Thought y’all might be interested in this; it’s the art reference doc I sent to Evil Hat today so they can make pretty pictures for Wild Blue. Enjoy.

Wild Blue Art Reference

The best way I can think to describe the aesthetic of Wild Blue is that it looks the way Bastion’s narrator and soundtrack make you feel. If you haven’t played Bastion (or if that nonsense just doesn’t mean anything to you), then think of a Weird West-ish setting with a bit more fantasy thrown in. Prairies, mesas, great mountain chains, untamed forests, deserts; all that stuff has a place in Wild Blue. But there’s fantastical stuff too, like a town built on top of a lake, or copses of trees the float in the air, or a glowing blue rock that’s mined for its magical properties, or a train in the sky.

Things I think should be handled with art pieces:

Whitehorse: This guy’s the narrator of the setting. He sounds like Sam Elliot and Chris Kristofferson mixed together after a night of hard drinking. Looks like that too. Grizzled gunslinger type, wears the gunslinger garb, and he’s got a hard, haunted look on his face. Whitehorse can see into the future but he can never change anything he sees, and that’s had a profound effect on him. He’s dangerous, probably one of the most dangerous men in the Blue Lands, but he’s past his prime. He’s a teacher now, teaching younger Wardens to do what he once did himself. Maybe some regret, maybe a little pride (but only a little).

Wardens: Wardens are the superheroes of the setting, but they don’t necessarily dress in superhero costumes. Stylized cowboy outfits, great big dusters, wide hats, six-shooters at their sides. The Cobalt Star of the Wardens on each and every chest. This thing’s a badge, like a sheriff’s star, and it’s the badge of office. Each Warden may have some affection, some bit of garb or facepaint or whatever that speaks to what they can do, what their power is. Run with that a little. Also, don’t be afraid to give Wardens obvious physical manifestations of their powers, but don’t overdo it.

The Sky Rail: This is a train that rides on tracks in the sky. The tracks are made of skywood and cobalt, with great skywood buoys that hold them aloft. It’s not like a regular train or train track; the train rides in between the rails, with open sky above and below, wheel-arms jutting out to either side fastening onto rails such that they don’t easily detach.

A Sky King’s Ship: The Sky Kings are pirates with delusions of grandeur. Run with the pirate motif. They captain these big flying ships, but their ships don’t look like sea-going boats. They’re giant hemispheres of skywood, flat end up, with sails that can swivel around the outer rim and a great main mast that’ll spin in place when needed, right in the center of the ship. Their landing gear look like a big spidery tripod that folds out when they need to rest on ground.

The Folk: They come in every shape and size, and I do mean every shape and size. Short, tall, bipedal, quadropedal, hairy, scaled, horns, human-looking, winged, blue skin, whatever. These guys are a bit like the fair folk of Celtic legend, with more than a little wandering monster thrown in. They are not mindless beasts though; they’ve been displaced by the humans who moved in and took their land, and will look alternately either dejected, furious, or mischievous. Some assimilate into human culture, but most either go to the Folklands (a vast reservation for their kind) or join the Crimson Council and fight against the Wardens and the people of the Blue Lands.

The Citadel: This is the Wardens’ base of operations, a huge floating fortress on a giant chunk of rock that stays aloft through cobalt reinforcement and skywood buttresses. It hovers several hundred feet above the city of Cobalt (the capitol of the Blue Lands), and you access it by way of either the Sky Rail or a system of rope-and-pulley elevators all around it.

Laketown: It’s a town on a lake. Not on the shore of a lake; on the lake. The houses, streets, everything; it’s all boats and floating platforms and bridges and such. They farm kelp, fish, and harvest all manner of medicinal herbs from the lake. Laketown is also home to the largest collection of guilds in the Blue Lands, so there’s plenty of wealth here.

And finally, some inspiration and reference pieces:

http://pinterest.com/zelgadas/wild-blue-art-reference/

The post The Art of Wild Blue appeared first on 2d6 Cents.

