Tacticians of Ahm Interview + Talking Narrative Gameplay
Links to channels I'm using to level up, Greenhorns behind the scenes, ZineQuest highlights, and more
Good morning from oddly sunny Kansas!
I hope the beginning of the year has treated you well so far!
Right now I’m ecstatic that Greenhorns is funded while heading into the final 2 weeks on Kickstarter. I’m also excited that I’ve been balancing well between writing and designing for Greenhorns and designing graphics for Incorporated Vol.1. It feels great to be down to the two major projects and making significant progress while Outsourced is finishing up at the printers.
Today I have a wonderful interview with Christian Sorrell about their newly released Early Access version of Tacticians of Ahm. I have a few ZineQuest/Zine Month highlights including the Mothership modules I’ve seen so far and some more behind the scenes as well. Here’s the docket:
THE GUAC 020 DOCKET:
Spicy Tuna related links including a link to the 5MW Rokaner Newsletter that contains a free bi-fold pamphlet playable with the 5MW RPG and is a crossover with Greenhorns!
Tacticians of Ahm interview with Christian Sorrell
Zinequest/ZiMo highlights!
Cool Links including some design Youtube channels and free fonts.
Greenhorns Behind the Scenes Part 2: Narrative Weapon Mechanics
Spicy Tuna Links
New
5MW Rokaner #1 Newsletter with free Greenhorns x 5MW RPG crossover pamphlet + Greenhorns interview.
I got to play Bug Busters by Garry Snow on TWS Plays Bug Busters
Ongoing
Greenhorns Kickstarter is Live with 2 Weeks to Go!
Free Greenhorns Quickstart on itch
Outsourced Pre-Order Store (has all of our current catalog!)
Tacticians of Ahm Interview
Hi, Christian!!
Thank you for hopping on for a quick interview about Tacticians of Ahm! I’ve loved watching it develop and now with the 92-pg early access in hand I’m eager to dig into more details.
Question:// Ahm’s corrupt3d fantasy realm feels so fresh. Can you give us a rundown of this deteriorating SNES cartridge players exist in and some of your favorite ways the environment changes as players advance throughout the world?
Christian:// When creating Ahm, I was taking a lot of my inspiration for the feel and vibes for the game from things like Final Fantasy Tactics for Playstation, Fire Emblem for GameBoy Advance, and Super Nintendo games like Chrono Trigger and the early Final Fantasies. At the same time, I was inspired by real-life stories from friends and folks online about how we’ve now reached the period of time where those first few generations of sprawling RPGs for the Nintendo and Super Nintendo are starting to have their on-cartridge batteries die and people’s childhood saves are being lost. Beyond that, floppy disks and even early CDs are now starting to experience loss of integrity due to age. Those elements all blended in my mind and had me imagining characters inside a digital fantasy world dying in that manner. What would it feel like to be living inside a simulation (and far from a perfect one) as it started to die? I took the classic fantasy game trope of a plague or corruption spreading across the world and blended it with that idea. Inside of being a magical blight spread by an evil wizard, the corrupt1on in Ahm is that spreading bit rot and data death of the world itself, the onboard batteries and chips giving way to time in a world beyond the one the characters inhabit.
With that, the game lets players lean into and out of video game tropes and aesthetics as much as they’d like at the table, letting some of the more simulation-minded aspects fall to the wayside. You can’t go further than the battlemap’s edges, because you are on the battle screen, not the overworld map! Enemies simply vanish from existence when defeated or after fleeing. You have set combat rules you operate within, but once the corrupt1on is introduced, that starts to change. The world starts to glitch and bend in new ways, introducing chance elements, cheat code-like effects, and more.
Corrupt1on can manifest in both the environment and in enemies as you explore Ahm. One of my favorite environmental effects is glitching, garbled text on everything in an area as the game world fails to read from its own memory correctly, giving you disadvantage on Knowledge checks to decipher it. In battle, corrupt1on can manifest as stretching of space and time, adding new rows and columns to the battlegrid or as an enemy capable of going off one edge of the battlemap and appearing on the opposite side PacMan-style.
Question:// I know streamlining rules and ease of jumping into play was a major emphasis while developing the game. The character sheet is a standout component to me in this endeavor. Can you give us some insight on your design decisions with both the character sheet and the game itself?
