The chaos of launch has quieted down a bit, and we're steadily making our way towards our first vendor expansion - the Menagerie! We'll preview that one next week when we have some preliminary art to share, so in the meantime, here's a grab bag of fun stuff to lighten up your Friday Saturday!
-- First, any toolkit module worth its salt is going to have not only new gear, but new weapons for your table to tinker with. As a treat, here's a look at the first 10 results of the full d100 table of Ephemera4Cheap gear! This doubles as a d10 table if your players are looking for weapons specifically, and don't want to waste time sifting through cowboy hats and expired luxury MREs. Take a look!
The glory of the Mall Sword will never be diminished.
It was a very fun design challenge to look at the default Mothership weapons list (along with several 3PP modules) and figure out what niches had yet to be filled. I did a bunch of deep dives looking into weird weapon designs from the past and ended up with what I feel is a really fun mixture!
It was important to me that everything functions on a mechanical level, differentiating itself from other options so its not just a flavour choice to use one weapon over another, but also on a narrative level, opening up new avenues for storytelling and decision-making for your character! My touchstone for this was the Dart Crossbow from the 2017 Prey video game - technically a weapon, a joke weapon even, but with the ability to press buttons and use touchscreen remotely, an actually game-defining piece of kit.
That kind of dual-purpose thinking bled over into the rest of the d100 table. So much zany shit to discover amongst DuBose's wares... I can't wait for y'all to dig in!
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Now, if you're reading this there's a non-zero chance that you have also been sucked into Sam Sorensen's incredible, experimental Discord mega-game Over/Under this past week and a half. I told myself I would only skim the surface, working as a humble shipbreaker with the Teamsters Local 32819L... but that was an empty hope. I've been captured, y'all, and I'm not the only one! If you haven't joined, read Sam's blog post about it here - and join if you dare!
Mr. Merle Hacksmith, drawlin' bone-achin' shipwright that he is, has been hauling in randomly-rolled spacecraft to Restoration Dock TI-75 and - with the help of dozens of other players eager to role-play out their day-to-day on the docks - has salvaged or refurbished 6 ships so far! The latest, shipped off only last night, was the Northstar Paragon Exploration Vessel Azure Rampart. This Class-V behemoth rolled into the shop with a whopping 16 repairs needed (thanks to Grim Merchants' Alterations rules piling on the Megadamage and extra repairs), but with some long nights of work, close calls, dedication and only a minor case of light fixture haunting, we finally got her back into fighting shape!
This alternative use of the ship tables has gotten me brewing on some downtime mechanics with TITAN Interstellar to make some extra credits shipbreaking for them. The more ways you can use each merchant, the better, and I'm excited to see what we can do here.
I've asked Michael to comment on his experiences with Over/Under, but he could not and would not tell me. There are assassinations, political maneuvers, and all kinds of scheming going on in his side of the game, and Merle can't know how to hear any more about all that. He just wants to make some honest credits and show support for the Union! (And make Union propaganda, and hunt some zombies that only maybe were real, and find an exorcist for this damn light in his office).
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That's all for this week! We've got some MM25 playtesting going on this week/weekend and are hard at work getting this book hammered out for a tidy turnaround. When things pick back up in the latter half of the campaign, there will be tons more stretch goal stuff to share, so keep your ear to the ground and your eyes peeled!