So for a while now I’ve wanted to take my Alien vs. Jedi idea and port it over to Fate Core, but the sticking point since the first iteration of the hack has always been, “How do you model the Dark Side?” In my initial draft of the hack, the Dark Side was basically a way to get free invokes at the cost of being compelled a lot (without getting a fate point for your trouble). It mucked with the fate point economy a bit too much and, in a con game, there wasn’t much incentive to restrain yourself from pulling as many free invocations as possible from your darker nature. So I need a new solution.

I was thinking about it today after a brief twitter conversation and all of the sudden I got the idea to model the Force and the Dark Side with a modified version of the rules for Gifts and Costs that I put in Wild Blue. A Force-using character would choose from a specific list of Powers: one for Light Side and one for Dark Side. A Jedi or Sith might get three of these Powers (or maybe they cost refresh, like normal stunts); the down side is that they’d also get three Costs (or a Cost for each Power), also specific to Light Side or Dark Side and chosen from a list. Powers and Costs work as their counterparts in Wild Blue work; they give you auto-success against passive opposition and nameless NPCs and they provide a stunt-like bonus when you actually have to roll a skill (though I’d probably tone down the bonus of each Power because you’re getting three of them, making them slightly better than a normal stunt but not as good as two stunts). Some examples:

The Force allows me to . . .

. . . move at great speeds and leap great distances.
Benefit: You get a +3 bonus to Athletics rolls made to run and jump.

. . . sense the presence of other Force users.
Benefit: You know when other Force users are near, and can make a Notice roll to determine a specific Force user’s identity, if you’ve felt their presence before.

. . . deflect and redirect energy-based attacks with my lightsaber.
Benefit: While you’re wielding your lightsaber, you can defend against energy-based ranged attacks (like a blaster shot) with Fighting. If your defend roll beats your opponent’s attack roll by 2 or more shifts, you can use the shifts you gain as an attack against a target in your zone or an adjacent zone. The target can defend as usual.

But . . .

. . . the Dark Side always tempts me with power.

. . . I rely too much on the Force, and am helpless without it.

. . . a Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.

A Dark Side user might look like this:

The Dark Side gives me the power to . . .

. . . hurl bolts of dark lighting at my foes.
Benefit: You can hurl Force Lightning, allowing you to attack an opponent in your zone with Will. If you attack a single opponent, you deal +2 stress on a successful attack. You can choose instead to attack multiple opponents in your zone by dividing your attack up, but you do not deal the extra stress.

. . . fill myself with the strength of hatred and rage.
Benefit: You can choose to get a +2 to Fighting rolls made to attack and a +2 to Physique rolls made create advantages through brute force, but you take a 1-stress mental hit during each exchange in which you use this Power.

. . . choke the life out of others with the power of the Force.
Benefit: You can use Will to attack a character in your zone or an adjacent zone. You deal +3 stress on a successful attack, but any defense rolls you make while using this Power are made at Mediocre (+0).

But . . .

. . . I am a slave to its will, and it compels me to ever greater acts of depravity.

. . . one day it will consume me.

. . . others can sense its presence within me, and they recoil from it.

The post Alien vs. Jedi: Wild Blue Jedi appeared first on 2d6 Cents.

The Citadel

Issue: A Place Apart

The Citadel’s where you’ll be going when your training’s done, when you’re a Warden. See, we train here in Ressen but the main force of the Wardens proper live and operate out of the Citadel in Cobalt. It’s our offices, our base of operations, our home. When you become a Warden, you give up your old life; you’re not the person you were and you can’t live that life anymore. The life of a Warden is a hard one, and sometimes a lonely one, but we stand between these lands and those who’d destroy us.

The Citadel itself is a . . . unique building. It’s a fortress, a tower, but it sits atop a piece of floating rock, tethered to the ground by great chains. It floats a couple hundred feet above the Queen’s Sound, casting its shadow down onto entire neighborhoods of the city.

Inside the Citadel you’ve got living quarters, training grounds, meeting rooms, stores, places to eat, and just about anything else a growing team of Powers needs to stay fully functional and keep protecting the Blue Lands.

