Hello, everyone! We have a lot of products to talk about today, and I’d like to discuss how you as a group have influenced their development.

The Book of Air

This sourcebook is now over the fence and escaped into the wild, so to speak. It is the book that this column has had the most direct impact on so far, I think, as it was the first book in development that I could share mechanics in development with you and get feedback on. The discussions that came out of those previews, both here, via email, and on the AEG forum were really invaluable in helping shape some of the basic ideas we shared early on in this column. I’m really excited about how it turned out! With the exception of one rather spectacular bad review, the response to the book has been overwhelmingly positive, and the feedback so far has given me some ideas about how to approach the next book in that series, the Book of Earth, from a mechanical standpoint.

The Book of Earth

Hey, speaking of which, you guys want to see some alpha-stage draft mechanics for the Book of Earth? Here’s a Path for you, which is currently being hotly discussed in our playtest forums!

New Path: Kuni Crystal Master [Shugenja]
Rank: 4 (feels about right for the ability, but I am wary of combos)
Replaces: Kuni Shugenja 4
Requirements: Earth 5, Spellcraft 5, Lore: Crystal 5
Special: Must possess a piece of pure crystal. Player must have approval from GM to become a Crystal Master.
Technique: The Crystal Masters learn how to awaken the spiritual power of crystal and use it to strengthen their spells. When you learn this technique, one piece of crystal which you possess becomes awakened and is then used to empower your spells with the essence of crystal. When casting a Fire or Earth spell that inflicts damage (e.g. Jade Strike, Fury of Osano-Wo, etc) you may spend a Void Point to channel the spell through your awakened crystal and infuse the spell with the essence of crystal. This adds one additional Complex Action to the time required to cast the spell. (Maybe should just increase TN instead?) The spell is now considered to be Crystal for the purpose of what foes can be damaged by it, whether it can penetrate Invulnerability or Creature Reduction, and so forth.

Hmm, I think that Hobart guy might be gunning for my job as the shugenja mechanics dude!

Strongholds of the Empire

Since the last column, Strongholds finally went on sale online. It’s our first PDF-exclusive sourcebook! I’m very excited by the whole thing, frankly. The book has already proven successful, financially speaking, and it proves that books like this are a viable outlet for the game. I think this is very interesting personally because I feel like this format is perfectly suited for reflecting direct, immediate feedback from fans like you, and perhaps even pushing the envelope a bit farther in terms of how we let people impact the nature of the game and its story. How could we do this, you might ask? Let me give you an example.

Hey, do you remember Kakita Soichi? He was a Crane personality originally printed in the CCG expansion Heaven & Earth. He had totally bitching art and in the story he… uh… well, actually he never did anything in the story. That’s the peril of the format, really: with quarterly expansions we never have time to get to a bunch of cool personalities. So what was Soichi’s deal? I have no idea. But! Maybe you do.

My thought here is that we can create a new product similar to the old first edition sourcebook Unexpected Allies, only this time the fans create the characters. And not just any characters, mind you, but actual canonical personalities that exist within the official framework of the game. If we did it this way, it would be perhaps the single most direct control any fan of the game has ever been offered over the story itself, which is exciting to me because I love to offer opportunities like that to the RPG fanbase.

“But Shawn,” some will say, “I don’t want to write about your stupid characters! I want to write about my awesome characters!” I completely understand this. It is an absolute and natural stance to take when we’re talking about the RPG over the CCG or other incarnations of the game. The problem we have is that I don’t have a big library of cool artwork for your character. I just have it for the personalities in the game. However, I think a compromise can be made! Is Kakita Soichi the brother of your sweet Crane duelist character, with whom his story is intricately intertwined? Would telling Soichi’s story also tell the story of your character? Perhaps it would! Or maybe they’re sworn enemies! Anyway it’s a chance to do something new and I think it would be pretty cool.

Of course that’s all purely hypothetical at this point. I’m curious to see what you guys think of an opportunity like that. Is it worth exploring? (Oh, and for those of you out there who love the game but don’t want to run it, we’d have to include lots of new tidbits for these personalities. New Advantages, Disadvantages, some Alternate Paths here and there, a few spells… all that kind of thing. I know you need more bang for your buck!)

The Second City Boxed Set

So since we last spoke, there haven’t been a lot of changes in the status of the boxed set. It is still in the stages of production, at this point, since there are so many different parts that will be included in the final product. A lot of these we have talked about already, of course, but there’s so much more we haven’t touched on yet! I don’t want to spoil everything, but there are two delightful little character pieces that I think you guys will enjoy tremendously. The first is an in-character journal, that of a prominent magistrate detailing his investigations, that the characters come into early in the included campaign and which sets into motion a great deal of the primary plotline. To me, this is very much the spiritual inheritor of the magistrate’s journal that I loved so much as a GM back in the day when I was running my college group through the City of Lies. The other is in the form of a pillow book, written from the perspective of a young samurai-ko just as she arrives within the Second City. It captures the essence of wonder and horror at all the new and alien concepts that a samurai must deal with in that city wonderfully, I think, and I’m grateful that Nancy Sauer agreed to write it for us. Thanks, Nancy!

