After spending this weekend playing the Anthem demo with the girlfriend I find myself turning over ideas on how to make it work in a Forged in the Dark framework. Characters would be a little simpler, but would have swappable loadouts to represent the game’s focus on gear and switching between Javelin types between missions. The crew would be replaced by your Enclave type (three I am thinking are Freelancer, Arcanist, and Guardian), which would work more like the ships in Scum than Crews in Blades….. still working on the ideas, but that’s the basic shape at the moment.
After spending this weekend playing the Anthem demo with the girlfriend I find myself turning over ideas on how to…
After spending this weekend playing the Anthem demo with the girlfriend I find myself turning over ideas on how to…
Sounds like a cool shape.
Until everyone plays a Storm cause they are way more awesome
Although I agree with storms being awesome, it would be no worse than everyone being a hitter in blades
Sorry it was more a comment on Anthem than an RPG based on it.
More on topic, Javelin type would be akin to playbook and loadout akin to gear selection. The pilot could be an entirely different beast as they are essentially irrelevant to the main action of the Javelin.
I guess you could each have 1 pilot that defined half a playbook and 4 Javelins each of which do the other half?
That was the thought. The game itself doesn’t have outside as much of a gameplay loop, but there are character archetypes that could be expanded in a full game. So the playbooks might be an Ace, Arcanist, or whatever the telepaths are called (I’m drawing a blank at the moment), because you know the players are going to want to get up to shenanigans outside of their suits in Freeplay.
Still thinking on the best way to handle the actual gear. It is a looter shooter after all, and I know in general mech games have a tendency to have a ton of equipment choices.
Agreed gear will be tricky. But as an RPG I would move away from a straight loot shooter and make the job of keeping the suit going a bigger element (ie the Javelins get shot up and damaged which drives the loot to keep them in top form).
That way playbook upgrades can define new gear capabilities (is flamethrower module)
I actually have a few ideas already on how to handle gear and upkeep of the javelin. Your hardpoints on your mark can act sort of like the current armor mechanic, but with additional steps needed to recover them (default to a downtime action that eats up either parts or coin). Since the Freelancers don’t seem to have to worry about heat something else is needed to eat those downtime actions.
Parts becomes a currency that can be paid out as the results of the job, or scrounged up during downtime if your job went particularly bad.
Sounds good