Suji's LANCER Jam 2

[elfin maple]

i have!

[cyan bolt]

Yeah ok! It's hard to imagine ||having my brain taken over by someone who is somehow even a bigger schmuck than Johnny Silverhand lmao||

[elfin maple]

ahaha ||johnny|| is a questionably well-meaning dickhead. the module strongly encourages players to come up with unrepentant monsters for their past lives here

[cyan bolt]

Oh yeah. Totally way better than seccom winter soldiers.

||i bet none of them are even played by Keanu Reeves.||

Hey you know what might be interesting? I'm just spit balling here, i dont want to put my fingers in your koolaid. ||what if the parasitic personality was invented by and played by another player at the table? Like you make you make your shitheel and curse the peraon to your left or right with it. Like how in Wraith, some one else would play your evil Shadow||

[elfin maple]

ohhh, wait, that's actually a fucking sick idea

thank you, i might run with that lol

[cyan bolt]

Hell yeah.

You're module has a built in soundtrack too, just the cyberpunk ost, which i use for lancer all the time already

Everybody is making such cool stuff

[silent cloud]

ngl one of my favorite things I did for the first game jam was add a tracklist for each scene

[knotty osprey]

Augh, I've got a lot of work to do to get something over the line in the next ten days

Thankfully have my core stuff together pretty well now, just gotta flesh out a couple beats and get to designing sitreps

[Creeping Silence - A LANCER Mission]
It is 501Xu. Union is in the midst of dealing with multiple crises across its systems and the Diaspora, as the relief fleet for the Union forces involved in the 2nd Distal War in Boundary Garden is still over a decade out from arrival.

But that is not your problem.

You are a group of Union Auxiliaries- a mixture of formal Union Navy and Marines pilots, mercenaries, and local Defense Force recruits from your homeworld of Nowa Arkadia. Not much happens here, but the planet is a large logistics stopover for Union Navy fleets outbound to the now blink gate-less Boundary Garden, and also serves as the site of a major terrestrial Omninet relay station for Union FLEETCOM usage.

However, the valley the isolated relay station is situated in has suddenly begun to grow silent over the past few days. With sporadic local banditry having gone on due to local organized crime syndicates in the region, your commanders have sent your fireteam of chassis pilots into the quiet zone to investigate the loss of communication, and identify if it is merely a technical problem or something more...```

Basically running with the two themes along the lines of the players being ||caught on the forefront of a *2nd front in the Union-Aun Ascendancy conflict*||- something that is "second" and impactful.

[light falcon]

I didn't write it into the book, but every time I start the combat in ATC, I use this https://youtu.be/2gxixK0fJ8c?si=v1eXPe5QwqEb5LiY

[elfin maple]

point crawl diagrams done, or nearly done

[knotty osprey]

Invoke Echopraxia rules as a mechanic

[cyan bolt]

This might be important to a section somewhere else but for the 1d6 kinetic you might want to add instructions about what to do instead of taking Structure damage, for instance, "This damage cannot reduce your Hp lower than 1".

[elfin maple]

oh, i gotta clean that wording up. it's meant to be 'take the structure damage but don't roll on the table'

plus i gotta add the same thing to the stress roll for the radiation challenge

[cyan bolt]

Roger.

[blissful sentinel]

Currently having fun with prototype mechanics: it's basically a weapon/system trait that can automatically cause the respective equipment to fail if certain conditions are triggered, rendering them inactive until next round. However, they can be evolved past the prototype stage via testing. 😅

[silent cloud]

Hahaha same I think we're on track plenty though 😌

[light falcon]

With how current cat-wrangling attempts are going, I'm gonna def be putting this out in beta with some untested elements

[blissful sentinel]

Absolutely with y'all on that. I wanna finish as much as possible till the deadline, but it will definitely be beta stuff.

[cyan bolt]

Publish or Perish, as they say

[proper grotto]

Yeah I have a million maps to make and those are definitely coming out post-release. Especially when I gotta do layout still

The 1e Manifesto says it best: https://200proof.games/manifesto/

[blissful sentinel]

This. I hope I get the work layout for the maps done or at least the ones of the first part, so I can rework em afterwards

[silent cloud]

Oh yeah, update from the [Dawnline Impact] mines, god I hate writing this guy
(CW ecofascism)

Bright side is the next beat I have to write is ||killing his ass|| though

[regal dove]

that seems oddly specific over ||killing all of him|| tbh

[silent cloud]

||Shit youre right im gonna have to write in an evil robo-donkey sidekick for this statement to work||

I did get to have some fun with a cool skill challenge setpiece though 😌 Hard to do my style of them with the CRB-only restriction, but I think the note on how to handle without it is probably good

[silent cloud]

...heh, yknow, it's kind of funny that our narrative that involves big kaiju actually. Literally hitting both this prompt and the last jam's prompt

[silent cloud]

||The Sculptor cannot be taken alive. He does not deserve it, nor the perverse glory of infamy, so avoid it from happening as best you can.||
The impartial voice is for authors who are COWARDS

[cyan bolt]

I'm sending my little module out into the world. It was a very simple project compared to what many other people are still working on but hey, I'm honestly still surprised I found the time to make anything in the past 2 months. Cheers to 1.0

[silent cloud]

HELL YEAH!

Excited to see it

[proper grotto]

congrats!

[blissful sentinel]

Congrats! Can't wait to see all those other ideas manifest on the pages. It's cool as hell.

[light falcon]

0.9 LCP finished

Only a single round of debugging needed

[clever scaffold]

getting around to porting everything we've worked on with our buddy for this and uh

holy fuck

todays going to be a long day 😅

tbf mattheus did do most of the work haha-

[proper grotto]

wow i think i'm done

the final draft of text has been finished

now on to layout 🙃

[light falcon]

I don't suppose we're gonna have that bonus month to wrap up and polish stuff before the submissions get promoted 🙇‍♀️

[vernal roost]

wanted to get this second playtest wrapped before finishing up my project but it's looking like I might have to finish and submit before then.

ah, scheduling. the first and last boss of ttrpgs.

[light falcon]

That's my issue too

There's stuff I wanna playtest but I know I will absolutely not have the time to do so before the jam ends

And I don't want the big post about "look at all this new Lancer stuff" to have a ruinously imbalanced fight in it

[vernal roost]

Yeah. I've already done one playtest game, but I've added a few things and had hoped to play through it again before the end of the month, though I suppose time has conspired against me.

[vernal roost]

it helps when your mission can be feasibly run in, like, 2-3 sessions. also when your sitreps get mulched by a zheng so all that's left is the narrative.

[silent cloud]

Hahahahaha

I cant stop myself from writing complexly and haven't been as laser focused as I coulda been, Ive till gotta write the finale and then go back and polish up some final pieces to a big city investigation section we have

I think we have cooked something special though. Might need a refinement period afterward, but I think it's fire

[vernal roost]

honestly i really need to sort out some of the narrative stuff on my end because i feel i've got some stuff in the back half that's Interesting but very unstructured, which is fine for home games, but maybe less good for something i am throwing out for other people to play.

[vernal roost]

interested to see what you've done when it's finished!

[light falcon]

If I didn't playtest mine at all, it would have been much worse.

There's a quote somewhere

"Testing is the part where you realize all the stuff you did wrong that renders all the stuff you did meaningless and-or shameful." -Zack Freedman

[silent cloud]

Yeah yeah absolutely true

[light falcon]

And boy have I had several of these moments.

[silent cloud]

I know for sure that so much of what Ive written for my big ol module project only came about because of that, it kinda makes me super excited for a post-game jam period where I can circle back and pick apart some things with a belt sander yknow

[light falcon]

Now I'm worried people are just gonna say I'm copying technophobia and, like, fair, but no.

[proper grotto]

they're just trying to pit two bad bitches against each other

[silent cloud]

I mean lets be real is it possible to make a creative work and not fret that you're just copycating someone else 😭

[proper grotto]

don't let them

[silent cloud]

YEAH bad bitch solidarity

Bad bitches around the world unite

you have nothing to lose but past bad outfit decisions

[light falcon]

I genuinely spent a morning wondering if I needed to restructure my map structure to prevent people from seeing all the accidental parallels I was seeing

And did in fact restructure one map as a result!

[silent cloud]

hell yeah!

[light falcon]

But I think it was for the better

At the moment, my to-do list looks like

• prototype a whole-ass map
• revise two existing maps (One slightly. One substantially.)
• get all those maps into a shareable format
• put all my stuff in a word doc

I am hoping the adrenaline will get me over the finish line so I can meet the "playable" requirement in time

And layout is at the Absolutely Not Happening stage currently

[cyan bolt]

We had a grace period last time, I'm sure one will also exist for this one.

[light falcon]

If there is a grace period, I'd be able to get formatting done at least

[blissful sentinel]

Organizing playtests is really hard if you have to translate the whole thing on top of all the other stuff

[urban trail]

how crucial areplaytests?

[blissful sentinel]

Well, it's basically a reality check to see if your stuff works, so I'd say: quite a bit

[urban trail]

how long was it?

[blissful sentinel]

About a month, iirc

[urban trail]

wait
so a monh long jam and a month long grace?

[cyan bolt]

There wasn't a hard deadline, some people needed a week after, some needed a month. It was part of the "Don't crush your own spirit trying to finish this in time" philosophy

[urban trail]

ah

[cyan bolt]

The deadline is more like a guideline than a hard-fast rule

[elfin maple]

I've been too shy to grab randos and play test with them, which I regret. Still time for another match or two but there's going to be....3 combats tested total out of 8

That being said a bunch of the combats are reasonably generic

[cyan bolt]

I've had good experiences with PUGing on pilotnet

I also run my projects on my personal playgroup of labrats close friends

You just have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known

[blissful sentinel]

Yass, my biggest nemesis!

[urban trail]

tbh
once I make this past deadline, I am making another version at least twice as large

[cyan bolt]

My last jam submission ballooned into a full setting, that I will make...someday...

[blissful sentinel]

My biggest fear is that the new season starts next month and I hate getting swamped by that chaos while actually trying to finish something.

