A NOCTURNE — progress update
Here’s another lil’ preview of what’s coming with the v0.8 play-test documents – another system map, this time for Zai-Shan, the strangest system in the Ram’s Horn Cluster (A Nocturne’s starter sandbox). Instead of a star it orbits a vast, ever-expanding alien machine that the inhabitants of Daedalus worship as a god. It blots out the stars and blasts horrible signals into space. Circling it are successive shells of wrecked craft. The system’s worlds are drenched in impenetrable night.
v0.8 play-test docs should be released early this coming week, Wednesday at the latest, in the form of a main .pdf with the rules adjustments, playbook descriptions, and broad setting flavour, and a sheets document containing the playbooks, craft sheets, the Ram’s Horn Cluster, and a faction table. Look out for it!
Super excited to see this big update! This is seriously one of the projects I want most this year.
Any chance of some example Scores or a Score generator in a later update?
Lex Permann A proper example score is in the works, but I feel like I need a few more play-test sessions under my belt before I can authoritatively talk about the shape of a score in A Nocturne.
That said, a score generator is absolutely high on my list for a later update. In fact, depending on how much I get done in the next few days, it might sneak its way in to v0.8, at least in some nascent form.
Lovely lovely news.
A question; is there any form of Stress relief beyond externalizing it into the Ship? I would love to pick your brain a bit as to why you did away with Vices.
This looks very cool
Lex Permann So, there are a few special abilities that interact with stress relief, like Serial, a Killer ability which functions sort of like a Vice. Really, though, I got rid of Vices largely on a hunch. It just felt right at the time to put the decision of how much stress they offloaded onto the craft fully in the players’ hands. It’s actually lead to some really interesting play – players are encouraged to keep some stress around just so they don’t overload the craft, which leads to some really nail-biting high-stress situations and encourages the taking of special abilities that interact with the do the math rule, for better or worse.
Vices are still there, though, in a weird way. My players (and remember, only one of them has played Blades proper before) automatically went into describing how they were Externalising – Nix has long one-sided conversations with the craft AI, Bug works out until he drops.
It also works to centralise the craft in a meaningful fashion – the crew’s individual mental states and issues will tend to end up reflected in the craft. All the bad mojo flows into it and sticks around.