Christian:// It is important to me that the Tactician sheet facilitates playing as freely away from the rulebook as possible. I took inspiration from “playbook” style sheets commonly seen in Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark games where with just a page or two in front of you as a player, you have everything you need to play without referencing the rulebook. Because Tacticians of Ahm is born out of a love (and also frustration) with traditional fantasy RPGs, that meant finding a way to communicate things like attack ranges, spells, weapon info, and more as easily as possible. For that, my solution is using simple grids with various patterns to quickly and visually communicate exactly what something does without ever having to parse a big paragraph of text or refer to the rulebook to get a full spell description and such. I’ve kept that style of thinking at the front of my mind with all of Ahm’s design.
When looking at traditional grid-n-minis RPGs, what could be faster while keeping the tactical meat intact? What could be less frustrating? What’s the most rewarding part of a mechanic and can I retain it while tossing out the chafe around it? That’s what I try to always keep in mind with this game and sometimes that means choosing to omit certain elements you’d typically see because they are more frustrating and inconvenient than mechanically valuable. The Tactician sheet itself will likely continue to evolve as the game’s development continues to progress too. Like the rest of the game, I’m excited to bring it to its final form.
Question:// Tacticians of Ahm is a sleek combat-first RPG. Two places I think you’ve especially succeeded in is the amount of GM guidance for “Building Battles” and your design for battling “Whole Encounter Enemies.” Can you share some details about the shining elements of ToA combat?
Christian:// Combat in Ahm has several, mostly hard and fast rules: Attacks and Abilities always hit and always deal their damage and effects to all combatants within their area of effect (even friendly targets). Damage itself is set as well so you know exactly how much damage you will deal before executing an attack. Plus, attacks targeting a combatant from directly behind deal bonus backstab damage regardless of your class meaning positioning is extremely important. As such, combat in Ahm requires grids and minis (or tokens, if playing virtually like many of us are these days).
Because the game is built around having so much certainty as the player (there’s no chance to miss, no chance to hit but still do very low damage, etc.), I felt there was room for additional guidance on how GMs can build both encounters and enemies for the game. A big part of this was simply communicating the internal system I had built for myself when creating the rulebook’s bestiary and adventures used in playtesting. For battles, there’s always a potential when streamlining and minimizing gameplay elements to create something that feels too simple to what players are used to, so I wanted to give folks good guidance on the most memorable battles I had during playtesting: utilizing obstacles around the battlemap, slightly outnumbering the Tacticians with enemies to ratchet up the difficulty, and including secondary objectives or other ways to resolve the battle beyond just defeating all of the enemies. Because Ahm streamlines so many of the other elements of combat, you can lean into having a variety of enemies, unique battlemaps, and mid-combat puzzles or optional loot chests the enemies themselves are going for at the same time without putting a huge mental load on the GM (something I’m always considering as a Forever GM myself).
I am planning to get even more GM guidance into the final version of the rulebook, especially for the non-combat portions of Ahm, what a typical session looks like, and more examples of play overall. This kind of writing is often some of the most difficult and time consuming to do well, but also some of the most important I think for any system you want to stand entirely on its own, free of needing to track down actual play example videos and blog post explainers before you play.
Question:// Last thing. I know you have a ton of playtesting under your belt that you are currently distilling into the rulebook for streamlined roleplaying. What are your key principles for roleplaying outside of combat in ToA and how does it enhance the setting?
Christian:// I’ve found that over time I’ve become more and more freeform in my play outside of specific, zoomed-in or high stakes moments like combat in almost any TTRPG I play. I recently ran a session of Cloud Empress where no one rolled (or even asked to roll) for the first hour or so of play, and despite that, everything felt great! They explored the world, chatted with NPCs, had great character moments, and I got to build the tension. Ahm is built around that kind of freeform play when outside of combat. Not to say that there are never rolls or threats, of course!
Characters have Aptitudes, four stats (Strength, Alacrity, Tenacity, and Knowledge) that are used for checks and saves in a manner similar to what most folks have experienced in traditional TTRPG play, but they are utilized much less often than in most games. As Tacticians, your characters are well-trained, very capable, and unique within the world. If it falls within your role’s trained or daily activities, you can likely just do it! I recommend a table only calls for a roll when it is interesting if both success and failure are interesting. That’s when we really want to inject that element of modified chance into the story we are telling, to decide a path that no one at the table can fully predict. Is it interesting if your Rogue can’t open this door, totally stopping your progress and not adding any additional stressors to the scene? No, it isn’t so they unlock it! No roll required. Now, if your party is fleeing from guards that noticed you on the keep’s first floor and you’ve fled into the dungeon below and unlocking the door means being able to further your escape but not unlocking the door means the guards catching up with you and a battle ensuing then both success and failure are meaningful and interesting so roll Alacrity and see what happens!
