You are an Explorer Knight. You are exceptional. Unique in all the Highlands. You’ve survived the Academy, honed your Potential and now wield extraordinary elemental powers. You have stalwart crewmates, great warships, magical Relics and ancient technology all at your command. Even so, can you survive your first voyage into the Twilight Frontier?
The EGS Inquisitive is long overdue and you have been tasked with tracking her into the Twilight Frontier and either leading her home or determining her fate. As every Knight knows, such search and rescue missions most often end with no sign of the missing ships. Or worse still, with the would be rescuers sharing the same fate as the lost…
Upwind is a new RPG in development from Jeff Barber (creator of Blue Planet). You can listen to our character creation segment here. If you enjoyed this game, please consider helping the game’s development by playtesting it now! Read more information in this thread on the RPPR forums.
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did this ep miss the Patreon?
Hey Ross and crew. Thanks for playing, posting and promoting. I’m pleased to have connected with RPPR and look forward to working together on Upwind.
Yes, I got too distracted by playing in a game last night to post the early access game. My bad. It won’t happen again!
I know some people might complain about this aspect of the podcast, but I just want to say that I find the “table sound” to be a a crucial aspect of the show. It’s really fun to listen to.
The game this reminds me of (kind of) is Sundered Skies. Though this seems to be set up to be a lot more interesting of a setting.
I agree with Caleb at the end, that this would be a good system for big and romantic games, or for running a full campaign in two sessions. I think it might port well to doing a MTG Plainswalkers game with all the shenanigans.
I might have watched too many episodes of Call the Midwife, but every time I heard the word “crowning” I pictured something very intense.
What does to “fraggle rock” a thing, mean?
@Celebrochan I just started listening to this one, but it’s an RPPR-ism that came out of Red Markets playtesting. Some of the players were talking about naming their enclave and PCs after Fraggle Rock stuff.
Since Red Markets is meant to be a game about difficult choices made by believable characters, that would have been pretty jarring in terms of tone.
Since then it’s taken on the meaning of doing something that radically departs from the intended tone of the game or session. Usually something very comic or silly in a serious game.
As usual the RPPR crew provided a fun, funny and helpful playtest for our new game “Upwind.” In case any of you have design interest in answers to some of the specific questions they raised I thought I would point you to the design notes I just posted in forum’s Upwind playtest thread.
http://slangdesign.com/forums/index.php/topic,2020.0.html
Pretty fun session and intro to the system! It didn’t really come up, but are there things to improve the average value of your deck/hand (more cards in hand, removing low point cards, etc)?
Is there something to handle a situation where someone’s hand is all shitty low cards? If I have a hand of 4-6 point cards of mostly different suits, it is not only hard to succeed but also hard to get rid of the cards. With stakes as high as they can get failing is really bad, it seems almost like you’d want to negotiate a failure you don’t mind getting from the GM and just throwing all your bad cards at it.
One idea I had was that if you’re assisting with a low card (say 5 or below) you don’t have to use your blade. Or maybe if you’re using a skill without crowning you can use up to the skill limit in non-suit cards.
Similarly, wounds are crazy bad. Reducing hand size is so much worse than anything else that happened. Unless the result is “dead”, take the other option every time. Not only is it a bigger effect on the player, but you’re basically just stripping away their ability to use their skills or even play the game.
I’d think about making the GM joker the optional side-bar rule as opposed to the default, so people are making the choice to play with that instead of having it pop up in play.
@ Zypher
The DM Joker came up in our later discussion off-mike, and I would like to share our observations of it if I may? The DM Joker was used in a moment to counter a move that would’ve derailed the story and ended the game in a way that would’ve deprived us (the players) of a great bit of story-telling. Instead, we were able to continue the scenario.
Statistically, the DM joker is not as likely to show up as a player joker (owing to the fact that there are generally more players than DMs, meaning as a player the odds are in you favor that you or one of your fellow players will draw the card before the DM does.) In the hands of a good DM, the joker will aid the game instead of the opposite.
Too bad about that almost-triumph, Shaun! Fun game to listen to, overall, although I did go slightly cross-eyed trying to keep up with the rules at times, lacking the visual effect of actually having the cards and characters sheets on the table.
The card mechanics in this game actually remind me a little of the mechanics in an older 90ies roleplaying game called Castle Falkenstein that the Esoteric Order of Roleplayers tested out for a while, except more/better fleshed out.
Hey Shaun, please watch your homophobic remarks. It surprised me when you were basically crackling with excitement to lay a real zinger of a put-down on a group of male NPCs, enough to the point that you barged into the scene, only to insult them by asking them if they were gay. Nice.
It confused me even more since you were the one in an After Hours episode that portrayed yourself as upset that the creators of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG listed “homosexuality” as a mental illness.
I’m guessing you were just playing another one of your “evil” characters so it fits, but come on. I have to deal with enough of that in real life.
Wow, this sounds like a really fun system and setting! I love using hands of playing cards to offer the players a limited set of choices on how many resources to commit to an action. Very cool.
i think to aid another you should pitch two cards, and the one with the lower value is the counted card.
You know what Upwind reminds me of, in a good way? Rogue Trader without the 40K benefits/maluses.
Caleb, a wonderful opportunity was missed to ask Pointy where he sees himself in 5 years, and who he would want to have dinner with, living or dead, during the interview. Ross please say you had answered to these questions polished and chambered for the talking deer. Credit for not going full Sparkles. Never go Full Sparkles.