Hey everyone!

We’re putting out the last two scenarios in the Lockdown arc, as well as the last two Playable Characters in the “core” box: Father Cosmos and High-Rise. Father Cosmos manifests energy into shapes with physical form, enhancing his allies and hindering his foes. High-Rise can change sizes to maximize her damage to enemies while minimizing adverse effects to herself. These characters are fairly high-complexity, but if you have a player on your team that enjoys experimenting with inter-dependent effects (or you are that player on your team), they can really rocket your team to victory!

With the Lockdown arc out in the wild, we wanted to give you all the opportunity to request what arc we put out next! We have 6 total co-op arcs, although two of those did not see any playtesting, as there were other focuses during active development. Whatever Co-op arc is chosen will also dictate which Threats are shown next, as well as the Environment deck that is associated with the arc. The core premise of each of the remaining arcs’ settings were born from the question “What if X villain had actually succeeded in their goals, to one degree or another?”, so each setting definitely leans way in to a specific theme. We hoped that this would allow players to jump right in without requiring too many panels of introduction in the scenario books, and that future expansions would give us more leeway on longer-form theme-building and setting descriptions.

All that being said: Here are your choices for the next co-op arc to release!
1) Despair: A setting where a nefarious cult has succeeded in summoning their dread god from an otherworldly realm, bringing despondency to the world and forcing world leaders to acquiesce to the demands of this cult and its terrible deity. Threats include: Ennui, Dreadlord, Chosen of Despair, The Ancient Despair.
2) Outbreak: A setting wherein a Virulent plague has run its course unabated, morphing all humans into a beast-like form and forcing most to lose their higher-level cognition. Threats include: Plague Beast, Plague King, and Vector.
3) Antibodies: A setting where everything is normal. Nothing at all is out of the ordinary. Why ever would you ask what’s wrong with this world? You must not be from around here, let me help you get settled in. Threats include: Muscle, Marionette, Fleshpit, Bodybuilder.

We’ll close out voting on Sunday August 23, to give us time to write up an introductory post about the winning setting.

We are continuing our studies into Black Lives Matter with Ibram X. Kendi’s How to be an Antiracist:

Definitions anchor us in principles. This is not a light point: If we don’t do the basic work of defining the type of people we want to be in language that is stable and consistent, we can’t work toward stable, consistent goals. Some of my most consequential steps towards being an antiracist have been the moments when I arrived at basic definitions. To be an antiracist is to set lucid definitions of racism/antiracism, racist/antiracist policies, racist/antiracist ideas, racist/antiracist people. To be a racist is to constantly redefine racist in a way that exonerates one’s changing policies, ideas, and personhood.

So let’s set some definitions. What is racism? Racism is a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities. Okay, so what are racist policies and ideas? We have to define them separately to understand why they are married and why they interact so well together. In fact, let’s take one step back and consider the definition of another important phrase: racial inequity.

Racial inequity is when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing. Here’s an example of racial inequity: 71 percent of White families lived in owner-occupied homes in 2014, compared to 45 percent of Latinx families and 41 percent of Black families. Racial equity is when two or more racial groups are standing on relatively equal footing. An example of racial equity would be if there were relatively equitable percentages of all three racial groups living in owner-occupied homes in the forties, seventies, or, better, nineties.

A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups. An antiracist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups. By policy, I mean written and unwritten laws, rules, procedures, processes, regulations, and guidelines that govern people. There is no such thing as a nonracist or race-neutral policy. Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or racial equity between racial groups.

Ibram X. Kendi “How to be an Antiracist”

As before, the most up to date Print and Play materials are in the Dropbox, and the Tabletop Simulator mod should be up to date as well. Thanks to darleth on Steam for helping us troubleshoot the mod and letting us know when we’ve misconfigured things! =]

–Smith at the Forge

The official announcement has gone out from our publisher, and it’s incredibly exciting, and in all honesty, a little surreal. The impostor syndrome hits with some regularity, but this is real, this is happening, and we couldn’t be more proud!

We spent several days in town with GTG at the end of June, and had incredibly good progress. We were able to play through the entire roster of characters – including the core box characters two and three times each in some cases – with shining feedback in almost every case. Very little of the core roster changed, with most changes coming in small tweaks to the dice for some abilities that needed some balance help one way or another. We played through multiple scenario matches, some of which went over excellently, some that need another nudge in a different direction, and others that just need some more playtests to find a little more balance.

Cooperative play underwent a fairly major change involving the timing of when adversaries act in relation to the players’ characters. Having done most of our testing with 2-4 characters, we were a little floored when we sat down and they asked us if we could all play a six-player game. A good number of hours later, we modified how adversaries take actions in order to reduce the overhead of managing a target-rich environment, and played a setup that scales even better from 2-6 players than we thought possible.

Before we went to St. Louis, we had been playing with a new concept to help track the victory state of the game, as well as giving characters some way of feeling re-invigorated after they had been Knocked Down. We introduced a Trophy system where each character has a unique Trophy card with distinctive art, placed in a very specific area of the character’s board. When the character is knocked down, they would hand their trophy to the opposing team, revealing their Rally ability on their board. The character would therefore have a new, more desperate, enraged, or determined portrait that reflects their dire circumstances, as well as access to their new ability that will help them regain their footing and come back swinging, even in the late-game stages of a match. The opponents gain a clear, physical representation of how close they are to victory, as all matches’ win conditions are now centered around Trophies, and how they can be acquired. When we introduced this new addition to the system, it seemed to flow well and give players more motivation, as the victory tracking was no longer abstract tallies but a personal, characteristic piece of their chosen character.

Since our last post, we have made one further shift in the dice. No one liked the blanks on the d12s. Players enjoyed being able to take matters into their own hands and maximize their possibility of success, and having an absolute failure with no other effect wasn’t interesting, especially in the context of our largest die class. We chose to change the three blank faces to one hit alongside two conditional vitals, one each for Support and Opportunity. We also switched out a Hit face on the d4 for an opportunity, making the d4 the least optimal die, but easy to tack onto other rolls for an extra edge.

Also, we were formed one year ago today, so that’s exciting! We’ve had a roller coaster of a year, and are only further looking forward to what the future holds for Prime War and Lore Forge Games!

A hearty greeting to all who have found us because of Prime War!

We are very excited for all of you to experience this game, and can’t wait until we get to show you the fruits of all of our hard work.

Keep an eye out for previews and announcements here, as well as from our publisher Greater Than Games!