The City Of Judas – Powered by the Apocalypse G+ Archives

Hello friends and fellow players of City of Judas!

I worked during the holidays to put together a beta of a new, powered by the Apocalypse, game.

It is another fantasy game, and was inspired by Vincent Baker’s AW:DarkAge. It aims to allow you to play stories mixing weird characters and fierce warriors, to impersonate nobles or adventurers, to seek glory or revenge in a remote northern land.

I am looking for beta-testers, so if you are interested, let me know and I will send you something by mail.

At this stage, I need the game to hit the table; I really need feedback from actual play.

It will take a few sessions (ideally at least three or four), and is a game designed for co-GMing (all players will GM at turn); there are plenty of components but I really hope they all fit together nicely and come into play one by one in orderly fashion, thus not burdening you with too many rules.

If you’re brave enough, then, and so are your companions, step forward and meet A Land Of Ice And Blades!

Hi everybody

Hi everybody,

We updated the City of Judas package, adding a QuickStart document for one-shots and conventions.

It contains pre-gen characters (with just a little customization left to do for the players), and some GM material like maps and ideas for Iron Fist missions. It should help you to get your game started, especially if you’re planning to test it with a one-shot.

The document is linked already in the right upper corner, in the info about the community, and here:

http://www.daimongames.com/judas/download/5-TheCityOfJudas-QuickStarterForConventions.pdf

As always, your feedback and suggestions are welcome!

If there’s something you’d like to contribute to the QuickStart document (i.e. some adventure seeds or ideas from your own City Of Judas game), just let me know!

I had the chance to review some comments about the Advantage Die used in #cityofjudas and I wanted to share some…

I had the chance to review some comments about the Advantage Die used in #cityofjudas and I wanted to share some thoughts about this specific mechanic. Somehow, this is also connected with the Spirit counter mechanics.

In a few words: the Advantage Die is incremented during the game by some successful moves (usually on a 10+, sometimes on a 7-9), and the same happens to Spirit (increased by certain moves on 10+ or 7-9). Both are “good” for the characters when they have high values: the Advantage Die can be used to replace any die that rolled low, and Spirit can become problematic especially if getting to a negative score.

Both of them are somehow a measure of how well things are going for the given character.

Now, in terms of design, an epic RPG telling the story of a group of heroes, would reverse this mechanic.

If we’re aiming for powerful characters — with solid chances of defeating any type of opponent and with some sort of “balancing” power against unfavorable twists in the story — then I’d say give +1 to the Advantage Die on a 6-, and give +1 to Spirit when the character suffers some setback (bad outcomes) in certain moves.

This would basically create a mechanical counterbalance for failure.

The reward for success (let’s say 10+) would be the fictional result of the success itself, while the consolation prize for a 6- would be a +1 to the Advantage Die – that would allow the player perhaps later on to break out from a series of bad rolls by using indeed a high Advantage Die.

This is all nice and cool.

Actually, if anyone wants to give it a try, please do! and let us know how it went.

But City of Judas is something different. It aims to create a different fiction.

It gives certain rewards (i.e. the +1 to the Advantage Die or to Spirit) as additional prize for certain successes, inline with the spirit of each playbook. It does so to make certain actions, certain successes, to bear even more weight in fiction — so that we see the ripple-effect of these positive consequences even later on.

When players roll a 6-, on the other hand, City of Judas can be quite harsh. In combat, and in general when it comes to harm, City of Judas can be deadly. Should be deadly.

A single 6- won’t kill a character, but a few of them, against a powerful opponent, would do it. This is by design.

I think you can see now why — since I wanted to depict a harsh and dark-fantasy world — there is no “consolation prize” for failure. The prize of failure has to paid by the character, and the rules offer no compensation for it.

How I wrote City of Judas (part six)

How I wrote City of Judas (part six)

Again about the design process of City of Judas. I’d love to hear your opinions – as fellow game designers and as players as well.

First part (intro and inspiration): https://plus.google.com/+DavidePignedoli/posts/EzYVbYncPhT

Second part (starting to design the game): https://plus.google.com/+DavidePignedoli/posts/iMSHo8Cjqat

Third part (playbooks, counters, and moves): https://plus.google.com/+DavidePignedoli/posts/PDjiV3RU5Dp

Fourth part (about the number of moves, and about accepting good advice): https://plus.google.com/+DavidePignedoli/posts/5ZL2cUBMaoz

Fifth part (about the setting in general): https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DavidePignedoli/posts/BriT4AN3REj

Today we’re in for a sensitive subject.

Religion

The manual contains a clear disclaimer that warns the reader about how it deals with religion, and a sensitive pairing such as religion and violence. For some reason, there’s always someone that feels like it’s perfectly fine to crawl into a dungeon and kill goblins or kobolds to loot their treasures, but they grow uncomfortable if religion is also thrown into the game.

Armed robbery and murder are fine; but keep god (or God) out of the equation 🙂

Now, I believe the majority of the players don’t have any problem to deal with how City of Judas presents religion: as a piece of fiction that is used to give color to a certain type of gaming and adventures. It’s this kind of people that I guess would buy the game, so these are the people I’m addressing. If someone is offended by the game, I guess he just won’t buy it; there’s enough in the preview to drive off potential “offended” customers.

I feel like the entire setting is built with a decent balance: there’s an almost real Church of Christ, and a totally imaginary Cult of Judas. Actually, even though they appear as “religions”, the manual clearly presents them as “political” elements: the Church of Christ is a symbol of stability; the Cult of Judas is a revolutionary force (in a relative modern prospective).

The combination of a realistic Christian church, paired with an absolutely fictional Judaist cult, I think puts also the former into a different light.