The whole thing is run by the Lord Warden Windhammer. He’s one part steward, one part military captain, one part lawman, and one part bear. Seriously, the guy’s huge. Stands about a head taller than any other man I’ve ever met, stacked thick with muscle, huge bristling beard, and hands like great rock hammers. With all that power you’d think he’d be slow, but that’s where his gift comes in. See, Windhammer’s fast, fast like you wouldn’t believe. That’s what makes him dangerous. The muscle, the girth . . . that’s all smoke and mirrors, misdirection. His enemies get an idea of what he’s like in a fight from what he looks like, and that’s usually the one and only time they make that mistake, one way or another.

The post Wild Blue Excerpt: The Citadel appeared first on 2d6 Cents.

So a little while ago I hit a wall in terms of the mechanics for Wild Blue; I knew where I wanted to get, but I didn’t quite know how. It stalled my progress somewhat and sapped some of the burst of enthusiasm I’d been riding on.

But then an opportunity presented itself, and herein is the announcement.

Wild Blue is going to be a Fate Core setting, published by Evil Hat, to be released sometime after Fate Core’s release.

This solves my problems in a number of ways. First and foremost, Wild Blue now has a publisher. Hooray for things being published! Second, using Fate as the system is liberating because I have a good idea how to get past my mechanical hurdle now. Third: enthusiasm rekindled.

One thing that this means is that I won’t be using the mechanics I’ve been developing for Wild Blue. I’m going to file them away and probably come back to them later, but for now they’re on hold. I’m hoping that they’ll be useful for some project down the road, and that said project will suggest how to solve my mechanics problem. Not going to worry about that now, though.

Finally, I’m still going to be posting about Wild Blue’s development on this blog. As you probably know, Evil Hat are all about transparency; to that end, I’ve been given the green light to keep talking about this thing.

And that’s the announcement. Thoughts?

Been a while since I’ve posted about Wild Blue, hasn’t it. I’ve been letting it sit for a couple of reasons. First, I’ve been busy. I’ve got some freelance deadlines looming and I’ve been busier than usual at work, so time has been at a premium. Second (and more telling) is that I had sort of lost interest in the game, so I wasn’t motivated to do anything with it. There were other things I was more excited about.

Some of this stuff has changed. I’ve got a little more time now because the big project at work is over, so I have more non-work time to play with. More importantly, I’ve recently figured out what Wild Blue is going to be, and it’s gotten me excited about it again. This is what I have in mind.

Humans came to the continent of Jeril fleeing religious persecution in their homeland. They wanted to be free to worship their sun-god in peace, so they sailed across the ocean and landed here. On Jeril they discovered a land filled with strange creatures, floating trees, and a native people suffused with the magic of the land. They settled, they spread, and they pushed the native Folk back as they did so.

War came and went with casualties on both sides, but the humans were victorious and the Folk were pushed into the north, a place that became known as the Folklands. With the war over, the humans started to explore the land around them, creating more settlements as they did.

Fast forward a generation or so. The human lands — known as the Demesne — are still a frontier. The capitol city, Bastion, is a place of order and civilization, but the outlying territories are wild and often lawless, and many don’t even swear fealty to the Queen or pay her taxes. Some of these isolated steadings make deals with the local outlaws or Folk tribes for protection, some wall themselves off and become increasingly isolationist, and a few are simply swallowed up by the wild. These outlying steadings don’t have the technology — steam power, six-guns, and so forth — available in Bastion, but they claim to be free.

The Queen, seeking to institute law (and collect taxes) in the outlying territories, created the Queen’s Wardens, an organization with the authority to enforce the Demesne’s laws anywhere in Jeril, and with the power to arrest or execute when necessary. Not everyone recognizes their authority, but that doesn’t stop them from exercising it.

Recently, something new has manifested. The first generation of children born on Jeril are starting to develop . . . powers. Some are minor — the ability to light a match with your mind or the power to make dead fruit new again. Others are terrifying or wondrous to behold. Some can fly, others can fire lightning from their fingertips, still others seem unbound by the laws of time and space. Each of these powers comes with an equally great cost, but these individuals are still dangerous — if not controlled.

The Queen, in her infinite wisdom, enacted a decree: any child born with significant power would be inducted into the Queen’s Wardens and made an Officer of the Law, sworn to act in the best interests of the Demesne. The Wardens quickly became the most powerful organization in the Demesne, both a beacon of hope and a source of great fear for the people.

