#vat ttrpg

[vatrpg]

Dark greetings. I yet live! My last update was basically just saying I figured out how to do a hexcrawl to a satisfactory degree within Vat. This remains true! Here’s the teaser:

I love ASCII art I love ASCII lettering.

Here’s another teaser:

Anyways. It’s… maybe like a third done. Nearing 2/3rds completion with the lore and background for the module that is establishing the setting. The rest is actual gameplay stuff. I’m having fun! It’s awesome researching hexcrawls. There’s so many resources available.

Otherwise… I finally developed a ‘sona? That’s notable. Not like game dev notable but still notable. Behold- me! It’s literally just how I look IRL but slightly different.

Ok that’s been this update. I really should update this blog more often but I’m not social media brained in such a way.

[vatrpg]

I'm like hey, what's up, hello. Crawling out of the yucky catacomb I've acquired as a home to give a Vat update. Module writing is HARD. So, I am solidly over half way with the rough draft of every event and encounter for this module. It took a toll on me, being a fairly tedious task - even if I enjoy it. So I am taking a brief break from writing that specific part of the game. Instead, I'm taking the time to once more revisit previous parts of the game I skipped over, primarily of which being module-specific items. I'm also covering some more parts of the world compendium to more fully flesh out that document.

Notably, I finished the first draft of the Borg part of the section covering cultural/counter-cultural movements around the setting. Behold! A teaser!

Ain't that just awesome? Anyways. These last few weeks were mainly me going through a bit of a mental rut as my summer semester started to establish itself in my routine. Things should be solid and stable and consistent now, but there was definitely a bit of an overall mess there for me for a bit. It has, probably, been rectified. One of Vat's aesthetic touchstones is the Zeno Clash series, and I've been continuing my play-through of the first game in that series after having left off of playing it for like exactly a year. Fun game! a bit jank, but I enjoy it. It's just so nice to look at to me. That's it for now. I think my computer tower is trying to crawl away so I have to go catch and reprimand it.

[vatrpg]

Dark greetings, my friends! I come to you from the tail-end of the semester, within the dank and fetid pits known as "Finals Season". I've been taking a light break, and will be taking a much heavier break soon. During this light break, I haven't been focusing on new content and module work. Instead, I've been going throw older writings. Rewriting and revamping some aspects, such as the general layout of the worldbuilding book, as well as tweaking the Conditions system to be a bit more robust. The last thing I plan on doing before the soon-to-arrive week and a half where I will be away from home and incapable of doing any writing whatsoever is going through the items and making sure they all are updated to use the new conditions. Dev work has been light, for obvious reasons. When I get back from that break I'll be able to lock in a bit more, but it'll really only be another week and a half of totally free time before my SUMMER COURSES start. Thankfully that'll be a fairly light load. That's all for now! Just a message to say I'm still alive, just taking it easy. I also have another drawing for you all of the Clavsona in generally fitting attire for the setting.

Of course now that I look back at this picture I think I could've made some edits to make it more up to snuff, but. Such is the woe of any creative endeavor ever.

[vatrpg]

Dark greetings... I live! Work continues, as always. I've been coming up with the general ideas for each important place's hidden events and secret events, as well as generally just doing a LOT of formatting. Making the tables and such so all future writing I'll have to do has a solid categorization foundation. It hasn't ALL been module work. I've been revisiting and revising certain parts of the core rulebook. Item durability has always been something in the back of my mind, but I was having trouble figuring out a way to make it easy to track and, you know, slick. I finally figured it out. It's very important to the module, even.

I've also revised one (1) of the character creation options to be a bit more in-line with the setting's tone as I consider it. The Servant origin is now the Borg origin, and the part of the Servant origin I enjoyed has been made a unique item in the catalogs. My college's spring break begins, like, tomorrow. An entire week off! At my old college it was just 2 or so days, so I appreciate this one more. On one hand, that means more time to write Vat. On the other hand, not really, because I still have a (thankfully dwindling) backlog of classwork I need to sort through and finish. My work pace is slower compared to a lot of my fellow indie freaks, but at least I keep my pace consistent. Something about turtles and hares? Idk. It don't matter. Vat continues. Vat always continues. The question remains - how the fuck do you write satisfying weather rules for a hexcrawl? We'll figure it out. I stand on the shoulders of giants. Ok I'm going back to my slime pod and hopping back onto the neuro-sphere. Or something like that. Next major blog post comes whenever I feel like it, as is tradition.

[vatrpg]

Dark greetings. Somehow my last post blew up? That's pretty cool. Anyways, a friend of mine recently made a post here about physically disabled characters in TTRPGs . It made me go in and revisit certain rules, as well as add some certain items. One of the main consequences that can befall characters in Vat is limb loss. The world is also one where adding additional limbs or replacing existing limbs is fairly commonplace. So, prosthetic rules are a thing, and also were one of the things I touched up.

