Experience Points

(An Excerpt from the Character Advancement Section.)

Experience Points

• There are two categories of Experience Points that may be awarded;
• Effort Experience is granted the end of each session. The type earned is dependent on how you approached the trials and perils you came across.
• Everyone in the party receives the same amount of Effort Experience, though they may not all earn the same type!
• Objective Experience is earned when your party accomplishes a specific goal or acquires something extraordinarily valuable.
• All experience points are valued equally for advancing in Rank.

GM TIP: The methods for rewarding Experience Points are discussed more thoroughly in the Game Master’s section.

Effort Experience Points

• You gain a single point of Effort Experience for each hour you spend playing a session of BREAK!!.
• You may earn more than one type of Effort Experience based on how varied your role-playing and problem solving was during the adventure.

Blade

These points are awarded for sessions that you confronted obstacles with force, combat, or intimidation.

Skull

These points are awarded for sessions that you avoided trouble via trickery, stealth or deceit.

Tome

These points are awarded for sessions where you demonstrated sound reason, skill or cleverness.

Heart

These points are awarded for sessions where you solved problems through diplomacy or demonstrated great courage or empathy.

Objective Experience Points

• Every member of your party will be awarded an Objective Experience point at the end of sessions where the requirements for one of the Objective Experience types is fulfilled.
• Multiple Objective Experience Points may be awarded for particularly successful sessions.
• Always remember that these things must be gained through effort, not luck! Stumbling on a great hoard of treasure won’t earn you a Crystal Point, but slaying or tricking a dangerous monster to claim that same treasure would.

Crystal

Points in this category are received when the party manages to acquire something of significant value through deliberate action or planning on their part. This doesn’t have to be material wealth; a well guarded secret, rights to a choice piece of land or a deal with a powerful Guild Leader are a few examples of things that could net a point of Crystal Experience.

Star

Star Experience is earned through great deeds that affect something larger than the party itself. These are feats that make people talk and find their way into ballads: finding a safe haven for a group of Shadowed Land Nomads, overthrowing the ruler of a kingdom, or publically thwarting the efforts of some terrible enemy could earn a point of Star Experience.

Shadow

Shadow Points are earned when the party accomplishes something personally significant or secretive. Returning a lost child to their worried caretakers, getting revenge on the person that killed a character’s parents or following a secretive scheme to fruition are all things that might net a point of Shadow Experience.

Honest Descriptions of the Outer World, Part Three: The Twilight Meridian

Part Two, The Blazing Garden

Part Three: The Twilight Meridian

Sail from the land of the rising sun to the land of the setting sun without missing a beat.

The Seven Sacred Isles

Chanbara Film Japan and Ninja Anime Japan fight to a Lotus Juice soundtrack.

Galvanus Archipelago

Crazy competitive trade empires in the Pacific with a lot of JRPG and Pirates of Dark Water stuff happening too. 

Night Haven 

Dark Stalkers and Revolutionary Girl Utena brainstorming a Castlevania map.

The Sunken Isles

An excuse for crazy high-tech underwater dungeons.

Stahlfeld

A lot like NieR, but with a lot of debris from 80's Sci-Fi Anime and Megaman games.

Honest Descriptions of the Outer World, Part Two: The Blazing Garden

Part One, The Wistful Dark

Part Two: The Blazing Garden
It's always sunny in the Blazing Garden (no, seriously).

Taaga
Breath of Fire 4 with a little Jack Kirby and African mythology land.

The Alliance of Sol
Mesoamerican Hyrule: "What if Link got really tired of everyone's nonsense and was getting bad advice from Lady Mum-Ra?"

Thunda Sands
Thundaar the Barbarian and Wild Arms shenanigans with the occasional Kaijuu.

No-Folk Lands
Harvest Moon in an absurdly dangerous wilderness.

The Pride Coast
The Thunder Cats crash landed on Muskehound territory, displaced them a bit and everyone is still a bit sore about it.

Blazing Gardens / Promethean & Bruun dev sketches

Wistful Dark/ Tenebrate dev sketches

Honest Descriptions of the Outer World, Part One: The Wistful Dark

So in the book proper, the areas of the Outer World are first touched upon (during character creation) and later expanded in a dedicated section on setting.

