Beta Release Part 6

[Agamemnon]

It's Thursday in Estonia and that's close enough for me. Today's release updates the Skirmish chapter and releases our Wounds and Healing rules entirely, in case you wanted your characters to occasionally recover from their own butchery.

Release 6 is now available on our Downloads page, which you can pick up at your leisure.

Exciting things coming down the pipe, however. With this release, we've begun work on a new draft that makes a number of changes to the existing rules in the interests of making the game more dynamic and easier to learn, play, and run. We'll have more information on the specifics of those changes and the reasons why as the draft takes shape.

Big things coming. Stay tuned.

[Siggi]

Hey, I'll be the first to comment on this one! )

Great news! Indeed, it's Thursday in Moscow, Russia (2 AM), and instead of going to bed or playing a couple of rounds of "Hearthstone" I'm gonna read this much anticipated document.

About big things and rules changes: that sounds exciting and scary at the same time. The 'exciting' part is self-explanatory, I believe, and concerning 'scary'... Speaking strictly for me, we haven't properly playtested this system yet, and it looks quite solid. And now you're already changing it around... Got to admit, I'm a bit bamboozled by all of these. I wonder, was this your new draft *brewing* for some time by itself, or was it provoked by the comments and suggestions from this forum?

[Agamemnon]

About big things and rules changes: that sounds exciting and scary at the same time. The 'exciting' part is self-explanatory, I believe, and concerning 'scary'... Speaking strictly for me, we haven't properly playtested this system yet, and it looks quite solid. And now you're already changing it around... Got to admit, I'm a bit bamboozled by all of these. I wonder, was this your new draft *brewing* for some time by itself, or was it provoked by the comments and suggestions from this forum?

At some point, I'm going to do a long post about what we're changing and why. The short version is that there are a number of reasons. Some of it has been stuff I've seen come up in my own playtests. Some of it has been forum feedback. Some of it has been simply that the mechanics could use some work. The foundations of 'Bastards are a good six years old now. Higgins and I have both matured a lot as designers since then and there are places where the current system isn't up to our own standards. Places where the rules could be clearer, less convoluted, less clunky, less bulky. The entire process of releasing this stuff and getting feedback has been an experiment in iterative design.

This is a thing that we want to kickstart. The end result is a product that we will be asking money for — that we want to be worth someone's money. It seems only fair that if we're asking you to pay us for a product, it should be a product that we can endorse without hesitation or reserve.

[higgins]

About big things and rules changes: that sounds exciting and scary at the same time.

We've never really changed something for the sake of changing it. If you liked the direction of streamlining the wound locations into wheels, Base TN instead of CP penalties, etc, I don't think you have much to worry about.