Another Mano a Mano Handbook?

It's starting to look like we might make another Mano a Mano handbook, based on the RPS currently being developed for Squawk 2nd Edition. We are seriously considering working on some system agnostic RPG materials, and having a setting agnostic RPS book would help us separate setting from system more easily.

No 2nd Ed. for TDW

We are NOT planning to do a 2nd Edition of The Dark Woods. We have other projects that have been in the planning stages for years, and we don't have time for doing a 2nd Edition on every project we complete. Unlike the 1st Edition of Squawk, we've never had to publish an Errata for TDW. The things we could improve on The Dark Woods (single-column smaller-cover format, different order of chapters, update to the Squwawk 2nd Edition RPS, etc.) would not actually improve the game play experience.

Pre-Beta: Squawk 2E Character Generator

This is not for testing purposes, we are still a long ways from beta testing. This character generator just for people who want to get a glimpse of what is going on with Squawk 2E: http://gameartsguild.com/SquawkCharacterGenerator/ We will post on this blog when we want beta feedback on this, expect it to change drastically before the beta.

Squawk 2E Update: RPS, part 4

Here's what the core role-playing system for Squawk 2E is looking like so far: 6 core attributes, complimented with over 50 different abilities. The attributes are Coordination (attack bonus,) Power (attack damage,) Toughness (hit points,) and 3 defenses. The three defenses are Agility, Intelligence, and Strength (like in The Dark Woods RPG.)

As alluded to in previous posts, having one Coordination attribute as a universal attack bonus and one Power attribute as the universal damage bonus, is more a matter of making the character point system fool-proof than it is having a descriptive attribute system. The 50+ abilities on the other hand get into a lot more detail and do sometimes modify those bonuses.

We are hoping to have a wiki version of the book up on this site for Beta testing and proof-reading before this summer.

Ulrich's Portfolio is EarthenDust.com

The artist who did the cover art for The Dark Woods and Squawk has his art portfolio at www.EarthenDust.com. He recently graduated from the University of Washington with a Bachelor's degree in visual arts. Ulrich Galbraith has been contributing to Game Arts Guild projects since the 90's (back when the team was called "Galbraith Games.") If you are a fan of The Dark Woods or Squawk you will likely enjoy some of the artwork on his site.

History of our Role-Playing Systems

Our first Role-Playing System (RPS) was Mano a Mano (MaM,) which went through at least several versions over the space of a decade. It was older than Squawk or The Dark Woods, and MaM's development was driven by those games. Frustration from working on one-size-fits-all RPS for so long led to a joke RPS called MiniMaM (not to be confused with the Pygame demo of the same name which we also made,) but that turned into a serious RPS called Scratch. Scratch's simplicity allowed us to finish the 1st Edition of Squawk, as well as put The Dark Woods together. Moving on past Scratch is exactly what is making the 2nd Edition of Squawk take so long to complete.

Squawk 2E: player direction

 We are keeping  the GM around for the Squawk 2nd Edition core rule book (but are seriously considering making a supplement that is player vs. player/team vs. team/no-GM-allowed like The Dark Woods.)  With the 2nd Edition version of "Eye for an Eye" (the campaign that comes with the book,) we are trying to use less random tables and us more player choice for determining how the plot unfolds (almost like a Choose Your Own Adventure book.) This means we are doing a lot of editing for readability (out loud) and otherwise tweaking the campaign to be as GM friendly as possible.

Nefarious lost in the woods

Nefarious will not return to Squawk 2nd Edition because she is exactly the same character as "The Old Crow," a major character in The Dark Woods. We started working on Squawk while we were first developing The Dark Woods, which is why the character was in both settings. We are tweaking and refining the setting in the Squawk 2nd Edition in other ways as well.

Squawk 2E Update: RPS, part 3

Making character development more balanced highly influenced this 2nd version of the Squawk RPG's core game mechanics much earlier on in development than with previous role-playing systems we have worked on. Back to that "size = damage" concept alluded to in our last post, it makes sense from a narrative standpoint to have one weapon (say a katana) do a lot more damage than another weapon (like a ninja throwing star.) In a lot of role-playing systems it's easy to generate characters with character points overly invested on the ninja stars instead of katanas, throwing off the over all balance of the game. In the Squawk RPG 2nd Ed. we've erred on the side of fool-proofing over flexibility; it should be a lot harder to screw up your character by misappropriating CP. (This is to a greater degree than in the "Scratch RPS" that the 1st Ed. and The Dark Woods is based on.)

Squawk 2E Update: RPS, part 2

In the past when we have made role-playing games, we have usually started off with game mechanics in an effort to make a sort of "universal" role-playing system, and then applied that universal system to a specific setting. However this time with the Squawk 2nd Edition, we focused on making sure the setting has come first, and that the rules serve to describe the setting.

For example, in Squawk the main factor that determines how much damage a character does is the size of his species (because we are talking about intelligent dinosaurs here.) In the Squawk 2E RPS rules the biggest factor for character damage in indeed the size of his species (even though this might not make sense in a typical fantasy RPG setting for example where all the PC races are some variation of hominid.)

Squawk 2E Update: RPS

With the Squawk 2nd Edition, we've decided on a role-playing system that is more visceral than Scratch. (It is almost like a highly simplified updated version of Mano a Mano heavily influenced by Scratch.) Unfortunately this will add at least months to Squawk 2E development, and we'll be lucky to have the game done this year. We will post here on the blog as we are looking for proof readers and play testers.

TDW Reference Document

We want as many people playing The Dark Woods Role-Playing Game as possible, so we have put enough of The Dark Woods up on our content wiki so that anyone can play the game. We still want you to buy The Dark Woods to support our efforts, but even if you don't we still want you the play The Dark Woods. Also this wiki version should be a handy resource even for those who normally use the paper book, even though it doesn't have all the content the book and PDF does.