Grey posted the map WIP and I was tempted to post snippets of that here, but I decided that the blog needed something unique to itself.

So I give you something a bit more blunt, more visceral: Honest Descriptions of The Outer World
(AKA Perpetual JRPG Plotonia)

Part One: The Wistful Dark
Literally stuck in the Dark Ages

Shard
Secret of Mana stretched over the Holy Roman Empire built on top of the ruins of Final Fantasy Camelot

The Murk
Zelda Fairies and weird monsters from Ghibli Movies in one spot with a lot of trees

The Shadowed Lands
Everyone here is stuck in the scary parts of Berserk and Wizards

Crystalia
Disturbing parts from children's animated films, the island

Aiden
Proudly fighting awful monsters with quietly bad ideas and black spiky armor)

The Hollow Queen's Kingdom
Yoshitako Amano draws Cannibal Corpse Album Covers and probably weeps a bit land

Map of Outer World

So Rey provided a sketch of Outer World.
I thought it would be fun to base the land masses on a broken up supercontinent (like Pangea)
Used a hexagon, fractured and jigged so details didn't fall on the page fold.
Still lots to finesse on the last stage (make more naturalist, add cartographic details, etc)

Production update

We have started putting the content for the first part of the book (Character generation) into an Indesign file. A major milestone! All effort now is about making this bit of the book real. Previous work was purely conceptual, was are essential for thrashing out design issues, but ultimately the work was disposable. 

We have linked Google Doc to Indesign with DocsFlow (which allows us to keep the content in sync, which is great, as there is a bit of flux.  It enables me to edit copy to fit the layouts in Indesign and copy the changes back to Rey's source files.

Hard to tell how long it will all take as we figure out process and tool up, but making it  'real' is definitely bringing some fresh momentum.

Icon development

Text as it comes in from google docs

After many hours... it gets formatted (provisional sketches inserted)

Very nearly there, but still issues to resolve

Also quickly sketching placeholder graphics, and 'linking' them to Indesign.

Character Creation

BREAK!! uses a character creation system inspired mostly by the 1st Edition of Stormbringer and numerous Japanese tabletop RPGS, mainly involving a few tables and some corresponding choices and/or d20 rolls. The hope is that in 20 minutes or less, you'll have everything you need to start playing.

The last part is up to the player - the hope is that these qualities also provide a bit of an idea of the sort of person a character might be, giving the player a fun outline to work with.

This system will get a serious test this weekend at a friend's birthday party, but I like to give things a whirl before hand, so here goes;

Calling: Battle Princess
Species: Promethean
Home Region: Blazing Garden
Origin: Jubilant Performer
Trait: Wiry, if a bit frail (+1 Deftness, +1 Might, -1 Grit)
Quirk: Curious

Our first character is pretty fun; Promethean's are naturally big and strong, but given their trait and Origin, I am going to assume they are a bit on the willowy side for a member of their species, and a dancer. Battle Princesses are capable fighters and masters of light magic, this combined with their Curious Quirk makes me think they are an eager, heroic type (something that gets them into trouble, no doubt).

Calling: Sage
Species: Dwarf
Home Region: Buried Kingdoms
Origin: Moss Scraper
Trait: Earthy (+1 Grit)
Quirk: Dark Demeanor

Most dwarves in the Buried Kingdom come from Old Iron - but the Moss Scrapers are outcast underground farmers. I imagine our Sage here actually grew up in the tunnels outside of Underland civilization, and educated themselves with salvaged books from the ruins. This rough life gave them a permanently dour and almost sinister look, which probably explains their unfortunate Quirk.

Calling: Champion
Species: Chib
Home Region: Twilight Meridian
Origin: Medicine Peddler
Trait: Valorous and thick headed (+1 Grit, +1 Aura, -1 Insight)
Quirk: Survivor

Medicine Peddlers are very colorful characters that come from the Seven Holy Isles, wandering to sell their odd little wares, but Champions are much more suited for a scrape and that's not to mention their Trait and Quirk! I like to think this character just uses the job as cover so they can travel around picking fights.

Actually, since the inspiration for the Medicine Peddler comes from a Kabuki play, I can't help but imagine this one as a diminutive Ishikawa Goemon

Overland travel layout

Words not official!

