Big Hype x3(+1)

 So as it turns out there are currently three whole RPG Kickstarters running that I don’t just think look good, I don’t just want to back, but are - all three of them - projects I’m seriously excited for.

I’d be backing all of these right now at the highest level… if I had anywhere near that kind of spare change. At the very least I can share them and hope you get excited too.

In no particular order…

Mausritter Box Set

One of the best OSR-or-whatever games out there is getting a shiny new update. The conceit of mice doing adventure is a perfect one in my opinion, but mice or no mice, Mausritter’s rules are some of the absolute best fantasy adventure tools available right now.

This KS will also fund a bunch of new adventures written by such top-tier talent as Diogo Nogueira, Amanda Lee Franck and Nate Treme that can be run standalone or as part of a sandbox setting. And it’s a box set! You get lil cards and sheets and stuff!

This one only has a few days left, so hop on it.

The Herbalist’s Primer

This gorgeously illustrated compendium lists various real-world plants along with their uses and importance to various cultures, including any supposed mystical or mythological properties.

As a lovely little coffee table book I’d already be sold, but the Primer is also primed for use in your games, stuffed full of things like quest hooks, random tables and tools to generate your own fictional flora. There are even exactly d100 existing plants in the book!

A worthy tome for any arsenal.

Picaresque Roman

How much can one game be Specifically My Jam?

I’ve harped on many a time about the brilliant design ideas coming out of Japanese table-talk rpgs, how we need to support anyone sticking their neck out to get them translated and published overseas. And when a game has this level knockout art & production and a great premise? Deal me in.

Players are gangsters competing for underworld influence - yes, this is a PvP game. In fact it looks like it blends a lot of Japan’s favourite tabletop game features: simple rules, d6 based system, easy character creation with a lot of options, one-shot session structure… even social deduction elements. If the end result is as good as it looks - and as that soundtrack sounds - this will be something special.

You’re going to want to check this one out.

Bonus Hype…

there’s going to be a Lupin III rpg!?(?!)

This is celebrating the gang’s 50th anniversary, and the press release includes words like “sandbox” and “the same system as Star Wars d6”. I’m somewhat gobsmacked tbh.

More news in October apparently, so stay tuned.

EDIT 30 seconds after posting this: lol I forgot this one. One of the rewards is a coffin. One (1) entire coffin. Containing a fake skeleton, holding the book. Also the book looks good.

The Horror on Tau Sigma 7

 👽New Mothership pamphlet just dropped from orbit! 👽

The Horror on Tau Sigma 7 is a prequel to Magnum Galaxy Games’ Dying Hard on Hardlight Station, but also works as a standalone adventure. (If you backed the Dying Hard KS as part of ZineQuest 2 you’ve already got it! Now it’s available to everyone.)

I had a great time working on this one! Packing all that ~level design~ onto a single piece of paper is always a fun challenge, and I was given a lot of freedom considering this is meant to be part of MG’s universe! And they made it look really, really good.

The MG team were fans of Ypsilon 14 (hence the name I think!) and I tried to get some of those starter adventure vibes in there, but it’s a very different kind of adventure overall. If Ypsilon is the Nostromo, this is the bit at the start on the planet’s surface… Things get messy.

The pamphlet is available here. Or here!

🩸Enjoy🩸

Items, Actions, Playtest!

 The main thing left to do on this Arthurian-esque project is player actions.

As I covered before, each player action in this mini game is tied to an item. Swords have an attack action, for example. And an action requires a roll, which advances a token (now a die) round the rondel. Read the last few posts if you need catching up.

(And yes, it’s a rondel I think. That’s already a board game term for a school of mechanics that are similar enough, and it’s a suitably medieval word.)

We’ll need to assign the different actions to items, work out a basic concept for how items are held/stored, and figure out what an item “looks like” in this game - is there any thing to them besides a discreet rules action.

I’ll also explore possible other concepts for items, but I won’t be finalising those for inclusion just yet. Once all that’s done, we’ll have a playable “test” fight ready to go.

Oh, and it should be clear by now that this is pretty much a board game and does not align with how ttrpg combat works best, in which PCs can attempt to do pretty much anything. So, uh, sorry if that’s what you come here for, but that’s not this game.

Ok then! Items.

There were 3 actions available to me in the last rough test based on the general ideas for actions in the original concept, and those worked fine.

