Author: Sean Gomes

Design Update #11

Already?

Yes! I wanted to share the first actually complete preview chapter for the first Carta Galaxia book (“The Core”).

Preview Chapter: Debt System

These are the new, completely revamped Debt rules which will come into play in the politics/intrigue-heavy setting. I appreciate everyone’s feedback from the first rough draft, and tried to make the system as tight as possible.

If you have the chance to take a look and give your feedback, I’d greatly appreciate it. This is a pretty big change from the old system, and I’m hoping it will fix the problems people had with the whole Debt/Faction stuff.

Moreover, if you currently have a game group running UW that would be ok with incorporating the new rules, or if you have a gang that wouldn’t mind running a session or two with the new rules, I’d be exceptionally grateful.

What’s Next

Work on the biotech faction has begun. This is the last of the 6, so hopefully by the end of the week I’ll be able to collate all of them and make another preview chapter. I’ve even decided on a name: Zindanya. Going with composite word (“New Life”). Ends up sounding vaguely Russian, close to the pronunciation of Svidania (“Meeting”).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dhcyjlumc13lrni/Debt%20System.docx?dl=0

Design Update #10

Back to some faction goodness.

The Iron Assembly

The most populist faction of the six. Went through a couple of difficult rewrites with this one, and I think it’s probably the faction I’ll need to revisit first during the editing/revision phase.

The Assembly provides a lot of tropes to the setting. As antagonists, they can be mindless thugs, raiders, barbarians, terrorists. As protagonists they can be freedom fighters, The Resistance, etc.

As usual, any feedback or issues about the faction would be appreciated.

New Debt System

For those of you who may have missed it, I’m working on completely revamping the original Debt/Favor/Acquisition system from the core rules. You can check out the first rough draft here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/109509798379128908797/posts/TP8zQjtyuNi

What’s Next

I’m working on a cleaner version of the Debt System, which will probably be the subject of the next development update. At the same time, I’m writing up the final (!!!) faction. Which I still need to name.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tp3d2450i6c0g7g/IronAssembly.docx?dl=0

Design Workshop: Favor and Debt

Random design-stuff that I’m chewing on.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m toying with expanding and revamping the Debt and Favor system. The intrigue-heavy tone of the first campaign setting feels like the best opportunity to try this stuff out. Shout out to Chris Wilson, +Alan Tsang, and everyone else who gave their feedback on the flaws/weak points of the current Debt system.

Brief summary:

– Incur Debt to people whenever you make a deal with them or ask them for something rare or important.

– Debt is recorded per group/faction.

– Debt is an economic “injury”: Minor, Major, Severe, Critical and Crushing.

– Earn Favors when you do beneficial acts.

– Favors can be spent to reduce the severity of Debts.

It’s a tad more complex than the original Debt/Favor system, but much more robust. Personally I think it’s just… better. Which is annoying? In a way? Like, I don’t think I could have put this together two years ago when writing UW, I’ve learned a lot since then. But I guess this is a candidate for a UW.v2

Anywho, I’d super appreciate any comments and feedback. I know it’s a hefty two pages, but if you folks have the time to go over it it would be really useful to me. Especially if you’ve run a campaign before and had problems with the old Debts system.

(Insert usual “It’s a work in Progress!” bleating here)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/au0txyb9swksbt0/Debt.docx?dl=0

Starting with the Conspiracy system, it feels like the new campaign settings are the perfect microcosms to deepen specific parts of the game, especially parts that have mixed audience reactions, like debt system and combat.

Since the Core is all about faction politics and interactions, it feels like an opportunity to implement a revamped debt/favor system. This probably won’t be a complete overhaul, and will be entirely optional (you can stick with the base game’s systems even if you’re running a game in this campaign setting).

A few aspects that I’m looking at right now:

– Differentiating Debt and Reputation.

– Making player-facing Debt choices (Calling in a Favor) more accessible.

– Group rewards vs solo rewards.

So, question to you wonderful community people: are there any aspects of the Debt system that are particularly problematic or confusing? Stuff that just doesn’t grok with you? Most importantly; have any of you implemented house-rules that you felt worked better.

I’m always interested in improving and iterating, so I think these campaign settings could provide me with a very interesting opportunity. The second campaign (The Divide) will be a more combat/war -style setting, and will be a perfect playground for a combat rules revamp/expansion.

Carta Galaxia Development Update #9

Been a bit slow, dealing with a lingering cold that has been clogging up my head. Totally forgot to upload this last weekend.

New Faction: Tulwar Industries

So this is the new faction I’ve been tinkering with. It certainly gave me a lot of trouble, but the result is quite pleasing. I enjoy how they stack up against the other factions (essentially buying allies with tech). Ultimately, Tulwar brings a more traditional dystopian cyberpunk organisation into the mix; the tech megacorp. However, I hope that the mad scientist (or rather, crazed engineer?) aspect will set them apart from your more traditional Weyland-Yutanis or Cyberdynes.

As usual, I’d appreciate if folks could take a look and give their general impressions of the faction and the layout (easy to read, easy to grok, anything that stands out as weird or contradictory, plot holes, etc)

What’s Next

Next up we have the Iron Assembly, ready to throw off the shackles of their oppressors and maybe demolish a few buildings in the process.

Naming! Argh!

Sooooo. The Biotech firm. Originally was named Brekengraf way back when. Changed it to Zindah follow the thematic of the setting. (South Asian, rather than Northern European). However, it would appear that I am not half as clever as I hoped, and not only does a real Zinda company exist (different latinized spelling, but same word), the real world Zinda is also an agri-business. My son really likes their couscous.