[blissful sentinel]

My submission last jam was the thing that was designed as a oneshot and escalated into a campaign that's been going on for three (maybe four?) years

[austere gull]

"I'm gonna make a chill one shot, I'll be right back"
-Last words of GM who disappeared secluded in their room for a year planning a whole campaign

[blissful sentinel]

Forever DMed myself again

[austere gull]

Happens to the best of us

[blissful sentinel]

<- Slow Learner

[silent cloud]

Okay, conclusion cooked, now to spend the last week circling back and polishing up 😌 Ill probably hate aspects of this phrasing and get to hacking later but whatever

[light falcon]

A month exactly and I used almost all of it

@unreal sluice Is there a grace period on this jam for late submissions?

[unreal sluice]

uhh i don't remember if i said anything about it

this jam is longer than last jam + grace period from last time, so i thought it would be unnecessary tbh

but i think people are asking for it

so uh, how long do y'all want

[light falcon]

Certainly not a month here

This time span has just been really bad for getting stuff done after work and on weekends

[unreal sluice]

@here
how much grace period do y'all want? a month? less? more?

(I feel like everyone ping only pings people in this channel, but I'm too scared to do it)

[vast dawn]

i'll say 2 weeks

[severe garnet]

No you did the right thing lmao

[vast dawn]

to get any maps, tokens done

[severe garnet]

Here is for in-channel

My gut was also 2 weeks so I support this

[teal gyro]

Two months should be enough time for me to playtest and figure out flavor text

[merry prism]

I find 2 weeks agreeable !

[unreal sluice]

I'm like 99% sure here ping is for people who are currently online and has access to the channel
and everyone ping us for everyone who has access to channel, online or not
people who aren't subscribed to the channel don't get pinged unless specifically called out (and maybe also if pinged by role)

[severe garnet]

I stand corrected you're 100% right

I didn't know how threads worked

[unreal sluice]

i also want to remind people that we went from 2 weeks to 2 months of time
if we scale it up, that's 4 months of grace time but i think that's frankly absurd
6 month is not a jam lmao

[teal gyro]

Definitely did not have cold feet for most of this, and prepping for/going to Gen Con did not help

Probably won't have art for my mech though, if that is okay

[tidal holly]

I'm currently definitely planning to release it in a 0.7 state and then replace placeholder art and playtest things a little more and update the doc, just to meet the deadline

I blame scheduling <.<

[light falcon]

Turns out this "making a mission" thing is really hard and time-consuming!

[vast dawn]

Indeed !

Making a full adventure even more !

[silent cloud]

TRUE!

[light falcon]

Seems like a common thread for this jam is 'bit off more than we could chew'

I'd probably have been fine if work didn't explode midway through for a few weeks and then I had to bin like half my ideas

[grand oar]

I'm out of ideas for beats

At least roleplay parts

Cuz that's one of the hardest for me to randomly make up :(

[regal dove]

lean into the random, make it roll tables!

“uh … the *rolls* pirates *rolls* have a party *rolls* on your ship?”

[elfin maple]

tbh my issue is that i had like 4 different ideas i wanted to try and i figured 'well this is my chance to try all of them'

[light falcon]

I had one idea. It was just agonizing to get out and then plagued with bad design decisions that thankfully got worked out in playtesting

[vernal roost]

to be honest i think i mostly kept it a reasonable length, i just forgot that summer is my least favourite time of year and not super conducive to writing. should have something reasonable written and finished for submission time, at least.

[unreal sluice]

I think I'll probably do 2 weeks? that got the most votes it seems like

[urban trail]

I technically did this, but I will be making this, then remaking it

for length

[urban trail]

it looks like I will be making a pilot combat system for a single beat in my jam

[regal dove]

eh, the good thing about ttrpgs is that you never make anything for a single thing

[urban trail]

fair

still
unexpected

[regal dove]

yeah, and either a great or very bad idea

and you won’t know until people play it! fun!

[silent dragon]

Had the realization that me and my friends probably won't get this together in time (had a crazy past few weeks), but we do still wanna write up the oneshot as its own thing later

[light falcon]

maps

there's elevations and stuff but THT labels borked and the 5th is 24x31ish

[urban trail]

those aren't standard zise are they?

[light falcon]

They are between 40x40 and 20x20

[slate narwhal]

is this encounter balanced for a LL3 party?

and is it understandable for a gm?

[light falcon]

Balance wise it seems fine but that's a lot of NPC types

[slate narwhal]

how would you tweak it?

its supposed to be the first encounter out of 3

[light falcon]

Less NPC types. 5. Maybe 6 maximum with the squad

I also tend to make it so NPCs have the same templates. IE (for this fight) every assault would have pirate

[slate narwhal]

but if I add more templates that increases the difficulty, right?

what if I replace the witch with a Hornet?

[light falcon]

More templates but the same amount of HP for the party to chew through

[light falcon]

They're both controllers so that's a good swap

[slate narwhal]

are there any enemies that have the ability to launch the players up to 20 spaces in the air?

or 10

[light falcon]

No, on account of the designers not wanting to weaponize fall damage.

[knotty osprey]

👆

[slate narwhal]

well it is in 0-G anyways, and the reason I say this is because the enemy wants to yeet the players off of their ship and potentially place them in range and within the firing arcs of their ship's point defense canons.

[blissful sentinel]

It's not the fall that kills you ...

[elfin maple]

the spacer's gravity rifle pushes 10, and they are in space

[slate narwhal]

good enough...but are Spacers Core Rulebook?

[elfin maple]

yep!

[slate narwhal]

how is this for a start

[light falcon]

Going for some iconography on this one gamers

[cyan bolt]

I know writers who use subtext etc etc

[light falcon]

I know map designers who use subtext and they're all cowards

[livid dagger]

We're so close

[lavish quiver]

So where will all the Lancer jam entries be released?

[light falcon]

The deadline is next week with a slight grace period afterwards

[cyan bolt]

You can find them on Itch.io

[proper grotto]

https://itch.io/jam/sujis-lancer-jam-2/entries

[silent cloud]

Making the galaxy brain decision to edit stuff while porting it over into a fancy document 😌

[elfin maple]

getting in on the coverposting

[regal dove]

ugh, i knew some great play on words with this, going “si vis panem” instead. but i forgot how it continues :<

[vast dawn]

The cover continues !

currently stuck thinking of the final two combat encounters

[elfin maple]

i need to retune my encounters, rework one map i'm not happy with, and finish off a bit of fluff here and there

[subtle heart]

Lancer Tutorial Jam for making missions next

[urban trail]

I need to write 4 combats minimum and make 3 hexcrawler beats

[livid dagger]

question anyone have on hand the usual NO AI used image piece?

[light falcon]

https://lonearchivist.itch.io/made-by-humans

[urban trail]

I still need to find some original art. Does anybody have reccomedations for what to do?

[cyan bolt]

Make some?

[urban trail]

I suck at art tho

[cyan bolt]

Are ypu going to let that stop you?

[toxic atlas]

I fucking love earnest art

I don't care if it's bad

It's genuine

It's you

[cyan bolt]

In a world of slop, the bad artist is king.

My cover was a bunch of public domain pictures of space and some textures i made by making everything black and white and lowering its opacity. You could make it with a line tool.

The planet is a picture of Uranus that i color shifted slightly

[light falcon]

This is literally my cover rn and it may be that for the entire beta

Sometimes you just gotta send it

(it's a little outdated. the MBH logo is color inverted and slightly smaller.)

Oddly the cover shows everything. The moon, the island, the four zones in said island, and The Singularly

(that's that fella what be on the moon with the scythe and all that)

[regal dove]

personally i would just keep it

[light falcon]

Consider: I'm giving a friend money to make something fancy

A good cover can really pull eyes and draw attention, and I'm lowkey going ham on this adventure, so I want them eyeballs

[livid dagger]

ye, however Ive been burning all month on this and with some life stuff goin on lately, im taking tonight to give brain a relax before dealing with the stuff for setting up as a publisher on itch, booksss done, maps are done, time for breather

[lavish quiver]

Will there be a Lancer jam 3?

Asking as a prospective writer

[light falcon]

If there is, I ain't doing something this ornate again

[urban trail]

idea
lancer jam 3 is a single mech lisence

[cyan bolt]

We all make 1 mech license. Like, the same one. We open an Overleaf account and all of us have editing privilege.

[silent cloud]

We all have to make jams

[clever scaffold]

blackbeard oil jam...

[slate narwhal]

do we need to have a full submission done on itch io by the end of the week?

[slate narwhal]

https://tenor.com/view/squirrel-disintegration-meme-ai-meme-funny-gif-5585270952676380091

[lavish lark]

Can I make a blueberry jam?

[regal fox]

Alright new jam for Lancer; The Jam Jam. Everything must be done through the medium of jam. You can do an entire mission, just so long as all of that jam you've laid out is readable

[regal dove]

https://tenor.com/view/jammed-signal-spaceballs-jam-the-signal-block-the-signal-signal-interruption-gif-24854397

[vast dawn]

Cover art is done !

and here is the timelapse

[lavish lark]

that's rad!

Title change and current idea for the cover

[elfin maple]

wow turns out writing an lcp manually is kind of a pain in the ass

[light falcon]

https://tenor.com/view/correct-horse-correct-answer-thats-correct-thats-correct-horse-correct-answer-horse-gif-19869529

And yet that's how I do it for some reason

[lavish lark]

Okay a recent reddit post has me second-guessing a writing choice and google isn't helping me so asking here... Does Lancer lore use the name Atum anywhere officially?

[merry prism]

Not that I know of no

[cyan bolt]

Not that i have seen. I've read most things

[indigo terrace]

someone stop me

[light falcon]

https://tenor.com/view/northernlion-ok-ok-gif-11212841590796247226

[indigo terrace]

I woke up from a state of delirium and said I can write my own game jam entry in three days

I should also make completely new mechanics and sitreps for it

[light falcon]

I'm not even doing sitrep setup pages for mine because they're parasitic by design

No point doing a layout page because they won't make sense without the faction template

[cyan bolt]

Ra's strongest soldier

[silent cloud]

hes insane. I say let him cook and see what happens

Transcribing into a layout and making sure I have notes to run CRB-only

[elfin maple]

dustgrave lcp is free (including the NPC stuff) so i don't think you'd need that particular caveat?

