START Week Three: BREAK!!down

For our halfway point START post, I thought it might be fun to give my thoughts and elaborate on the different sections of the book itself. These are touched on broadly in our kickstarter video, so I thought I would try to come at them from a different, more personal angle for this post.

Thanks to some unforeseen mishaps, this is my third time writing this blog. Only fitting for the third week of START, I suppose!

Example of play

There is a short Example of Play at the beginning. This is done in the classic transcript style, and mostly there to give new players an idea of how play flows between BREAK!!'s different focused rules. I also tried to have each of the players and GM narrate what they were doing differently in hopes of showing that there was no one true way to role-play. This also introduces the dastardly duo Blaster Blade, including some stats for them if you want to delight/annoy players with them in your own games.

 

Tutorial Site

Next up is the Tutorial Site. This is a short, linear adventure meant to let new players try out many of the different systems that come into play while adventuring. It's a training course run by a grumpy old knight who I think has some pretty fun abilities. While experienced groups probably won't use this one as is, there is still a lot of cool stuff for them to pull from it.

 

A small beginning

A Small Beginning contains information on Beacon, a lantern town, and a scenario titled A Wilting Wish where you help out the people of said town. Along with Beacon, several adventure sites are fully detailed. This is in the running with the next section as the centerpiece of this book.

 

Wider World

The Wider World expands upon the area presented in A Wilting Wish, further detailing the network of Lantern Towns, the knights that protect them, and the threats to them. Some sample adventure sites are presented here, a little bigger than the examples in the core rulebook. These are intended for you to build upon for your own individual games. Each one is themed after a certain type of adventure, hoping that readers will be able to remix the ideas presented their in their own creations.

 

 

Extra Stuff

The Extra Stuff section has some bonus systems, rules for alternate callings and creating species (with completed examples), and thoughts and advice on how to best utilize stuff in the core rulebook. This section also goes into some of the ancillary things that come up in the scenarios in the main parts of the book in greater detail.

START ended up being a bigger project than we intended and took a lot longer than we thought. But ultimately, I'm proud of how the final product is shaping up, and think it was well worth the wait.