We have a big announcement today and a deep-dive look at the Fracture Opening, the first sector the expedition enters.
We don't have formal stretch goals for Substratum Protocol because we wanted to make sure that we can get the game out to you as quickly as possible. However, as we rapidly approach 20k raised, we wanted to give thanks for all the support with additional content: expanded rules and art!
On the development-side, we are submitting proof prints of Substratum Protocol this week to ensure we don't have any color or layout issues on the bigger print run. We also have an assigned ISBN now! We'll make sure to share images of the proof prints once they arrive.
New Rules: Deadly Hazards
I'm incredibly excited about these. Deadly Hazards, can be added to your game to give environmental situations dynamic consequences beyond rolling skill checks. We've added five big hazards and tips for creating your own.
What Deadly Hazards do is drain the scientists' resources - cards, skill dice, items, and stress - and put players under real-world time pressure. It's a great way of ratcheting up the tension, adjusting the difficulty of your games, or getting indecisive players moving again.
One deadly hazard your scientists may find themselves in extremely dense pockets of radiation. The exosuit turns on its active radiation countermeasures and that consumes energy. Players must begin discarding cards from their hand every 5 minutes to avoid taking radiation damage themselves. When they run out of cards, players begin stepping down their Skill dice as the radiation leaks into their exosuit, and ultimately begin taking Stress as they succumb to acute radiation sickness if they don't work to leave the area or stop the source of the radiation.
We provide examples for handling dangers that may migrate through an area, like caustic clouds of gas, dealing with exosuit tears and punctures from sharp rocks or claws, nests of creatures bombarding the scientists randomly, and implementing an automated exosuit feature called Catastrophic Survival Mode, where the suit sacrifices its systems to save their scientist.
The tips we provide for Mission Control give a simple breakdown to quickly determine how your specific situation would impact the scientists, and when to move from one kind of damage to another based on the narrative.
More Art from Galen!
I talked this weekend to our illustrator, Galen Pejeau, and we have agreed to add more art to the book because of everyone's resounding support! Instead of asking for specific art, I've given Galen free rein to look through the unknown-scientist's writings and setting to create a series of characters, vignettes, and props for anything that calls to him.
He has shared a few ideas already, and I'm very excited to see these new illustrations come to life and share them with you!
An example of many of the Unknown Scientist's notes throughout the book.
The Fracture Opening
In our last poll, the Fracture Opening won for the next deep-dive This is the first sector of the expedition experiences. At 1,300 kilometers long, it covers the distance between New York City to Miami, Florida. London, England to Naples, Italy. Melbourne, Australia to Alice Springs. Buenos Aires, Argentina to Sao Paulo, Brazil.
It is massive. Where did the fracture open in your game? What exists teetering at its cliff walls?
The world at the surface is a hellscape of the apocalypse, and much of the Fracture Opening is littered with crumbling buildings, detritus, and ancillary debris of civilization. Oceans spilling over the edge seem small in scale. Sitting suspended over it, is the Fracture Observatory.
The Fracture Observatory, the home of Mission Control.
Furthest from the portal, this sector is rooted most in the reality of the surface. Here, players may find groups of survivors from the cities that tumbled into the great fracture, steam vents, cave ins, and earthquakes make finding solid footing and a reliable path difficult, and even here, strange subterranean creatures may make an appearance.
Old research stations, part of the Substratum Protocol's monitoring efforts may still be intact here, and dangerous fast flowing waters threaten to whisk away scientists into massive whirlpools to further below.
When we were first designing Substratum Protocol, the thought was that players would start in the action of the expedition and wouldn't really spend time on the Fracture Observatory or on the surface. The Fracture Opening was our way of showing what the surface was going through while still being en route. It is meant to showcase the incredible destruction happening, and give the players a sense of urgency to stop it from getting worse.
How do the scientists descend into the fracture before being left to their own power? Lowered on a cable lift? Paraglide down? Or perhaps they are more like hell jumpers, free-falling through the gargantuan opening (or Link entering the depths in Tears of the Kingdom!)?
The title screen fades to klaxon alarms and screams of the world above, slowly giving way to a deafening silence of rushing wind as the expedition descends past the cliff walls into the abyssal black depths of the Fracture Opening...
What do you imagine as the opening sequence for your expedition? Share it in the comments!
