This is a fully playable version of the game! And unllike the vast ocean of silence for the past couple months, I'll be posting updates to the doc every week, slowly filling in the last remaining mechanics, lore, and quite a few monsters. Don't be concerned over the lack of images or fancy formatting, right now we've got to get all the text ironed out before I can concern myself about that. Once that's stable enough we'll import this baby to indesign and begin the prettifying process.
The scope of the update was quite large, so I'm sure there are plenty of small mistakes and confusing language that I've missed. You can let me know about any you find either by messaging me or by joining our Discord! I may have been silent on Kickstarter but I'm pretty dang active there.
Whining and Moaning
So despite me trying to play this off with a silly self-deprecating title, the past couple months have been rough. Part of this has been because of my foolish desire to have the game pdf be ready for playtesting before I posted any updates, but also I've been recovering from some rather heavy emotional stuff.
My dad, Christopher Kitts, went into surgery for prostate cancer after the kickstarter ended. They removed his prostate, but it has spread to other areas. Things aren't looking the best for him, last I heard the average lifespan of someone at this stage is five years. Despite this he's relentlessly optimistic, and he's been working relentlessly to improve his diet and exercise so that things don't get worse. What can I say, I love him.
Of course around that time I had some crazy confusing relationship stuff happen, and nearly lost a friend group. I don't need to get into that mess, but man did that not help the situation. These things didn't end up breaking me, but it took a while to recover from them.
Speaking of things that did break me however...
It's this picture again!
I broke my right arm about a month ago, a radial head fracture they call it, while performing box jumps at the gym. The stackable "boxes" I was jumping on weren't as stable as I thought and collapsed underneath me.
Now, I am a 6'6" man, a veritable meat tower, and let me tell you, that is a long way down even when you're not proving man was not meant to fly. I fell back on tile floor, and what happened next was not too surprising. Honestly could have been worse. But it made it damn near impossible to efficiently type (among many other things) for a couple weeks.
This post won't age poorly at all
I'm fairly recovered now, though it still hurts on occasion and I still don't have full range of motion. You certainly learn things about your body when parts of it cease to work.
Honestly, despite the physical injuries, I still can't help but feel a bit guilty. "Gettin' real sad" isn't exactly the greatest feeling excuse for a delay. But I sought some help and am much more enthused to get back into the thick of things. Part of the reason I'm doing weekly updates now is just to keep up that excitement, something that our graphic designer Alex suggested and that I'm grateful for.
Anyway, thanks for listening. Sorry if this ended up causing some delays, but nothing changes the fact that we're making the best game we can for you guys. Even if it is about freaky monster murder.
Happy Death Day!
almost 5 years ago
– Tue, Jul 23, 2019 at 10:34:23 PM
Hey everyone! (If you haven't seen Happy Death Day, it's a lighthearted horror movie with a groundhog's day like twist. It's fun!)
I'm nearing finishing updating the rulebook, but got a bit carried away with adding finishing touches on things. By the time the rulebook comes out, it should be fully playable for your home games, but it will be missing lore and stat blocks for a few creatures.
It's my birthday today! Whee. And as a celebration of my oncoming death, why not talk about death in Children of the Beast? It's weird, it's fun, and should lead to some interesting stories! Here's basically a clean rip from the draft rulebook on how death works, along with the Space Between Spaces, the Drift:
-Death & the Drift-
Death is never the end for a hunter. Upon dying, a hunter's spirit is dragged to a primordial place known as the Drift. Here their spirit will linger for a time, subject to the whims of a dream-like, folding reality. Eventually they will return to their body, waking in a moment of their past prior to their demise.
This happens every time a hunter dies, creating a sort of perpetual life where death only brings you back to a time before your mortal mistakes. Some hunters use this to their advantage, learning of future events before killing themselves. After all, in an existence where no mistake cannot be undone, what is stopping you from achieving everything you could ever want?
To the Warrens and the Outer Worlds that compose them, such recklessness is encouraged. The weak-minded will learn their lesson soon enough.
This section details the immaterial nature of death, and a few details about exploring the Space Between Spaces, the Drift itself. If you want more details on the nature of the Drift, check its section within the Lore of the Warrens.
So You’ve Died
Don’t worry, dying happens to the best of us.
If you ever die, your spirit will be dragged to the Drift. You may end up having to explore the Drift, a sort of hunter afterlife. It’s a strange place, but so long as you’re careful nothing too terrible should happen. After a time, which is often instantaneous, you will return to the living world, waking where you last rested.
You might notice some minor changes when you return. Someone’s hair might be different, or your best friend may not recognize you anymore. But don’t worry, everything always changes, maybe it’s just you that changed?
Death can happen again and again, again and again. To a hunter, death is merely an obstacle on your road to success, and plenty have died countless times.