[subtle heart]

nah, the caveat is good

might not have the lcp anyway or know what it is, might not be experience and is focusing on CRB, I think it's good at least :)

[silent cloud]

double checking and it seems you are right, I misremembered what Suji had said on Dustgrave in particular. Its good practice though and we've already done the work, so 😌

[elfin maple]

i probably also have too many dependencies tbh

but too late in the game now 🤷

[indigo terrace]

[silent cloud]

Fuck it we ball

Sadly I think im scrapping the impact font gimmick for the most part due to tone reasons, but Im making sure to include it where it counts 😌

Also, wrote up a big ol Note on Player Safety the other day and I think I'm learning to get over the kneejerk sense of "maintaining professionalism" and embrace earnestness with these kinds of things. Didn't understand how cathartic it could feel to do so.

[light falcon]

While I've designed around things being totally vanilla, I did cross-check with NPCs rebaked and made sure that the themes for the faction still worked

And they do

But I'm not gonna mention it in the already-going-to-be-a-late-sub beta release

[indigo terrace]

https://tenor.com/view/fuck-it-we-ball-guy-in-suit-black-guy-in-suit-meme-gif-9989487814461476583

[indigo terrace]

the planned tl;dr is YOU ARE BARONIC SOLDIERS. IT IS THE DAWNLINE SHORE. BLOW THIS SHIP UP
nice, simple, I have no time to write narrative

[slate nacelle]

Ship boarding isn't something I see too often in Lancer space. Sounds super cool. I have to hand it to you and Cael for working on this while also putting the finishing touches on Iphigenia and Ironbound. When do you sleep?

[indigo terrace]

I don't sleep!

Levity aside, Cael and Nyx's project is absolutely to their credit; my work was really just rubber-ducking and doing combat work. This new stuff I started posting today is me tossing together some unrelated combat stuff that I wanted to get out of my head, and technically the game jam is still going.

[clever scaffold]

YOOOOOOO

[silent cloud]

Ironbound Shadows is mostly just in a "send to editor, await feedback, tweak" stage, but I'd be lying if I said I don't expect a release delay tbh

C'est la vie though, I updated the draft for a reason and this has been very good for my writing

Ah, right - since I can't assume the GM has access to the way Lancer's implemented clock mechanics, I need to give my own writeup for em. Think this works well enough? 🤔

[light falcon]

Let me dig up my blurb about clocks from ATC that I'm gonna copy near verbatim for SWD

Ah. Thanks, me. Very helpful.

Guess I was skittish about sharing how technically paid-for mechanics work

[silent cloud]

Haha, alas

I figure its probably safe in that I'm talking about a general mechanical concept used across a section of tabletop games and am also not using any wording from any of those sources, at least?

Pointedly avoided referencing those pages for my own structure, hopefully for better rather than for worse

[silent cloud]

Okay, I think this is coming together

I'm not entirely sure how right the values for these clocks will prove to be - always a challenge with these looser metrics - but we'll see how the dominoes fall.

[indigo terrace]

oh my god the weatherboy

[elfin maple]

actually, good shout, i guess i need one of these too

[light falcon]

Map isn't final quite yet but

[indigo terrace]

embracing the voice in my head that tells me just do a call of duty

[light falcon]

Realistically, this'll be there too

hostile unit with a scythe what's he gonna do

||it's just the demo hammer but renamed 'oblivion'||

[proper grotto]

It's okay, I'm doing a Halo

[indigo terrace]

🤝

it's kind of refreshing going from IaM to this to not have to worry about grand narratives and respectful thematics, you're baronic doorkickers and this is your day job

[proper grotto]

Barbie-Oppenheimer meme but it's "well written thematic narrative" vs "hoorah fuck yeah"

[silent cloud]

[indigo terrace]

oh my god

[silent cloud]

Ngl I love writing investigative narratives but every time I look up from a clue board thinking "man, I shoulda done an action movie" 😭

In Nehal Blue was originally gonna be Pacific Rim but then I knocked in a vial full of The Batman (2022) like the Powerpuff Girls scientist

[proper grotto]

There's always next time to go head-empty-shoot-mode

[silent cloud]

True!

Tbh I could probably pull a good head-empty-shoot-mode energy with the big Lancer project concept thats been lurking in my brain for the past year (Spanish Civil War thing), but I think ive learned pretty clearly that mayyyyybe solo writing projects are Unwise actually

[indigo terrace]

I have faith in you to ball

[indigo terrace]

we'll see if I come up with something better after sleeping on it

[slate narwhal]

So...who here also has problems naming their module last minute?

[light falcon]

I've usually had the names come together pretty quickly

Mine went from "Doan's Island" to "Project Gravity" to "Souls Weighed Down" in the span of like, a week

[slate narwhal]

does anyone know how to order the layers of multiple images in google docs?

I am trying to have 1 image ontop of the other, but also have both of them behind text and its not letting me

[lavish lark]

Empire of Dirt is now live!
https://bogdweller-games.itch.io/empire-of-dirt

[regal dove]

i should run some jam-themed oneshots here 🤔

[livid dagger]

Can i each the chassis?

[regal fox]

Every structure lost is an entire slice of bread you must jam and then eat. Every system and weapon is a bread finger and must eat the corresponding one lost.

Either that or the GM throws a piece of toast covered in jam at you every time you lose a structure

[indigo terrace]

grinding away

thinking of making prewritten character sheets/an "iconic party" so it's literally just plug and play

[knotty osprey]

Oh! Hunting a submarine carrier?

[knotty osprey]

I KNEW IT

sounds fun

[indigo terrace]

Sometimes a man lets himself write an expy

[light falcon]

Ain't no way I'm finishing. for that two week buffer

Maybe next jam won't have life breaking me over its knee during the runtime

[cyan bolt]

i feel that

[knotty osprey]

I also might wind up having to dip into that two-week buffer, if just due to work and university stuff kneecapping my time for doing combat refinement and polishing up writing

😔

[light falcon]

I've gotta convert the maps to images, which is gonna take a day

And then turn my 40 pages of handwritten horseshit into a document of some fashion

[indigo terrace]

Handwriting Lancer stuff is extremely powerful energy

[knotty osprey]

👆

augh

[light falcon]

Reposting an example

[knotty osprey]

I've made more work for myself on my end by having an optional combat

[light falcon]

Other stuff

Shows that I expanded the faction roster at one point to add more defenders and make the comps less burn-happy

[livid dagger]

https://turtle-shell-studios.itch.io/si-vis-pacem

SI VIS PACEM is officially Live!

[silent cloud]

Having way too much fun with formatting today 😌

[knotty osprey]

glad I saw this from you yesterday btw, realized I might need to do this too

[silent cloud]

I refer to my previous image

Would offer my own text for it to be used but I can't say I'm that confident it's the best way to put it xD

[subtle heart]

Dictation can be super handy for this

I wrote my first book by hand and dictated it back. There was a LOT of editing during the dictation but it went by quickly!

[indigo terrace]

Writing these premades has actually been pretty fun

[light falcon]

I type about as fast as I talk but I'll keep that in mind

[void cape]

two week buffer?

Is there going to be a late submissions period like the last jam?

[unreal sluice]

yep 2 week late submission period

[void cape]

a godsend, thank you

[silent cloud]

DOC’S DONE YIPPEE

Well technically I have to update the table of contents and write alt text for a couple images, then slap together an itch page

But

That’s for tomorrow when my wrists don’t hate me for writer crimes lmao

[tidal holly]

Highly recommend getting kinesio tape for writing crimes related wrist/finger pain

[silent cloud]

Ooh, duly noted I think its the first time ive reached this point, so it's never been a consideration before

Laptop shrimping probably hasnt helped either

[indigo terrace]

my wrists gave out on me as well, I foolishly thought "surely I could finish this today" and then Did Not Do So

on the bright side: all I have to do tomorrow is write up AWACS Cernunnos, finish the epilogue (which, realistically, is almost all read-aloud text), and then do the read-aloud text and descriptions for the module (incl. the pre-mission briefing)

I think that's doable™

[silent cloud]

Okay I lied. Final polishing and publishing will be tomorrow because my coauthors are talking sense into me

[blissful sentinel]

What even is sense?

[urban trail]

meanwhile, I have to write nearly an entiure missions

[blissful sentinel]

Currently wondering if I might've overdone it with the explosions.

[grand oar]

Clearly its not enough if you are doubting it

[urban trail]

Deviation?
Spotter?

[blissful sentinel]

It's two mechanics I introduced in the module. Deviation checks how far the shot goes from the original target (1d3 & 1d6; d3 = number of hexes; d6 = direction, taking the 6 corners of the hex as a clock) and is applied for all the zones simultaneously. Spotters are special NPC templates: basically light support frames that can take a full action to call in said artillery without applying Deviation. They can also circumvent the usual cooldown that triggers when the artillery is used. They are weak, but somewhat elusive and can be a real pain if ignored.
The artillery is basically a boss encounter that the players hunt during the mission and except for special encounters, it's not a unit on the field. But it's always somewhere in a safe distance, waiting for its shots to be called in ...

And yes, friendly fire is totally legit, depending on your GM.

I tried to build the abilities in a way that creates interesting situations: They can really ruin your day and make Controllers *very * dangerous, but since the effects usually trigger at the end of the round, there are a lot of tactical opportunities as well. Grappling and Ramming becomes very useful - also to save your allies.

[cyan bolt]

The superheavy knows where it is because it knows where it isn't

[blissful sentinel]

Philosophy Shells have been loaded.

[slate narwhal]

this might be a dumb question, but are there going to be any votes or contests by category?

something like...best map, or best player facing content?

[blissful sentinel]

Yay, even more pressure!

[silent cloud]

Last jam was pretty focused on avoiding a competitive environment, I imagine it is much of the same here lmao

[cyan bolt]

We're all winners

the way of the sage is to act but not compete-- Bobby Hill

[light falcon]

Getting it done is your reward

[toxic atlas]

Looking forward to reading entries! It was a lot of fun reading through things during the last jam

[slate narwhal]

out of curiosity

does anyone like El Quixote?

[silent cloud]

Final touches, back on my bullshit as always

[blissful sentinel]

Don Quixote?

