#cortex ttrpg

[beautifulterriblequeen]

Want more TDP canon goodies? Tales of Xadia has got your back!

Today's Role and Keep Twitch stream covered the Table of Contents from Tales of Xadia's upcoming rules handbook, which is scheduled for release in the first 3 months of 2022, before Bloodmoon Huntress comes out. Take a look!

The first chapter, Welcome to Xadia, is for those who don't know The Dragon Prince at all. It covers the basics, and there probably won't be too much in the way of stuff the TDP fandom doesn't know in there.

Chapter II, Welcome to Cortex, covers the gaming system. If you know D&D, try to ignore it. Cortex doesn't run terribly similarly, and the focus of the gameplay in ToX is very different, in a more intuitive way that really embraces cooperative storytelling.

Chapter III, Gazeteer of Xadia, is - ohoho fams - this is the good stuff, this is the grand prize! This chapter is the deep dive into all kinds of lore, culture, locations, myths, and other worldbuilding that we have not learned anywhere else before - and it's all canon, created in collaboration with Wonderstorm.

And there's art in this book. Glorious art. I am so excited!

Chapter IV, Player's Guide, is the meat of the handbook, containing a complete guide to creating a character from scratch and learning how to interact with the tale you're playing. I've participated in one of ToX's online character creation workshops and created a dozen or so catalyst and narrator characters, and it's very simple once you get the pattern.

Chapter V, Mage's Guide, goes more in depth on how magic works in ToX - and it's going to give us shiny new details on how Ocean and Earth magic work! Aah! It sounds like we should be getting a full explanation for dark magic as well as all the primal magics, except for Stars. Because someone has to be a mysterious drama queen in his mirror.

Chapter VI, Narrator's Guide, is all about how to be the person spinning the tale for your friends, and what you'll need to do it. I've been writing and running original tales for a few months, and it's still a bit wibbly without the full ruleset, but the online tools on the ToX website are really helpful and I always have them open for reference.

Also of note: I asked a question in the stream about whether we'd be getting any new pre-gen characters, or perhaps if there were character sheets out there for canon show characters that players might want to interact with or play. Cam Banks (Cortex's creator) responded to say that there are some characters from the show that are available as catalyst characters - I assume that's in this chapter, under Featured Catalysts - and that it's very easy to shift a character from narrator-character to catalyst-character to playable-character. Which, yes, it should be, because there are only so many stats you need for each of those three roles. So I guess we'll see who got into the book as a featured catalyst!

Chapter VII, The Tale of the Corrupted Core, is, I expect, the long-awaited playable tale set in Lux Aurea between S3 and S4. It's been a long time since anyone mentioned this specific setting, but I have been waiting for this for a while, and Cam confirmed that this tale is very much a Sun tale, just like Gloaming Glade was a Moon tale and Lost Oasis was a Sky tale.

The Appendix is where all the glorious lists are, for the good details like Distinctions and SFX, which will be so much fun to delve deep into for nosy nuggets on our favorite characters from the show! See, Cortex's first ever game was based on the TV show Firefly, (which has a Cortex) and its character distinctions were pulled from characters on the show itself. I have been assuming that ToX will do the same, from the few distinctions I've have seen so far - because Cortex has been delightfully coy with sharing these. I'm expecting that all the available character distinctions and SFX will have been created and included in the handbook because they belong to a character we know or will meet eventually. So if you want to piece together a playable version of Nyx, or Callum, or Amaya, or Corvus, or Ethari, or Claudia, or literally any canon character at all, and there isn't a character sheet for them yet, you won't have too much trouble crafting something that feels very much like them!

Also: ToX has released 12 pre-gen characters, thus far, for people to just jump into gameplay with. They're amazing, with humans and elves as mages and fighters and diplomats and adventurers and rogues and more. But in the Appendix, that little section there says a Baker's Dozen. That means 13, guys. Looks like we're gonna get blessed with one more secret playable pre-gen character! OMG WHO IS IT??

I am SO HYPE for this book, I have had it pre-ordered forever! But there's more canon fun to come, and it's just around the corner.

