HEAR YE HEAR YE, DUELS HAVE BEEN UPDATED ONCE MORE
Hello again! If you were wondering why this blog might have been so semi-dead for so long, it’s because I’ve been working on a particularly gigantic update to Duels on top of the still unfinished narrative systems. Duels have been updated to version 0.5. More information/summary of changes under the cut.
Duel A combat Scene between two characters. In order to settle a dispute, a duel may be proposed to decide the victor. During the Conflict s
Today’s word of the day: Granularity
Duels have been made even more granular. We've added rules for armor, grappling, and each of the listed Major Injuries. I felt that grappling and armor needed to arrive in the same update, as most armored combat is focused on grappling the opponent. Additionally I added Conditions, applying a new level of detail to how characters can be damaged in a Duel. Skill checks and contested rolls have also been thrown into the mix, which provides a peek into how narrative systems will work later on.
Grappling is a very detailed system, but it should be easy to understand regardless. When a grapple is initiated with a Grab, there is the Grappling fighter and the Struggling fighter. The Grappling fighter is trying to Restrain all four of the Struggling fighter’s Lines, while the Struggling fighter is trying to break free or kill their opponent before they are fully restrained. As it often is in real life, a knife fight is devastating and the chance of walking out unscathed are quite low. As I assume it always is in TTRPGs, it was quite challenging to write enjoyable grappling rules, and I feel it will be the most taxing thing to balance going forward. Along with grappling, the rondel dagger has been added as an equipment option for fighters to bring to the duel. The rondel serves as a great tool to break through an armored opponent’s defenses, but works best when grappling or at Arm’s Reach.
Armor was a different sort of challenge for me. I find it difficult to not put immense amounts of detail into the things I enjoy, and my obsessions with armor made it even harder than usual to compromise with myself. Armor interacts mostly with Pierce rolls, as certain attacks can pierce armor more effectively than others.
For now armor will be available in various presets, but in the future I hope to be able to make armor fully customizable to the fighter equipping it. Credit to the Sellsword Arts youtube channel for providing me an easy template to use for armor presets with their video on the effectiveness of medieval armor, which you can check out HERE.
Expect a number of small updates in the near future as playtesting continues. Until then, thank you for reading! See you next time!
TLDR Changelog:
Punch/Kick are altered and placed under universally available attacks
Added an entire grappling system
Added an entire armor system
Gave a handful of armor presets for playtesters to have fun with
Death and major injury table altered to 2d6, as an attempt to phase out any/all uses of anything not d6 compatible
Major injuries and Conditions have been listed with their various effects
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In the current issue of "Mari has no idea how to make a TTRPG but will continue doing it anyway," I have started on the systems for out-of-combat scenes and situations in Crossblade. Going to skim through some PbtA systems and whatever else has interesting social mechanics and see what I can make.
My current unresearched plan is to set up modules in such a way that player-made NPC's can appear during exploration or if certain events trigger it. For example, a player character having an old friend or loved one appear a tavern, or a Burden activates and summons guards searching for one of the wanted PCs nearby.
While pondering this idea I spent some time on some more art for the rulebook! Take a look!
War and Fury Crossblading sketch colored(Darksiders)
Was playing some Darksiders 1 (Stygian down bebii!) so I felt like sketching something with War,and since I still have that DS3 mood as well I decided to do both War and his sister Fury.
I love the crossblades of the game so I wanted to do something with them.Man,I love the Angelic one from the 3rd one a ton but its such a shame its not as viable as War's in the first game.I tend to use base hair fury(Hallows are fine and all but I LOVE the normal hair she has)so I mostly rely on the whip and the crossblade.Hopefully one day it could get a buff(or even a more continuos motion like in DS1)Right now I can only use it as a poking tool and for puzles,wich is a shame considering how badass it looks!
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Burdens were originally my solution to mechanically expressing character flaws. Now they aren’t all built as flaws, but all of them serve a similar purpose: challenging player characters in ways unique to them. Burdens will be able to be taken on a player character during their creation and can be applied later to a character after doing certain actions.
Burdens also interact the most with Narrative Significance (NS), a character’s measure of their importance to the vaguely-defined “narrative” of the setting itself. Taking more Burdens rewards your character with more NS, making them harder to kill. The higher NS a character has, the larger die they roll on the Death Rolls chart. NS has other applications, but we will touch on those at a different time.
Most Burdens have a series of challenges or requirements necessary to rectify them. Usually when a Burden is rectified the ill effects of the Burden are lifted from the character that has it. Bonuses will often be given to the character that rectified the Burden.
"Mundanity of the Commoner
Your character is burdened with a yearning for adventure, but has lived a painfully mundane life. They have chosen to face the dangers of this new life head-on, though they may not get far.
Your character’s total Resolve is reduced by 2. This modifier is unable to bring a character’s maximum resolve below 0.
The only way for someone to fix the Mundanity of the Commoner is to fully leave their comfort zone and embrace the danger before them. Each time a Resolve check is succeeded, a duel is won, or a Battle is deemed a victory, your character gains a Bravery Token. At 10 Bravery Tokens, this Burden is rectified.
Once a character has rectified the Mundanity of the Commoner burden, their maximum Resolve is increased by 2."
Resolve is the system’s measure of a character’s morale or resistance to fear. It hasn’t been fully fleshed out, but the idea should still be understood here. A character with this Burden is meant to start out cowardly, but through facing their fears they can grow into someone braver. This allows a form of “character development” that I think can be very fun, even if it is something that is applying a detrimental effect to your character.
Happy holidays! On the chopping block today was the movement system for Duels. During a long, boring car ride with my partner we brainstormed ideas and came to this solution:
Here's the current idea. At the beginning of a Duel, fighters are placed on a line. Depending on the circumstances (whether or not the duel was organized, the environment, etc) different tables can be rolled on to generate environmental effects on segments of the line. First a check to see if there is a modifier, then a roll on a random table to see what is applied to that space. These spaces can have things like rocks, cliffs, innocent passersby, etc which can be used to change the outcome of the Duel. When fighters move too far away from each other, the line is lengthened and the GM rolls for their potential effects. As of right now I feel that having fighters move left/right on a grid is unnecessary, and think this currently works as is.
My hope is to keep along the theme of requiring minimal resources to play Crossblade, by allowing this system to be ran with whatever tokens the players have at hand and a pen/paper. I also find the idea of actively generating the environment during the Duel, where even the game master doesn't know what could be around at all times, very very exciting.
Hey everyone! It's been a good minute since the last Crossblade update post, so I'll give you all a little rundown of what's in the works right now.
Because of the limitations of my disability and the uneven pace I can work at, things are splintered into various levels of completeness. Narrative systems are coming together well. Here's a funny little rough excerpt from that section.
Duel rework is going well. Tomorrow I'm making a visit to a local HEMA club with a pen and pad to talk to some more fencers and gather a better understanding of longsword techniques before I do any further work on guards.
The last things to get done before a rough playable version of Duels are the systems for injuries and the way guards interact with the new line/attack/priority systems. I've been a bit stumped to find a way to be quick AND efficient with injuries, I've been having to compromise some of the elements of realism just to make the game less clunky in general.
It really seems like the game will be ready to be playable soon, but I keep saying that and then finding a hole that needs to be filled. Regardless, soon I can start working on the game's introductory module. I have a few fun ideas. If there's enough interest I could potentially put the plot/theme up to a vote in a later post.
Thanks for reading to the end! Here's an old concept piece I cropped to potentially throw in the rulebook. Plenty of whimsical little creatures to meet in the world of Crossblade, potentially including this little fella.