(Oh, and I need to call the die that moves round the rondel something to make it clear when it’s mentioned over the other dice or whatever, so for the moment it’s called the heart die.)

Attack: “heavy” roll (2d6 take higher). If the heart die passes “midnight” on the rondel due to this roll, action fails. If the heart die does not pass “midnight” due to this roll, deal 1 hit (move the hit token 1 space clockwise).

Defend: “light” roll (2d6 take lower). If the heart die passes “midnight” on the rondel due to this roll, negate damage caused by overkill for this roll. If the heart die does not pass “midnight” due to this roll, reduce hits by 1 (move the hit token 1 space counter-clockwise).

Claim: “spell” roll (2d6). Roll equal to or under the current tally of hits (as indicated by the current position of the hit token) to claim the foe’s soul and end the fight. Roll over this number, roll fails.

Probably worth noting - these are written terribly. There’s probably no way to understand them unless you’ve read all the posts in this series so far and somehow understood those.

These are all just notes, remember - turning this all into a rulebook that allows the reader to teach themselves the game just by reading alone is a whole other battle, one that a lot of big-name board game publishers can barely fight. Some can’t! Thankfully you won’t have to see that bit of the work.

Anyway.

Let’s assign each of these to an item, and also decide how items are depicted in general. Dark Souls famously tells its story and world history through item descriptions, to the point that just the phrase “item descriptions” is something of a meme in itself. And I’ve always loved the little flavour blurbs that come with item logs or bestiaries and such across JRPGs in general. So let’s have a go at that (remembering this is all first draft stuff…)

Old Sword. Its blade is nicked and weathered but still holds true. It will not fail a valorous knight.

Black Ram’s Shield. Bears a sable crest beneath dents and scars. Lightweight and trusty.

Morgen’s Favour. A talisman from the witch queen of the otherworld. Contains a spell to bind the souls of those bested in battle.

Good for now!

Inventory-wise, I like the idea of having spaces for the left and right hand, creating risk if you want to switch things around mid-battle. So let’s say that you can freely use the actions of items in either hand, and putting an item you find into any space is a free action. But to switch the positions of two items in battle is an action that requires a 1d6 roll.

… Seems ok. Oh, and Morgen’s Favour is a vital thing that you’ll always have need of, so while I could make it eat an inventory space and force the player to switch it in and out, that seems kind of needless and unfun. So let’s say it’s always “equipped” (attached to your helm or something idk), and you can use the spell whenever as if it were in your hand.

Then for the rest of the inventory, call it 9 spaces total - enough for a spare weapon or two and some other fun items. With the two hands and the “favour space”, that brings us to 12 items altogether - same as the numbers on our clock. I like my numbers to align! (I mean, have you seen GRAVEROBBERS?) I’m sure someone could arrange the spaces around the clock in a very pretty way on the character sheet, too.

So what could those other items be?

Just a jumble of thoughts so far, but:

- Healing items. First thing that pops into my head is a magic potion, but I quite like the idea of fairy dust, like from Berserk. Dark Cloud has some great items and that’s on our influences list too. But yeah, a one-use item that you’d have to take out of your inventory to use in battle, that heals your heart die back up. There can be different levels of healing item, like all good JRPGs.

- Consumables. Other one-use items with fun effects. Buffs could make your next attack do more damage or eat up hits for a turn. Fire vials that deal damage to an enemy, poison that coats your weapons and makes your next attack have weird side effects. These could be fun and quite powerful, since they’d disappear after a single use. Offers a fun choice of if or when to use them.

- Armour. Each bit could be its own item, meaning you can mix and match armour sets with different effects, and choose how much armour you want to wear vs what other items you might want to take. Or, I might just handwave it? For some reason the idea of helms being the only armour item is really appealing to me - the rest is implied, and then the helm lends flavour and a special effect, and you switch between them depending on your goals and preferences. Dunno. I can make that decision later I guess.

- Gear. Not armour but items you hold to get a passive effect. I keep thinking about boots for some reason. Like, they could let you dodge attacks. Or “move” quicker - how could that be represented? Fun to think about. There could be all sorts of other passive effects, and the prep game would be in choosing whether each slot in your inventory should be armour or one of these, or a spare weapon or a consumable, or a free space in case you find good items… etc etc. The more “good” options the better.