It was a good year.

The High Holy was tired.

This year had been trying. The city of Torm openly violated church decree, opening its gates to the forsaken. Spire's political unrest and subsequent violence cost a hiearch their life. According to rumors, a terrible Unshaped named "The Queen of Weeping Shadows" had enslaved the ghosts of the southern ruins.

With a weary sigh the ancient raised a pale hand, tracing an unseen sigil into the air. There was a brief hiss, not dissimilar to the sound of air rushing out of an opened window. A small orb covered in eyes emerged, hovering inches above the the High Holy's palm. 

"Yurn, feeble thing that can never look away..." The pale being spoke with lazy, assumed authority. "...show me the progress of the potential keys."

Yurn's many eyes opened wide as a series of images entered the High Holy's consciousness. A tenebrate woman weeps softly as she raises her heart's blade against an unrelenting foe. A chib searches his pack for something to save his friends. A warmechanoid lumbers alone, without purpose, somewhere beneath the surface.

Yurn was dismissed with the being's ancient smile, evaporating to that place between reality where it belonged. Five keys had already been claimed, only six were needed - and the High Holy had their choice of three. Perhaps all this hardship was not in vain.

"Next year then." They said, finally allowing themselves the luxury of slumber.

  

So, three years later...

It has been 3 years since the first blog post and so, dear follower, and we are still not finished.

So far we have ignored all the advice. We used a homebrew campaign as a starting point, went about fixing D&D and pursued a sprawling ruleset for our very first project. Rather than a sprint to the finish line it's been more of ramble in a vague direction. We're prone to expansive thinking and often meander into non-essential areas. But we are getting there.

Rey has been a fabulous and generous collaborator and ride has personally been immensely fun thus far.

Anyway, I present the evolution of the species table.

Dec 2013
 

Jan 2014
 

Nov 2014
 

Oct 2015
 

Hmm, that firsts one's pretty good...

More Other World

More antics on Other World

Other World

Dimensional strays are humans that have been plucked from Other World (a world remarkably similar to our own) and deposited in BREAK!!'s fantasy/tech setting.

The Strays are one of my favourite BREAK!! constructs. At one point I even suggested that PCs should ONLY be allowed to be dimensional strays (I still think that would be cool!)

Anyway, it figures that if humans can get sucked out of Other World the reverse can happen too... fantasy creatures can get drawn/summoned into a contemporary setting.

Visiting Other World creates TMNT-esque game opportunities:

• PCs would need to conceal their exotic appearance (make-up, prosthetics, sunglasses...)
• PCs could user their powers to fight crime, commit crime or tackle mysterious/sinister corporations.
• Skelemonarchs (Lich types) might run shady crime syndicates or organisations with dubious business practices (planning a full blown skeleman invasion?).
• PCs would get access to cool 80s tech like GameGal, Jogman, 3D glasses and skateboards.
• Traversing dimensions is not temporally precise. PCs find themselves in Other World eras equivalent to our own Victorian/Edo/80s.
• The Secret Service are on to all this dimension hopping and want to destroy/harness/exploit it. Special agents wield magical weapons and scientist are keen to perform their next extra-dimensional autopsy.
• Returning Strays have a lot of explaining to do. "Hi mom, I'm home... and I bought some new friends"

Three Factoids (Second Scroll)

Legend

"The fish that never rots"

• Just south of the grand city of Portia is a small fishing village that is quite famous for one of its residents - an enormous aquatic Deva that lives in the waters near the town. Powerful, old and mostly content, it protects the town from all danger and asks for nothing but a single fish in return. The only issue is that it is quite picky, and will study the offering for weeks at a time, guaranteeing that even a suitable meal will be rotting by the time it deigns to eat it. Fortunately, the town elders found a way to catch a fish that never rots, though it requires a trip to a dangerous undersea cave off the coast...

World

"The Kingdom of Shard"

• The great Kingdom of Akenia was left devastated by the Third Cataclysm, its people orphaned by a war with a legend and abandoned by the retreating sun. Left alone in the darkness, they huddled around the great "Star Shards" - glowing pieces of the Sun Machine that had fallen to the ground after that final, devastating battle. They conglomerated and rebuilt in these odd facsimiles of the dawn, and the new confederacy of city states that rose from it was named "Shard" in honor of what had saved them.

