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| Click to read the macabre! |
I'm so happy to be getting more art for Frenzies and The
Noise! Of all the different categories of cards, they've been lagging behind
the most, but all of these catch the darker, more brutal tone of these kinds of
cards.
For the flavor text of Coded, I considered writing
"Never give up, never surrender!" in binary or hex, but neither come
out looking interesting, so I decided a more Infinite-esque quip would do
better.
For Twister, it's got a bit of a similar theme to Solidity's
Turbulent, but I tried what I could to break it off from being identical. In lieu of flavor text, I decided to make the
special rules a little twistery.
I might have considered flavor text for The Cursed, but
trying to get the special rules text to be logical enough without being
awkwardly verbose was a challenge enough in itself. Besides, I think this guy looks sufficiently
dark and brooding to warrant a more silent card.
Typically when I find a great piece of art, I go down the
list and see what could be a potential match.
For the last piece of art above, I was hemming and hawing over a bunch of
different cards, like Brainwash or Corruption or Decomposing, but when my eye
glanced over Through the Mud (a card my eyes usually glance over, as I never expect to find art for it), the
name jumped out at me. I did not expect
to find such great art for Through the Mud so fast. It looks like he's draining her energy or
strength, which works in a wonderful way, taking the metaphoric visual of
dragging someone through the mud and making a more literal and macabre act out
of it.
I also like how I'm now tying cards together. I like to think that The Derelict live on
Grime, or possibly the Plains of Filth (maybe Sewerlife coexists with them),
but now I've gone a step further in cohesion to give flavor text from other
Crusaders. I had done it with Trail of
Emptiness (giving it a Song of the Walkers), and I hope to do it with more, as
I can find places for them.
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| Click for more macabre and sadness. |
Brim of Despair gets a nice revamp. I changed the flavor text to be more
disturbing, and in line with how Solidity acts.
They aren't the jokey type like The Noise is, so I removed the old mixed
up quote I had and replaced it with this new text. I think it works in that brutal, Stockholm
Syndrome way Solidity likes to operate.
Limbo Rock gets to keep its old flavor text, but I think
I've found just the right art to capture what I was getting at. I think of Limbo Rock as being something of a
holy site or pilgrimage site, but I always thought it would be tough to find
art that's just right. Luckily, like
Through the Mud, I found the art long before I expected.
If you haven't noticed on the cards, I've also added symbols
to them all. I wanted to make sure
colorblind players could distinguish factions and turn order, and I think I
found a good way to do it. I'll try my
best to refer to each faction by name, rather than color now.
The symbol of The Infinite is, most logically, an infinity
sign. The symbol for The Noise is a
heartbeat/pulse/sound wave. I think
those two work the best in terms of making a literal translation of their
names.
Of course, Solidity and Emptiness were tougher. What was I going to do to show Solidity? A
cube? So I went with something that shows their personality and place in the
cosmos: a spiky crown. They are the
rulers of the universe, the movers and shakers, and the King rules from his
throne on Capitalia, with the Bishop of Hatred whispering in his ear, his
legion of Thunderheads striking fear in the hearts of the people.
For Emptiness, the obvious thought is to have no symbol, but
of course that's just unsymmetrical. So
I went with a leaf or feather, because they are tribal, nature-type people.
You can see these symbols on the Location cards inside the
colored dots for turn order, and you can see them on the bottom of each
Crusader card. I used to have a tilde
there, and I still do for Rogations, but I figured that was a good space-saving
spot to put those symbols, so when you're counting up cards at the end you can
quickly spot the symbol on an outer edge.
Of course, once
again this only effects cards with art and cards that will get art (I am so bad
at organizing templates and such).
Lastly, a new change that affects the rules: you can now not
only Bluff Attack a Conditional Rogation, but you can also Bluff Attack a
Frenzy. I altered the way the rules work
a tad so you get a choice of rewards for doing so, and if the Opponent wasn't
bluffing, they get a few options to rectify the situation.
It's been a few posts since I actually linked
to the drive, so here it is.
I do want to make a change to the goal of the game, or at
least how points are potentially scored, since doing a bit of calculating leads
me to believe the factions are imbalanced.
I almost want to hold off on that though, until I get some playtests and
get a bit of a gauge on win ratios. A
heck of a lot of factors can go into this kind of thing.
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