A NOCTURNE — a much-needed progress update

A NOCTURNE — a much-needed progress update

Work on v0.9 is continuing apace, so I decided I might as well update y’all on the current progress, and what’s to come in the new version! If you follow me on Twitter you’ve maybe seen some of this before…

1) I’ve fully decoupled the characters’ physical bodies and everything associated with that (primarily Harm and Recovery) from the playbooks. Now, you have a separate Shell Card where you track this stuff. Yes, this means you can potentially have a stacked deck of bodies to move between as you see fit. This is to drive home the transhuman weirdness of the setting and make physical bodies cheaper (I’ve also done a few other tweaks to craft modules and special abilities to reflect this). You can see a sheet of Shell Cards below!

2) Some overhauled and boosted special abilities. This is mostly me taking a long hard look at how I was writing abilities and making some much-needed adjustments. Some of the abilities have gotten a bit more juice to make them more attractive options.

3) The default setting of A Nocturne, the Ram’s Horn, is being beefed up in a major way! This is the current time-sink on writing v0.9, but trust me, it’s gonna be good. I’ve added around 17 new factions to the setting, and written some more descriptive system write-ups. Also, each system now has a little d6 table of plot-hooks for the lazy GM (read: me)!

4) I’ve added the Fallout system, which is basically a miniaturised, free-form version of Blades’ immediate Entanglements, to spice Downtime up a little. I’ve also altered and clarified the way long-term Movements work, and what happens when a system reaches max Chaos (hint: it’s not good). The reason I added Fallout was that I was noticing us reset a lot in the play-test game when we reach Downtime. There wasn’t nearly enough forward momentum. I’ve rigorously tested Fallout in-play and it’s been an absolute blast.

5) Speaking of which, the play-test game has reached its Season 1 finale! You should see a nice big write-up and collection of general post-Season-end thoughts in an actual play post soon. In the meantime, we’re taking a break from that game to give me a bit of head-space to finish v0.9, and I’m doing everything in my power to hold off on just starting Season 2 right now, ‘cos we ended on an incredible high.

In summary: v0.9 is soon! Watch this space, etc. etc.