It’s summer, and you’re on your own in the backcountry. It is as beautiful as it is remote, and while you’re grateful that you stumbled across this listing on the ecology job board, you can’t help wishing for a nice, simple list of GPS coordinates. Who knows why Dr. Olson decided to note down site locations using cryptic landmark descriptions instead of the standard LAT-LON? They must have had their reasons. Whatever those are, the end result is you - the seasonal worker - hitting the trails to hunt down and retrieve their equipment.Â
This position has the independence and challenge you love about this kind of work. It will be the first time you’ve ever worked a job like this solo, but you’re ready.
What will you discover out there this season? And how will it change you?
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Field Season is my in-progress submission to the Firelights Jam. Something I initially struggled with was how to translate Curses to my game - I changed the name to Complications, and replaced the four Curse options with a d66 roll table with options like “Broken equipment” and “A sudden change in weather”.
But when I actually tested it, building those card stacks felt super punishing for a game that was fundamentally about taking a walk in the woods. I ended up replacing the combat aspect altogether with a simple “you deal with the problem, but there might be consequences” mechanic. Essentially, I didn’t want failure to mean “you weren’t able to solve the problem,” but instead “you were able to solve the problem, but barely - you’ll need to take some time to rest and to think about how you might approach problems differently in the future.”
Am I getting away from the metroidvania feel of the original Firelights by doing this? Probably...but I think it works for this game!
After not giving it a lot of attention when it first came out (ttrpgs have definitely taken a back seat the last couple of months) I checked out Firelights by Fari RPGs and the Creator Kit. I thought of it while tossing around some ideas for a Metroid-esque ttrpg (I've been playing the Metroid Prime Remaster lately). It's not the system I settled on for my Metroid ttrpg, but I had another idea for what I wanted to do with it.
I like it! It's a solid solo system that is easily reskinnable and allows a lot to be communicated in a small space. I hope and expect to see many more games made with Firelights (the Firelights Jam is at 29 entries as I type this!). The condensed brochure style of it makes it extremely hackable much in the same way Lasers & Feelings and a lot of one-page games are.
So, what did I do with Firelights? Let me introduce you to Eousi: Solarium.
An Eousi Immortal seeks to reclaim an ancient home
Almost exactly a year ago I put out Eousi for the Hack It! 3d6D TTRPG Jam which was a jam aimed at generating a bunch of games using Lucky Newt Games' Diversified system (which was called 3d6Diversify at the time). Diversified works really well with characters wielding superpowers so I made a Hotshots spin-off that followed the "Jedi" of the setting I've been building for that game.
Reborn of the Sun; A 3d6D Space Fantasy RPG
What resulted were the sun-drenched, punk rock cultists who drink the molten blood of their sun god in order to get all sorts of solar powers. Many die in the process (a fact reflected in the possibility of death in character creation). The most powerful Eousi are Immortals who can easily incinerate most mortals, slay dragons, survive the vacuum of space, and be resurrected by being placed inside a sun.
Eousi: Solarium is a new game in the Eousi series that puts the player in the shoes of one of these Immortals, tasked to explore and reclaim an ancient abandoned solarium (think Jedi temple) from the imperials and monsters that guard it. You will travel the halls of the solarium powering up cradles, mystic machines that each hold a piece of your sun god Eous' power.
What I found easy was rewriting the rules to fit the setting. What was most fun was reworking some of the Actions. Many of these were small changes, but provided lots of opportunities to tweak mechanics and balance. While one could certainly just swap out any setting specific words, I did take it a little further and added some of my own mechanics that specifically fit the Eousi experience including using Light to enhance rolls and a checkpoint system.
The part I had the hardest time with was the tables that are meant to inspire what the areas you discover are like. I think in the original Firelights game, these tables feel the least mechanically connected to the rest of game to me. They definitely grew on me as I played and used them, but still felt a little floaty compared to other parts of Firelights. I ended up doing something different with mine by having each card represent a different kind of room, blending tenants of Eousi represented by suits and other ideas represented by the cards' values to make a specific theme for each room. The sheer number of combinations of evocative themes is definitely reduced, but it helped me feel like I was on more solid ground with what each room was as I visited them and felt less like an extra thing to do on top of the other moving pieces of the game.
I'm really proud of how Eousi: Solarium turned out and am really pleased with the Guided by Firelights system! I have other ideas for it that I don't know if I'll complete any time soon, but hope to eventually see through. If you're interested in checking out other Guided by Firelights game or even doing some of your own designing, check out the Firelights Jam on itch.io!
Firelights is an open licensed and condensed solo/co-op ttrpg, with the main tools at hand being two 6-sided dice, a deck of cards, and a journal, with the setting itself inspired by games like Hollow Knight, Ori, and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I recommend people check it out if you're a fan!
With the jam, participants are expected to design and publish a game based on Firelight's mechanics, releasing it within March or April.
I plan on releasing a game for this jam, and posting weekly devlogs for the process. I would consider streaming, but I don't have the equipment or internet for that as is.