But don’t try to die too often. Just in case, you know?
Blood Bonding
If you die, what happens to your party members? Don’t worry, hunters that are close to one another become what we call “blood bonded”, which means their spirits are in sync with yours.
Upon your death, your party members will get a powerful calling, encouraging them to join you in the Drift. If they follow the urge, they will kill themselves and join you in the Drift. Now wherever you wake, it will be together with your friends, with all the memories of what happened prior to your death. The calling usually lasts about 15 minutes, getting more intense until it fades away entirely.
And don’t worry if a party member you don’t like dies. You can simply not answer the call, and then they will die normally, never to be seen again.
What if you die and your friends don’t answer the call? Well I suppose you will still wake with your friends, but those that did not answer will not remember your death. I suggest finding a new hunting party at this point, as they may no longer be trustworthy.
In some… unfortunate circumstances an ally may not find themselves blood bonded with you when they die, meaning you will never get the calling. This is rare, but happens for no apparent reason, so don’t beat yourself up about it if it happens. (Your Judge will decide if this ever happens)
Consequences of the Drift (SECRET)
The Drift may seem like it is reviving your hunters, but it is not. Their bodies are broken, husks to be cast aside. The Drift is actually a connection point for a multiverse of infinite timelines, each one slightly different than the last. When your hunters die, the Drift finds compatible essences of dreaming hunters, other versions of them in a similar timeline, and shunts their consciousnesses into their bodies, overwriting the old minds with your hunters’ new ones. This is the only true death for a hunter, having your consciousness eradicated, and as a result some hunters keep themselves awake with drugs so they never have to sleep again.
Because there is a timeline shift, elements of the world and decisions your hunters have made could be found to be altered. It is often subtle at first, noticing miscolored hair or a slightly different inventory, but they can be drastic. Your hunters could wake up trapped in an ancient prison cell, or be burdened with an unfair debt from a scrupulous noble. Have fun with it, make death a time for interesting story moments.
Oh, and it is important to note that technically, items gained after your hunters last rest will be lost (though they could be gained again if they woke up in a similar timeline). However, no one will come knock your door down if you skip this minor bit of bookkeeping.
The Drift can also change your hunters physically from having their essences exposed to the Drift.
The first time a hunter dies, they will actually see an improvement, gaining a single step in both reflexes and resolve.
After that, every time your hunters die in a new story arc, or three times in the same story arc, they will gain a wild corruption level. They will not gain a wild corruption level if it will exceed their humanity level.
But that’s the basic stuff. Have some fun giving your hunters light mutations if they die too often. Here are a few examples:
Example Drift Mutations
(Note: Tables do not format well on kickstarter)
1 - You feel like your guts are writhing like worms
2 - Fine, needle-like hairs have grown across your fingertips
3 - Hair is now growing in odd places
4 - Your groin is now upside-down. Huh
5 - You’ve been noticing threadlike parasites growing from your pimples
6 - You can’t help but snarl as you eat, devouring food with obvious relish
7 - Your eyes have gone black
8 - Colors seem so much brighter and vivid to you. It’s nauseating
9 - Your skin is leaking a fetid, but oddly fragrant, liquid
10 - Eyes have grown on your hands. You cannot see from them, and yet they watch
Exploring the Drift (SECRET)
Exploring the Drift is not required to play Children of the Beast, in fact most hunters can't manifest in it physically. But if you do, it is a place for alternative adventures in a dream-like world, and you can choose for your hunters to explore it as much as you like. While in the Drift, your hunters manifest as projections of their spiritual essence, which means although they will have the same stats, skills, and bodies, no item carries over (not even a scrap of cloth). Your hunters will have to scavenge what strange supplies they can, and interact with the warping life that exists there.
You can also enter the Drift through your dreams when resting. Sometimes your connection with the Drift is light, giving you visions of a wandering spirit’s memories or a unique place of the world. The Drift is a lower layer of reality, connected with all aspects of the Warrens, so the visions it can show you are nearly limitless. The Elder Deities speak with their followers through their dreams, and it is thought that the Drift is the means by which they do so. But other times when dreaming you will project yourself directly into the Drift, able to explore it as if you died.
There are many ways to leave the Drift. Dying again is the main one, but sometimes just the passage of time will bring you back. Characters do not get tired in the Drift, but they can choose to rest. However, resting simply brings them to new bodies in the Warrens, but increases the chance they can continue exploring the Drift in their dreams.
If your hunters manage to change pieces of the Drift, it can even change aspects of the Warrens back home. Sometimes it will be obvious, like freeing a spirit in the Drift that was haunting a piece of the Warrens. But other times it will seem rather nonsensical. Like destroying a massive plant thing in the Drift causing a god to spew spiders in the Warrens. Use this to your advantage to create interesting consequences for adventuring within the Drift.
