Towards 0.4
So, Nighthaze 0.3 has been out for just over 2 years now. Considering that 0.1 and 0.2 lasted about 9 months each, that's a long time on substantively the same version! I think the game is in a relatively good place in terms of balance and like, being fun. However, there's still some wider issues I'd like to address, and they're things that I can't really tackle without rewriting the whole game - which is what the incrementing of the middle number is for.
Nighthaze has an information problem. If you have exhaustive knowledge of the rulebook, you can have a great time playing a fully-fledged strategic immersive sim full of diabolical tradeoffs and satisfying mechanical interactions. If you don't, you're stumbling through spreadsheet hell, making uninformed guesses at what's a good idea and hoping a good time will fall into existence as a result. Some amount of this is unavoidable. A tabletop immersive sim will have a level of irreducible complexity, and different people have different amounts of patience for working through the legal errata needed to build a character. But the game can also do a lot more to help people making their first character, and sticking around long enough to really access that juicy tactical play.
Right now there's a lot of bare metal in the game. The game presents a lot of mechanics without really telling you what they're for and how they fit together. For example, the Sniping trait (+1 damage when there's no interference) only weakly suggests that you get a Scope (reduces interference from range). Relationships like how Implants make spellcasters more vulnerable, or that Tanks are supposed to get Harmonic spells, or how Hackers are more effective on bosses than groups, are implied - which is to say, you're kinda guessing because there's no wiki to guide you. The game can do a lot more to teach people how to play it well.
Nighthaze 0.3 has also gathered a lot of clutter. This is the same initial impetus for the move to 0.3 in the first place - 0.2 had accumulated cruft in the form of hotfixes and neat-idea mechanics that didn't really belong, or just things that seemed like a good idea at the time until the rubber hit the road. 0.3's clutter isn't as egregious as 0.2's (looking at you, magic), but there are still things like infiltration rules, new crafting types, addendums to Martial Arts, and the mess left by multiple reworks of the Diplomacy rules that could do with a clean slate to properly work out. There's a very slick, robust game in there, it just needs digging out of the disorganised manuscript that it's currently trapped in.
Supporting materials need adding. Another consequence of the bare metal is the lack of flavour text in a lot of places, and while I've been steadily adding to the Operator's Manual, what people have really wanted from me is more of the Rogues' Gallery, and one or two actually published scenarios for Operators to run on their own couldn't hurt either.
There's still a couple of big ideas I'd like to try. Given that 0.3 is so stable the temptation is there to not rock the boat, but there's still some bold new ways of doing things like damage that I want to give a test at some point that may find their way into 0.4, so keep an eye out for more experimental playtests like that on my Discord server (what Discord? Check out my Patreon!)
0.4 could end up being 1.0. I've long said that a printed edition of Nighthaze is on the cards for some time in the future, and while you can always tinker with things like this forever, if it's going to see print, at some point you need to call it a day. I wouldn't expect this to happen this year, and probably not in the first half of 2024 either, but it all depends on how the move to a new version goes down. And also whether I can find time to work on the dang thing I'm doing so many other things in that time like goddamn
There's nothing immediately forthcoming from this announcement, it's more just a general statement of intent, that at some point in the next 3 months I want to begin work on a new version of Nighthaze that's cleaner and more flavourful, and just as mechanically deep, but whose depths are more accessible. I guess you can toss out some thoughts on this roadmap if you like, or things you'd like to see in the future, but it's all very vague right now.