In other words, when playing City of Judas, the strong fictional charge of the cult of Judas makes also the Christian church somehow “less real”. If this happens in your game, that’s fine; City of Judas is about an alternative, fantasy history, not about the real history of the crusades. This fictional space is supposed to give you the freedom to explore these sensitive topics without feeling restrained: you’re not talking about a “real” religion, even for the Christians, but about something made of imagination (mostly…).

How did you feel dealing with them in your games? Did you feel uncomfortable to have perhaps to describe one (or both, more likely) as organizations with their own agendas, which often aim to something more than religious goals?

Did you have trouble when those cults were associated with violence, greed, betrayal? Or did they instead (as I hope)served as powerful leverage to push your stories forward?

Here is a short presentation of City of Judas from tabletopgamingnews:

http://www.tabletopgamingnews.com/city-of-judas-a-new-rpg-about-medieval-mercenaries-in-a-alternate-history-jerusalem-during-the-crusades/

http://www.tabletopgamingnews.com/city-of-judas-a-new-rpg-about-medieval-mercenaries-in-a-alternate-history-jerusalem-during-the-crusades

How I wrote City of Judas (part five)

How I wrote City of Judas (part five)

Again about the design process of City of Judas. I’d love to hear your opinions – as fellow game designers and as players as well.

First part (intro and inspiration): https://plus.google.com/+DavidePignedoli/posts/EzYVbYncPhT

Second part (starting to design the game): https://plus.google.com/+DavidePignedoli/posts/iMSHo8Cjqat

Third part (playbooks, counters, and moves): https://plus.google.com/+DavidePignedoli/posts/PDjiV3RU5Dp

Fourth part (about the number of moves, and about accepting good advice): https://plus.google.com/+DavidePignedoli/posts/5ZL2cUBMaoz

This time it’s all about the Setting – the crusades, the medieval times, and why the Middle East…

The Setting

When I released the first beta (or actually, alpha) of the game, it already had a very precise setting: the characters are mercenaries, and they start in the area of Jerusalem, in a setting that is a mix of real historical events (such as the crusades) and imaginary ones (the most prominent being the cult of Judas).

What I wanted to achieve was a setting that would stand out as clearly different from the dark “European” fantasy setting that most of the games have. This choice required some sacrifices: there is no Empire, there are no Fantasy Kingdoms with their wars and their nobility, for example, but here the characters are somehow part of an invading force, or anyway forced to cope with a mix of war and politics where it’s very hard to determine who to side with…

There is no space for a dark and cold forest with ogres or goblins – but there are demons, many of them; they’re at work in the dark, influencing the politics of men in power and trying to exploit the weaknesses of the various religious cults. And there are other monsters like Carnivorous Elephants, Sand-worms, Scorpion-men or Horned Wild-cats (for all of those I took some inspiration from the ancient persian and arab monsters).

I felt that the setting had a great potential: both for its intrinsic value and for the simple fact that it is different than others.

The temptation to recycle a more common stereotype was strong (and I guess City of Judas could be also played in such setting with a very minimal adaptation, if you feel inclined to do so). I was actually working on a different system with such traditional setting. But judging by the feedback I received, the choice of the holy land and the crusades was a winner.

Another positive side of the combination of the medieval times and the holy land, is that it presents a subject which is reasonably familiar for most of the players; there’s no need to study some alternative history or geography. But at the same time, since this is not the real history, not the real crusades, it leaves space for improvisation and original stories.

Strongly tied to the setting is the issue of religion and sorcery.

But before we discuss that, here are some questions for you.

What’s your favorite part about the setting or the City of Judas flavor and color?

Did you have a chance to exploit, in terms of fiction material or inspiration, this setting with its very well defined premises?

Do you feel still free enough to improvise, to re-write history with your players?

Gencon Games on Demands is closed :-(.

Gencon Games on Demands is closed :-(. What I might do is run it in one of the online cons. Like Aethercon or Virtuacon. Anyone in this group have any interest in those?

About the combat system (again)

How do you deal with damage regarding to the fiction?

For example, in one of my previous adventure (the second session actually), my characters were facing a huge Roc bird. So during one of the assaults, one of them ended up being pounded to the ground by the monster beatting up his shield. In terms of pure mechanical damage, I think he got only like 1 health point less (so he was still in positive at the time), so hence my question : do you think that in this case particularily, we can assume that even if the damages weren’t enough he could receive the Unstable condition nonethelss to respect the fiction? The Roc was really massive and I described how he could rip apart sheeps and cows like butter so hitting very hard somebody even with a shield at his arm would be enough to save his life for sure but maybe not enough to let him get away with just a fleshwound? I was thinking of giving him the condition but only temporarily as his arm will get numb for having blocked such powerful blows, meaning it will be gone either after the fight or as soon as natural healing will begin.

I ask this because quite recently I came accross an article for DW entitled injuries are not just hit points gone (or something like that) describing the kind of situation as above. So I know COJ is not DW but was wondering if any of you had to deal with the same kind of situation?

The City of Judas.

A collection of images. Enjoy!

As somehow new to the Apocalypse World system in general, I just would like to have your different views here about…

As somehow new to the Apocalypse World system in general, I just would like to have your different views here about how you deal with the Perception move.

For instance, during and investigative mission I asked my PC to have a Perception check because they were watching over their client. One of the PCs got like 3 holds/questions and started to ask me things like : what’s hidden here, what might be the escape route, and so forth. Only matter was that I didn’t plan anything really dangerous at this point so I had to play along because I didn’t want to rob the player of one of his hold. What do you think?

During such a kind of watchful mission, would you maybe have your PCs to roll for Perception only once and assume this check will cover, say a day of watch or maybe like a special event only?