Up to Eleven Alpha and Bubbly for 600 Heroes (Patreon)

Dear heroes,

Cherry blossom season is nearly here, and you ... we ... number over 600. This is something I could never have imagined when I started this patreon back in 2016.

This journey has been both life-changing and inspirational and educational. I am certainly a better artist and writer now than I was when I began, and it is thanks to you. But, I think, I have also gained in hope and comprehension as a person, for which your support, thoughtful words, example, and instruction have been key.

But let me not go all maudlin. We are not here for that, no.

I mentioned a game

Yes, the pentagram game. The 5d12 game. Up to Eleven.

It grew from the same stock as Seacat, from a stripped-down home game I developed and ran in 2011 using microlite and 4e (and later 5e) as a launchpad, however it's goal is very different. Where Seacat is a simple but broad traditional d20 game designed for campaigns, UtE started out life as an single mechanic for running a very fast one-shot with nothing but a couple of dice ... and a long-held love of the cruelly under-utilized d12 (the great-axe of dice, as I think of it).

I first ran a game of proto-UtE in 2018, with the rules entirely in my head and a group of newbie players. It let me run a very successful game of Death Frost Doom with next to no prep. From there, I used variants for a series of other one-offs and by the summer of 2020 I had the majority of the notes ready, including the interlocking attribute pentagram. Most of them gained a lot of polish after walking-talks with Ahimsa Kerp of Knight Owl Publishing.

However, I needed a little bit more headspace before I could write them down in a more ... presentable ... form. Not a few pages of scribbled notes and maths and experiences, but something that could work as a game.

After finishing Holy Mountain Shaker I found that space. I considered diving right into Seacat and finishing it, but ... something told me that UtE would never be as long. So I wrote it in three days a couple of weeks ago. I got a lot of useful input from Saker Tarsos (who built the digital screen for UVG), and he's been instrumental in both building a digital tool for UtE, and for shaping it more towards online play.

I think it's gotten very close to exactly the weight of game I can handle when running a game using discord and owlbear.rodeo (a truly fine super-lightweight VTT that I've been using to run weekly Red Sky games for the last 4 weeks or so: http://owlbear.rodeo/). Since then I've spent a bit of time fleshing it out with examples, but the mechanics are quite finished enough for a useful alpha.

Or so I hope (I could be utterly wrong!)

The other pdf I'm sharing now is The Volunteers. This one is completely un-finished, but it is a good companion to UtE since it is the initial outline of an adventure written using the UtE rules and has four heroes ready for play in a space-themed game. Fittingly, it is (will be) a re-interpretation of the initial space gulag game I ran with those cobbled-together rules back in 2011.

So, without ado, the UtE alpha.

See attachments for the actual pdfs :D

By Any Other Name

That said, I'm not certain UtE is the perfect name for this game. While the Australian vehicle of the same type is certainly cool, it might be a daft name for an rpg. If you care to discuss that, how UtE and Seacat fit or could fit together, have ideas for better names for the game, or even have ideas how to turn it into a game jam or something similar, I will really appreciate your inputs.

While commenting here on patreon is fine, it can be a little slow. If you want a faster conversation, and to discover Grinning Maniac's current avatar, do join the stratometaship discord: https://discord.gg/aJCDj9w6Yu

(I still haven't double checked why some roles aren't working, and am not sure how good the automatic connection between patreon and discord is right now. I'll check ... uhh ... probably after the holiday. That's the next part of the update.)

Now, a Wee Holiday

As I mentioned, cherry blossom season is fast approaching here in South Korea. Three days to go, they say, till the little flowers burst forth on Jeju, and the maesil plums are already flowering (delightfully scented).

I'm planning a 4–5 day holiday, hopefully mostly off-line, to visit that volcanic isle this weekend. Hopefully my ankle will keep up with an ascent of Mount Halla. I'm certain to come up with some inspiration there, as well as a fair bit of fruit and seafood.

While the inspiration is certain, I won't promise to use anything I see there to write any content ... just going to leave myself open to experiencing a holiday.

Here's a daimonorana colorada for you.

Take care with it!

Health and peace and good rolls,

—Luka