- Other weapons. I think the concept of a bow you load and aim with a heavy action and fire with a light one is solid. Some more tweaking would need to be done to make it feel balanced and worthwhile. I also definitely want a greatsword in the game, something that takes up both your hand spaces. Beyond that… idk, weapons are fun. Whips, staves, maces, axes. Each with their own mechanic and potential drawbacks. I’d definitely treat these more like Monster Hunter weapons where none is “better” and picking one is all about what feels right to you - but then there could be different versions of each, like magic swords or whatever. A lot of the game’s potential longevity is going to be about making these feel right!

- Craftables? Ingredients that don’t do anything on their own but can make things. This would be… a lot of work, and it’s not something I want to do right away. An earlier version of this game that is languishing in my notebooks was built around a crafting system. Maybe worth a revisit down the line but… it really is a whole thing.

How does the player get their hands on these? Well, for now we don’t need to worry, we’re just focused on the Bridgekeeper fight and those three basic items. But once the battle system is down I want to start looking outside it - a way of exploring castles, making decisions about where to go and how best to explore before taking on the resident Lord using the various bits and bobs you’ve collected along the way. Y’know… dungeon stuff.

As for that Bridgekeeper fight…

If you’d like to play along at home, you should now have everything you need now to try out this basic fight! Remember that this is an early playtest - the point isn’t to work out whether or not the game is fun (it probably isn’t just yet!), but whether it works.

Are their points in your playthrough where the rules don’t say what should happen next, or are all the bases covered? Are there edge cases or freak occurrences that can severely disrupt the experience, or does the randomness feel logical (if mildly unfair at times)? These are the relevant questions for now.

For what it’s worth, I’ve tried the fight a few times and i think it works ok! It’s very easy, which makes it a good baseline for the future. But the basics are there, and I’m happy with how far this project has come in just a short time.

So, give it a go if you’d like - you’ll need 3d6, a coin or token and a clock face to play on (just draw one). Your three items/actions are listed above, and your opponent deals damage equal to Overkill, or OK+1 if you reach 9+ hits on them. Yeah, all the rules are spread across like 4 posts now and I can’t be arsed to compile them, sorry. That’s a job for future me to worry about!

For now - have fun, and next time I come back to this series I’ll start thinking about new ways to beef up fights, items and a structure to bind it all together.

Peace!

A Worthy Foe

Work continues on the Dark Souls/Arthurian combat minigame! Today’s notes - enemies.

Before we start… I still haven’t named this thing. Going off the ~lore~ established in the last post, I’m going to to throw some ideas out off the top of my head as I write this and see what sticks uuuuuhhh… Chivalry Is Dead? Too on the nose maybe. Excaliburied. Ha. The Dolorous Stroke, of course, is already taken by Emmy Allen’s wargame for which it is perfect. Could just call it Overkill, but that sounds a bit too Heavy Metal to me. Onslaught? That’s just a word I like, but I don’t think it fits.

I don’t know, still thinking. Answers on a postcard. I’ll keep tagging these as The Green Knight for now, i guess.

Right! Let’s make a foe.

from Dark Cloud, on the Influences list

I think there’s just about enough of the mechanics in place that the easiest way I can think of designing an enemy is to imagine what a finished one will look like. I’m thinking the smallest of statblocks - a card or something, mostly art, with a name and a quotation that they might say before battle. That seems quite Dark Souls.

Then, mechanically, we need to know what they do on their “turn”, every time your dial passes 13, and how the Overkill concept factors into that action. (It might not at all - but so far that’s the only thread of an idea I have so I’m sticking with it.)

Anything else? Some loot you get if you win, their weapon or helmet maybe. Any other additionally info can wait for a more fleshed-out version of the game.

Ok, first step - going back to the ~lore~ and coming up with a character concept that fits! This is going to be a standalone enemy for our playtest battle, so I’d rather not think about castle layouts or anything just yet. This is going to be an open, standalone fight with a clear goal and an Implied world around it, but not much actual detail or complication. Something that gets across the potential of the larger world in one scene.

Here’s what I have right now:

Bridgekeeper Kalidor

“None pass hence that live. Have at thee!”

art: relatively normal knight with some plants growing through the armour in places. Male/ambiguous. Sword probably as weapon, emblem on shield of first “boss” Lord? Idk. Maybe his helm is lifted to reveal a skull.