Keep in mind that being able to actually explore the Drift is a rare gift, with elder hunters referring to those with it as “Voyagers”. Changing things within the Drift has potentially dire consequences, including returning to bodies that aren’t your own.
If you would like your hunters to explore the Drift, it is highly recommended you read its lore section.
Judge Advice for using the Drift (SECRET)
Death is always a tricky thing in roleplaying games, and in Children of the Beast death is relatively common. As a result the game is designed with occasional death in mind, with increasing consequences the more often you die. Although we have our own vision for how death should be handled in the game, if your group wants to change the consequences to be milder or harsher the choice is ultimately up to you.
We view death as an opportunity for interesting story moments, so try to have some fun with how the world changes upon returning from the Drift. Just be sure to be clear that any changes to the world they notice are unusual, and likely due to the Drift. There are a lot of potentially confusing aspects to the Warrens, and the mechanics of the Drift doesn’t need to be one of them.
Stories of death do not even have to concern your hunters directly. Every hunter experiences the drift, so how have some NPCs reacted to their odd fate? Do they feel frightened, cursed, or grateful?
Nonetheless, a lot of people don’t want death to be potentially robbed of all meaning. If you do not want to try this alternative to character death, you can have blood bonding always fail, so no one can ever join each other in the Drift.
Have fun, and I look forward to posting the finished draft!
We're Back! (A Dinosaur Story)
almost 5 years ago
– Mon, Jul 15, 2019 at 04:19:10 PM
Hey everyone, glad to talk to you again! (And yes, you better believe I'm going to reference 20+ year old dinosaur and monster movies)
After a week of hibernation, I am ready to get back in the saddle! Here are our plans going forward, albeit with a bit of a text wall.
The App
First off, a bit of clarification. Jake and Alex, our two other members, primarily work on the app. Alex occasionally helps out with graphic design for non-app stuff too, but for the most part that work goes to me until he’s done with app pages.
Until then, I’ll let you know if there’s any major updates on the app front. Right now they’re working on app pages for interacting with items: Using them, dropping them, picking them up, that sort of boring but necessary thing. It includes such riveting debates as how in-depth we should make the in-app “floor” where dropped items go. At one point we were thinking we could have multiple customizable floors where every dropped item could have a unique location it belonged to. But simplicity is often better, so we’re opting to go with making just one dropped item floor for each campaign. Like I said, riveting stuff.
Reorganizing the Rulebook
As for my priorities, I’m currently reorganizing the rulebook. We had known this before, but it had become very apparent over the course of the campaign that learning the game with the rulebook in its current state is a bit of a mess. For one, no creature stats or corrupted mutations are currently in there, and it’s also a wilderness of case numbers and hyperlinks that were designed to be an outline for our wiki-style rules reference in the app. At best, it’s for people who already know how to play the game. The table of contents has already been updated, so you can see an outline of the new organization in the rulebook. I’m pretty happy with how it’s turning out!
Second, we’ve also heard that the rulebook been failing to load for some people. Unfortunately google docs simply doesn’t handle large documents well, so we’re going to split up the doc into multiple files hoping that at least alleviates some of the problem. In the end though, the game is going to be formatted into a nice pdf with inDesign, so unless there are some serious problems, we’re not going to put excessive effort into making sure the google doc works with everyone. If by the time we’ve finished the doc you’re still having trouble opening it, just message me and maybe we can figure something out.
I’m aiming to get this done by the end of the week, along with the postings of all the previously unshown mechanics like bonesmithing and beast taming. It will undoubtedly require some polish afterwards, but everything’s being done one step at a time. Lore work will soon come after this is done.
This is ultimately servicing the goal of getting the full game playable for you guys as quickly as possible. We’re still at a stage where feedback can help us polish the game, and believe me when I say that my top priority is making a fun, thematic game that all of you can enjoy.
Creature Stat Blocks
Finally, the other work I need to get done is creating stat blocks for our creatures. Some of the later game creatures are still being tested, so you likely won’t see them for a bit, but we have plenty of early to mid-game creatures that I’m ready to transfer over from my mess of excel documents and horrific scrawlings. I'm not sure whether I'll be able to get them done this week, but we'll see how things go.
Once these stat blocks start getting done, I wanted to do a fun thing where we hold monster designing streams with the community! None of my horrors can surely match the collective id of a hundred monster enthusiasts. I don’t know if any of these will make it into the game book, but they should be fully playable! And hey, in the end it should just be fun. 😉
Streaming
We are also continuing our gameplay streams, but now at an earlier time in the day. Now the streams will be Wednesdays at 6 pm Pacific on our Twitch channel https://www.twitch.tv/childrenofthebeast
Come join us!