You are one of the Queen’s Wardens. You have Power. You and your comrades travel the Demesne, righting wrongs, punishing the guilty, and enforcing the Queen’s law upon those who violate it. There are those with Power who defy the Queen’s edicts, and you bring them to justice too.

But is your cause just? Is the Queen in the right? What about those who want to stay independent? What about the Folk, who claim their lands stolen from them? And what will happen when the next generation of children is born?

Thought I’d give you an idea what a character looks like in Wild Blue today. Here you go. Speculate away (and feel free to ask questions).

Today I’d like to talk a bit about how damage works in Wild Blue.

As in Marvel, when you attack someone with the intent to cause injury, you’re using your effect die to deal damage. The size of your effect die determines what kind of damage the target takes.

A d4 or d6 causes that much Exhaustion (or step up your Exhaustion if you’ve already got a bigger die). Exhaustion is a track (much like the stress tracks in Marvel) that runs from d4 to d12. It’s used for damage but it’s also a resource for certain Talents. For example, humans can step up their Exhaustion to use it in a dice pool. Having Exhaustion is also bad for you though, because your opponets can use your Exhaustion die in their dice pools. Exhaustion will roll up into condition slots (see below) when it’s stepped up past a d12. It goes away at the end of the scene.

A d8 causes a temporary condition. There are three temporary conditions: Hurt, Angry, and Afraid. Each of these conditions can be checked once, meaning you can effectively take three relatively minor hits before things start getting serious. Temporary conditions go away at the end of the scene. Like Exhaustion, your opponent can use one of your temporary conditions in his or her dice pools; it contributes a d8.

A d10 causes a sticky condition. There are two of these: Wounded and Stressed. Sticky conditions need some sort of justification or treatment in order to go away, and even then they stick around for at least a whole session. When a sticky condition does go away, it becomes a temporary condition (provided you’ve got an unchecked temporary condition that you can justify turning it into). Your opponent can use one of these in a dice pool too, and it contributes a d10.

A d12 causes a lasting condition. There’s only one lasting condition: Broken. If you’re broken, you stay Broken for a long time: at least until the end of the adventure. There needs to be some significant treatment and recovery time or justification to get rid of it, and when you do it becomes a sticky condition (but only if you have a relevant, unchecked sticky condition available). It’ll contribute a d12 to your opponent’s dice pools.

Wild Blue’s rules are an amalgam of a few different systems. Most evident is C+; the basic rules draw pretty heavily from Marvel. I’m also borrowing some stuff from Technoir, Fate and possibly Lady Blackbird.

so yeah, Wild Blue has aspects. You get five of them: a High Concept, a Trouble, a Background, and two Relationships (one with an NPC, one with a PC). When you invoke an aspect on a roll (at the cost of a plot point), you get to step up or double one Skill die, or simply add a d8 (if you can’t justify using your aspect to affect the Skill you’re using). You can also invoke an aspect to add a d4 to your pool, though this grants you a plot point instead of costing one.

So far aspects sound a lot like Distinctions from Marvel with slightly expanded utility, right? So why didn’t I just use Distinctions? One word: compels.

I’m a big fan of aspect compels in Fate; I think they’re what makes the system sing in play. A GM who knows how and when to compel aspects can hand out a few fate points (or plot points, in the case of Wild Blue) and watch the fireworks as the players riff off of each other and get into conflicts with each other. Compels allow for very player-driven sessions when used correctly, and allow the GM to play the role of instigator rather than storyteller. It’s a role I prefer in most cases.

I’m also borrowing the idea of verbs from Technoir. Verbs replace affiliation dice in Marvel; they’re the thing you always get to use no matter what you’re doing. There’s a little more borrowing from Fate here too, because the verbs themselves correspond to actions from Fate: Attack, Defend, Assess, and Maneuver. In any roll you make you’re assumed to be doing one of these things, and there’s some overlap and room for interpretation.