So yeah. I don’t want to get sued. I’m going to do a big naming update soon. Whoopsie.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pn3roly3h72k3bz/Tulwar.docx?dl=0

Carta Galaxia Development Update #8

Hello hello! Another week, another update. So lets jump right in.

General Workflow

Over the past few weeks I’ve been hitting a lot of creative walls. While I’ve been picking myself up and trying to plug along, I decided to take a step back and look at my methods and workflow.

Writing a setting is quite different from writing rules (shocking, I know), but I had been applying my old methods to this new challenge. Didn’t work out quite so well. The biggest issue was flipping back and forth between sections to make sure the factions were distinct, well rounded, well defined, etc.

Despite following the same template for writing each faction, I found myself wracking my brain to not repeat myself, of thinking of stuff that would really work well for faction A while working on faction B. Things like that.

So I’ve started a series of documents that are concept-based rather than faction-based. This allows me to easily compare and shift elements around. For example, I just traded the Dai’Rho’s angry mobs out to the Iron Assembly because it fits more and doesn’t have anti-synergy with the whole opiates/pacifying drugs. Instead I saw an opportunity to have a parallel to the Ministry’s infiltrators by giving the Dai’Rho sleeper agents (more in line with the whole brainwashing aspect of the faction).

All in all, it’s going much better, and I feel quite unblocked, creatively. Hopefully I should have more faction stuff very soon.

The Dai’Rho

Speaking of the Dai’Rho, I’ve linked their Faction section down below. Same format as the others.

As I said last update, the Dai’Rho were too much of a good thing in a dystopian society. So they underwent some serious changes and became a lot more sinister, a lot more bombastic in their outlook. They are experts at brainwashing and mindcontrol, especially on a community/social level.

I invite you to take a read if you’ve got the chance. It’s just 4 pages. I’m looking for feedback about the faction itself, plus general stuff about the layout, etc.

What’s Next

Got 3 factions left to do. Probably Tulwar Industries will be next. I’m quite happy with how they’re evolving, they’re really finding their personality, and I look forward to introducing them.

Until then, have a good week folks, and thanks for your continued interest. Keep those conversation topics coming, I love hearing from you guys.

-SG

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gs817au2lj70dh4/The%20DaiRho.docx?dl=0

Carta Galaxia Development Update #7

Howdy folks. Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Canadians.

Some of you may have heard a distant thump last week. That was the sound of me writing myself firmly into a corner. I had a bunch of stuff written for the Dai’Rho and Tulwar factions, but when I reread it, it was just… garbage. Like really no good. The whole thing was bloody messy and not very useful.

So I completely scrapped all that work and went back to the drawing board. Thanks to a couple of writer friends, I was able to re-examine the two factions through a more appropriate lens. Said factions are now more cohesive and considerably less scatter-shot.

However, that means that there won’t be anything in the way of preview material this update. There was more unwriting than there was writing. Such is life.

Hopefully I’ll have more tangible stuff for you guys to sink your teeth into.

Carta Galaxia Development Update #6

Hello all you wonderful, supportive people. It’s been a bit of a crummy two weeks writing-wise. It’s been a struggle to get words on the page, kinda thing. I’m working at getting a good pace going again.

Faction Spotlight: Heirs of Taaj

I’ve uploaded a new faction spotlight for the Heirs of Taaj. They are the remnants of the old empire, noble houses who use their wealth and influence to rebuild the “age of nobility”.

This is one of the situations where I have to censor my own biases. The first draft of these guys was way too unambiguously evil, and I had to go back and make things more neutral. The whole “At Their Best” section helps with that, but the rest of the text needed to be a bit more neutral and academic about their outlook. I know I won’t succeed in expunging all of my own biases, but I can at least make an effort to give them a fair shake. Like every other faction, this faction will be the closest thing to The Good Guys in someone’s game.

Interestingly, their schemes ended up pretty positive, benign or only slightly evil.

What’s Next

Next I’ll start on the Dai’Rho, the drug-religion of the wandering warrior monks.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5deemudglxeohts/Heirs%20of%20Taaj.docx?dl=0

Carta Galaxia Development Update #5

Gasp! Less than a week since the last update? What madness is this?

I’ve been tooling around with the presentation/layout of the Factions. See, I definitely don’t want to club readers over the head with a lot of background and information. What I want is to create a portrait, something vibrant and bold to inspire a gut-level understanding of what the faction is and how it behaves.

More importantly, I want the essential information to be clear, concise, and readily apparent. So here’s my 4-page structure that I’ll be using:

Page 1: Brief outline and history of the faction. “At their best” and “at their worst” sub-sections, defining them from the lens of protagonists and antagonists (portrayed differently depending whether the characters side with them or against them).

Page 2: Might, Reach, Structure, Ideology.

Page 3: Politics: How they interact with characters (what Favors they grant, what Debts they call in, what they do to opponents). How they perceive the other factions.

Page 4: Schemes and Resources. This ties directly into the Conspiracy System (be sure to check that out here if you haven’t already https://www.dropbox.com/s/arn7fr41pyufn4w/Conspiracy.docx?dl=0)

I’ve gone through a number of iterations, and I’d really appreciate it if you folks could take a look and give me your feedback.

– Is the info easy to digest?

– Does the structure/ordering flow naturally?

– Does it give you a good sense of the faction?

– Does it give you ideas for play?

– Is there info you feel is lacking?

I’d like to make sure the structure is doing its job before I commit to heavily in writing all the other factions like this.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9q04lmozqixc35k/The%20Ministry.docx?dl=0