DIE v1.3

Hi again.

As I said last time, I suspect this is the last of the Beta add-ons for DIE, at least in terms of new major content. It basically completes what I consider the core DIE Beta experience.

It takes the form of the previous update, in terms of working as an errata to what already exists in the main manuals. This release also includes what was in the 1.2 release, with some more tweaks. The character sheets entirely replace those in the previous edition.

The main new areas in this are…
1. A full Master class, which can be played by any player, GM or otherwise.
2. The option to make a non-Master class be the antagonist.
3. A remixed Godbinder.
4. Some minor rule tweaks for things like Specials and a new Initiative system.
5. A new easy-to-run basic scenario for DIE.
6. The Emotion Knight has all levels of creative violence accessible at the start of the game, and access to their stances and Venting (which is what we’ve renamed Greater Abilities).
7. The NPC archetype rules that were in the comic, tweaked to work with current rules.
8. Advancement tweaks, including Master advancement.

As I said, if there’s more releases for DIE in this open Beta stage, they’ll likely be fixes for what’s released rather than big new content. The push of the work now is on making the campaign game work – or, rather, making it work properly. At the time of writing, I’m 32 sessions into my first full DIE campaign, and we’re approaching the end game. It’s giving me a lot to fold back into the design. We’re having a lot of fun. 

There are a lot of emotions. Also, the Fool character just tried to punch the Fair in the balls.

The full release of DIE, if it goes ahead, will be a big step forward - the Campaign Mode is significant, to say the least. It’ll also include a lot of reworking through the whole text. Some changes are the sort of fundamental tweaks that are just a lot of leg work. I may need to change how we describe Difficulty in game, which basically means reducing the difficulty of all challenges by 1, which means going through the whole book and changing every single one. That’s not worth it right now, right? Same with some other small changes of terminology. Especially as I’m not sure I want to do this - there are costs as well as benefits.

That said, I think I’m within a breath of being able to actually hand the game to another designer who can look at what I’ve done and then make more stuff in that template. That excites me hugely.

Thanks everyone for playing this. It’s been everything.

Kieron