Hey everyone, Reecius here with an April update!
Back Blood Throne in the Pledge Manager here!
I was super sick for a few weeks, I had some sort of respiratory bug and so I missed about a week of work unfortunately, and was at Adepticon as well for my day job so lost some additional time, but I kept going as much as possible and we are very, very close to pre-production. The last week I have been editing the books pretty much all day, every day. It has been more complex than I thought as I have never made a book with graphics and such but we are I think a week or two out from wrapping them up. That is the last thing to do before handing everything over to the factory! But making sure all the scenarios have all the info they need to be clear, all of the images match the text, the naming conventions and formatting are consistent, etc. has been a very fastidious process but critical to having a professional product.
I finished the Campaign Map last week and I think it came out great! This was a challenge to get right as we had two goals with it:
- Obviously it needs to work for the campaign in the Core Box so I had to be sure the stickers for the campaign are easy to place on the map and made sense for the main scenario.
- The Hero Expansion takes place in the same geographic area so we wanted the map to be useful for homebrew campaigns as well! It worked out and allows the user to dream up their own missions and campaigns with this asset to build off of.
Not pictured as the image is small and the map is quite big, are the coordinate indicators on the sides. We followed the chess model with letters for columns and numbers for rows to make it easy to see where to place the scenario stickers. It is super fun to see the campaign develop as you add scenarios to the map and tick them off as you complete them!
We also finished the revamp of the Monster Cards to make them look nicer and in alignment with the updated Hero Boards and skill cards. We still have to go through and update the rest of the cards but now that we have the template that will be easy to do.
The new version is easier use and looks cleaner as you can see below!
On the front of the cards you get the key stats and special ability descriptions. The Special Actions for the monsters can be wordier than those on the Hero Skill Cards as they include instructions for when to use them and context to better understand what they are meant to be representing. Most monsters abilities are simpler than the Wrymling above but as this monster is so unique, we added more text to be sure everything was clear. These final versions of the Monster Cards are a lot easier to read and look cleaner than the original versions we had.
The rear of the cards gives you the AI script for the monsters. We have general monster AI rules in the rulebook that give you the basics and tried to keep the scripts very simple for ease of use to describe the unique actions individual monsters make.
The Wyrmling specifically is an interesting (and annoying!) monster to play against due to the fact that it goes off the table to burrow into the ground and then on its next Activation, pops up to either defend its master–the Biomancer who summons him–or attack the most vulnerable Hero on the board! If it succeeds in using its first Special Action, Burrow Attack, to knock a Hero down it then wraps them up to squeeze them like a boa constrictor and keep them pinned in place. This is a great example of what I feel are some unique ways the monsters interact with each other and the Heroes in Blood Throne to make the PvE campaign feel unique.
Not all of the monsters are this tricksy, many martial monsters simply run at you and try to beat you up, but they all have at least one unique special action! For example, the Butcher of Ruin, a common monster used in scenarios that primarily serves as a tank style monster who can take a beating and hits hard in return, will once he is below 50% HP use a bite Special Action which if it hits, deals damage to the Hero and heals the Butcher for the same amount of HP! This lets them stay in the game longer and keep the heroes tied up. These little touches help to make all of the monsters feel memorable and gives them a unique roll in the game so that they don’t all feel the same or boring.
We finished getting the tokens print ready and are on the last pass of the cards. They are done, I just gave them another pass to try and catch any errors. I am sure there will be a goof that slips through with hundreds of cards and tokens but I have put in a LOT of hours to minimize the odds that this happens.
I will am aiming to do another in-depth article ASAP, I was planning on the Alchemist but we had a request for the Shaman from a backer so I will do that instead!
Lastly, I will start making some short videos illustrating the game mechanics. My wife and I are trying to buy a house right now which may cause some disruption if we have to move but thankfully if it all works out we are only going about a mile away from where we currently rent. So long as that doesn’t throw a monkey wrench in my schedule I should start getting those videos done by next week.
Thanks for reading and more updates to come soon, I think things will be going pretty quickly from here to pre-production!Like4 people like this upda