Heavy Metal Heroes, Decorated Rectangles and Seacat BtBC 0.75 (Patreon)

Dear heroes,

First ... again, I am blown away. Years ago, when I set up this patreon, I set the 667 target as a pie in the sky. Now, that pie has grown wings and here we are. Being able to create like this is absolutely life-changing. It is also deeply exciting.

The last couple of years have often been personally difficult for me. Often, a veritable roller-coaster: successes mixed with tragedies, difficult circumstances, struggles, deaths. Throughout, you've supported me—enjoyed my art and writing, even when I found it hard to see its worth myself. Ok, enough of me being maudlin here. I'll save it for my personal blog.

Let's just keep it simple: I cannot thank you enough. You are truly all my heroes.

\m/

Now, back to our regular programming.

Heavy Metal Hëroes

Three years ago or so I mulled the idea for SNËER or something like that. An over-the-top power metal game. But nothing came of it. Still, the idea gestated and over the years that I had that 667 goal up, I thought about it. Now I can present it.

~~~*~~~

The Messenger of the Gods rolls up to the Culture in their sky chariot of fire.

"Yeah, hey, folks,"

(wild cheering)

"Yeah, umm ... calm down, we've got like a pronouncement (sotto: turns on the fire bushes)."

(awestruck)

"Ahem ... due to budgetary constraints and underperformance, experimental generative world ... uhh ... your world ... has been slated for shutdown. Your world will end in one month. If you have any questions, please take them up with your local divine intermediary. Thank you."

(shocked silence)

"Right ... um ... that's that. Sorry folks. You had a good run, but our hands are tied."

(shocked silence)

"Uh ... right, gotta go. A few more towns to visit today and all that."

A timid voice, "Why are ... why are you telling us now?"

"Uh ... in the interest of fairness, we're announcing the apocalypse in alphabetical order. Your town begins with Aa- ... so ... uh, you're the first. Congratulations."

(numbed silence)

~~~•~~~ 

But the people of Aa ... well ... some of the people of Aa ... well, a small group of fanatics decide they will not go quiet into the Land of Not.

They assemble a group of [guitar] heroes to journey to the Arena of the Gods atop the Mountain of Dreams and face the Four Gods: Death, Dawn, Doom, and Dance.

There, these heroes will perform the greatest and best song in the universe[s] and convince the four shining ones to let this world live.

It's a perfect plan. What could go wrong?

A sentient autogolem. A road trip. A band.

And, if they fail, the last adventure in the world.

====\\m//====

So far so simple, but I want to make this a little bit fun and interactive—and for that, I'll need your help. We're going to assemble an inspirational playlist from which I'm going to build the adventure: spells, locations, instruments, weapons, powers, skills.

Step 1: I'm going to make a form to collect ideas for songs and videos. I'll post it here and on the discord as a link to a google form.

Step 2: I'll go through that list, curate it a bit (any aleck trying to sneak any weird dumbogrind in there: not gonna fly), and set up a poll.

Step 3: I'll write and art it up into a smöllish adventure + brêve seacat supplement (hero origins and genesis) for the journey and special little card-and-dice-game for the Concert of the Gods.

I won't say too much, but I already have the mechanics for the concert of the gods and it involves 42 dice. And, thanks to Saker's tireless work on turning Seacat into a game that also works with cards -- we also already have the structure for the location cards.

====trust me. if we fail, it will be a glorious failure====

Decorated Rectangles

You may have noticed that I shared a few card Joint Photographic Experts Group files. I'd intended to make cards for seacat for a long time, but as the digital version of seacat (SRDcat) started to take shape, the push became stronger.

Well, I finally got the mojo again to make some cards.

And then, once I did, I finally also had the mojo to make those UVG location cards I'd dreamt of doing as a pipe dream for so long. Please draw your oculorbs to the top right corners of a couple of the UVG locations. Yes. They are new. Some of the locations also got new art, which they didn't have before.

You'll get the various cards as full pdf packs, too — and I'll figure out how to set up some prints of them, too. Possibly PODs.

For now, we're still kind of experimenting with the structure for various kinds of cards, but we've got a few types in the works:

• "regular" item, spell, skill, trait and extra (NPC) cards -- since a lot of these are already written in seacat, we may well get full decks quite soon.
• UVG location cards - discoveries and destinations in the UVG, but as cards.
• "experimental" adventure module cards -- we're still testing these, but the idea is to make a generative adventure game, which could, in theory, be run with less game-cat effort.

I, we, hope you like the cards!

===[🖤]===

Seacat 0.75

Finally, 0.75. Not as many changes this time as I wanted, because ... uhh ... cards. But still ... here's a low-down:

• damage section tweaked for clarity
• around 10 new consumables (specifically, a fair number of uvg drugs get update effects)
• restored the biomancy album
• added the cancer bomb thing and the infected, and the uplifted creature tables
• finished of 3 vedas
• expanded the skill and traits quick explanation
• outlined the skill customization tables -- but haven't put them in the file yet. Basically, both traits and skills will get an extra page with random tables for generating new traits or modifying existing ones, a little bit similar to the name section. So, instead of the book saying, "just make it up", it'll say, "and here are some ideas for how to make it up." Kind of line with my theory that even a minimalist game needs to offer actual content, not just bare bonnz.
• new cover concept -- the current ship is going into another section
• new seacat rpg ecosystem logo
• new opening
• about five pieces of art I haven't managed to place in it yet, because the sections are still in flux. Let's just say it's a lot of gates and I'm planning a section on gates, travel through gates, various effects and generators. So, uh, yeah ... the part for the top cat to make worlds is happening.

"Oh, god, why is this changelog so detailed and dull, Luka?"

Well, I've started keeping a detailed Seacat changelog so I can feel like I actually do stuff. As the book is now over 200 pages (and, pace, Affinity Publisher is handling the size with almost no slow-downs now after the last update, which is amazing), it's becoming increasingly hard for me to convince my brain that "see, I did stuff." Hence, the detailed logs.

====\mm/====

OK!

This update was long.

If you've read this far ... wow. Dedication. I appreciate it.

Here's a reward.

The full picture of the Cryptich of the Craquelure Queen. This was one of my favourite locations in the UVG, but I somehow never managed to illustrate it.

Well, now I did.

Have a lovely weekend, every one hero of you all.

—Luka