Carrion gods, launch post

 

As is tradition, I begin with art. This is by the much beloved Dominik Meyer. 

I would genuinely hire him to do the cover art for the book once we get to that stage, but he is a big MTG artist as as such busy and expensive, and I would prefer to support a less well off artist. If anyone who reads this thinks they have a compatible art style for the setting, send me a PM (obviously the detail and quality does not need to be anywhere near this level, this style of art is only really sensible for covers, not stocking a whole RPG book). 

So I've been working on this game for the better part of the year now, I've done around 40 sessions of playtesting across three campaigns for the current iteration of the system, and the system works as intended. 
You can find it Here 

I originally had a really long document describing my though process on the game, but that seemed like it would distract people from actually reading the text, so here is the short version of it. 
Carrion gods is the system that I started working on a year ago, which was meant to
1-Adapt the pre-existing Nine rivers setting
2-Make a game which fixes some of my issues with pre-existing games in the trad tactical combat space (such as Pathfinder, 3.5, Lancer) by approaching it from a GLOG pov.

Later on, I developed a few design goals and guiding principles, which are as follows. 
-Snappy combat rhythm, more focused on dynamic and interesting combat than on things like grids and tactics.
-A stable power curve where one's standing in it is intuitive and satisfying.
-A naturalistic approach to design 
-Intentional asymmetry, with balance between powers being determined by availability.
-Have the maximum amount of "sauce", since while coolness cannot be reliably produced, sauce-fullness actually can.

The setting is a bloodborne inspired cultivation setting. It has a bunch of other elements but you can read that on the blogpost dedicated to the setting (see the big linked post on the sidebar). 

The bare bones of this system are a d12+modifier system, with some use of advantage or disadvantage. I don't play around with dice mechanics for their own sake, but there are still some pretty interesting twists that might interest any game design enthusiasts. 

In the end, the objectives of the core rules are to be both intuitive, grounded in reality and streamlined, while retaining truly immense capacity to bolt in an enormous scope of content. 

Who is this for?

This system has pretty broad appeal, as there are a lot of combat fans. If any of the following statements seem familiar, this game might be for you.

-You want a system that does not feel the need to take every cool idea behind the shed.

-You love mecha, but are more interested in gnarly biomecha, and smashing your warmachine through buildings to get at the insects hiding within them, then in sightlines, heat management, and squares moved.

-You wish to drive your enemies before you, hear the lamentations of their women, ect ect.

-You are a pathfinder 1e fan annoyed at 2e for not having derived statistics.

-You want a backloaded, fully diegetic build system where character creation can take as little a 5 minutes, but you really know you're going to spend 6 hours preplanning all the upgrades you're going to get, agonizing over your implants and equipment and techniques and soul architecture.

-Wish a system where the most optimal builds are lich, and nuclear mechadragon. * Contrary to the tone of this post, the document itself is written in a very utilitarian style, and I've spent literally hundreds of hours obsessing over the implications of wording, prose, formatting, rules minutiae and the consistency of the setting.

Reviews, since I cannot seriously sing my own praises this much.

"The final form of diegetic advancement, without any levels or XP. The system maximizes epic moments and hype during the game not by extensive metacurrencies or narrative control but purely by the depth of the interactions between elements. The system is for you if you enjoy fast-paced, brutal, gory, exciting, cinematic combat in the context of this crazy ass cultivation biopunk setting with guns and gods and AIs and mecha."

-Antitime, play tester.

"I am more sold then a watermelon at an auction"

-Artof5rings

Note - Here is a permanent Discord link.
Its also linked in the doc but a lot of people cant seem to find it there.
I run a weekly game in there but for logistical reasons I would recommend joining one of the one shots that will be being run by other GMs in the near future (or past, depending on when you are reading this). 
You can also use it to ask rules questions or yell at me for unintuitive formatting (I appreciate both). 

*Becoming a lich or nuclear mechadragon requires an absolute ton of investment, so its more of something you need to do a sidequest for, then something you can obtain by just grinding away at it.