DreamSent v0.0.011

Hey there! My work this month has mostly been split between my Dice app (update coming soon, hopefully!) and DreamSent, which has been improving a lot!

This version of the Player Guide has further improved the dice system I detailed in an earlier post. (Now it’s MUCH more streamlined; just roll Skill vs Difficulty, no multiplication of boons/banes!)

It also adds a Talents system, a new Magic system (still somewhat WIP tbh), and clarifies terminology like Skills, Stats, and Tests. Also there is a Druid class now.

tbh, it’s A LOT of work! I could have sped things up SO much if I’d just used an existing system and repurposed it, but look I really wanted a system that was both simple and used all kinds of dice so here we are. It means I need to rewrite the “How To Play” section of the book about once every fortnight, and every change means I need to re-examing how classes work too.

All the changes are good and important though, I prototype little things and find ways to make the systems more lightweight and they are starting to feel REALLY good to me – I’m so excited to get to testing so I can actually play this, buuuuuut it still needs a little work on the classes yet.

Anyway, attached is the .pdf for v0.0.011, and also here is what the character sheet looks like rn (I find looking at a character sheet while reading an RPG can give a better understanding of the game. Unless the game is Pathfinder :P)

Update: I’ve added v0.0.011b which is basically the book through the “How To Play” section, but with actual layout! I’m gonna try to avoid working on stuff like this until the game is more stable and isn’t changing so much, but it’s cool to know I can put together things like this – and it might be the easiest way for you to get an idea of how the game is played if you haven’t checked out the other pdfs yet 🙂

Dice Work and new RPG stuff

Hey so I’m trying to keep you updated more frequently again so here’s what the past week has mostly been about for me:

DICE!

I’ve been working on an update for Sophie’s Dice, I finally replaced ALL of the dice models and their old system so that they look better, have sharp-edged versions, and don’t cause the app size to be quite so humongous (I got rid of 150+ HD normal maps!)

I also implemented new dice surface controls so dice can be customised even further! There are a bunch more things I’m hoping to include but I’m not expecting any major show-stopping additions besides perhaps adding more dice shapes.

DreamSent

I realised that the setting for DreamSent was leaning heaviliy on tropes that reinforce colonial and xenophobic attitudes so I pretty much scrapped it! The setting that is, I think the game is worth saving so I’ve been writing a new setting! Instead of brave strong heroes who march into weird/insideous alien places and kill stuff – it’s about people who live in a future Earth after a magical universe collided with our own, triggering a few disasters and conflicts, but the tl;dr is humans and faries teamed up, pushed out the assholes, and turned the planet into an anarchist utopia with dragons and internet and stuff. tbh the setting rewrite is a lot of work so I don’t really have a pdf that is stable enough to even share as a WIP rn.

Echoes of Fargil’s Golabic Technic

I also started writing another RPG! The WIP pdf attached to this post!

It’s basically a horror RPG with a format that is an existential crisis. Also it has a lot of made-up words. I started writing it when I had A LOT of manic energy and unlike most of the things that start that way, I think this has a lot of potential!

It’s not got a seperate combat system, your stats are literally just which dice you place on your character sheet, and it is built around largely random travel – roll a d100 and see which scenario is next. Also, as well as numbered scenarios, items are numbered too, and I can group them to say “You find item [d20+60]” and know it’s pulling from some specific part of the list.

I dunno how but I lucked out and randomly came up with something that is interesting to me mechanically and thematically, and is also relatively straightforward.

The non-tabletop RPG

OK so I’m not gonna lie, work has 100% stalled on that. The next thing I need to do for it is just a load of writing, and I have no motivation to do it right now. Which is weird because I’ve started writing FOUR RPGs since I started procrastinating writing for that one. For the time being I’m just going to follow my passion and see where I end up. There’s a good chance that whilst I’m milling about writing other RPG settings I’ll see *the one*, you know? But only time is going to tell. I really want to make this game but there is absolutely no point if I don’t have a story/setting/characters combo that I am interested in.

Adventure Gamebook Stuff

I spent the last couple of days working on a new version of my festive/gruesome gamebook Assault on the Frozen Fortress, which now has a pdf version (attached below).

This version includes the extra classes for my gamebook system that I posted a few months ago, has more clarified intro and how-to-play stuff, and it’s been proof-read a couple more times fixing some issues, spelling, and awkward writing. Also it has way better layout.

In other news, I’m hosting an Adventure Gamebook jam on itch.io through July, so if you’re interested then join in 🙂

Divination with Polyhedral Dice

Hey, wanna become an astralagomancer?

The attached pdf explains the dice divination method I came up with, and I’m also attaching a zip file containing compatible dice that you can roll using my dice app.

This project was something I started quite a while ago but never got round to finishing up until now. It’s nice to take an old project off the shelf sometimes and see it to completion 🙂

I hope you’re well!

Normal Bowling

Hey, so today marks 1 year since I started this patreon page, I began making a kind of “year in review” post a week ago and saw I had made 9 games since then. Now, 9 games is good sure, but I figured double figures would be better. Then I got the idea for a very normal bowling game.

It’s not quite… “perfect” yet (scoring in the final frame isn’t set up, also the camera is a bit eh, and there are no replays) but it is solid and playable, I hope you enjoy it!