[slate narwhal]

https://tenor.com/view/donquixote-delamancha-windmill-gif-13409327

our adventure has themes

[tidal holly]

what NPC type is the Windmill? Goliath? :v

[slate narwhal]

the air filter

[light falcon]

"just make 5 maps isa how bad could it be"

"you're being crafty by putting two combats each on them so it's fine"

I'm spending my entire weekend in krita

[indigo terrace]

I am simply not making maps

I thought about the possibility of making a map for an entire fleet of warships on open ocean and broke out in hives

[light falcon]

the wallflower special

[lavish quiver]

https://www.reddit.com/r/LancerRPG/comments/1adynk4/ocart_lancer_magical_girls/ lancer magical girl reflavor au oneshot when

[light falcon]

i mean when you put it like that, me, yes, it's a weird map

[silent cloud]

Any lancer one shot can be about magical girls. The belief in your heart is magic

[lavish quiver]

Well I know what my first Lancer Jam submission will be now

(For next time)

[unreal sluice]

4 entries so far

[indigo terrace]

Three more read-aloud sections to write (epilogue, combat 3 intro, pre-mission briefing) and then I'm done

Very short little project

[unreal sluice]

I'll request for a new announcement in the same format

Suji's LANCER Jam 2 is complete! number of submissions at close time brand new Lancer modules are now available for your enjoyment!

The jam's themes were: Second, and Impact

All jam entries are available here: https://itch.io/jam/sujis-lancer-jam-2/entries
Or check out a random entry here: https://itch.io/randomizer?jam_id=406967

Thanks to all the creators who participated! If you enjoyed their work, please leave a review and rate it!
(Be on the lookout for late submissions! Over the next 2 weeks, some more works will pop up on the entries list.)
Announcement for last jam: #lancer-news message

[cyan bolt]

A lot of people sliding into home plate in the next 24, surely

[silent cloud]

Make that five! In Nehal Blue is now published https://caelarkh.itch.io/in-nehal-blue
Please enjoy a single-mission module about a weird clam, a Baronic city, and a very nasty man I want to kill with hammers

Shoutout to my co-writers, @indigo terrace and @lone gull, for being wonderful to work with as always

[lone gull]

I showed you my nastiest blorbo
pls respond

[elfin maple]

i am literally just too lazy to finally label/export my maps and write out one two-sentence fluff description

otherwise i would have submitted this shit already

[elfin maple]

if we submit within the time limit but want to make some minor changes within the grace window, would there be any issues with that?

[cyan bolt]

You can release new versions whenever, i did that with my thing last jam

Most of mine where spelling mistakes

[unreal sluice]

you can technically edit however many times you want

[blissful sentinel]

Oh my, how I hate timezones - didn't realize submission deadline was tomorrow morning (for me). Seems like I gotta throw a placeholder site up tonight. -_-

[tidal holly]

oh god, I just realized that myself, that's a problem <.<

[slate narwhal]

and I realized that making a 4k version of an inkarnate map without alternatives for 2k and 1k versions might not be a good idea if I want people to use them on roll20

[regal dove]

they use roll20, they are used to suffering

[slate narwhal]

i suppose I should check in foundry to see if the hexes are alingned

[slate narwhal]

quick question, did you make that in google docs? if so, how did you get the art, the blue cyan block, and the text all in different layers?

[vernal roost]

Oh, that deadline is closer on my end than I thought. I figured I'd have all day tomorrow to work on it. I think I have most of my document written anyway but I'm probably gonna have to push to get it written tonight.

[silent cloud]

Good luck! Excited to see it

[vernal roost]

I think I'm more than likely gonna add to it post-submission at some point - unfortunately my second playtest got hit with a number of scheduling hiccups. Should still be good to run, I hope.

On the plus side I did most of my writing in affinity publisher anyway, so I don't have to worry too much about formatting.

[manic crane]

bit off more than I could chew with this jam, but not finishing all my art due to work did mean I got to make this:

[bleak knoll]

If there is a Jam next year I’ll probably be done by then

[silent dragon]

Looking at In Nehal Blue makes me really glad that Retrograde is working on some new fishlike sprites tbh

[vast dawn]

@unreal sluice we havw a 2 week grace period correct ?

For we still need to edit things

[silent cloud]

Oh man, I had no idea actually- that is super lucky xD

The new wreck sprites are probably pretty useful too - the ones still standing that is

[indigo terrace]

https://ash-and-gold.itch.io/storm-warning
Storm Warning is now out!

[silent cloud]

Fuck yeah!!! excited to dig in

[indigo terrace]

I honestly think that waking up from a delirious haze to write this in three days was a good experience - IaM's something I've put a lot of heart and soul into, so going "fuck it, short single mission you can run at a con or something, let's go" instead of Big Passionate Design Vision Goals was refreshing.

[silent cloud]

IT WAS THREE DAYS??? I coulda sworn you started earlier in the week for some reason

[indigo terrace]

fortunately having record of Nyx encouraging me to evil acts has informed me that I started it at just about noon on the 27th

[urban trail]

There is a grace period right?
I will definitly need it

Related:
Will I need to throw up a site before the dealine today, or can I do that in the grace period?

[urban trail]

do I need to submit a page before that?

[proper grotto]

that i'm not sure about

[urban trail]

@unreal sluice Would I need to create a page before the deadline today?

[cyan bolt]

We did not last jam. I think the grace period consists of Suji just adding the submissions manually

[urban trail]

I'll make a page now then, and upload the content later

[subtle heart]

Same

[urban trail]

I do need a few ideas for names.
The plot is based around PCs trying to stop a Seccom admiral trying to use paracasula shit to pull Seccom from the past to overwrite the future.

'Blast from the Past' seems too bland for me

[regal dove]

||seccomd impact||

[indigo terrace]

Backwards Unto Night is very cheesy and technically a reference, but good vibes

[cyan bolt]

All roads lead to rome

[slate nacelle]

Time and Again

[unreal sluice]

if you want to do late submission, ping or dm me with the link to your submission and I'll send you the link for late submission

if your thing is basically done but want to do more edits, I recommend just submitting and updating it later
if your thing isn't ready for public viewing, i recommend using the late submission

[light falcon]

Once you make the page, it shows up on itch's new submissions, so best to have it workable by that point

[urban trail]

If I make it and submit it late, it dosent show up?

[light falcon]

It'll show up in the jam submission list when it's approved

[blissful sentinel]

Ok, thanks for the info, then I'll definitely not be doing a late nighter to put the page up and submit later.

[slate nacelle]

It's kind of funny that I'm seeing so much Karrakin in the submissions so far. It's the unofficial third theme of the jam.

[vernal roost]

I'm gonna try my best to get the rest done tonight but I might end up submitting it late.

[silent cloud]

I can’t help it tbh, I’m a #1 Noble Bullshit Fangirl

[vernal roost]

I think I can at least get the second Beat written tonight, and then that just leaves finishing up Combat 2 and Beat 3/the Conclusion.

[silent cloud]

Excited to see it! I remember you had some real cool concepts cooking, and I’m pretty curious to see how you’ve realized em

Plus hey, never wrong to take advantage of a nice chunk of time to polish 😌

[knotty osprey]

Will do, am unfortunately in layout and refinement hell so am gonna have to do a late sub

[lavish quiver]

What is the theme of this jam again?

[indigo terrace]

Second and/or Impact

[slate narwhal]

@unreal sluice due to the fact that I am the one with the itch io page, and due to timezone issues, i dont know if we can have the correct document up, can we submit tomorrow?

or do we have to submit what we have today?

[cyan bolt]

You'll be within the grace period tomorrow, so when your thing is ready you can dm Suji and get the link to submit it. If you can make like a beta release style thing and submit it then that's cool but if you can't then that is also fine.

[unreal sluice]

see this @slate narwhal
i recommend late submission which is gonna have a slightly different process

[slate narwhal]

does that mean that I shouldnt make submission to the main page and instead to the late submission? We have a Minimun Viable Product, but we plan on editing it these next couple of weeks

tbh we need more art and remove default text with actual text

[unreal sluice]

you can edit post submission whether it's submitted on time or not

[grand oar]

Hell yeah, we got our MVP in

Fuck i sure do procrastinate

Why did WolfeyVGC have to do this to me

[vast dawn]

QQuestion folks ! does anyone has the lancer font ? for cover image ?

[proper grotto]

believe it's helvetica of some kind

but iirc you need to pay for helvetica. i think arimo is free?

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Arimo

[light falcon]

The good thing about using one map for two different combats is that when you spend 8 hours remembering how to lay this shit out in krita, the second one comes out in like 10 minutes

[regal dove]

https://tenor.com/view/office-gif-14057355957964410391

[light falcon]

They're like 85% the same picture

unless I've gone loopy from sitting at the computer all day and that giant purple section is just in my head

[unreal sluice]

gauntlet into holdout using same map, nice

do you have anything about wrecks from the previous battle?

[light falcon]

They're blackwash so they get eaten and go away

but there's mechanics that can alter maps between combats

[light falcon]

The pairings are

1. Holdout + Gauntlet
2. Holdout + Recon/King of the Hill
3. Holdout + Special ("Kill Confirmed")
4. Holdout + Joke Fight
5. Special ("Destabilize") + Special ("Sealing Ritual")

It's recon/koth because you can find out where the true point is during narrative play

so like

why look for it in combat

you know where it is

Kill Confirmed is a fight where enemies drop an item that you need to bring to a special zone. Bring enough drops to the zone and you win

Destabilize is something I'm stealing from Valk where there's a bunch of points. You need to interact with them to score victory points before time runs out, but hostiles in the zone can turn it from a QA into a contested skill check.

Sealing Ritual is where you have to take the item the enemies drop to specific points on the map. If you don't, the ultra can't be killed and will attrition you to death.

[vast dawn]

there we go, cover page and itch.IO banner

[clever scaffold]

oh fuck yeah

[proper grotto]

https://lxcoco.itch.io/harvest-stars-tithe

still waiting on character art but it's otherwise done

[indigo terrace]

I think if I had to comm art for game jam I would've actually exploded and died

[cyan bolt]

I barely trust myself

[proper grotto]

thankfully the artist is like one of my best friends

pretty much the only way i wouldv'e commed art

...just realized it's not set to pwyw

there we go

[tidal holly]

Well, still using 2 placeholder maps while I wait for the artist, and less playtesting than I would like but

https://lithuasil.itch.io/the-space-between-heartbeats

we are live, with a whole 8 minutes still on the clock

never didn't have it

[vernal roost]

still figuring out the cover but this is the basic look.

