you can certainly end a campaign with the same character you started with if you play them a bit more cautiously, but it's one way to do it.

One of my 'stretch goals' is to eventually have playbooks for Shades and Process, which would introduce official options for the other ideas you've mentioned. In the meantime, check out the Daemon if you want to see one example of this!

There's a lot of setting writing I need to do to flesh out the idea of Process in the setting, but it's definitely meant to be something you can adapt to your own ideas... and you definitely have some great ones! I'm glad the setting inspires!

Welcome! I'll answer your questions in order, feel free to follow-up with any others!

1. Chaos level is similar to Wanted level from blades in the dark. It's tracked on the Crew sheet, and it usually increased by having the Heat on the crew reach maximum. The idea is that your crew's Heat-increasing actions in World are actively destabilizing the status quo, which has disruptive effects on World's infrastructure and also makes the Administration less lenient with the crew (as they realize that you're the source of the instability!).

It's actually very good feedback to hear that there's a (obvious, in hindsight!) possibility for confusion with the regional rating for Data Structure between stable and chaotic. That's not meant to affect the Chaos level, and I could probably do better by renaming that to clear any confusion. Great question!

2. Yes!  Here's a preview of the Revisionists:


3. The MEM system is designed to give flexibility to the characters. The core system of the game (blades in the dark) was designed to run heists, and heist fiction (especially cinema) is often about the characters showing us their cool equipment right at the moment they need it. In-detail planning often happens off-screen. Another example of this principle at work is the system for Flashbacks, which let you back-fill in clever planning on the part of your characters in the middle of the action.

The way MEM is represented in Hello, World is that until a PC locks in their MEM slot by announcing what they're carrying with the slot, it's quantum: a piece of gear that their character has planned for and knows (or suspects) they'll need later in the score, but since we're discovering how the heist goes as it happens, we the players don't need to plan that stuff out ahead of time. In Hello, World, depending on how you envision the setting, it might actually be quantum data that turns into the item, or information that is downloaded just as needed, but that's up to you!

I have not written this move yet!

The idea though, would be that it's a way to continue playing within the world that you have established when your original character is forced to or chooses to leave the story in some way. You would choose some elements relevant to the departing character and retain them... Vows and/or Assets, mainly. It is gonna be pretty rules light, and you might be able to intuit a lot of what it is going to say just from the context.

I will have full text for this move in the upcoming update!

Thanks so much, I'm glad to hear that you like it!

Development on SCO will resume shortly after I get out the current update I'm working on for Hello, World, one of my other roleplaying game projects. Keep an eye out!

Just to add to this, I also really like Spotify for this purpose for Shuffle capability and to be able to edit and add to the playlist over time.

Ooh, interesting idea. I had not considered it before and must admit I am not well-versed in the specifics of Youtube content upload with regard to music playlist 'mixes'.

I am under the impression one would need express permission from every artist involved, otherwise the upload would be subject to takedown demands. Spotify of course doesn't have that concern. For Youtube, that could mean a lot of work on the audio mix creation and upload wasted if any of the artists have aggressive content hawks.

Let me know if I'm incorrect on any of these assumptions, and thank you for the question!

Awesome, I'm in.


umbralaeronaut.itch.io/hello-world

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Thank you Kami!  That is wonderfully detailed feedback!

EDIT: There will eventually be much more fleshed out about the various factions alluded to in the truths, most likely as possible adversaries and/or example challenges (things that players can slot in or ignore as they desire).  That said it's meant to be interpretive and the game should still work if you throw all that out and have your own setting for SCO.

Greetings Avatars! My name is Charles and I'm the designer/artist behind Solar Crown Online.

This topic regards the Your Truths exercise, which as you might have noticed is still in process. This is a (view-only) link to the google document draft that should capture the current state of writing, just in case your downloaded version is old.

My questions to you are: what Truths did you find most interesting, or inspiring? What Truths (either individual choices or entire categories) are not as interesting or inspiring to you?

Thank you for checking out the game!

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This was a really cool session, can't wait to get Teddy back so we can have the gang all together.  I also look forward to more long-term Trouble because apparently my character is a magnet for it!

We have launched!  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pocket-world/pocket-world?ref=42xtmi

Hello World now has a little brother!  Light in form factor and slimmed down for Kickstarter's ZineQuest event, it's Pocket World!  We are holding a two week kickstarter for Pocket World, check it out below!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pocket-world/pocket-world?ref=42xtmi

Pocket World condenses some of the setting and mechanical elements of Hello, World down into a digital dungeon crawl.  It blends Old School influences and Forged in the Dark dice action with an emphasis on getting into play fast!  This is our first Kickstarter ever and in some ways it's a test run for an eventual HW Kickstarter, so keep watching this space!