Every Wednesday at 3PT, Role and Keep has a live Twitch stream. And on December 2, 9, and 16, Cam Banks will be running a 3-part ToX holiday celebration ttrpg which will include new canon details straight from Wonderstorm about how various cultures and/or characters around Xadia celebrate - or don't - during the holiday season! That's right, Wonderstorm is gonna dump all the fun fluffy cuteness (and angst? maybe? I gotta go find out) we need for our upcoming holiday fics, right into our arms. Oh, I'll definitely be taking notes while I watch.

Hmmm. Maybe I can write up a tale that starts out as a perfectly innocent travelers' visit to one of the newly revealed locations in the handbook... until......... Bahaha. Whatever you do, don't touch anything.

[beautifulterriblequeen]

New canon detail and catalyst teaser image from today's ToX stream - and info for S4??

So today's Cortex Prime Time stream featured Dan Telfer, the narrative lead for the Tales of Xadia handbook, along with Mellie Doucette and Cam Banks! Dan talked at length about writing playable tales for Tales of Xadia, about the player's handbook that's coming out early next year with so many excellent canon goodies in it, and about working so closely with Wonderstorm throughout the process of creating the handbook itself.

We got just a teensy tease for the Tale of the Corrupted Core, but uhhh it's big. And because it's a canon detail in the world of TDP, it might have far-reaching effects for S4 and beyond.

Spoilers below.

The way Corrupted Core was explained, it begins with plenty of specific information for players, so they know exactly what their options are - and how little time they have to deal with the events that are happening. Apparently, Wonderstorm specifically requested that this tale have a "Ticking Time Bomb" vibe, and so it does.

Here's the setup: The Sunforge has been poisoned by dark magic, as we saw in S3 when Viren and Aaravos attacked Lux Aurea... and it cannot be saved. It's dying, it's going to die, and very possibly players will want to kill it themselves because of the dark magic that it's radiating across the land!

Um. Okay, so that's a lot. I had some scattered ideas about targeting/destroying nexuses, about what happens to elves if they lose their connection to their Primal Source somehow, and suchlike, but apparently that threat is active and current!

This isn't a guarantee that the Sunforge will definitely fail in the show. But personally, I think it will. That feels very dark and right for where this show is going to take us.

That doesn't have to be the way Corrupted Core plays out, though! Players can do basically anything they can think of in ToX tales. They're very flexible stories, and they're not meant to herd players toward any specific result. Play is centered more around a vibe that the group (ideally) chooses to pursue together. That said, the locations and characters, etc., we will get in this tale are canon, and might show up at some point in some aspect of the show, even if it's not got anything to do with Lux Aurea or this storyline.

So even if there's no canon way to save the Sunforge, in TDP or in CC, if you want to play to save the Sun Nexus before its light goes out when S4 drops, then you can just change the tale and go for it. ToX absolutely supports fix-it fics, even before canon breaks things. (like our hearts)

Hoo boy, that's a lot. But on a lighter note (I hope), there's one other fun detail I screenshotted from the stream: artwork of a Catalyst from CC, by Noe Levya:

A Catalyst is a major influence on gameplay, and depending on players' choices, they can affect various outcomes with a lighter or heavier touch. This teaser art shows us the Catalyst's hands, so we know they're an elf due to the finger count, but that's about all we get!

Or is it? CC is about the Sunforge, but this looks like, maybe, Moon magic, with the white light and the decorative swirls? "Moon reflects Sun" might be one of the possible angles players could use to try to deal with the crisis in Lux Aurea.

Also, this character might be trying to steal this object. I'm getting some Indiana Jones vibes here! It's probably the leather gloves, very roguish. But this image might not even have to happen in the tale! It could be more of a key art vibe thing instead of a specific scene.

Also, raise your hand if you want that cute jar as a night light. *raises hand*

I physically cannot wait for this handbook and its new tale and all the canon lore inside! It's almost here, after a very long wait, and you'd better believe I will be screeching ecstatically for years once I get my copy!

If you were planning to tune in for those cute canon holiday deets in the fluffy winter ToX rp over at Cortex, remember that it starts next week, and you can watch it here, from 3-5pm on December 2, 9, and 16.