Fealty Protoype (Patreon)

Hey folks!

Welcome to the new patrons we've acquired since last time I posted! Feel free to wander about. Help yourself to anything in the fridge.

Just wanted to share the prototype rules for Fealty, the game of courtiers and magical medieval politics I'm making with Galen Pejeau. 

This is a link to the early access folder. I'll update it with new version and sheets as they become available. Eventually I'll follow up with a link to the itch version when it's ready, for all my patrons to enjoy.

Fealty is in a good place right now and most of the writing work is complete. I've been spending my time on a few other projects including:

Card Drives

I've been wanting to make a sort of cyberpunk deckbuilding game for a while now. I've been diving back into my favourite rogue-like deckbuilders like Slay the Spire and new games like Balatro and Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers, and new-to-me games like Regicide. 

I've got a working prototype of something I'm calling Card Drives. It's a single player game about making poker hands (called apps) that help you find certain cards and card combinations to progress through more and more difficult challenges. The encounters you progress through are either made by me or could be something called "Daily Packs" which ideally will be booster packs for your favourite trading card game that you can use as encounters. 

I really like the idea of players having their own custom decks, full of playing cards they have customized and cards from other games that have their own effects, and their own list of apps that do different things.

It's taken several different iterations to get something I'm happy with and is fun to play. Might have a prototype for you all to see and play soon.

Big Damn Heroes

I checked out the MCDM rpg recently and had that feeling familiar to most creators: "this is alright, but I think I could make something I would like more". And luckily some things in that game melded well with some things I had already done in Big Damn Heroes, my forged in the dark fantasy rpg.

I'm having a lot of fun with this one. I'm trying to build on what I love about 4th edition D&D, the ease of forged in the dark rolling system, and a very basic grid-based combat experience that lets the player feel like, well, big damn heroes. Fast turns, spells and special abilities that let the heroes be mobile and heroic, and a battle grid that is never bigger than a chess board. 

Die-Atonic

This is the music-based two-player assassin/target game that you all voted on. Still struggling a bit with a central mechanic that feels good but being a pamphlet sized game this should be easy to finish once it gets going. Once it's delivered I'd love to do another patron poll for you all to determine yet another game I'll make this year.

Neon Black

So at the end of last year I really wanted this to be the year I finish Neon Black, my forever project cyberpunk game that kinda started me on this career path. Unfortunately the end of last year was a bit of a shit show, and the time I needed to get the new version of Neon Black to something I can playtest and start to get to a point where I could do a crowdfunding campaign just vanished. 

It's a big game for me. Much bigger than a zine. I feel a bit bad that I have to push this project back yet again, but I think I'm just not used to games of this scope. I'm used to making games a fraction of the size, that don't need editors and consultants and probably dozens of art pieces. It's totally fine that it will take me years. I just need to let it come when it comes.

I know by now that my creative drive changes all the time, and I need to be along for the ride to some degree. Forcing the work leads to friction and luckily being self-employed, I don't need to force myself to do those things.

I've been thinking a lot about "hard work" as a supposed virtue. I've been trained, for a long time, to think that doing a task uninterrupted for several hours a day, to a degree of exacting precision and faultlessness, is a good thing. 

And I don't think that's true anymore.