Ø2\\‘3|| is still coming! (now for sure AND soon)

Sorry about the silence on the blog, folks. It's the same old mantra: if I have nothing to say, I will say nothing. Still, I always feel bad when the blog runs on empty for months. To be totally honest, sometimes I have the energy to do all the writing I want to do, and sometimes it's a struggle to get anything done at all. Covid politics did a number on me, for sure (I know I'm not alone). Anyway, we have good news here at Disoriented Ranger Publishing! That game we wanted to get published close to half a year ago? It is about to go public. Time to talk about it in more than vague terms ...

Rules? What rules?

I kept this one close to the chest for some time now. It's an original system and I sat on it like a mother hen even after it had hetched and I knew it worked. Now it's a fully grown up gamecock, ready to stand its ground in the arena of published games fighting for attention ...

All grown up and ready to game ... [source]

 

With the book done and ready, only waiting for approval, I can start showing the engine a bit. While we are at it, I'll showcase the layout and the writing as well:

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As you can see, this is just a short summary, very much at the beginning of the book. It is followed up by an extensive glossary of all the game terms a player might need and then we go into character generation, advancement, combat and social media interaction. That's roughly a quarter of the book.

After those basics are presented, the book will feature a roughly 150 pages strong part with all the information and material a gamemaster might need. It all builds up if you read it in a linear fashion.

The basic idea driving the game is that characters have 10 slots they can fill with gadgets, contacts or skills over the course of a 'Season' (which streamlines levelling up into a cooperative endeavor). Damage (physical or mental) will block slots, as will missing 'Episodes' (which means sessions, of course).

Players come up with slots as the characters need them by describing them and manifest them into the game by randomly determining how strong the described slot actually is (a player might claim that the character can Judo, but the roll might reveal that he just saw something on TV and copy that with mediocre success). DMs collects slots in a similar way and when all slots are filled, the season has its finale.

Rolls are described as shared in the picture above: players roll 3 dice, take one of them versus a difficulty and might activate or buy the other two, depending on the situation. That 'buying' is part of a feature where the DM is stronger the more 'Pennies' (the game currency) they have. If the players keep buying dice, the DM gets stronger. If they don't, the DM has other options to get stronger. Either way, it will fluctuate and that struggle is part of the game.

Since it's all playing in a dystopian future, there's also a full blown system for social media interaction that has a strong impact on a character's social standing. The game will play very much like a TV series, strongly leaning towards anime, but mostly due to the setting. A different setting will change that feel (we've tried our hand successfully on a Stranger Things clone, for instance).

All this is rounded up with tools for the DM to construct and manifest a narrative (similar to what is used in Lost Songs, see here) and build a sandbox for the characters to play in (also a variant of what's happening in Lost Songs).

And that'd be the rules, roughly speaking. The book will also feature examples, infographics, a collection of all the information (for easy access during the game), an extensive glossary (including DM terms), essays on all aspects of game and game world, an index, cheat sheets for documentation of all the lose parts and even some ideas on how to use just the setting, how to alter the rules or how to play the game in another setting.

It's very much a unique and complete game. The over 40 illustrations are just icing on the cake :)

Open in new tab for details ...

Soon, now. Very soon.

As I said, it'll be released any day now (we are waiting for approval from OBS, it'll go live shortly after that). It'll be print on demand only (I thought long and hard about this). All the work was put into making this the best book it can be, not a pdf. There is a difference, and I stand by that. I also want people to actually engage with the game and not just download something that'll ultimately just get forgotten on some hard drive ...

Anyway, how's that for a first impression? I'll make a full blown preview as soon as we go live. (Update: here we go ... I'll write a post top that effect right now, but if you've read this right now, you can get the game right here) This is it for now. Check out the follow up post here :)