And that’s all for today folks. Have a great week!
WE DID IT! 27K! And a Dragon Surprise...
almost 5 years ago
– Fri, Jul 05, 2019 at 10:43:13 PM
Oh my word, this has been a great run hunters. This final day has been a crazy rollercoaster.
We may not have reached the Fireblight Drake, but I have a wonderful surprise. I've been talking with our 5K ULDABEAST backer and they said that if we don't reach it by $500, they want to give up their create-a-monster privilege to unlock the Locked City. So thank their anonymous hide everyone, the Fireblight Drake is ours!
After all this, I'm going to hibernate for a few days. But so you guys know our plans going forward, we're going to open up the campaign to slacker backers to potentially fund even more stuff. We'll make the first one easier once again because of our outrageous 5k backer. We've got 3 more Courrupted Strains we'd LOVE to fit into the base game.
Once I get back, it's immediately to work on adventure and rulebook stuff. We'll update you all as we go, there's no reason to hold it all in until the end.
I'll leave you guys with this teaser image, and then I'm out! Have a great weekend everybody!
Barrow Mire Unlocked! Scion and the Locked City next...
almost 5 years ago
– Thu, Jul 04, 2019 at 07:33:19 PM
We did it everyone! We reached enough funding to put the Barrow Mire and that tongue demon of a Babblefish into the game!
Let's look at the next stretch goals...
$25,000 Stretch Goal: The Scion Strain
The Scion is a strain of Corruption that allows you to harness your inner mental and physical energy into Ki. As your corruption grows, the amount of Ki you produce increases until eventually you can hyper-accelerate your speed to dodge attacks or reflect projectiles back to the launcher's face.
You surpass even the greatest martial artists at the Paragon tier, where you can now charge Ki until reaching a "Heightened State". While in this state, you float above the ground and can unleash your stored energy as elemental bursts. You can even change what element you use, adapting to the creatures and challenges you face.
But all pales before the Ascendant tier. With enough charged Ki, you can enter the "Apotheosis" state, with power rivaling a god. While your energy remains stable, you are able to teleport instantaneously to any location, your body performs actions at insane speeds, and your elemental bursts now explode in a massive area upon reaching their target.
$27,500 Stretch Goal: The Locked City Expansion
The world is permeated with unfathomably deep pits collectively known as The Abyss. Many have tried to find their bottom, but find that as they journey the pits get progressively colder with depth, so cold even the air begins to freeze into chunks of ice. Many assume this is how the Abyss continues, getting colder and colder until not a remnant bit of heat remains.
But it is a lie. The few that have made it past the frozen barrier of the Abyss found a world locked in time, protected by a great, unwilling guardian.
The Locked City is a civilization of heretics who defied the will of a world beyond ours. Now its populace of giants is trapped in a snapshot, frozen in the same place they were thousands of years ago. If your hunters can discover the nature of their curse, you may be able to free them, or manipulate the time curse for your own gain.
Our artist for the Locked City was unfortunately delayed, so instead here's some in-progress artwork for the Rahlian Underbelly!
Locked City Hunt - The Fireblight Drake
This expansion contains multiple variations of the Fireblight Drake, a great beast that could effectively be called a dragon in our own world.
Creatures within the Warrens naturally trust sources of light, which the Fireblight Drake eagerly abuses as the bio-luminescent acid it cultivates glows within its stomach. Highly intelligent, many Drakes can even instinctively channel the Occult to power forms of magic. One of the most powerful varieties of creatures, some worship them with the hope of being spared from their wrath. But there is always something bigger, as even the Drakes developed eye-like adaptations on their wings to scare off their own potential predators.
The first variety included is the Non-Corrupted Fireblight Drake, a lategame creature that will plague your adventures as you explore the Warrens. You will have to run and hide from its flyby sprays of glowing acid until you have the strength to defeat it.
The second variety is Hatchling Drakes, the spawn of the great beasts that are too young to know better if a hunter decides to raise one. Still rather violent creatures, they are quick to learn and will abuse any means they can to find additional food.
Literally our largest creature ever, this piece took three full desks worth of paper stitched together to fully draw.
The final variety is the Corrupted Guardian, the Drake that protects the Locked City.
Ten times the size of a typical Fireblight Drake, exploration of the Locked City will be a paranoid rush from building to building, trying to avoid the guardian's gaze. If a normal Drake is a lategame creature, the Corrupted Guardian is an order of magnitude beyond that. Simple tactics will not work here. This ultimate hunt will be a prolonged effort of discovery, close escapes, and minor victories until eventually the beast might hope to be felled.
Like the Sappy People We Are, Thank You Again
We really love working on this game, and for a while there I wasn't sure if we'd even be able to show these stretch goals. Thank you all so much.