[slate narwhal]

https://ozu95supein.itch.io/tilting-at-windmills

anyone want to be a junior wing of Albatross? Check out Tilting at Windmills. Made by yours truly along with @grand oar and @manic crane

[elfin maple]

oh whoops missed the deadline (technically)

uhhh, @unreal sluice how do we make submissions at this point please? The actual jam page appears to be closed

[light falcon]

You send suji a DM with your sub and things will move forward from there

[blissful sentinel]

Love the Gundam reference in the comms chatter. 😅

[slate narwhal]

strange, I wasn't trying to make one, which one are you talking about?

[blissful sentinel]

"So ... this is what a Lancer/Gundam is like."

[unreal sluice]

For late submission, i need the link to your page so i can generate a late submission link for specifically your project

[slate narwhal]

lol, I didnt even realize

[knotty osprey]

I'm having to late sub but it's worth it, if just because I did not want to rush

[elfin maple]

as of like 2 minutes ago, here ya go: https://atejas.itch.io/dead-branches

[knotty osprey]

😔

[elfin maple]

i was at like 98% for a week and i missed the deadline cause i started playing deadlock this weekend and procrastinated lol

[lavish quiver]

The great part abt Lancer canonicity is that literally any "noncanon" adventure can be handwaved as "GALSIM simulation"

[light falcon]

I've watched more anime in the past two months than I have in some time and I can't tell if it's procrastination of me trying to keep my sanity

So just say it was structurally-integral sanity-maintaining deadlock and you're good

(she says, having watched two shows notorious for making people sad)

[indigo terrace]

got hit by doorman ult in last few days of game jam, rookie mistake

[proper grotto]

many such cases

[tidal holly]

I wasn't planning on submitting 8 minutes before the deadline, but I spent the time since monday writing a 32000 word Dragon Age fanfiction, for intrusive creativity reasons <.<

[blissful sentinel]

I split my days between finishing editing a manuscript for a novel and transmuting my notes into readable text for other GMs, which is a challenge my brain can not always compute effectively.

[unreal sluice]

DMd you link

[light falcon]

map has caused me to make an adjustment to an NPC and a 5 player party who triggers the holdout in the Flooded Settlement map is going to have a great time I'm sure

woe, ||veteran commander elite mirage|| be upon ye

[livid dagger]

My module made it TOO THE FRONT PAGE OF REDDIT

https://tenor.com/view/when-goku-go-crazy-gif-9729286411239948914

[proper grotto]

[slate narwhal]

which one?

[livid dagger]

Si Vis Pacem, the one for the gamejam!

At least according to Itch, in its analytics it said someone came to it from Reddits Front Page

[silent cloud]

https://tenor.com/view/fuckyeah-alphonse-elric-fma-fmab-gif-6230902

I’ve thought about remembering to post my work on Reddit tbh but I have a hard enough time remembering to post on bsky alone 😭

[livid dagger]

Its the kinda thing driving my inspiration to do another, larger mission/narrative

[void sinew]

I am seeing the submissions from folks I'm following and I'm so excited to see the rest come in hahaha

[tidal holly]

Also, because most of the Art is in already, doodle for the good ending of "The Space Between Heartbeats" :v

[proper grotto]

i feel icky everytime i do it lmao

[elfin maple]

goddamn, you went kinda crazy with the layout on this one man

(positive, to be clear)

[proper grotto]

thanks! there's a lot more i wish i could've done and might still do with a subsequent release (less empty space, more color, etc). but i appreciate the compliment, layout is definitely a pain in the ass sometimes

[elfin maple]

what program did you use to set all this up? i'm guessing this isn't a google doc like mine

(at a first glance i'm gonna have plenty of praise for the actual content of the module later, but i am actually a bit star struck by how pretty it is rn)

[void sinew]

yeah I'm glad to see someone taking a different approach to Layout in Lancer publications tbh

I'm always happy to see my template used and hope it gets folks off the ground, but seeing new takes is always great and exciting

[proper grotto]

affinity publisher 2. it's pricey but it goes on sale around christmas i believe?

[void sinew]

usually around Black Friday yeah

[proper grotto]

that combined with some basic tutorials on how to operate the program and this article can get you a lot of the way through a project

[proper grotto]

i love lancer's standard layout and it's pretty iconic, but i also wanted to have something that could set my submission apart

it's also just fun to take a crack at it and i feel like i'm learning something new everytime

[light falcon]

5/13 maps complete

The gimmick of this fight is that it leverages "the edge of the map is an implicit IZ" from holdouts to deploy barricades on the difficult terrain and non-barricades on the tall buildings

and then the barricades play minecraft and put blocks between the buildings to make walkways for the other units to use

plus having a (bare minimum) veteran commander mirage teleport people into the rooftops that are closer to the PDZ/OZ

[lavish quiver]

||imagine if the bad end actually teleported u to Rotfront in the Signalis world tho||

[proper grotto]

really awesome to see all your combats come together. they're all very well thought out and look fun as hell

[light falcon]

This is actually the map I couldn't get people to do a test of, so I hope it works

Thankfully I got tests in the narrative stuff, which is important to me

[urban trail]

Ok
I need some advice for a point/hex crawling setup I am making
Currently, all I have is 'PCs are exploring facility and going deeper to find out where the veterans accompanying them went'

I want a clock system that limits how far they can go, but I'm stuck on what to put in it/how it works exactly apart from 'if the clock fills you get an extra combat' which feels bland

[subtle heart]

Greatest dumb advice for clocks is add a 2nd clock

[subtle heart]

if you're going to have the clock limit them explicitly, it's because there would be too many combats/too many enemies/too much danger to represent in an encounter with any reasonable hope of success or timely resolution

That's at one end of the spectrum at least, is there anything else you'd like to do with the clock?

[urban trail]

the initial intention I had was to force the PCs towards the objective and put a limit on their exploration
if it filled, there is a combat

I want to focus more on 'exploring an bandoned facility that slowly comes to life' rather than pitched battle

[proper grotto]

you could try a fluxcrawl. i know pigsriot did one of those recently

#gm-corner message

[subtle heart]

A combat is more gameplay, so it's an incentive to move forward but very light. Still fun tho!

[urban trail]

i'm not really sure how to present a compelling narrative reason though

[subtle heart]

For the combats to appear or for the players to move forward?

[urban trail]

second one

Combats feel like the only solution to that, but I cant think of smth else

[subtle heart]

Oh, one sec

[subtle heart]

https://ashofcreativity.itch.io/typhon-unchained

[unreal sluice]

Ok I'm gonna send this up in a moment

Suji's LANCER Jam 2 is complete! 13 brand new Lancer modules are now available for your enjoyment!

The jam's themes were: **Second**, and **Impact**

All jam entries are available here: <https://itch.io/jam/sujis-lancer-jam-2/entries>
Or check out a random entry here: <https://itch.io/randomizer?jam_id=406967>
Thanks to all the creators who participated! If you enjoyed their work, please leave a review and rate it!
(Be on the lookout for late submissions! Over the next 2 weeks, some more works will pop up on the entries list.)

[indigo terrace]

... pfftha, we ended up using the same art (and LL5 is also where I set my jam entry)
I probably should've checked

[unreal sluice]

it's a good art

i think some people used it in the last one too

[subtle heart]

I made this for the last jam. There are 3 clocks: PURGE, SABOTAGE, and RESCUE.
PURGE boots you off the ship when it fills, which leads to a narrative encounter (wherein you need to get this back on the ship). RESCUE lets the other boarding action participants get you back onto the ship if full for free, along with some other conditions. And finally SABOTAGE mainly just destroys modules on the ship

The key here is that different encounters fill up the clocks in different ways and some of them represent fail conditions (which can be permanent under the right conditions)

[subtle heart]

it's public domain, no worries!!

as suji says it slaps

@urban trail I mention all of this because (without knowing anything about the facility) you could easily flip these to your own purposes. Rather than a clock for getting rescued, you could fill the clock for rescuing, getting enough supplies or collecting evidence on where the party's allies went.

You could have a clock for players sabotaging the facility (if that even makes sense in your mission's context), or perhaps the inhabitants can sabotage your rescue efforts!

PURGE is my go-to for time limits; get kicked somewhere outside the ideal mission environment. In Typhon Unchained, it also fills up for each hour that passes from mission start IRL...and those segments don't reset, putting a hard 6 hr cap on the mission itself

You don't have to use these directly of course, I'm just trying to illustrate how clocks are handy when you tie them to the mission environment and whatever goals the players have. Tie a clock to your missing veterans!

[silent cloud]

Ooh, I’ll have to bookmark this. A little hungry to get out of Word jail lmao

[indigo terrace]

word jail is my comfortable padded cell

[silent cloud]

Scribing your module into the walls in a mad rush to make the game jam deadline

[silent cloud]

I think having a bunch of different clocks that sort of pull against each other is a great little trick to incentivize players btw - we're sorta trying to do something with that in In Nehal Blue, where we have social clocks for how nobility and working-class people view the party respectively - and instructions to the GM to help stress the clashes between those reputations. Our mechanical levers aren't particularly robust, since its just "what's the vibe in the epilogue", but Im hoping the physical, looming presence of clocks pull some of that thematic weight

I'm also pretty interested in seeing how well our shot at handling narrative momentum will go in play. We took a shot at cribbing off of Cain's Pressure and Tension mechanics, with a couple written event triggers to try and both escalate the plot and give PCs new hooks to follow

[elfin maple]

i am impressed by how complex your clock interactions seem to be yeah.

[subtle heart]

ime they will! probably one character (if not more) will be in the middle of a scene or encounter, see those clocks and want to make their own lever

Just having the stat in front of players kinda begs them to find a reason to change it!

[elfin maple]

both of my clocks are distinctly negative, the gimmick with mine is balancing them against each other. which is maybe a bit punishing but my submission ended up being a bit mean in general

[silent cloud]

Thank you! My personal game groups tend to use clocks a lot in play, and it's definitely stuck in how I write - the one in Beat 2 in particular is actually a structure I used a couple times in my main project, Ironbound Shadows, that kind of sprung as a simplified form of @indigo terrace's approach at hardsuit combat in Iphigenia

Course, the real question for the multi-scene clocks will always be how much I got my numbers right and how well Ive accounted for the inherent fluctuation that comes from having to rely more on GM improv than a rigid rules system. I want to encourage "yes and"ing as much as possible, but boy can it make rules writing tricky xD

[tidal holly]

All 10 Endings are named after Signalis quotes. ||"And now, Rotfront!"|| and|| "Perhaps this is Hell"|| are not the good endings 😛

[lavish lark]

Already happy to see how many people have checked out Empire of Dirt! But uhhh, I can see that not everyone downloaded the maps... First update's gonna add them to the actualy book part just to be safe

[elfin maple]

i imagine a lot of people are just gonna casually browse the pdfs but don't have a strong intention of actually running the game; i've had more downloads on my pdf than the GM resources folder too

tbh i do that with a lot of third party content

btw, i promise i'm gonna be Normal about this, but i gotta ask; is the popularity metric based on revenue, views, downloads, or overall impressions?