Another Fate/Technoir combo that I’m implementing (and still working on a little bit) is the idea of complications. I’m aware that C+ has complications but these ones work a bit differently; they’re a replacement for a damage track. They work a bit like a cross between consequences from Fate and negative adjectives from Technoir. They’re gained in a similar way to consequences, but I’ve brought over the temporary/stickky/locked idea from Technoir (though I might use different terms).

Finally, Drives come more-or-less from Lady Blackbird. In the examples I’ve posted they look a lot like Milestones from Marvel, but I’ve changed them recently to more closely resemble Keys from Lady Blackbird (upon which Milestones are based). I like the flexibility inherent in Keys a bit more than I like the specific triggers of Milestones, and I think they work better for the type of game I’m designing.

Project Ninja Panda Taco is funded! Great job guys! Now we can start working on Wild Blue together.

I posted the Mercenary a little while ago as an example of a class. Now I’m posting the Warlock as an example of a class that relies on magical abilities and spellcasting.

In the current iteration of the rules, the difference between casting a spell and accomplishing a task in a more mundane way is largely flavor. If you’re attacking someone, you can describe it as lunging with your sword in order to use your Attack Verb, your Fighting Skill, your Sword, and maybe a relevant distinction and Talent. If you’re more of a spellcaster, you might instead use Will to represent summoning mystical energies or Lore to represent your knowledge of arcane formulae, and you’d probably use a Focus rather than a Sword (or you might use the Sword, if your schtick is using it as a Focus).

As in Marvel, it’s all about what you can justify based on your character concept and class. This means that the setting is as high- or low-magic as you want it to be; do you want your Thief to be able to cast spells? That’s fine; you can flavor your actions in that way if you want to.

What you’ll notice about the Warlock — what makes him/her better at casting spells — is that the Talents presented make it easier to cast the kinds of spells a Warlock casts.

Going forward I’m going to be soliciting feedback on these posts. I’ll be posting mechanical elements or conceptual elements from the game, but don’t take these as The Way It’s Going To Be. I have a vision in my head but I’m designing this hack out in the open for a reason; I want your help. If you see holes, help me plug them. If you see ways to make things better, I want to hear it.

WARLOCK

Verbs
Assign the following to your Verbs: d10, d8, d6, d4. Then step up either Attack or Maneuver.

Skills
Assign 3d8 and 1d10 to Class Skills, then step up one skill. Assign 4d4 and 4d6 to Other Skills.
Class Skills: Might, Toughness, Speechcraft, Will.

Talents
Choose one:
Cloud the Mind: Step up Exhaustion to step up or double Speechraft. If you create a Complication, step up the effect die.
Dark Bargain: Before any action, you may borrow a die from the Doom Pool. After the action, step it up and return it to the Doom Pool.
Strength from Darkness: Step up your Exhaustion, then use it and Wounds in a Might, Toughness, or Fighting dice pool.
Stolen Vitality: Whenever you kill an enemy, you may move your Exhaustion and Wounds dice to the Doom Pool.
Summoning: Step up Exhaustion and make a Will action against the Doom Pool. If you are successful, your effect die becomes a Companion of the same die size. At the beginning of each scene, step back that Companion die or step up Exhaustion. If you must step back a d4, the Companion disappears back whence it came.

Drawbacks
Choose one.
Feed the Beast: Your power requires sustenance. Gain 1 PP whenever you voluntarily step up Wounds.
Mark of Darkness: You have some physical or metaphysical trait that people can see or sense, something that makes them uneasy and marks you for what you are. Gain 1 PP whenever you take a Complication representing this mark.
Pay the Piper: 1s and 2s are considered opportunities for your rolls.

Starting Gear

• Take one Light Melee Weapon d6
• Take one Superior Focus d8
• Take one suit of Light Armor d6
• Take one Superior Tool d8 OR two Normal Tools d6
• Take one Normal Companion d6, representing your familiar
• Starting Wealth: d6

Drive
The Price of Power

• Earn 1 PP when you kill a foe.
• Earn 50 XP during any scene where you added at least 2d8 to the Doom Pool.
• Earn 500 XP when you either feed an ally’s soul to your Patron or you betray your Patron in order to come to the aid of an ally.