My goal is to have the out-of-combat aspects of Tacticians fall away as much as possible to allow players to roleplay within the world without having to reference rules, have progress stopped in boring ways by unnecessary rolls, and giving space for meaningful roleplaying. In my mind, this is how I can do a similar streamlining of play for world exploration and character interaction the way I did with the game’s combat.
[end]
Tacticians of Ahm is currently itch funding!
You can purchase it for $15 in its bare-bones form. There are two great things about purchasing it now. You’ll receive all future updates of the 3 core books that will be worth $45! And, it will allow Christian to put more time into writing and designing Ahm so that the books can be produced more quickly and with more art.
The Weekly Scroll also has a great interview with Christian here
Zinequest/ZiMo Highlights
Mothership Projects Funding Now
Advanced Rules by RV Games is another Mothership collaboration with a ton of contributors. Violet Ballard, Roz Leahy, Christian Sorrell, Jack Shirai, Greenspore, Joshua Justice, Håkan Lundgren, Edbury, and Curious Friends. Advanced Rules is a 100-page wire-bound text-only zine of house rules for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG from the Mothership community including solo and wardenless play guidelines, ship combat rules, psion and psionics, additional classes, the ruleset from Ultimate Bad Ass, and more.
Quality Assurance (QA) by SL Perry is a 12 page one-shot for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG set during a disaster on an orbital station. A very special robot accompanies the Crew as they try to recover a piece of valuable hardware before it, and everything else onboard, is lost. QA features an autonomous rescue aid named SMILEY, which seems like it’s a Baymax-like character!
The Stone Flesh Gift by Jordan Boschman is a 40-page, light-prep living ship module with a focus on exploration and body horror. The players will wade through the innards of an ancient alien bioengineering factory called the Gift as it drifts through space, working to avoid its dangers, discover its secrets, and plug their brains directly into its organs to feel their thoughts.
Gas! Gas! Gas! by Waco Matrixo is a one-shot adventure where the crew escapes the subterranean prison of Praxis Spar after it has suffered a catastrophic gas leak. The prison's systems are run entirely by a computer that only cares about one thing; no one escapes. The gas intelligently moves, blocks, and follows the crew.
Game Highlights!
Beetle Knight by Jim Hall has an incredible setting where you play as a member of the Iridescent Order of Knights. You are driven by honor to investigate the mysteries of the world. The resolution mechanic is an interesting contested roll where the difficulty is determined by the size of the Arbiter’s dice. There are a ton of contributors building out this world and 3 accompanying zines.
Subterranean Fightin’ Freaks by Andrew Misisco is an incredibly illustrating zine with a ton of flavor shown on the KS page. The game takes place in a fictional Chicago altered by seismic shifts. Bipedal animal freaks now roam and the setting makes me think of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem!!
Milk Bar by Eryk Sawicki is a sci-fi tabletop roleplaying game set in an alternate-timeline, post-Soviet Poland. After the Soviets grew in power, their ultimate clash with Capital left your city in ruin. All you can do now is gather your fellow Communards, salvage whatever you can, and build your Milk Bar. Eryk’s graphic design is so damn fresh here! Worth checking it out for the visual appeal alone.
Fealty by Michael Elliot and Galen Pejeau is a game of courtiers who sit at the foot of the throne, who direct the fate of a small fantastical country in the name of a capricious monarch, forced to choose between the whims of the crown and the needs of a nation. This is another beautiful standout. Galen is a master of illustration and this is some of his best work I’ve seen!
Cool Links
I recently listened to the Making Neverland RPG video with Andrew Kolb on the Dieku Games Youtube Channel (an almost 2 year old video). Neverland is incredibly beautiful and Andrew is great at describing what lead to his design choices. I’ve made it about halfway through Andrew Kolb’s Domestika course on Illustrating Creative Gameplay Maps months ago and it has greatly informed the ideation process of my planet layer designs in Greenhorns. (This is a little insight to how bad I am at finishing online courses, but I do plan on finishing this one when I have more time for leisure digital painting time. I have really enjoyed the course so far!).