Last time I shared with you the descriptions, but not the mechanics, of two Alternate Paths found in the Second City boxed set. Today, let’s look at another!

Crane Alternate Path: Aerie Falconer
Although it is the smallest of the ports established within the Colonies, the Aerie is nevertheless a very important holding for the Crane Clan. It allows them to challenge the Mantis Clan’s dominance of trade and the economy in the Colonies, and it is the seat of their diplomatic relationships with several other clans, primarily the Dragon Clan. Because of the political and economic importance of the city, the Crane contingent in the Colonies has made a concerted effort to emphasize the city’s contributions at every opportunity. Fortunately, the area’s natural resources include everything necessary to create a falconry of exceptional size and quality, which is of course how the city derived its name in the first place.

The falconers of the Aerie are unquestionably the finest in the Colonies, and some say in the Empire as well. Falconry is considered a noble sport of sorts, a pursuit suitable for both courtiers and warriors, and even the occasional priest who finds it of interest. A great many important political negotiations have been initiated or resolved on the hunting fields, with raptors on arm, between individuals who might otherwise have not found common ground.

This Path was originally conceived and planned for Enemies of the Empire, to accompany the Bestiary chapter and a discussion of falcons. However, it was decided that the actual animal stats were sort of redundant, and it wasn’t fair for the Crane to get something when the other clans weren’t, so we scrapped it at that time and oh look, now it gets to join up with the others in SC! How nice!

Of course, there’s also an appendix containing some information on a few of the more prominent creatures found in the Colonies. What is a samurai if he is not challenged, after all? So we have some truly spectacular opponents, one of the least of which is the dreaded Bonedrinker!

Bonedrinker

Air 2; Earth 4; Fire 2; Water 4
Agility 3

Initiative: 5k3
Attack: Bite 5k4 (Complex), Grapple 8k4 (Complex)
Damage: Bite 4k2, Grapple 6k3
Armor TN: 25
Wounds: 32: +5; 64: +10; 96: Dead
Skills: Jiujutsu 4, Stealth 4

Special Abilities:

• Squeeze: When using a Grappling attack, a Bonedrinker will always choose to inflict damage while it controls the Grapple (which it rolls 9k4 to maintain control of). After a victim has suffered Grappling damage for a number of consecutive Rounds equal to its Stamina, it will begin to suffocate, enduring an additional 2k2 Wounds per Round.

The serpents called Bonedrinkers are at least a familiar threat to the samurai of the Colonies, similar as they are to the various types of constricting serpents present in the Empire and its island holdings. The primary difference between the Bonedrinkers and more familiar forms of constricting snakes is that of size; an immature Bonedrinker is the size of the largest recorded constrictor ever found in the Mantis islands. Bonedrinkers appear to be significantly more intelligent than common animals as well, and are capable of using rather advanced tactics (by the standards of animals, at least) to ambush and capture their prey.

He only wants to give you a hug!

The Release Schedule for 2013

Well I promised that I would talk a little bit more about the release schedule for next year, even though it’s not yet written in stone. Honestly you probably have already figured most of it out. In the first quarter we will be releasing the second volume of Imperial Histories, which will feature even more of your submissions for everyone to experience, as well as plenty of new mechanics to support era-specific play. The second quarter will see the Book of Fire, and of course the fourth quarter will bring the Book of Water. But hey, what about that third quarter?

Our plans for the third quarter of next year include an as-yet-unnamed sourcebook (its working title at the moment is Secrets of the Empire), which covers a lot of things that were brought up during the discussion we had not so long ago about what kind of things you would like to see from the line. There were a lot of good ideas raised, but unfortunately most of them would not support a sourcebook on their own, or at least not one that would sell suitable levels in order to be considered profitable.

One of the things I’m most interested in getting to work on when this book finally gets underway is the province chapter. We are devoting a reasonable portion of the book to detailing an entire province, just as so many people asked about during that aforementioned discussion. The thing that is most interesting to me is to use this as an opportunity to expand upon and explore the concept of regional mechanics, the precursors of which appear in Strongholds, but which there is so much more potential to be exploited. I’m getting all tingly just thinking about the design process! I can’t wait to share that kind of thing with you, but we have a lot to do between now and then.

Speaking of which, I’d better get to it. See you guys next time!