Layout Mountain and Busy April (Patreon)

Hello the Heroes!

It's update time, a few days late. I thought I'd be able to squeeze Longwinter in between the UVG print layout phases, but that's turned out to be simply too ambitious, so I'm just going to outline what I'm planning and solicit some feedback and ideas.

As I've probably mentioned, there are going to be two adventures within Longwinter, one per chapter: Escape From Ice Valley and Against the Winterwhite. The first is a series of vignettes and events to run a survival-thriller game of heroes, well, escaping a frozen hell. The second is a straight up investigation-against-the-clock to figure out how to appease Winterwhite.

The first one I already have largely figured out and mapped out, as it's pretty modular and self-generating. The referee generates possible starting routes, and from there different vignettes follow, each generating additional options depending on outcomes. For example:

Climbing the Frozen Waterfall

The valley closes in from all side, towering buttresses and walls of slick blue-black flysch heavy with dead weeds and ominous icicles frame the pale sky. At the very end, mounds of ice pile up at the bottom of what was a waterfall but is now a shattered and crazy ice cliff.

The location is safe on three sides and provides an advantage to defenders but has no easy places to retreat.

The location is sheltered from wind.

Progress

• Climb the ice waterfall—one watch, difficult physical test. Fail: back-breaking fall. Success: new valley location.
• Climb ice waterfall slowly and carefully—two watches, moderate physical test. Fail: painful injury. Success: new valley location.
• Climb rock cliffs—two watches, moderate physical test. Fail: back-breaking fall. Success: new mountain location.
• Retreat down the valley—one watch, no test. Return to previous location, roll extra encounter.

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So, yeah, it's going to be pretty cool.

(Hey, look, I tried a different style!)

Hail Discordia

A few days ago somebody publicly shared an invite to the stratometaship discord O_O ... I was a bit shocked and a little, well, sharp initially. I apologize for that, I did not mean to be, but I found around midnight as I was about to sleep, which was a bit annoying.

That said, everyone was super polite and my terror about an invasion was misplaced ^_^ ... so, thank you everyone!

Anyway, you may recall that a couple of months ago I limited automatic discord access to the higher tiers. This was to make it a little easier to manage everything! Now that things are in some sort of rhythm, and we even have some casual moderation, I think I can share an invite for all heroes again. I'll get around to assigning roles sooner or later (or ask the vacation wizards, they can do that now).

Here is a link for fifty uses: https://discord.gg/gSffVgV

Please don't share it outside of the patreon. If it runs out, let me know, and I'll make a new one :)

UV News

Finally, the state of affairs in the UVG: I'm up to page 42 of 192 with layout. Couple more weeks should do it. Huff huff. Some of these early pages were super hard, because they involved a lot of editing, tweaking, and re-writing to make UVG fit more neatly both with Skeleton and the later parts. Also, some mechanics were a bit ... dull, so they got polished till they shine. Like the trade stuff.

Oh, hei, there's also a wip teaser of the first 30 pages attached! Cool, nyoh?

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Ok, that's it! Thanks for your patience everyone, and I wish you a lovely Friday and a happy new Weekend!

—Luka