The Pleasure of Destroying your Game

And a journey into Traveller

This Week’s post details some of the axe work I’ve been doing, chopping Mythic Bastionland down to size.

UPDATE: There have been some extra changes to MB since I first published this, so don't be alarmed if some of the specifics don't match the most recent release. 

Well, I wouldn't say I'm in full crunch mode with Mythic Bastionland just yet, but it's certainly occupying a lot of my time. 

So that's why this week my post is actually more like a dive into the patch notes of the most recent update, which tore apart some key parts of the game.

Let's look at the casualties, with the caveat that I may end up reviving one or more of them down the line. 

Burdens are Dead

My precious flagship mechanic for this game! 

See this all started with Into the Odd. One of the very few mechanics in that game is that you can lose points from all three ability scores, but the subtext is that this will mostly happen to Strength. 

Way back I talked about the ideas of Stress and Strain to make the other two Ability Scores feel more like a resource that can be damaged or even spent throughout the game. 

Then why does Mythic Bastionland introduce a whole new system for wearing these knights down with three different types of burden when there are already three resource pools waiting to be used?

So we're trying it out. Burdens are dead, hit'em right in the Virtues instead, the new extra-knightly name for Ability Scores.

Self-Assessed Glory is Dead

Argh, this one hurts. I guess it started here or actually maybe here?

I think this one needs a whole post, but I think the old system of "judge how well you stuck to your oath and earn glory accordingly" works just-fine but just-fine isn't good enough for me. It kind of felt... inconsequential. 

So we're back to a more concrete set of ways for earning glory, still tied to the same principles of going out to find myths and protect the realm.

• Survive to the end of a Season or Age

• Venture into a Myth Hex

• Resolve the final Omen of a Myth in a way that protects the Realm

It puts further onus on finding the Myth Hex too, which drives players out into the more remote parts of the realm. 

Travel Tasks are Dead

In playtests I found players quickly got to grips with the travel tasks, essentially a "free action" you could do while travelling. Common examples were plotting a route, making a camp... and... erm...

Yeah, it mostly became busy work where you'd always want to use a task to find a route, and make sure you set up camp before nightfall. Not much of an interesting decision.

So it's dead. Travel no longer relies on routes, but learning your way around and finding guides will help you better negotiate all this new stuff on the map...

Landmarks are Born

It's not all doom and decay. This new system gives some much needed flavour and utility to all of those hexes which aren't holdings or myths.

You've got three nice Landmarks:

Haven: Places of safety and comfort
Restore Vigour

Sanctum: Niches of calm and focus
Restore Wit

Monument: Symbols of hope and inspiration
Restore Grace

And three nasty ones.

Ordeal: Nature that fights your every step
Lose d6 Vigour

Gloom: Shadows that deceive the senses
Lose d6 Wit

Vestige: Past failures that dampen spirits
Lose d6 Grace

You'll put d6 of each down in your Realm and players won't know their locations until they discover them. They might even create or destroy landmarks through their deeds. 

They each get a prompt on the Knight and Myth spreads, so you'll have 72 little cues for each to get an idea of what the landmark actually is. 

Still lots of work left to do on this game, so I'd better get back to it. 

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Elsewhere

This week’s Bastionland Broadcast is a look through Classic Traveller, and some bemused thoughts on Traveller 5.

A Knight at the Opera talks about NPCs and treating them as, well, an actual part of the game. A trap, monster, treasure, or trick personified.

Bedroom Battlefields had me on their podcast for a chat about The Doomed and reading cereal boxes.

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Coming Soon

This week on Patreon I lamented a wasted week of work after I went down a fruitless path with Mythic Bastionland… or did I??

Lately my posts have mostly been content pulled straight from the most recent changes and additions to Mythic Bastionland. This has let me focus on grafting away at that game, not getting bogged down in writing extra content.

Except this week my progress has been:

1. Think of a radical change to the game, right at the core of the system.

2. Run an initial test of that system and get excited that it would streamline things and create some fun moments in play.

3. Get over-excited and go through the document, applying this change across the board.

4. Run some more tests of this new system and... find some unfortunate knock-on effects that would need fixing.

5. Spend time applying those fixes to the document.

6. Try the system out again... I’m not so sure about this actually.

7. Take a hard look at this new system, comparing it to the existing system.

8. Full of dread, face the facts that the original system was probably better overall.

9. Feel intense relief that I backed up the document before I made all of these huge changes.

So I sat down this morning to work on Mythic Bastionland, staring at a document that is very much in the same place as it was last week.

Expect the full post here and on the blog next week. Thanks for reading Bastionland Presser! Subscribe for free to receive new posts straight into your inbox.