And that’s just about all we need on that front. Normal, kinda boring first enemy - but sometimes you need a bit of boring before shit hits the fan later. Now for the actual work…

This doofus needs to teach the very basics of the game, not in terms of the rules but more what strategies and ways of playing are useful. Which as far as we know are: Calculate your risks, try to pass 13 with a low roll or some kind of defensive effect, overkill is bad.

So he has one big, obvious, slow attack that doesn’t really need any fancy effects. Like a training dummy, kinda. This will also help form something of a base to think of some future enemies from.

Also -what *can’t* we make a feature of this guy? Well as it stands the way to win fights is always the same, rack up hits and then try to finish them off when you think you’ve done enough. This means that we can’t really make fights longer or shorter, or give guys more “health”, without adding complications to the basic mechanics - and complications are not what this fight is about.

So how long will the fight take? Well, 2d6 averages at 7, call it 6 if we’re lucky. Let’s say you get 1 or 2 hits in a turn, maybe 3. That’s somewhere between 3-6 turns of combat before you can even start to reasonably think about risking your turns on the kill shot. Most likely more, and accounting for bad luck I’d say 9 turns is a decent rough estimate for now.

That’s… quite long? Turns should whip by once you know what you’re doing, but this is the first fight and we’re learning. Something to bear in mind, I guess.

Having said all that, if the action options and choices presented by the luck of the dice are engaging enough, this all shouldn’t matter too much or feel like a slog. Actually, it feels about right to me? But that’s all stuff governed by the player’s actions and items, which we haven’t really got to yet.

For now, let’s work out how we can make those 9-ish turns engaging using our enemy.

The “Duel” in question

First question: does he just do the one attack every turn? It won’t feel exactly the same because overkill will factor in there somehow, but over 9 turns that novelty might not sustain if the flavour is really just going to be “swings sword”. So we need some variance in behaviour.

We also need to get across to the player when is roughly the right time to start attempting the kill shot. So, two birds - let’s say that after you’ve dealt 7 hits to Kalidor he changes his action up in some way? This might have the opposite though and make players want to *not* rack up that many hits, since don’t forget this is a solo game and they can see all these rules and variances laid out. In that case, let’s call it 9 hits - plenty of space, and it can be comfortably avoided. If at worst case you’re landing a hit a turn, and still slogging away after 9 turns, it’s time to wrap up.

So what does this guy do when you’ve hit him 9 times? Better work out what he does normally first!

(Ah, the enemy action, the hole in the middle of this doughnut that’s been staring at me for so long now… What to do with you…)

For now, I’m going with Overkill = damage. A few reasons - mainly I did a very rough test and it felt easy to play. And since this is an introductory fight, what better way to get across the concept of overkill than making it literally the only danger you need to focus on? No additional maths or effects yet, just “look at the number”. Sometimes - often, I find - the best mechanic is the one that seems the easiest to wrap your head around. A good mechanic that’s hard to explain isn’t a good mechanic at all.

I know I said just one attack would be boring, and I’ll get to that. But the main thing is OK=dmg is an effective base for other things, bonuses and whatnot. There are all kinds of ways to make it more complex and add extra mechanics onto that base, like the “threshold” thing I mentioned in a previous post.

Speaking of - that idea of 9 hits being a threshold for some kind of change-up? It occurred to me that since 9 is the 3/4 mark on a standard clock, if we were to make this a normal 12-hour clock instead of 13 we could demarcate quadrants as “zones” indicating different behaviours. Four “seasons” with different effects or enemy behaviours as you rack up hits and the token moves around.

Then just make the 2d6 finishing blow a “roll equal or under” rather than just roll under, and we don’t really need that 13. It’ll make turns a little more scary and short, too. A 6 is now exactly half your turn gone, there’s no buffer.

Ok so Overkill is base damage, and different “seasons” can add or change that as the enemy takes more hits. Good enough for now!

So, uh… what’s damage?

sorry

We need to know about player health to know what damage means. I had a pretty simple idea for this during that little scratch play test fight, and it seems to work ok so I’m sticking with it.

The token that now moves around the rondel (better name than dial?) is now another d6. Starting on 6 and ticking down - that’s your health. I like that it represents “you” on the “board”, and it’s a simple way of tracking that eschews note-taking. Most Overkill hits are just 1 or 2 due to a bad or misjudged roll, and a 3 or 4 feels suitably devastating and Dark Souls-y. Nobody would risk more than that anyway, you’d have to deliberately make a bad decision to take any more damage in a single hit. Or, the enemy would need bonuses hehe.

