i guess we call this 1.1?

Well, I lasted about eight months this time before coming back for another pass on Beneath Pirate Flags. This one should actually be the last big one for a while -- at least, I don't have plans to restructure everything again, like I have in this update. After another round of playtesting earlier this summer I nailed a couple of things which just weren't working yet -- the mechanic of giving tokens to a setting element was one, and the experience gain towards unlocking was a finale was another, and the third was a broader and more nebulous problem: I just didn't feel like the game was teaching itself well.

Solving that problem -- teaching, scaffolding, onboarding, whatever you want to call it -- is, imo, one of the hardest parts of games writing. It's one of the few things that extensive playtesting won't necessarily catch -- since the longer a playtest goes on, and the more often a player has experienced the game, the less likely it is that they'll end up stumbling over bad teaching tools, since they're mostly just playing a game that exists in their head. I think I've fixed that -- or tightened it, anyway.

Anyway, I've never been one for real changelogs, but here is some of what's happened:

Major restructuring and organization. 

- Beneath Pirate Flags has been reorganized into four chapters: Learning the Ropes, Gathering Crew, Charting the Waters, and Sailing Free Forever. The logical organization of the game now makes a little bit more sense, and there's a nice table of contents to help you find what you're looking for. Depending on your pdf reader, the hotlinks directly from the TOC to whichever heading you're looking at might even be active... but no promises on that. We've been burned by PDFs before.

- Lots has been rewritten, retitled, etc. that I won't summarize here, but you should check out "The Shape of a Session" on page 8 if you're looking for the best ways to move through the new text.

- Playbooks and setting elements have also been moved to their relevant chapters, rather than stuck on the end -- which should mean less flipping back and forth as you're working through the text for the first time. I might end up making freestanding playsheets at some points -- the new setting "faces" could probably do with that -- but that's a job for another day.

Reworked Playbooks

- Almost all of the playbooks have gotten a new coat of paint, and many of the weak / strong / lateral moves have gotten shifted around for balance and interest.  I also removed a couple of feedback loops that had snuck through — like the Knife both spending and gaining a token by stabbing someone — and tightened some generally uninteresting books. 

- The previous system of finales, where testing your ideals lead to points leading to your grand conclusion, is gone. Maybe in longer term play that structure would have been workable, but as things stood it was never actually happening. In its place, everyone know has a strong move — decide who you want to be — which unlocks your finales. I don’t think there’s a need to gate it behind any further mechanics, so long as you’re flagging to your fellow players that the end is coming. 

- On the setting side of things, the distinction between setting elements (broad forces) and faces (their specific iterations) has now been made fully clear. Faces may be defeated, destroyed, or transformed — elements last forever. I also tightened all of the sheets down to allow for quicker face-generation when one emerges in play  

- As with character finales, the banishing setting faces has also been reworked into a more elegant system. That’s where you’ll also find the new permanent character changes: as forces come in and out of our world, we will be marked forever  

There’s more, of course — like I said, the whole book got reorganized, which meant basically all new introductory text as well as a new closing ritual-reading to end your sessions. I can’t wait to see how people like it.

Until later, then —

Peace.

Che

EDIT: Of course, there are also typos to fix! A little hotfix log to end the day:

General

- Corrected a capitalization typo on the cover (!!!) of the game

Charting the Waters

- Corrected an instance where Anarchy Alive was referred to as the Fortress.

- Standardized picklist headers for Setting Elements

peace!

Che