[knotty osprey]

As said before- unfortunately will be a late sub, but starting to get places

[light falcon]

A late sub is still a sub

[unreal sluice]

no idea, but it's probably not revenue since free stuff can get pushed to top

[light falcon]

"This is probably my most complex map so I'll do it first."

"Ah."

[knotty osprey]

:v

yeah I feel taht

[light falcon]

8/13

[urban trail]

what software do you use?
and how do you decide sizes?

[light falcon]

Krita

Vibes

[urban trail]

may give this a try
prob easier tan giimp

[vast dawn]

Ship fight !

[elfin maple]

How the fuck does krita work, how does a map consisting of a couple hundred hexagons reach multiple gigabytes

[urban trail]

@subtle heart so I did a bit of crafting based on what you made

Currently I have:

Scan: How close you are to finding your squad. You need to perform scan actions in various places.

Activate: How active the facility's systems is. each time it fills, you mark it. Each marking means that encounters are more dangerous/some will lasst longer.

Hunt: How clsoe dedicated hunter/killer squads are to you

the main issues I am having rn is that I am not sure how to justify it via the lore/ where to fit in alternate combats

[light falcon]

It's memory usage and it's because it's a file that's like 12kx12k with a ton of layers

The actual file, when closed, is only a few dozen megabytes

[subtle heart]

In what way? Remember, your writing should accommodate the gameplay!

[elfin maple]

also this might just be me, but a word of feedback, I find it pretty difficult to tell Elevation 1 and 2 apart in the legend

[light falcon]

Yeah, They may need a steeper gradient

Right now I'm doing what's called "finishing the maps"

[urban trail]

I have a decent idea for the lore reason
now for alternate combats, I just need stuff worth combating for

[subtle heart]

You can always shoot me a DM if you don't want to expose those reasons publicly! anyways it's v cool that you're leaning into clocks here!!

[lavish quiver]

Re: Lancer magical girl au

"In the name of corporate expediency, I will punish you."

"Who... Good lord... What are you."

(Shotgun loading noise) "Sailor Caliban."

[light falcon]

Since I'm at the point where I need to put the finishing touches on the lore, I'm entering the stage of "oh god how many people am I gonna make mad in #lore-and-worldbuilding with this one"

[tidal holly]

I'm over here worrying my 'Lancaster Lesbian' joke was too subtle 😛

[light falcon]

"is it okay if it's in the kunlun line and serviced by the capital blinkstation? That it's a purview world??? That it is a part of an expansion push and was settled because it's hycean and mineral-rich so it can provide water, food, oxygen, and rawmat as a logistics hub for a deeper push into kunlun????? Is that even practical given what's said in some unreleased paratext from 2019 I haven't even heard of???????"

[lavish quiver]

Just another file in the Martian polar ice....

[blissful sentinel]

I know the feeling and I kill it by telling me there are like thousands of different worlds out there so I'll just pick the one no one wants to talk about and roll with it.

Fuck canon, I need more cannons.

[light falcon]

Aw fuck I got a ship involved. That means battlegroup lore too

[blissful sentinel]

Glad I'm not the only one stuck in that nightmare.

My characters have started invading my GM infos with dialogue but fuck it, I'm game and no one can stop meeee.

[light falcon]

I'm blending HA and SSC designations for the name of the skyhook, but like

If someone goes ☝️🤓 to me on that I'm gonna holler

[tidal holly]

eh, "does it fit the vibe of the material you're engaging with" is way more important than being 100% lore compliant

[light falcon]

In hindsight, it's caused me to cut a lot of stuff that I'd need to explain

"Damn. That's a lot of stuff I'd have to write for me to put an addenda in of 'you can ignore all this'"

I had a thing about a handler and the ship you got there on as a diagetic explanation for why you can call for repairs, but naaaaah

Too much to explain. Only two persons of interest now and the ship is an afterthought.

[blissful sentinel]

Did sth similar; meta coc and stuff happening in orbit is basically footnote; more into snowballing mechanics tied directly to players actions

[light falcon]

Lunchbreak writing sesh going reasonably well at least

complains about obscure paratexts
uses something from The Maw as the mission quote

[light falcon]

I've realized that after designing ten combats, I now have to name aforementioned ten combats.

[indigo terrace]

The trick is song lyrics

[light falcon]

That was my first instinct ngl

[indigo terrace]

I'm very sad that my one big pun combat name in IaM is actually much harder to figure out because the capitalization trick is ruined by Lancer styling for layout meaning combat names are allcaps - You have to look in the pdf bookmarks

[light falcon]

Unfortunately that lead to me looking up the meaning of one song and the composer being like "it's a conlang inspired by Icelandic and means nothing"

[light falcon]

Given the themes I'm playing with, naming a certain combat ||Consign To Salvation|| doesn't feel combat-y, but maybe gets something across

[slate narwhal]

when writting a module, is it better to use second person prose as if you are talking directly to the GM? Or is it better to treat everything in 3rd person?

[tidal holly]

address the gm directly

you're explicitly giving instructions outside of read alout text and such

and way too many rpg products are way too coy or beat around the bush about just telling the person trying to run a game from this "hey, here is what you should do"

[slate narwhal]

yeah I figured, I'm reediting it now and we have all done multiple different writing styles and have to be consistent

[tidal holly]

it doesn't have to be 100% consistent imo - I tend to use 3rd person when doing general sitrep description (here is what the battlefield looks like), so it's left to the ST if they want to embellish it or just use that as readaloud text, and then 2nd person direct everywhere else

basically, anything that doesn't have to be read aloud, but could be if the DM doesn't feel like putting in extra work, should be 3rd person in my mind, specifically in a module

[blissful sentinel]

Oh, wow, if things go perfect I might not make this thing completely solo. 🤯

[light falcon]

Old story themes: discarded
New story themes: integrated
Easter eggs that will make my players want to yell at me: written
Beat and Combat names:

[knotty osprey]

🙂‍↕️

feel that hard

thankfully making good progress here

[blissful sentinel]

You can do it!

[vast dawn]

Maps done

Now just wditing

[light falcon]

That's probably gonna be me in a couple days

[blissful sentinel]

Hopefully same!

<- hyped cause things are starting to come together (at least it feels like it)

[light falcon]

I think I've made most pointed knife for a player to stumble onto in this story about decorp

||```The degree of confidentiality they're operating under isn't necessary, but it is adorable! They really think they've cracked decorp! Instead, it's just high-synch facsimile production that replaces the subaltern or flash clone with a wash construct. Points for style, I guess?

Cassie says they're one reproduction error away from turning into a mass-accumulating Balor factory, so I'll take his word for it and get out of here. I don't wanna be anywhere near this place when it becomes the next Bo.```||

[light falcon]

Hooo god yeah there's gonna need to be a lot of writing getting done over the next few days

Note to self for future jams: don't make some insane nonlinear bullshit with five biomes because even though you're re-using assets, that's still five biomes of assets

some of which have substantial variation to account for

[silent cloud]

Damn, not the kind you can get away with the classic Color Filter huh

[light falcon]

Nope

[subtle heart]

when's the extended deadline?

[unreal sluice]

i think it's 1 month right? should be last day of September

[subtle heart]

ty ty

[light falcon]

Oh. I thought it was the 14th.

I still wanna get this done by then so I can enjoy life without guilt

[subtle heart]

Think I'm gonna type up an encounter each free day I have and see if that gets me complete/in the mood

[slate nacelle]

I thought it was two weeks.

[urban trail]

you said 1 month now, no take backs

(/j)

[unreal sluice]

did i say 2 weeks or 1 month

sorry my life has been hectic

I will stick with 14th, mb about confusion

[unreal sluice]

pinging for visibility, 9/14 for late submission

[subtle heart]

yeet

[knotty osprey]

working hard

[light falcon]

11/13 now and arguably the hardest lift of the set

[urban trail]

how hard is it to make custom maps like that?

[cyan bolt]

I mean i use photoshop. Its as easy as that i guess. There are sites and programs specifically for maps

[manic crane]

Yeah I mean honestly, if you've got GIMP or MS Paint and an image of a hex grid, you could whip something up that's just using the paint bucket tool to fill hexes for different terrain, slap some text labels on top for heights, you're done!

Won't look as nice as Isa's, but it'll be functional and ok enough to look at!

[urban trail]

The main thing is that I have only played on square battlews with scatteree terrain, not a more structure layout

[blissful sentinel]

I created my first map ever for the last jam and used Inkarnate; a lot of it comes down to knowing your asset library. Speed increases dramatically after that.

[blissful sentinel]

When it comes to mission rewards, why am I always like: "Isn't survival its own reward?"

[regal dove]

well that and a license level =p

[light falcon]

Not hard. Just takes time I'd you're getting fancy with it.

The last two maps are nearly identical and symmetrical so they'll go much faster than those two

[urban trail]

one problem I have:
I have no idea how much I will be able to playtest this (most likely not atall)

[indigo terrace]

it's a jam, don't worry about playtesting

[blissful sentinel]

You're completely right, but even when jamming, there's still this innate fear of getting crucified by the hardcores cause I'm messing with/testing so many mechanics.

[knotty osprey]

Can always update/patch your jam game later

I know I will have to (no time to playtest)

[light falcon]

I playtested when I was stuck in a rut and it helped a lot

Also it told me to turn the combat difficulty down

[blissful sentinel]

It's easy if not everyone explodes at the same time, right?

[regal dove]

pretend you are bethesda and let the players do the testing

[urban trail]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C-ipYn-H-dlDC_EU9Ci4-01Krnef3BFQ57QlQrLX9a0/edit?tab=t.wl2xcxnpwp0s

Could somebody give me some feedback on the jam mission I am majuing?