And, there’s still a token on the dial for keeping track of your hits on the foe. Easy to differentiate between the two now that one’s a die.

So - bonuses! To stick with the initial idea of teaching when’s best to deliver the kill shot, I’m deciding that for now our Bridgekeeper deals base damage from 0-8 hits and gets a +1 bonus on 9+. So spring to autumn you’re relatively safe, but winter is coming. That should make it clear how you’re “meant” to approach the puzzle but still give leeway.

The other thing that became clear in my play test is that defensive actions felt a bit bland. I was trialling a “heavy” roll to attack and a “light” to defend (see the first post in this series) as my only two options, and that felt good, but a “failed” defend roll - i.e, one that didn’t push you past 13 and start the next turn - just felt like a fizzle rather than an interesting failure. My idea to fix this, which came from an earlier iteration of the mechanic from way back in my notebook, is that a “failed” defend roll actually reduces the current number of hits on the enemy. So they’re not literal hits, more like your current combat advantage - but basically flinching when you didn’t need to makes you lose a bit of momentum. Even more incentive to take silly risks!

Oh, and as for what defensive actions *do* when they succeed, I’m thinking -1 damage is good enough for this fight. I’m not too keen on all these numbers, but it’s fitting for the type of game this is. I wouldn’t put them in a straight RPG. I’ll need to test this though, it might not feel powerful enough.

(Of course, actions are tied to items, and there may be other shields or items that do other things…)

All in all these changes make the basics of the game feel solid. I feel like you could almost play this fight as-is now, but there are just one or two things I want to iron out first around items and player actions.

Next post I’ll sort that out, and then we’ll have a “tutorial” fight ready to play!

Health, Damage and LORE

 … so the UK distributor for The Green Knight has just pulled the film from release. No word on when it’s delayed to, or if it’s coming out here at all. This is of course after it was initially pushed back from May last year…

*sigh*

As I said last week, I was going to use the Green Knight RPG to round out my new combat minigame, but I’ve already decided to save that game until I’ve seen the movie.

Bit distraught tbh. But! Let’s crack on with what we have.

From the RPG box art!

Next piece of the puzzle is how health and damage works here. We can make attacks, the timing system and enemy turns are there, but we don’t yet know what either player or enemy attacks *do*.

Here’s what I’m leaning towards at the moment:

Enemy attacks/player HP: The Overkill idea still seems good to me. I toyed with the notion of OK equaling damage, 3 over “midnight” and you lose 3 “hp” or whatever.

This makes sense in that the more you fuck up the better a hit the enemy can land on you, but it’s a bit bland and 100% of that info is coming from player actions. Which is not necessarily bad, it’s where the system trends in general, but I can see it leaving enemies feeling a bit same-y. What could you do with that number - a base attack bonus stat for enemies, so they all do OK+Stat damage? Fine, but there’s barely any granularity there and now literally all that differentiates baddies is whether they’re a +1, +2, etc. Up to like maybe +5 max before it gets silly. Or, is this “rating” the max damage a baddie can do? As in, no matter how much OK they rack up a “level 1” guy does 1 damage?

Regardless of if I use the OK number straight or not, there clearly needs to be another layer to bad guy attacks. I don’t mind them being defined by their attacks, like the attack is the whole statblock, but that’s even more of a reason for things to be interesting. And variable! They should do different things, maybe at different times or stages of a fight.

Anyway, that’s where that is. Enemy attacks should be cooler and do more, but I don’t know what “more” can look like just yet, other things need to be clearer first.

Player attacks/Enemy HP: current thought: a successful attack deals a Hit. To kill a foe, roll 2d6 under the number of Hits you’ve scored on them.

So like a killing blow. The dolorous stroke that fells the beast! Adds another layer of push-your-luck - do you potentially waste your turn trying to kill an enemy with low hits to save yourself more battle damage? Or do you keep fighting until the kill is a sure thing, all the while getting closer to death yourself? (Again… how that works is as yet ambiguous but bear with me.)

I quite like this so far - but to answer questions about where to go from here we need to know some bigger picture stuff. So it’s time to zoom out a bit.

Micah Ulrich

In my post way back when about the mood board I mentioned how nailing your aesthetic first helps you creatively later. If you have a range of viable options, or just aren’t sure what the next step in your design process is, having a solid idea of what the theoretical final thing looks like, feels like, all that, will really help.

