Otherworld: Infinite Requiem
Cards and Tokens

  Hello, friends! It is time for my obligatory “I certainly realize that it has been a while,” greeting, now with a dash of “I’ve been working a lot on this board game and believe me the stuff I’m doing is important but quite dull.” With the formalities out of the way, I have some fun things to share with you today!

  I GOT THE FIRST RUN OF CARDS AND TOKENS!

Ah, parking lots.

  Yes, that is a default Photoshop shape. You will be seeing a lot of those today since, again, I am really bad at visual art.

  Anyway, I won’t be showing off every last thing, but I can give you some idea of some of the little pieces that will be present on a given run of Infinite Requiem. These are search tokens, which are placed at the beginning of an episode and will grant either a free pickup or trigger an event. As the larger campaign goes on, fewer of these are placed at the beginning of an episode, meaning that stocking up in earlier sessions is recommended. Of course, there will be trials and tribulations between such points… so, uh… item conservation?

The library's overdue system is shockingly punitive.

  Here is a set of relatively common tokens. The Line of Sight at the top is intended to be a screwed-up eye; whether or not it scans as that is up to you! The purpose of such icons is to establish where a creature last saw a player dart off to. On its next turn, it will make its way to that location as it hunts down the player. They are also used for a variety of team events, where monsters will make every effort to reach that point despite player interference.

  There are also markers meant to change the conditions of walls and windows. Toward the top are the Fortified markers, which prevent aberrations’ easy movement through entry points. A fully fortified building will prevent creatures from spawning into it, so they can be effective at making some breathing room. Fortifications are not entirely fail-safe, though, and can be breached.

  Along the side are the broken glass markers. All windows start the game intact, but player and creature movement will end up breaking them (seriously, in all play-tests thus far everyone pretty much preferred diving through windows rather than using doors in the same tile). Players and monsters can pass freely through broken glass, but players may pick up a one-use only Glass Shard, which are useful but dangerous weapons.

  The tokens aren’t just for marking things on the map, either. Players will get some nasty side effects from their fights with horrible monstrosities, and they keep track by piling on the tokens.

  Crimson Touch is a movement-modifying status condition that makes your character move in random directions. Since that is a very annoying effect, it does prevent you from being targeted by the nasties for its duration. You can also re-roll the direction every tile, allowing you to at least alter your trajectory and perhaps alleviating the frustration of losing control.

  Threatening is a status effect whereby your adversaries can sense you through walls. This means that even if there are obstacles preventing them from seeing you normally, if you enter a creature’s vicinity they will sense you and put a Line of Sight token on that tile before making their way toward that position. The token’s design is a standard Photoshop sun, but the center circle has been replaced with part of the eye from the Line of Sight token. Also, a rust filter.

  Threatening can double up with Crimson Touch and negate the latter’s invisibility, meaning that you can be attacked and you have no control over movement.

  Sorry about that.

  Finally, we have Burning Blood, which is a relatively simple damage-over-time condition. It does have the benefit of increasing the chance to hit something you want to slap in its toothy maw, so it’s not all bad. Just mostly bad.

Symbolism, you see.

  These are meant to be visual representations of where a player needs to go to complete their objectives. Originally, players were just required to remember them. In other words, these very handy indicators were added after the fact because I didn’t even think that people may forget what the heck they’re doing.

  This is why you need editors, folks.

  And then there’s the cards!

Two, four, six, eight, punch a monster in the face!

  A showcase of melee weapons, firearms, and aberrant items! You will notice that the melee weapons now has a small-caps description right beneath it labelling the weapon as ‘Crushing’. I will have to do another post on combat or something. Just know that this is exactly what happens when you let me start tweaking things, so this is largely the play testers’ fault.

I would like to imagine that people can keep these powers after the nightmare is over. I would use Temporal Tether to think of really good comebacks, rewind time, and just verbally smack the hell out of people.

  Big ol’ bosses should drop big ol’ loot, and I had to really overhaul them because a frequent play tester said that all the unique items sucked. I had originally wanted to make using them a kind of gamble, where the costs and benefits had to weighed appropriately. Turns out the costs were much too high, so I just straight up made them more useful overall.

  The bosses are tougher now, though. So you gotta earn them.

Even in the apocalypse people drive without their signals.

  Those search tokens have events, and sometimes they are outside! Sometimes they speak to the larger narrative! Sometimes they are just where weird/lucky/bad stuff that happens! Good gravy!

I just don't want to get yelled at by the Dog Rates guy.

  And sometimes those events happen indoors! Just like with exterior events, they can carry narrative weight or just be a roadblock. And sometimes there’s a pooch involved, and they are such good dogs that they are, indeed, the legendary goodest boy.

  Also, I made a token for the goodest boy because I realized that I would certainly go back for the dog if… you know… the town was exploding or something.

  Not that such a thing would ever happen.

   Cough.

Glass Cyclone is a good name for a band.

  Rule change cards! Occasionally the rules change and they make lives demonstrably more garbage! Several of these cards had to be overhauled to incorporate the rules of the new team events. Things like ‘these monsters can’t be killed’ are incompatible with ‘defend yourself against the ravenous tide’, so modifications were made.

With these cards, you winsome or you lose some! I will show myself out!

  And when players get a little too wonky, they get one of these suckers. I added several more which influence table talk rather than directly impacting how the game itself works. Doing something to the other players will satisfy the card and take it out of play, but people have long memories. Long, hostile memories.

  The map also got a slight tweak while all this stuff was being designed and rewritten.

There's a body stored in the fridge of the Rustic Retreat. I'm just saying it's not a perfect Trip Advisor score.

  The standard grid is still there, but the left and bottom sides now have alphabetized tiles. This allows for more complex rule management and for clearer relay of information to the players, both in terms of troubleshooting but teamwork. Other portions of the map have numeric labels.

  The system was inspired by the conversations surrounding a game called Into the Breach, which I haven’t played but really want to. From what I remember, their grid-label system was inspired by chess. In any case, I really liked the idea of having a standardized system through which players could talk to each other about the comings and goings of their individual games. Since each player’s… uh… playthrough is unique, this will help to create more coherence to the personalized stories and facilitate the development of community scenarios and events.

  Next week (or maybe in another three months or so), I will have another, very exciting development for the people following along. I guess I will also have to talk about the combat system at some point. Unless I already did. It’s been almost a year of development, so please forgive me for the overlap at this point.

  Or not.

  I remain not the boss of you.

     

  

< PREVIOUS ENTRY • NEXT ENTRY >

Advice • Fiction • Gaming • General Musings • Reviews