Category: Uncharted Worlds

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

Carta Galaxia Development Update #4

Hello all. Quick update this time around. Been doing a lot of small, uninteresting things with Carta this past week, so nothing to really “show”, except for this.

New Career: The Rebel

Part of making a heavily urban setting is that it completely invalidated most of the Explorer career, both mechanically and thematically. So I decided to go back to the drawing board and create a new career to replace the Explorer. Introducing The Rebel career (below).

Note that the symbol is not final, I need to do another pass on it.

I invite you all to take a gander, maybe try combining it with your favorite careers/skills and see if you can break anything in un-fun ways.

Rebel Design

I wanted something that fit more clearly in an oppressive, authoritarian, political landscape. At the same time, while I wanted to do away with the “nature/wilderness” aspects of Explorer, I definitely wanted to keep the reckless, brave aspects. The Rebel allowed me to salvage Boldly Go and Recklessness, which are two of the most well-received/popular skills in all of Uncharted Worlds.

The new skills play in areas I hadn’t really touched upon before. Well, ok “Walk Away” is something that could easily be in core UW and I’m kicking myself for not having it. But both “Instigate” and “Safehouse” are skills that are best served in a heavily urban setting like The Core. Personally I’m very happy with the way the career shaped up, I feel it provides some nice tools for creating archetypes.

(On that note, I find myself looking on UW with some… dissatisfaction. I know that Perfect Is The Opposite Of Finished, but man, I’ve learned a lot. There are some skills that just don’t sparkle at all. One day I’ll write Uncharted Worlds, 2nd Edition.)

What’s Next

Next update I’ll be re-introducing the Factions. I’m still working on creating a layout for each faction that provides the correct mix of information vs inspiration (I’m not a fan of info-dumps, they’re too scholarly/clinical.)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zcfj53a4p96xzq8/Rebel.pdf?dl=0