So here, I’m not sure what direction to take health and damage. Should the game feel gritty, on a knife edge? Are these heroic battles, duels, hunts, fights to the death or ritual slaughter? Who is the player character and what kinds of things do they fight  - what should it look like in the mind’s eye when they take or land a hit?

Once we know these things, the right mechanical choice will reveal itself. Is the idea.

So here’s where I’m at with the game’s aesthetic - yes, it’s a “game” now. Might as well be. (And of course this is all subject to change, the point is to have a general idea of where we’re going so as not to wander aimlessly, rather than to set anything in stone this early on.)

Influences: The Green Knight (*sniff*). Other Arthurian legends, leaning towards pre-Christian Celtic and some medieval tales more than later romantic revivals but it’s all fair game. Adjacent Celtic legends, chiefly Welsh/Cornish/Breton. Dark Souls. Bits of Berserk. Dark Cloud and Dragon’s Crown. Nature as inexorable, humanity as bright, callow, feeble and dead. The Otherworld - Annwn, faerie, the liminal. Dingy castles, daring knights. A melancholic contemplation of one’s duty. Lush forests and quiet ruins. Rain.

Basically, the general aesthetic of the non-gonzo fantasy stuff I’ve done here on the Graverobber’s Guide over the years. This is a project I’ve noodled with on an off for a long while without writing about it here, and it’s existed in some form or another since before I started blogging, so this vibe has made itself known in places before, I’m sure. BUTCHERY comes to mind, and a few choice posts.

So does this help us make design decisions?

Hmm, let’s see.

Zé Burnay

Well, I think our player character is a knight, that much is clear. And I reckon these fights are duels, they’ll be fighting other knights - monstrous and inhuman perhaps, but there’s a sad kind of chivalric code behind it all. Twisted ancient kings waiting in their crumbled castles, unable to deny a challenge.

Which leads me to think that you’re a kind of psychopomp? In a Dark Souls-y way, kind of. Maybe you’re Gwyn ap Nudd or the equivalent, on your Wild Hunt, claiming souls for the Otherworld. Wandering the realm of the living, taking out these knights who cling so hard to the old code that they just… don’t seem to die properly. The Empire has fallen, nature has reclaimed the land, and yet these relics persist. And they will answer only to the sword. So, with a kind of quiet dignity, you end their reigns one by one.

(I think “but you’re dead” is a decent enough twist on the basic English fantasy thing? My favourite is still “but you’re a mouse” but Mausritter went and perfected that so here we are)

Or something to that effect. Point is, I’ve figured out the “killing blow” - it’s a ritual to take the soul. Hence why they won’t die otherwise. (And didn’t I say last post that “colossal” rolls will probably end up being spells? It’s almost like I know what I’m doing. Almost.) Tie the spell to a key item like every other action, an amulet or summat. And you can use the 13-hour “clock” to track Hits, since there’ll be no need to go over 13 if you’re rolling 2d6 under em. So a second “hand” token can do that.

Player HP then? I reckon we need to use that dial again. Maybe yet another “hand” can start at 13 and track anti-clockwise as your foe’s spectral blows threaten to rend your tether to this realm before you do the same to them. Maybe if they get you to 0 you get 1 more turn as they prepare *their* killing blow? We’ll see.

(Also - clock it ain’t. We’re pre-clock. I’m thinking “zodiac”, or some wheel representing the seasons or the cycle of life. Like a tapestry. Oooh, on a cloth mat, or a wooden version with little engraved coins, and, custom dice and - wait. What am i saying. Things cost money.)

Enemy attacks are the biggest question. I’m picturing disproportionate FromSoftware knights swinging brutal and ornate weapons… Maybe one or two have a “fire” or “poison” effect but there needs to be a more basic form of differentiation and interest so that these relatively of-a-kind Big Metal Boys feel distinct. Since everything on the player’s side is so item/inventory based, maybe it’s keyed off different armour pieces that offer protections from certain damage “tags”? But then that just makes pre-battle a box-ticking exercise over a choice… It needs to come back to the clock, the timing. (Sorry, not the clock. The… dial? Let’s say dial for now. Shadows on a sundial.)

Hmm. Still needs some thought.

Well, I hope that was a vaguely entertaining ramble in lieu of something actually Green Knight related. I’m enjoying doing all my design thinking on this project in post form like this, so I hope it has some value for those of you reading, too!

Next, enemies I think. Then items, then something we can play.