Would you look at that... ain't that nice? There's also prosthetic organs and such. That's not to say that wheelchairs and stuff don't exist. It's just that, if you're going the wheelchair route, you can make that wheelchair badass.

There's also spider legs and such but I'm not going to reveal my whole hand in a simple blog post. wink wink. Fuuuuuck now that I post these teasers I realize I need to correct a few spots of grammar. The writer's ailment.

[vatrpg]

Dark greetings. This isn't really an update post or a progress post. I'm working on it, got to a section where I was actually able to figure out the exact progress and whatnot for what I needed to do to finish it and my eyes went wide, you know how it is. So, I got paid today. Decided to treat myself, try to find a video game (preferably on sale) that would vibe with me. Didn't have much luck - most of the games I've been eyeing simply aren't out yet, and if they are out they aren't within my budget or I don't have a good enough GPU. I just recently did a VERY significant upgrade on my CPU, but my GPU's model is still like decade old (I made it in high-school and it wasn't even cutting edge for its time). So. But I wanted to talk about the ideal Clavgame, and how that mirrors what I am doing with Vat and my long-term plans with Vat. I like the idea of simulator games. Just doing a relatively mundane thing in a game. Powerwashing, trucking, whatever. But the thing that doesn't vibe with me is it's all relatively normal with the setting. Normal trucking. Normal powerwashing. That, specifically, is what makes me uninterested. I really love the idea of doing something mundane in a fantastical setting, and seeing how that fantastical setting changes what the mundane is. The main game that I can say solidly does this to my satisfaction is the demo I played for the unreleased game "The Lift: Supernatural Handyman Simulator". An Exercise In Caution, the module I'm currently working on, is... sort of this. It's not built around it from the ground up, but it is inspired through being set in the world I'm building for Vat. Of a world that has fantastical things but also has a lot of mundanity (apparently not a word but you get it) to it. It's not the focus mainly because I want AEIC to be THE starter module, and thus containing as much of the breadth of mechanics in it as possible. Something that contains everything in it necessary to just be able to pick it up and play it while also solidly covering everything in Vat. It's why it's taking so long. There's a lot for me to do to have it up to my standards. But the next module I want to write, once AEIC is out and playable and Vat is something that people can easily access and download, is something with this focus on the mundane inside the fantastical. Current idea in four words - cargo ship point crawl. One thing I like about a lot of OSR games is the logistics of it all. Of figuring out what your characters can carry, what they can carry feasibly, managing their supplies, all that.

[vatrpg]

Dark Greetings... the holiday season is upon us. I haven't been home much, having to go on pilgrimages to see family members good and bad, so I haven't been able to access the Deep Ectoplasmic Sludge Knowledge Training Organoid Player (Or Desktop for short) and thus able to actually do work on this whole shindig. My laptop went kaput earlier this year as well, so. It Just Sucks. I've finished the majority of the party creation shish for An Exercise in Caution, with what's left requiring me to progress in other parts before I can progress there. Currently I've been writing the general travel rules and travel hazards and such for this hexcrawl. I am so thankful the OSR community has blogposts upon blogposts for creating hexcrawls. I'm really standing on the shoulders of giants here as I format them into something befitting of Vat and the module as a whole. We're doing the 6 mile hex here, mainly because it's the larger of the reasonable options - the expedition (party) in AEIC have access to vehicles, which means they can travel farther and more regularly than just going on foot. After my holiday hiatus (hopefully ending sometime shortly after Christmas) I'll begin work on the hexmap in earnest, which I'm VERY excited for. I plan on creating a custom tileset for it because there's a very particular aesthetic I want that no hex tile pack I've seen offers. That's all for now. See ya'll in, like, two weeks? two and a half weeks? Hopefully I'll have something to show again by then. Maybe a pretty picture or two to jingle in front of yall like a set of keys.

[vatrpg]

Dark greetings... So, remember when I said I quit my job? Yeah, I've been mainly working through that backlog of classwork I missed, but I have been doing some work on the module as well. Reworking the encounters table I have, about to write even more encounter tables. It's a lot of work! I've split the main terrain hexes into distinct different day/night encounters, though I don't plan on doing that with the unique location tiles.

Also, on recommendation of a friend, I've been rewriting and revamping the beginning section of the core book. Specifically - TOUCHSTONES! Originally it was just, like, a list. Just a list, no explanation. Well, that's getting expanding massively, with me now going into the specific WHY of why these are chosen as touchstones and inspirations. It's a lot more work, but I'll never pass up an opportunity to talk about things I enjoy.

That's all for now. Realized I haven't posted much lately, and I wanted to rectify that. No teasers rn, but maybe next post? Whenever that will be?