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Hiya! We've been pretty heads-down recently -- still moving forward
The writing is moving forward. Mendez reports that he’s about halfway finished with the Water chapter and is certainly further along than that by now. In his words... "[How long it will take to finish is] hard to say because the quickstart stuff is extremely concise by design, but it’s the bulk of the hard work. Everything else is not particularly challenging, but takes a long time."
Brennan is supporting that by helping outline the content and continuing to work on art direction and acquisition. He's also been wrapping up some of the Bulldogs! supplements to go out, to which I've also been contributing. I’ve shifted my layout responsibility forward in time to better account for both timing and other responsibilities.
Here’s a selection of the other things we’re up to as well...
Evil Hat has just released Mendez’ Iron Street Combat: A World of Adventure for Fate Core
Brennan’s new actual-play podcast, Dungeon Not Included
Tim is the lead writer on the Sentinels Comics RPG: Urban Settings Guide, doing memory card design and production as a stretch goal for One Child’s Heart, and is nearly finished with his role as a judge for the Cardboard Edison Awards.
Hello friends!
Tim here, with what I've got collected of a project update. Please note, that much of this is pretty well known to be incorrect, and I'm working on getting more complete information but this is what I've got right now.
Mendez continues to be working on the manuscript. Brennan is assisting by helping outline the chapters. These are likely to be the *most* incorrect dates; I'm very likely to be overestimating a large chunk of it. Mendez is sick right now though so I haven't been able to catch up with him on many of the details.
Art is more or less on the last known schedule. Jabari Weathers should be done with playbook art in the next few days, which will knock that section out. The map art is in progress for the scroll and book end-papers, and we should have a sketch later next week.
I'm currently responsible for organizing the design and layout. Some of that has already started, but is also substantially waiting on my own bandwidth to make forward progress. Luckily, most of that is dependent on the manuscript being substantially finished. Small favors.
All this leads to this conclusion. The information I have and estimates I've made point to a June distribution. I'm going to continue working on getting more accurate information and continue updating y'all on the project status as we go.
-Tim
I've spent the past few days writing an article about which many of you have asked. It will appear in Thousand Arrows in a form tailored more specifically to sixteenth-century Japanese characters, but in the meantime, here's how to play a character from another ethnicity or culture.
If you want to re-share it (and I hope you do, because I know some of y'all got friends who need to read it), here are the social media links.
Damn, I'm tired.
This update comes to you in both text and video/audio form! They are basically the same. You don't need to read it AND listen to it.
Happy new year! I'm hard at work writing the full text of Thousand Arrows, starting with the chapter on common moves. We’re excited to bring extra guidance and specifics to the move text, especially when it comes to what I consider the game's most important move: resist or indulge your attachment.
RoIYA adjudicates your relationships: with your physical body via your self, with your emotions via your drive, and with other characters via your bonds. The move performs several different functions, which makes it tough to explain. When you roll RoIYA, your character struggles with that attachment's significance. The attachment becomes an influential whisper in your head, telling you to prioritize physical safety or driven action or a relationship with someone else above all else in your world—but you aren’t sure whether you want to, aren’t so poised you can act without hesitation. So you roll with that attachment to find out. If you roll a hit, you must act in service of that attachment. If you roll a miss, well, it’s up to you. You can still take that action if you want, but it isn’t particularly effective and has no mechanical impact.
One common reason to roll RoIYA is that you want one of the special effects indulging your attachment permits. When you indulge your Self, on a hit you can perform an incredible physical feat beyond your normal limits, like swimming across the harbor in a gale or appearing more beautiful than the moon. When you indulge your Drive, your words or actions inspire a NPC to aid, admire, or sympathize with you: you could convince a Chivalrous character to duel you fairly instead of sending their troops to cut you to ribbons, or a Playful character to abandon their responsibilities and go bar-hopping with you. When you indulge your Bond, you may help or hinder another character who’s just rolled, forcing someone who’s rolled to re-roll their dice and take the better or worse of the two results.
If you role-play your character in such a way that they avoid an opportunity to act in service of an attachment—riding for leagues when they’re sick or injured, ignoring an opportunity to embarrass a rival or flirt with a crush, or acting contrary to their drive—other players at the table might point that out and suggest that perhaps your character might struggle with that opportunity. In that case, you roll to see whether you successfully resist (a low roll) or give in (a high roll—although if you roll high, you also get one of the special benefits for your troubles, though it may not be applicable in the fiction). This mechanism might remind Fate players of compels.
Now, on a related note: you may notice that, aside from special playbook moves, Thousand Arrows gives you limited tools to affect other characters socially. The social move to which everyone has access is show them how you feel, which requires a dramatic outburst of emotion your character may not be prepared or impassioned enough to make. You could also implement a stratagem, but you’d have to lie, cheat, or steal to do that—not always effective even if you have the temperament for it. Such restrictive options make RoIYA an excellent manipulative tool as long as you know your target's motivations—for PCs, their Attachments. You can set up situations in the fiction which touch off their attachments, forcing them to rise to your bait or else roll to deny it. If you know I have a Bond of rivalry with your enemy, you can orchestrate a situation which tempts me to fight your foe for you. If I know you care about your Reputation, I can tempt you to help me by appealing to your pride and pointing out how awesome you'll look when we triumph together. Under those circumstances, the tempted character would have to give in or else roll to resist.
Finally, sometimes if I or my character can’t decide whether or not they want to do something, I’ll suggest that I roll RoIYA as a way of deciding.
Whether you'e tempter or tempted, RoIYA rolls are always exciting. When they happen, one of the characters involved always marks XP. That character could be the one who’s rolling or the one affected by the re-roll or the physical feat, whoever has marked fewer total XP over the course of the game. If your characters have marked equal total XP, cool, you each get one. You also mark XP if you roll a 6-, as usual. But watch out: on a roll of 7-9, in addition to the special effect that goes with your action, you must also rank up your attachment by one. If you’re worried about getting obsessed too quickly, consider taking the Yagyū Clan’s special move the unfettered mind, which lets you increase any attachment (not just the specified one) whenever you have to rank up your attachment. This move reflects the Zen-and Daoism-inspired philosophy which guides the Yagyū family in both conduct and combat.
I’m both happy and frustrated that one move has so many possible applications! I think it’s great that it can serve so many purposes, but it’s also a little frustrating and counter-intuitive for it to need such extensive explanation. I’m curious to see if our players find still more applications for RoIYA.