[light falcon]

"11/13 I'm so close!" I say, forgetting that the sitrep in the final map has zones based on player count that are added/removed I've binned this idea because it's stupid MAPS DONE I'M GONNA DO SOMETHING ELSE FOR THE REST OF THE NIGHT

[light falcon]

What playing against a sunzi who really wants to shoot angles with rules text does to a mf (I'm the mf it's me)

It's tamper prevention for a sitrep mechanic

[cyan bolt]

what kind of feedback are you looking for?

[vernal roost]

If an image I want to use for a Cover is CC BY-SA, does that mean I can still sell the module commercially or no? Sorry, this is my first time ever really engaging with licensing so I just wanna make sure I have everything straight.

[toxic atlas]

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

You can sell it but you have to give attribution and allow others to use your work under the same license

(I'm not a lawyer, but that is my understanding of the license)

[vernal roost]

Ah, I see, thanks!

[regal dove]

essentially the whole thing you do has to be cc-by-sa as well

you can still sell it, but others can then freely redistribute it as well

or you can talk to the author and make any other arrangement you can agree on :)

[light falcon]

I feel like this is pretty understandable if incredibly yappy

[light falcon]

The secret to posting it is that I find a lot of the errors and weird shit that I need to rephrase.

That's 3k of what I'm hoping are the hardest words down. Lord only knows how many to go.

[light falcon]

Something about hand-writing everything and that being neat, I think?

Productive lunchbreak to ease my anxiety for not being able to write while at work

[urban trail]

How crucial are hooks for different types of origin?

[light falcon]

Idk. I'm just putting them in there as little teasers to get GM heads going.

[light falcon]

Could we get a timestamp when the late sub window closes?

[unreal sluice]

it's not a hard deadline, so if it gets submitted on 15th due to time zone issues, it's fine

[light falcon]

I had something come up for this Friday so I was wonder if I had to cancel some plans

[urban trail]

Idea I had for hooks: the hook choice retroactivly alters the party in control of the planet the mission takes place on.

allows options for varied backstory while keeps the mission simple

[blissful sentinel]

• Setup: ✅
• World/NPCs: ✅
• Mobile Base & Supply Mechanic: ✅
• MESA (artillery) mechanics: ✅
• Drop & 1 combat & map: ✅
• new NPC class: ✅

Still not where I wanted it to be before posting, but getting closer.

And still a lot of stretch goals and TBDs.

[regal fox]

Stretch goals? You kickstartered this?

[blissful sentinel]

It's stuff I'd like to do if I still find time (which I probably won't).

[regal fox]

I mean I'm curious about so many from this jamm, yours particularly cause of the idea of deviation

Reminds me of old warhammer games

When you used to cast a spell and got a misfire and your AOE spell could move randomly across the battlefield

Twas a time... before GW became... well, GW

[indigo terrace]

The people long for scatter dice and blast templates

[blissful sentinel]

It adds a certain kind of randomness to certain abilities, but it can almost always be manipulated in some way. I personally like how the mechanic turned out, but I'm really curious how it turns out in actual plays. The cool thing is that the actual impact always happens on round end, so there is still time to get out, push enemies into hazards etc.. Knocking folks over can however become really dangerous.

[regal fox]

What do you mean the meteor landed on my own army?

[blissful sentinel]

I kinda like this passage from the GM tips I wrote today. The munitions are basically a pretty big napalm strike:

https://tenor.com/view/this-is-fine-gif-24177057

[light falcon]

I'm hardly even giving GM tips.

"make burning targets regret not stabilizing"

"shoot them with a gun"

[elfin maple]

yeah i struggled to write GM tips because idk to what extent i'm supposed to explain the basics of how each class works

[silent cloud]

Something about "The Slippery Sniper" is a phrase that brings joy

[silent cloud]

When Ive written tactics notes, I've found it useful to focus on talking about the cool synergies you have in mind and/or how certain traits are conducive to making the sitrep hard

The GM may be able to understand what the unit does at a glance, but they might not intuit what the vision is for using it in this NPC comp, after all

[light falcon]

stormtrooper sentinel is a double-entendre because they're stormtroopers (charging in to hold a line) but also when I use sentinels, they can't hit to save their lives

as such, my players say they have "stormtrooper aim"

[clever scaffold]

i think my boss is really good at making silly situations

so hype to get his book submitted finally 😌

[blissful sentinel]

Having players work to get to their mechs under tension is such a good way to up the drama. Had a lot of fun with a boarding scenario, where they had to face off against a 1/2 NPC in cramped ship corridors only in their hardsuits. They started sealing bulkheads, planting explosives, hacking systems etc. to keep it at bay (and trying not to completely cripple their ship along the way)

[urban trail]

For My NPCs, I decided to use a Faction Roster.

Mostly, it consists of using movment control to move the players into AOE, while the AOE also creates chokepoints for my defender NPCs to mess them up.

Also, a side of the Scout applying Lock On so the Rainmaker can ruin their day

[blissful sentinel]

Created the project page for the jam. Note that the current state is beta, as I'll keep hacking away at the to do list. https://djed-moros.itch.io/where-the-dogs-buried-their-bones

[light falcon]

It's just 3 combats 🙂

[knotty osprey]

Three combats. Right

:v

[light falcon]

the funniest part of this is that, with proper pathing, you may only see two of them and you only have to win one.

✨ nonlinear design ✨

[light falcon]

read as: "I ain't typing all that shit out again"

[vernal roost]

If I can just write up a satisfying description I think I should have my project published today.

[vernal roost]

Immortal Winds is a third-party mission for the Lancer Role-Playing Game that casts the players as Union Auxiliaries tasked with the mundane but extremely vital work of demolishing a comet that is set to collide with a nearby inhabited planet. On arrival, however, the players discover that not all is as it seems, and that their task may not be as simple as originally envisioned.

This mission is designed for 3-5 players at License Level 2, and is expected to run for 3-5 Sessions, including two full combat encounters. This mission is ideal for groups that wish to explore the surreal and uncanny aspects of the Lancer setting, with the players confronting both the ghosts of the past and the eerie premonitions of what is yet to be.

https://scratching92.itch.io/immortal-winds

IT LIVES

[blissful sentinel]

Rad

[silent cloud]

FUCK YEAH!

[knotty osprey]

🙏

[light falcon]

I think I've finished the uphill battle part of getting the writing done for mine.

All that's left is the mechanical stuff and a bit of read-aloud text here and there

The conclusion can be a big ol "TBD"

It just has to be playable

[knotty osprey]

Tonight and tomorrow are gonna be big crunch days for me

University scheduling killing my flow

[light falcon]

I'm just exhausted tbh

[cyan bolt]

Take care of yourself

[blissful sentinel]

Also feeling a bit spent today; had hoped to get the tag team stats done today for the 2nd combat. Bummer.

[cyan bolt]

Y'all going to make me tap the sign

[blissful sentinel]

Hey, I also feel spent after training and that's healthy, right?

[light falcon]

My writing assistant

(he's sitting on the back of my chair)

[wet karma]

Very good assistant

And also very handsome

[regal dove]

looks a tad grumpy

[light falcon]

That's just him all the time

[blissful sentinel]

Finished a few things for beta 0.5, including:

• 2nd combat scenario
• introduction of enemy tag team - a dangerous duo building on synergies and special team abilities!
• some fancy equipment as rewards, bearing the new "prototype" tags (which have absolutely zero chance of backfiring)
• additional combat map

[light falcon]

I'm at 16k words and maybe like halfway done

[unreal sluice]

isa nooo

[knotty osprey]

genuinely rooting for you Isa

I'm uh

suffering (making good progress but also nature has decided to slap me in the face with a cold right in the final stretch )

[light falcon]

I mean it'll be playable

It's just that at the halfway point it's gonna go full-on evangelion ending

but I wanna get as much of it written as possible for when it shows up on the itch front page and the larger lancer community maybe sees it

[light falcon]

I AIN'T WRITING THAT SHIT OUT

[blissful sentinel]

Jeez, I'm also past 19k and almost done with Pt. 1. Don't think I'll finish till Sunday though; got a live session tomorrow so I'm gonna take a break and actually be a player for once. 🙂

[clever scaffold]

we're currently at 11k and only halfway done 🫠

[light falcon]

https://tenor.com/view/predator-arnold-schwarzenegger-hand-shake-arms-gif-3468629

[clever scaffold]

we plan to be 2/3rds done when we go to sleep tonight!

[light falcon]

I'm not sure where I'm gonna be since I'm taking a break to Attend A Function, but once that's done I'm snagging some pizza and putting my nose back to the grindstone

I think I've gotten the combats with the most tactics discussion out of the way, but famous last words

[clever scaffold]

we took a lunch break at 4 in the morning last night to make sure we can hit 1/3 done 🫠 (/lh)

[light falcon]

🥴

I'm too old to stay up that late. I'm in bed by midnight

[clever scaffold]

we plan to be "too old for it" when this damn book is done!

[light falcon]

But my start today was a bit late (11AM) because I was doing my GW2 dailies and handling some non-writing parts

The LCP text should be locked in. If the artist doesn't finish the cover in time, I've got a fallback splash and cover with credits

[clever scaffold]

I FORGOT MY DAILIES 😭

gotta get them done mid session.....

[light falcon]

You've got an hour!

Unless you're GMing

[clever scaffold]

im playing so we have time!!!!

[light falcon]

If you've got all the expacs, it's go blow up some pocket raptors in auric basin or craft 10 items, then do a rift hunt and so long as you CC the boss you're 3/3

[light falcon]

48 actually 🤓 ☝️

[vernal roost]

Original deadline was 8am my time on Sunday. Assuming it's the same again, that leaves less than 24 hours here.

[light falcon]

Boss says otherwise

[light falcon]

And if that's changed, I'm gigafucked, so I hope it's not changed

[vernal roost]

Ah, I see, fair enough!

I'd not seen Suji's comment.

[light falcon]

Man, the combats are a lot easier to write when they don't point to each other in a wacky nonlinear sense

(they still do, but it's easier to point to each other though)

[light falcon]

using the "tactics" section to tell GMs to behave

[unreal sluice]

basically don't worry too much about the deadline and just work on stuff on your pace

[light falcon]

I'd like to get it done on (late) time mostly so I can get it done, and I think I'm on track to do so

Don't hold this up because I went a little nuts

[knotty osprey]

(Funny enough it's making sure I go over several NPCs and such that's taking the most time, making OPFORs was actually the easy part)

[silent cloud]

Ooooooooo

Ngl my favorite part of these things is seeing what everyone named their stuff sometimes. I love naming beats

[vast dawn]

all npcs done

maps compile in one folder and organized

waiting for the PDF to be done !