Persona

"Shogun Seika - she who would unite all under the sky"

• It is said that the Seven Holy Isles were always destined to be at war, and yet she rules three of them now. She, the daughter of a disgraced ronin, who rose to prominence by earning victory after victory from those who doubted, berated and looked down upon her. She, who struck down her ruler in an act of treachery that was cheered by the soldiers under her and the peasants freed from the yoke of a tyrant. If the Will of Heaven does not support her, she will simply make her own path - because truly, what is a few more lives crushed underfoot when the end result is a true and lasting peace?

Elective Abilities

I hammered out the main/essential rules to the game finally, which Grey is currently giving a once-over (where he will inevitably tut-tut the lack of u's in words like armor and color) before I run through it again for last minute revision.

As for me, I've switched gears back to character rules. This is actually one of my favorite things to write, so beyond the occasional writer's block I've been really enjoying myself. Even though all the Callings I'd put to pen a couple years back have needed to be re-worked (and in some cases, totally scrapped) it's just inspired me to put my all into them; as well as freed me up to play around with some new ideas.

Every Calling has three or so "Starting" Abilities - these are defining skills and powers shared by all members of that particular Calling; the Battle Princess's Heart's Blade and the Factotum's Pack are good examples of these.

However, Calling also has a list of Elective Abilities. These are not universal, like Starting Abilities are. Instead, players may select a new one when a character reaches a certain Rank. These can take many different forms.

(Just a reminder, all text and rules will likely face revision and maybe alterations in the next process!)

Some, are simple. The following Factotum Ability guarantees a certain proficiency in social situations.

Silver Tongue

Whether a quaint earthy drawl, subtle accent or eloquent manner, a good speaking voice can make any argument sound convincing. Well, almost any argument...

• The Factotum has an Edge on all Negotiation Procedure Rolls as long as they are given a chance to speak.

Others are Advanced - Abilities that you may only take once you are Rank 5 or higher, like this Champion Ability.

Roaring Spirit

Even when calm and still, this Champion’s soul crackles with an energy beyond normal beings. A mere look can send spread this force outwards, sapping the fighting spirit and blood lust from lesser warriors in the Champion’s presence.

• To use this ability, the warrior must glower at the intended targets and make an Aura check.
• Success means that all hostile creatures within shouting distance will step back and will not engage the Champion or their allies unless they strike first.
• This ability has no effect on any creature or adversary with a Rank equal to or higher than the Warrior’s.
• This ability may be used once a session.

Some Abilities are just magical. Bad jokes aside, take note - this Sage Ability is marked as (Magic, Dark): all magical abilities are aligned with Light or Darkness, and taking one earns you an Allegiance point. These points can add up pretty quickly, and can potentially lead to some interesting changes for magic using characters..

Murky Mask (Magic, Dark)

By coating themselves with malleable dark mana, this Sage is able to create an incredibly convincing disguise.

• By taking a few minutes and mushing their face and body a bit like clay, the Sage may alter their physical appearance. They may change their build, coloring, face and height within reason. 
• The result will always somewhat resemble the true form of the Sage, so looking like a another specific individual is generally out of the question.
• As an example: a Human would be able to sculpt themselves to look like an Elf or Tenebrate, but would not be able to mimic a smaller Chib or the significantly larger Prometheans.
• This disguise immediately dissolves if the Sage is caught in a direct lie, loses at least one Heart from an offensive action, or wills the effect to end. Otherwise it will last for an hour before everything snaps back into its proper place.
• Regardless of how the Ability Ends, the Sage needs to let their body rest for another hour before they can use Murky Mask again.

Obake hunters

Whether in human or animal form, the Obake predator will always savour the fresh kill.

Spooky creation

I'm hoping the crafting rules will allow you to create... companions!

Buried Kingdom Railway

Some of the less well established trainlines weave curious paths through the Buried Kingdom. Often built for exploratory purposes, players can find themselves passengers on these quirky transports on route to an adventure site. Despite being far from the main battlefront Goblin saboteurs are still a threat, throw in the unpredictable geology and journeys on the network are rarely uneventful.

Characters designs

Sage

Champion