Updates
over 8 years ago
– Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 10:56:22 AM
It's been two weeks, so I thought I'd give you an update on how things are going. There's nothing huge in here, basically just some cool pictures.
Josh went on a family vacation right after the campaign ended, so unfortunately he wasn't able to start working on the remaining art until recently, so that's delayed things a bit. Fortunately, he's back now, and his new work is just great. I've attached my two favorite new room tiles at the bottom of this post, so check it out! I've already posted these, and more, at my twitter, so if you want to see them and other more frequent updates, go follow me there.
All but 25 of you have answered your survey (not counting those who only pledged $1). If you haven't answered yet, I just sent you a reminder email, so please answer it!
Updates: BackerKit, PAXAus, Is it Secret? Is it Safe? playtest
over 8 years ago
– Tue, Nov 03, 2015 at 11:18:56 PM
83% of you have filled out your BackerKit reward survey. If you haven't, you should have just received a message saying "hey fill this out already". So please fill that out already!
If you have filled it out, great, thank you! I'm going to be locking down the filled surveys in the next two days, so if you have any changes you need to make - want to grab more add-ons, had a sudden change of address - now is the time to do it!
PAXAus was amazing. I swear, every time I go to one of these it seems even more amazing than the last time, and I have an even more overpacked schedule. There were so many things I wanted to see that overlapped with other things I wanted to see. If you want to join the conversation about that, hit me up on twitter. All I'll add here is that the international Australian boardgame design community is growing and getting bigger and better at a very impressive, ever increasing pace, and the international boardgame design community is all the better for it.
Outside of the general sentiment of "how amazing was PAXAus, seriously" there's the specific question of the Is it Secret? Is it Safe? playtests.
As always happens when I've got a specific deadline, I get all sorts of great last minute ideas. Or at least, ideas that seem great in the moment, and I feel spurred to include, and then we get to find out through playtesting and this conversation here whether they're great or not.
I was thinking about the use of "Necronomicon translation fragments" as the MacGuffin in Is it Secret? Is it Safe?. On the one hand, yes, the Necronomicon is a classic for a reason, and the searching for translations is a known theme - see the Dunwich Horror, with Whateley's incomplete translation, for instance. But on the other hand, we're already using the Necronomicon as a single artifact in another scenario, and the Tomes and Spells add on gives an alternate form. Do we really want a third form of it? My instinct is no, we should go for more variety, but I'm also putting the question to you.
So I went with, as Gabriel Edge suggested last time, the play The King in Yellow. If you haven't read the short story collection by Robert W. Chambers that introduces this play (and contains Hastur's first appearance) then go give it a read! It's quite good, one of my favorite non-Lovecraft contributions to the Mythos.
This tied in with what we'd been discussing about multiple traitors, bad things happening when you pick up the translation fragments, etc.
So here was the scenario as I presented it: everybody starts as an Academic. There are fragments of the play strewn around the University. With 4 players, the fragments contain 3 bits with a hidden message, 3 bits that give you 3 Horror when you read them, and 3 bits that turn you into a Cultist. The Academic goal is to get all 3 bits with the hidden message together (give them all to one person) and then get that into the same room as a completed Elder Sign. The Cultists' goal is to get the Star Chart to 30 before that happens. Thematically, I'm envisioning a portal to Hastur and Dread Carcossa opening up at 30, in which case everything's fucked, but if you can find the bits of the play that hint at how to close the portal, and find an Elder Sign, you can close it before then.
The first playtest went well, and revealed two flaws: one, without the standard bevy of Scenario Actions to find Elder Sign pieces, it was too difficult to find them. The second is that it needs a prompt for the Cultists to reveal themselves.
I could have just added normal "go to a place, make an ability check" style Scenario Action to find more Elder Sign pieces, but I decided against it, as more than one of you emphasized wanting not to do that, in order to make this scenario even more different. So, what's unique about this scenario? The translation fragments strewn everywhere!
Here's what I changed about the scenario for the second playtest: replace the "3 Horror" fragments with "This fragment can function as a piece of the Elder Sign". Add the rule "when every fragment is picked up, everyone must reveal which fragments they have", which shows you who the Cultists are, where the 3 pieces with the hidden message are, and basically (literally) lays all your cards on the table.
And it worked great! It was very close, down to the wire: the Academics narrowly snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, and if it had lasted even one more turn (not round, turn!) the Cultists would have won. I'm very, very happy with how the second playtest worked out. It will, of course, need more, to make sure there aren't any bugs hiding in it, but for being two playtests in I am very happy with this scenario.
What do you think?
Playtest of Is it secret? Is it safe? at PAX Aus
over 8 years ago
– Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 09:36:08 PM
I'll be bringing the prototype of Cultists of Cthulhu to PAX Aus, and I will be running two playtests of our collaboratively designed scenario, Is it secret? Is it safe?.
The first will be from 7-9pm on Friday, and the second will be from 12-1pm, both in the Tabletop Tourney area. If you're in the area, come on down and let's play! If not, I'll be tweeting about it from @SixpenceGames, so follow along there to see how it plays out.
I hope to see you there!
More thoughts on Is it Secret? Is it Safe?
over 8 years ago
– Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 11:53:59 PM
I've been thinking about the Is it Secret? Is it Safe? for a while now, and I've got more thoughts that I want to outline so we can keep working on this.
So the aspects of this that seem the most unique and fun are the scavenger hunt bits. In other scenarios there's a bit of this going on, with the main distinctions being that there you have to make checks to find them and there aren't that many things to get, and so one way to set this scenario apart would be to make it so it's just an action, no ability check, to pick up a piece, and that there are more pieces to find.
I think it would probably be good to make the true translation be split among a few pieces, say 3, so that it definitely takes multiple actions to acquire the whole thing (somebody finding the single true translation on the first turn would be anticlimactic). Plus this adds to the teamwork aspect. What do you think?
I think that the translation fragments should be something like this: true piece A, B, and C, each of which has a negative like "gain 3 Horror" or "you must reroll Bads instead of Weirds", and then a few that function as pieces of the Elder Sign, and then perhaps some more that just have bad effects. What do you think?
I'm envisioning the Academic goals as being something along the lines of this: A1: Assemble a complete Elder Sign. B1: Assemble the complete Necronomicon translation. AB2: Get the Elder Sign and Necronomicon translation in the same room. AB3: Maybe do some sort of ability check?
I want there to be something the Cultist can use the translation fragments for. In addition, we haven't really come up with anything for the Cultist to do when they reveal themselves - do you want to associate this with any particular story or stories? Do we want to keep the standard Cultist goal "kill all the Academics" or have it be something else, like "make sure the Academics don't solve things before the Star Chart reaches a certain level" or "carry around the completed translation for X number of turns"?
Once I get some feedback from y'all about this, I'll formalize it into the standard scenario format and then get to some playtesting!
