Zornhau Forums

Moving this here, since it will go into its own tangent.

nemedeus wrote:

Agamemnon wrote: If all goes according to plan, the next release should have at the least: Melee, Ranged, Skirmish, Wounds & Healing, Encumbrance, and the Wound Charts.

After that, we want to get in as many of the fiddly bits as we're going to bother with for the sake of beta -- Connections rolls, Social conflicts, etc. Then we get to go into PR mode.

You're making me very excited here, Agamemnon.

A we are talking about subsystems, said other guy asked about other systems such as naval combat which you all but confirmed already of course, but also a siege module. Could you give us a quick rundown of the modules you're planning to work on at some point?

Btw, i love the change to the Draw Cut property.

This is a big topic, but we have a truly massive amount of stuff planned if there is enough interest. There are a few tiers of releases that we're contemplating, depending on how things go.

For the Beta to be complete, we plan the following:

• Melee, Ranged Combat and Skirmish stuff
• Advanced Melee (this will be released in stages -- the full maneuvers list first, then the emphases later simply because we want to make sure the default stuff all works and is balanced before we reintroduce emphases which can potentially screw up said balance.
• Connections rolls and introducing NPCs
• Support for specific applications of basic conflicts - Knowledge rolls, social conflicts, simple combat
• Wounds & Healing
• Encumbrance
• Wound tables
• Glossary

After beta, we're going to spend some time doing the outreach thing as right now we've done nothing to actually promote the game outside of just having some pages up. Beta-testing will continue during this period and through kickstarter.

After that, we're going to develop stuff out depending on the amount of interest shown in it. As much as I enjoy developing this stuff, I'm working this game like it's a full time job on top of my actual full-time employment. At a certain point, if I'm going to keep putting hours into this, I need to get something out of it. Not because I really care about turning a profit so much as health and sanity demands that I start cutting down the amount of time I spend working in front of a computer. If I'm going to spend 20 hours developing stuff for Scoundrel, I need to be able to take some hours off of my freelance work. On top of that, we need to recoup hosting expenses, etc.

So depending on how kickstarter goes, we have a ton of extra stuff that's already in some level of completion:

• A huge magic system, complete with information on crafting magical artifacts, incentives for players to keep their own spellbooks, etc, all flavored somewhere between folklore, occult, and a touch of lovecraft.
• A full social combat system, to let socially-based characters have the same kind of involvement as more traditional combatants.
• Survival and general "Adventuring" rules, covering everything you need for exploration and scarcity-based adventuring (dehydration, exposure, fatigue, frostbite, etc).
• A huge pharmacopoeia section covering everything from period drugs and alcohols to poisons, diseases, and so forth. We actually have a ton of notes and an independent researcher on this one with a background in such things. We might wind up making this its own book, at the rate that it is coming together.
• A section on psychology, including morale for NPCs, horror, and sanity mechanics that mesh well with the drives system and our general players-as-protagonist philosophy
• A full Factions system, treating factions as characters with their own attributes, skills, and traits. This further elaborates into a mass combat system with sieges and so forth.
• A complete NPC section and Bestiary, with rules for all the usual suspects - undead, fighting giant monsters, etc, as well as rules on how to create new monsters and so forth.
• A huge GM section that goes into everything from campaign creation and session zero, to how to get the most out of drives/traits/etc.. making protagonists, pacing the game, commentary on how to use different mechanics to get different effects, and how to customize/hack the mechanics themselves. My notes in this section are easily the largest single section in the game.

Assuming that we have the support and means to do so, we also want to come up with additional books in the future that are a combination of settings/genres to play in and the rules hacks to make those settings/genres feel more appropriate.

• The naval book is the first one on this list, because making a proper nautical supplement is going to be a huge task just from the research alone. We'll dress this up with an Age of Sail setting as well as giving some rules to make it appropriate for everything from Pirates of the Caribbean to The Three Musketeers
• A traditional Elves & Dwarves book with some twists that will serve to both give us some alternate-flavored magic systems and the ability to incorporate non-human races easily into a game.

There are a number of other setting books that I really want to do up when I have the time, exploring different periods in history and approaching things from different angles, but I don't want to get into too many particulars. One I definitely want to get to at some point is a Solomon Kane/Grimm's Fairy Tales early modern gothic horror/witch hunter setting, though, which will give us a lot of ability to expand on some themes I am a huge fan of as well as dive deep into folklore for a bestiary.

One day, on the far horizon, if we wound up being extremely successful, we also have notes on an eventual sci-fi/modern edition of the rules to do everything from space opera and cyberpunk to post apocalyptic modern zombie fiction.

There are a ton of things we have as potential plans, but it all really depends on the level of interest and support we get for this stuff.

That was quick. Did you have all of this prepared?

Thanks for the summary. Incredibly excited for the future of Scoundrels, and i can't wait to throw money at your kickstarter!

nemedeus wrote:That was quick. Did you have all of this prepared?

Thanks for the summary. Incredibly excited for the future of Scoundrels, and i can't wait to throw money at your kickstarter!

Only prepared in the sense that I have the complete list of everything written up and broken down into stages and bullet points for internal reference as we do dev stuff.

The GM section I think is so important that it ought to be mandatory, not even optional. I don't think games can be made worse by the inclusion of such material. Personally I have great interest in the adventuring, psychology, and magic parts of your list.

myanbar wrote:The GM section I think is so important that it ought to be mandatory, not even optional. I don't think games can be made worse by the inclusion of such material. Personally I have great interest in the adventuring, psychology, and magic parts of your list.

If the kickstarter succeeds, we'll wind up getting some form of GM section in the finished product regardless. The depth of the section very likely depends on how well we succeed. The better off we do, the more interest there is, the more time/energy we can spend on fleshing out GM stuff. On the off chance the kickstarter failed, we'll play it by ear.

Agamemnon wrote: A huge pharmacopoeia section covering everything from period drugs and alcohols to poisons, diseases, and so forth. We actually have a ton of notes and an independent researcher on this one with a background in such things. We might wind up making this its own book, at the rate that it is coming together.

I've been meaning to ask what the poisons skill was.

taelor wrote:

Agamemnon wrote: A huge pharmacopoeia section covering everything from period drugs and alcohols to poisons, diseases, and so forth. We actually have a ton of notes and an independent researcher on this one with a background in such things. We might wind up making this its own book, at the rate that it is coming together.

I've been meaning to ask what the poisons skill was.

In most games, I'd just let someone with the medicine skill handle it. Alternatively Lore (Herbs) or Trade (Herbalist). When we have proper rules for poisons, we'll probably give more specific guidelines for it.

myanbar wrote:The GM section I think is so important that it ought to be mandatory, not even optional. I don't think games can be made worse by the inclusion of such material. Personally I have great interest in the adventuring, psychology, and magic parts of your list.

Fully agree with this, personally i'm looking forward to the psychology part in particular (integrated with lovecraftian horror magic? like a dream come true).

You guys have a lot of talent for creating storytelling tools. I can't wait to see what kind of things you come up with to help less consistently creative people like me put together their own scenarios, adventures and campaigns.

In the meantime, i figure i'll cobble something together for using S&S with the setting for my Troll Witch setting (from the unfinished story i wrote). Will post in the Settings board...