A NOCTURNE – progress update
While I’m running my play-test (got the second session tonight, so look for another AP here real soon!), I’ve finally let the levies break and started working on a new version of the play-test rules, v0.8. This is basically a slash-and-burn quality of life pass, making certain rules more streamlined, focusing the way the game deals with time, and fixing up (or completely changing/cutting) certain rules I’ve been struggling with.
Here are some previews of the changes. The second is probably the biggest: Compromised actions (now called “doing the math”) are basically pushes with extra implications from certain modules and special abilities (anything on the existing craft and crew sheets referring to Compromised actions is this, with only some minor wording changes). It’s just way neater, with a lot less wavering before a roll, and it’s also incredibly horrible. In some cases it makes pushing certain morally-dubious actions free if you’ve got the right abilities. It’s evil. I love it. Like, do you really want to push yourself to bombard this city, knowing your character likely feels nothing?
The new version will probably take a few weeks to get together, so don’t hold your breath. In the meantime, let me know what you think of these changes so far!
Murder-hobage on a planetary scale. Awesome.
Also spotted a small typo on “Coasting”: “short flip and burn to break” should be “short flip and burn to brake“.
Counting down the days until I can throw money at you for this.
Unless I’m missing something, being able to Do The Maths without taking any stress seems like win/win, especially since you’re going to leave the system and never come back. It’s not like other Blades hacks were you have to stay in one location and live with the consequences.
Also: Looking for info on an earlier version of the game where the characters attributes were far fewer and based on die size (d6, d8, etc). I couldn’t find anything on how they would be used before you switched the system over to the current Blades style. Can I get some info on what you originally had planned?
“Unless I’m missing something, being able to Do The Maths without taking any stress seems like win/win, especially since you’re going to leave the system and never come back. It’s not like other Blades hacks were you have to stay in one location and live with the consequences.” I guess that checks out if you’re a psychopath…
This hack is looking so interesting. Playing transhuman space gods traveling around systems is something I haven’t seen before.
Grass Dragon Sure it’s win/win in the moment, but here’s the thing: you /do/ have to live with the consequences, just at a remove, since if you’re doing the math in the first place it’s probably bumping the score up to a higher Chaos level, which likely means more and more prevalent Movements later (which are sort of like long-distance entanglements). Also, most of the special abilities that do lower the cost of doing the math mean you’re doing capital-h Horrible things – killing at Scales above the city-level, that sort of thing. That shit sticks, even if you’re gone for a century or more. Just as A Nocturne’s scale is a lot more blown-up, so are the actions of the crew.
As for the previous version before it went full Blades hack: while I’d say it was kind of a shitty game that didn’t know it was actually a stealth Blades hack and would warn you against checking it out, you can find it here: drive.google.com – A_NOCTURNE_playtest_v0-4.pdf
Calum Grace I’m not big into space rpgs, so I probably won’t play, but I’ll read it! I enjoyed the mood set in the first few paged – kudos to you.