Amtgard V9 Indy Development

Amtgard Version 9 is in development. Amtgard Version 9 has been in development for, like, a couple years now. There have been surveys, focus groups, teams put together to build the best version of Amtgard that’s ever been imagined. There’s a rockstar team of experts in various fields of LARP, with probably a cumulative century in the game, working with data driven focus toward the new and improved version of one of the largest and longest running live action role plays in the world.

That’s not me.

The Official V9 Committee is the LARP equivalent of a triple-A team of big name developers. I’m a single dweeb with a dell laptop working in my spare time. They spent a year surveying the community as a whole and figuring out what the average Amtgard player wants out of their game. I started brainstorming ideas for what I wanted out of V9 a couple days ago.

Anyway, The Official V9 Committee has promised a working playtest by Gathering of the Crowns 2024, roughly 13 months from now.

Can they do it? I dunno. Maybe, but it looks less likely with every passing day.

There are a few things I don't see making it out of alpha, a few things I really like and will be shamelessly stealing as I continue this project, and a few things I genuinely don't understand the point of.

Fly and magebane or mageslayer or w/e it was are feel-bad game mechanics that are going to cause problems and fights on field. We had fly in v7 and there's a reason it was cut in v8. Anything that changes how another player respawns for the worse is going to be cut in a storm of angry nerds.

I like the archetypes. I was trying something in that vein for indy v9 and got about halfway there, and tbh think I need to rip a little of that flavor for this project. They're popular among the stickjocks I've talked to. They're incredibly unpopular with one of the caster-mains I talk to because he thinks he's the main character of the universe and anything that lessens the caster-supremacy that amtgard has suffered from for the last decade is the worst thing in the world to him.

A couple spells are the exact same effect, that work the exact same way on every level of play and in every interaction of rules, but that have new names and incants. And I don't understand why. There was nothing wrong with ravage. Clearly there was nothing wrong with ravage because it's in V9 alpha after getting a new name and identity. Why not just keep it ravage?

Anyway, here's the first playtest of the indy v9 attempt. It's in early alpha, so like, there's not a whole lot there and I have no idea what the balance is going to be like.

oh hey by the way that's something else I'm doing differently from the Official V9 Committee. I'm interviewing paragons and battlemasters and experts in depth, instead of sending out surveys to every amtgarder with a facebook profile, about what their class in particular needs.

Anyway, a short and not at all comprehensive list of what I'm doing to the casters

I've figured out why V8 Monk sucks so goddamn hard. Like the actual reason. Probably.

So who plays monk? Who actually plays this class in our game? Mostly people who don't want to fuck around with magic, who don't want to learn or interact with the magic system on the same level that a lot of the classes have to. Lot of new players, lot of cross gamers, lot of stick jocks who are enticed by the promises laid down by enlightened soul and magic ball block.

So, at level 1 and level 6, beginning and ending, Monk appeals to people who don't give a fuck about magic.

At levels 4 and 5, Monk gets the longest and hardest to memorize spell in the game. A pair of long, weird, specific poems that you have to memorize beginning to end to cast. And then you learn another poem to charge it if you want to use either more than once.

So, so far Monk gives us the promise of ignoring magic, and an equal amount of the hardest magic in the game. Cool. Cool cool cool.

And Sanctuary! Which gets weirder and harder to understand the more shit that's going on on the field! Difficult magical interactions, difficult magical spells, and the promise that you won't every have to use magic.

Take Ranger from Druids and give it to Healers.

they deserve it

nerfs one and buffs the other

I’ve gotten a couple classes to a good rough draft. It’s an early rough draft, lots to do still, but it’s a start, and I think they’re going to be fun classes once they’re balanced out a little.

Stat blocks under the read more

I hammered out the rough draft of what I want from Spell Strike today, and I think it looks good. It still needs to be balanced with the rest of V9, edited, and polished, and I’m sure it’s going to change a lot over the course of the project, but there was forward progress today and I’ve gotten the lion’s share of a new mechanic hammered out.

Screenshots under a readmore