Kolb’s course is currently on Domestika Plus and with a free 30 day trial you can check it out for free if it interests you.
Jesse Nyberg’s Youtube Channel has been very helpful to me in my quest to level up my graphic design skills. I appreciate how he breaks down his designs. The videos are pretty quick and made well enough to learn from.
Here’s a great video to be introduced to Jesse’s channel with Designing custom album art for Spotify top artists
Lee White is a professional illustrator and teacher who I’ve been learning a lot from in the past year or so. I’ve really enjoyed his Youtube channel because he gives great workflow advice and he uses his background in traditional painting incredibly well.
Here’s a video to start with if you’re interested in digital painting:
I’ve also bought both of his watercolor brush packs and his tutorial series on his website which I plan to use on a number of future projects. Here’s a video of him showing his process with the brushes:
The Weekly Scroll are up to 15 episodes this year already and will be highlighting a ton of Zinequest games throughout February. Here are a few highlights
The Weekly Scroll EP 134 Interview: Fealty
The Weekly Scroll EP 133 Psykers
TYPE DEPARTMENT is a new-to-me font marketplace that has some amazing fonts. They also have a huge free font pack with a number of highlights if you sign up for their newsletter.
Greenhorns Behind the Scenes Part 2: Narrative Weapon Mechanics
One of the aspects of Greenhorns that I’m most excited about is how the adventure and narrative mechanics blend together. When I got to reading Down We Go, I was in the middle of starting to become interested in narrative gameplay controlling more of the story at the table. I think that’s part of the reason why the Lore as Loot idea from Down We Go stuck with me so much.
In the past 8 months I’ve discovered several narrative-based games that have left big impressions on me and I continue to be more interested in designing in the narrative space. I especially have Adam Vass of World Champ Game Co to thank for that. Their zine-sized story games have really clicked it all in place for me because their games are extremely focused, such as No Future where you play as punks lamenting and celebrating the hardcore scene in your hometown over the course of a single night or How to Summon a Spirit where you create your own murderous mythology and supernatural rituals to evoke the dark. They are also rules-light and easy to understand how to run and how to balance narrative input between all players.
All of these narrative influences have manifested in mechanics I’m really happy with in Greenhorns and I want to share a bit about that here and how I plan to develop them more in the final version of the game.
My favorite narrative element is giving players the opportunity to describe how their weapons work and even what they are. It’s a simple premise but it’s led to a ton of surprising moments because of the gonzo-esque setting with near-zero technological boundaries.
In Greenhorns weapon damage is flat and players have a choice to deal more damage per hit to large threats and !!Bosses!! or have the ability to take out swarm threats. But, the narrative piece of describing how your weapon works consistently enhances both the story and capabilities of the crew.
Currently, Greenhorns has a single d10 table of example names for the two types of weapons. But the combination of these seeds and player input have created several memorable moments during play. For instance, The Big Knuckle Punch Cannon (a Large Threat Weapon) has been used to create awesome slow-mo anime-esque moments when it strikes the enemy across the face. The Punch Cannon has also influenced combat when it hit the enemy square in the sternum and the enemy’s body wrapped over the knuckle as it propelled the enemy out of range. This gave the crew the ability to focus on a separate target for the round it took the propelled enemy to get back into the fray. The result more than likely would have been different if the player was wielding a different Large Threat Weapon such as the Head Splitter or The People’s Carbine.
I like when players decide what type of “shot” their weapons have especially. Swarm Threat Weapons fire hundreds of projectiles at once. But shooting hundreds of mini-missiles gives different opportunities to a player wielding a Swarm Threat Weapon that fires hundreds of small lasers. The Quickstart only has a paragraph on weapon customization, but the more I’ve played the more I want to make sure this part is encouraged. Some more guidance such as using weapons outside of combat. Explosives having different applications than a projectile that is a sharp blade for instance.
More development on this to come, but I am excited to spend some more time next week nailing more of this down. Than once the drafts are expanded I’ll be putting it through the ringer with some designers to help make sure everything is communicated clearly.
And that’s all! Thank you for reading this far! I’ll be sending out The Guac 021 about halfway through February to share some more!
Have a beautiful day,
Marco
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Wow, another stacked newsletter - love all the useful/cool links too! Thanks for having me on for the interview!