[light falcon]

"If your players are concerned about getting a true, good, or bad ending, don't worry. There isn't one."

writes this into one of the post-combat results, wondering if maybe I should erase that sentence.

[tidal holly]

See, the problem with naming all the endings after Signalis quotes is

there definitely is a good and a bad ending

[light falcon]

Got up to get something for dinner because I was facing writer's block.

Now?

https://tenor.com/view/kronk-emperors-new-groove-its-all-coming-together-gif-12813012

[light falcon]

22k words written. Everything that's left are things that I've already written on paper notes.

[knotty osprey]

I'll be finishing up in the morning (really tired, need to have my brain in a good writing mindset to get things finished) but I'm nearly there...

[urban trail]

annoyingly

I was relly fukin suck yesterda, so I only have today left

[unreal sluice]

hi i just got a dm for a submission but i think itch is down? and also i lost your dm, please send me another message

[subtle heart]

Gonna take my in-development page down; we'll get em next time folks!

[blissful sentinel]

Oh no, the jam broke itch.

[urban trail]

I may have to submit tomorrod midday, would that be ok?

[light falcon]

While not suji, she did say that as long as it was the 15th due to timezones, it was okay

Meanwhile, I'm sitting here thinking that I can probably get this done today, but like

this thing is gonna be at least 60 pages and probably close to 30k words long. Is it even going to make sense???

[blissful sentinel]

Well, itch is still acting up, so I'm not stressing my pants out tonight.

[light falcon]

I just want the damn thing in a sufficient beta state so I can watch anime in peace for a couple weeks.

"but you should be writing stuff for your jam" not now brain I'm watching spice and wolf

https://tenor.com/view/spice-and-wolf-happy-fresh-air-love-it-holo-gif-14710197

[unreal sluice]

if you can't submit due to itch being weird it's fine, don't stress

I'm not gonna officially extend the deadline or anything, but if some bullshit got in the way of your submission, it's gonna get in there one way or the other

just don't be like, a month late from the original due date or anything like that

"today-ish" is the due date for late submission

[clever scaffold]

five more pages till this book is done and submitted!!!

[light falcon]

I'll be done with it tonight, but I probably won't be able to set up the itch page until I get home from work tomorrow

except formatting the table of contents because it's being REALLY DAMN RUDE for some reason

[clever scaffold]

Finished EVERYTHING about 24 minutes ago! Now waiting for @vast dawn to set up the itchio page >:3

[light falcon]

Meanwhile, I hit an 11th our unresolveable design snag

[subtle heart]

What happened??

[light falcon]

A mechanic is not fitting the way it should in a way that's, uh

bad

I can fix it, but it ain't getting done after I've spent the last

let me check my watch

fourteen hours writing

I'll be able to get it done, but it ain't getting done tonight

curse thee, ambition

[clever scaffold]

we made it to like, 23,240 words in 69 pages, how do you have only 58 lmao

[light falcon]

no fancy formatting or visuals

well, 3 glossy jpgs

[clever scaffold]

JUST REALIZED WE SAID THIS WOOOOOO

[clever scaffold]

HOT DAMN ISA

[light falcon]

wait I lied

five glossy jpgs

[clever scaffold]

book so dense its about to make its own star (/positive)

[light falcon]

funny you say that

[clever scaffold]

HGHSBLAFB

[light falcon]

behold my visual design prowess

[clever scaffold]

FUCK yeah ❤️

[light falcon]

tweedle dee and tweedle dum having dialogue together

[light falcon]

Okay, I resolved it. It's gonna take like a whole-ass page to explain, but it's better than it was, which was "bad"

[vast dawn]

TA DA ! book published

[urban trail]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hKeAZ3svlUYEqqXkdq4hfMGgwKbTt9_xU3TOUUbrCf0/edit?tab=t.0

there are still a bunch of holes on this

but I need some eyes on to make sure I dont miss anythig important

[light falcon]

For my lateness, I will be adding an exotic weapon to the beta release

[urban trail]

how

can u fit one in to a plan u already made?

[light falcon]

It took 10 minutes to make. If it's bad, it gets reworked. That's what the beta is for.

(there's a section where PCs search through crates and because I was reworking something already, I decided to make a quick adjustment)

Thus PCs can now find the "INCINERATOR" Miniturized Focused Field Projector

[blissful sentinel]

Meanwhile, one of the best rewards PCs can find in my module is "Cuppa Damn Fine Coffee". 😎

[tidal holly]

Does "the warm fuzzy feeling of having helped a doomed sapphic romance survive a major paracausal event" count as a reward?

[light falcon]

Rewards in mine are scant, but I had to put a little mechanical treat in there for the sickos

Anyways, my stuff is now complete when handwritten. Just gotta put it in the computer

https://tenor.com/view/kermit-typing-gif-18416959

And the LCP

[light falcon]

Spoilered for dogshit handwriting

[bleak knoll]

Good handwriting

[urban trail]

overall thoughts:
maybe dont try and make a 2 mission module +unique mechanics if this is your first time making anything

this is for me

[light falcon]

Mine is: you can run it, but can you actually write it?

And the answer is

[unique glen]

Do we need to do anything specific to submit late?

[unreal sluice]

i need to know what's getting submitted so i can generate a submit link

you can dm me or post it here and ping me

[light falcon]

In the club, actively resenting my ability to handwrite this shit faster than I can write this into a word doc

[blissful sentinel]

Coffee rework:

[light falcon]

Coffee that stops you from being unconscious is definitely a cuppa damn fine coffee

Meanwhile (I removed the AP)

Added flavor text saying it was considered a failure because they wanted ghostbuster proton packs and got made in abyss sparagmos instead

But the boys at ras shamra heard and were like "hey can you uuuuuuuuuuh... give us that?"

"yeah, yeah, your decorp experiments sure what about that gun though "

[blissful sentinel]

Since the mission is basically raiding a HA R&D facility (when not getting shelled), I threw in some fun exotics after the first mini boss:

[light falcon]

HA homebrew weapons 🤝 Heat 2 (self)

[blissful sentinel]

Gotta stay warm in that weather.

Though looking at it rn, I think I need to make it run hotter cause it seems too efficient. Balancing never stops.

[vernal roost]

I'd like to work on some exotic gear to add to my module in an update sometime in future. I kinda wanna do something with a gravity-based tech system, and maybe some sort of nexus weapon as well.

[blissful sentinel]

I'm basically just doing the Dark Souls thing where I rebuild systems the enemies used against the players with some tweaks.

[light falcon]

Looks like the cover art isn't getting done tonight so that means I should probably get to posting something

ah fuck i gotta write an itch rundown

I knew i was forgetting something

[indigo terrace]

the great work: marketing text

[light falcon]

ah beans the table of contents

okay a little more work left

hooray post-print scrollthrough instincts from work

[light falcon]

https://isatheengie.itch.io/souls-weighed-down

I'm gonna go die now, and because I don't have the special surgery from point aubade, I'm just gonna be dead instead of a cloud of nanites

[silent cloud]

YOOOOO

Hell yeah Isa, rocks to see you get this out

[light falcon]

Final note stack check

[light falcon]

I genuinely couldn't have done it without this channel

[silent cloud]

The only module out here who is truly stacking paper

[clever scaffold]

WOOOOOOO!!!!!

[light falcon]

Lessons for next time: why the FUCK did I do that to myself

I'm proud as hell that it's done but also jesus christ what was I thinking

"just design five maps Isa it'll be fine just make two combats per map that way you're re-using assets it'll be easy"

"make a nonlinear adventure and try into publish it Isa c'mon what could go wrong surely this won't be an incredibly tangled and complex web of interactions to have to make compelling and also good"

Bless my playtesters so much

[light falcon]

Hell yeah now I'm finding all the typos lfg

[cyan bolt]

Hell yeah

Post Release Clarity

[indigo terrace]

sometimes I realize there's a bug or unintended interaction 7-9 months after doing a thing

It Happens

[light falcon]

My favorite (harmless) post release bug was that I gave a superheavy the unique tag

Since, you know, you famously can equip multiple superheavies

[proper grotto]

congrats!

[unreal sluice]

futureproofing

[cyan bolt]

2e introduces the Superduperheavy, which can only be fired with a Double Barrage-

[unreal sluice]

you need bonded talent and combine two heavy mounts from two different mechs to mount the superduperheavy weapon

[cyan bolt]

It fires a Barbarossa with a fully charged Apoc Rail

[unreal sluice]

fires the apoc rail or the barbarossa

[cyan bolt]

A fully charged barb

Which shoots the target midflight and then collides and explodes like a reactor meltdown

[unreal sluice]

doesn't battlegroup have a thing where you launch barbarossas

[blissful sentinel]

Enter the Gungeon has guns that shoot guns that shoot bullets.

[knotty osprey]

I swear I'll get my late submission out this week (been trying to wrap it up through coughing nonstop but alas)

[unreal sluice]

please do not sacrifice personal well being in order to complete this project

[light falcon]

I didn't willingly, but the adrenaline crash from actually posting the darn thing is ROUGH

[knotty osprey]

Unfortunately not a case of "willingly sacrificing" as much as "had bad enough luck to get sick during the home stretch"

😔

[cold thistle]

fascinating!

to what extent has this been playtested?

[blissful sentinel]

Just finished the last map for part 1, which turned out a little bigger than expected. Then again, what's climbing a mountain unless you can finally look back and see what you achieved? Feeling positive I get the rest done tomorrow (as long as the hammer drill at my neighbors doesn't kill my sleep again).

[light falcon]

The narrative mechanics have been through a couple rounds. The NPC template has gone through like 5 combats, and two of the custom sitreps have been tested at least once

I plan on doing 3 full runthrough playtests that start in October

Testers have been in the loop giving feedback on things as I've changed them too

So not as much as I'd like, but enough to put it out into public playtesting for feedback

[cold thistle]

interesting

[blissful sentinel]

Non-linear stuff is brutal for balancing

[cold thistle]

when i read though this ill probably like