You'll see it mentioned here!  You can also follow me @umbral_aeronaut on Twitter for the inevitable flurry of Kickstarter link reposts when it drops.  Our current launch target is the 25th, or approximately ten days!

At this time Hello World is entirely digital, unless you print it out!  (The booklet prints to a sheaf of ordinary letter-sized paper folded over in half when you print it using the "Booklet" settings on most printers, everything else is presented in letter-size landscape-oriented).

In the space of a few weeks though, we will be kickstarting for Zinequest 2 a publication called Pocket World that will feature many of the same themes as Hello, World!  Things depend somewhat on how well that does but it could be a test run for an eventual physical version of Hello, World.  More information soon to follow in this space!

Rad game and some really clever sessions!  'Ballot' is a much different Forged in the Dark character then I usually play and figuring out how to manipulate the social web of the county has been a lot of fun.

Hello, User!

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Hello everyone who has joined us through the Humble Mable Bundle or the Whitney Delagio Bundle!  Hello to those of you who've been here from the beginning.  This is the first design diary of a series that targets the individual playbooks of the characters in HW, to be followed by discussion of the Crew playbooks and the nature of World.  Take a look through the design diary archives if you're looking for some more about the fundamental ideas that shaped the game!

12 word review:

a zero-sum game, fought over finite resources.  Digital Neo-Malthusian?  Very fascinating!

Morning Changelog:  Had to reupload a few things so that both the Free Demo and the Owners of the game have access to Handouts and Pregenerated characters (I forgot how itch doesn't like having duplicate filenames).

Real world tried so hard to derail me on this one but I'm super pleased to say that hello, world is a full "beta" experience with all the various little bits and pieces of rules needed to run a campaign at least somewhere on a page facing the GM.  Here's the front page of the player handout:

Yeah, the setting is a bit of a lot.  I'm curious to find out if folks pick up what I'm trying to put down or it's too byzantine and sprawling a thing in it's present form.   Good luck to everyone else in the jam!

First big caveat: this is a forged in the dark game and assumes that the GM, at least, is familiar with the system.  Graphic player handouts and playbooks that cover the dice resolution are included and I've successfully run this at conventions with players unfamiliar with FitD!

I made a startling amount of progress on hello, world over the course of dream jam!  A great deal of it was polishing up fluff, graphic design and the GM's toolbox (the booklet).  There is enough material now to run the game as a short campaign!

Follow me for further updates as I plow toward a finished product!

image didn't make it into the post somehow!

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My submission to DreamJam is going to be Hello, World, a forged in the dark hack about a post-scarcity digital Utopia.  Imagine touchstones like Transistor or TRON!  Here's my first development diary:

https://umbralaeronaut.itch.io/hello-world/devlog/90031/v03-preview-factions-and...

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At risk of copying CS Dev's statement above:  Congratulations everyone!  The top game (Patricide) was really something special, regret that personal time and player availability meant I couldn't play too many before rating all the good things out here.

Now that voting is over, I've posted an update that upgrades Cold Fusion into a full-page MiniRPG + handouts!  Please let me know what you think of it, and I look forward to seeing the developments others have made to their games as well!

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HOT and COLD are the two APPROACHES.  When you "defy the endless night" in Cold Fusion ie. perform a challenging action against risk, you must be acting in one of those two ways.  The basic dice pool is usually 4 or 5 dice (assuming an uninjured Pilot; fifth die from the potential for a Frame Quirk bonus), you always roll all the dice you have.  The different dice sizes are just a way to push probabilities toward one of the approaches: d6 is weighted toward Cold (66%), d10 toward Hot (60%), d8 is an even 50% split for both.

Bonus dice get added to the pool by Burning and/or Venting AFTER that initial roll which lets you deal with bad luck on your starting dice, have a chance against harder difficulties set by the GM, and/or to attempt actions your Pilot is less suited for.  Because "Failure Is Not An Option" you must keep adding dice to succeed for as long as you are alive, but the two consequences (HEATSEEKERS escalate the pressure, and SHIVERing) enter the picture if you can't manage to keep your majority of final dice results within the APPROACH you are rolling for.

Hot results are intentionally harder to get in order to 1.)  meet a specific theme, 2.) put pressure on the player to spend their Atomic resource, and ultimately 3.) push the asymmetric Action/Consequence curve toward the SHIVER result which drives the dramatic short-form death spiral story that this rpg is designed to tell.  It's like the final episode of an Evangelion-esque mecha show where spoilers: everyone dies.