Author’s Diary for December 11, 2020

(Don’t forget to contribute to our Patreon campaign or join us on the Radio Free Covenant Discord server! Don’t forget to tune in to the Radio Free Covenant podcast every Saturday at 4 p.m. Eastern (1 p.m. Pacific) on our Twitch page and get a summary of the game rules!)

Featured Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

We’ve finished the last three chapters in Covenant’s playtest rules and have started the item creation rules! Read below the fold for more.

Here’s what we want to talk about this week:

• The chapters that we finished this week
• Our progress on Covenant’s playtest rules
• How to become a playtester

WHAT WE DID THIS WEEK

Here are the three chapters that we finished this week:

• Dirty Tricks: All the underhanded methods and tactics that your character has, including:
  • Deceiving Characters: Hiding from and fast-talking other characters, disguising yourself and items, and feinting opponents
  • Undermining Characters: Taunting and intimidating characters
  • Damaging and Degrading Items: Sabotaging items; setting and disarming bombs, traps, and alarms; and hacking computers
• Building and Fixing Items: Repairing and upgrading items and removing flaws and conditions from items
• Using Medicine: Healing characters and removing conditions from them

We also started the item creation rules. This is divided into rules for designing weapons, armor, and “gear”, or miscellaneous items. We’ve finished the rules for designing weapons and have started the rules for designing weapons.

OUR PROGRESS ON COVENANT’S PLAYTEST RULES

When we last talked to you, we’d finished 120 pages. Tonight, we got that up to 165.

We have finished all of the chapters in the main section of the rulebook. These include the basic rules of play and all the rules for performing different bids under different circumstances.

All we have to write now are the appendices at the back of the book. These appendices will probably include:

• The item creation rules
• A master list of predesigned items
• An alphabetical list of traits
• An alphabetical list of conditions
• An alphabetical list of abilities
• A master list of advantages and disadvantages

Luckily, the item creation rules are probably the longest and most complicated of these appendices. The others, as you can see, are just lists, which should be relatively quick to write.

We are going to do our damnedest to get the item creation rules done this weekend. If they aren’t, then they’ll definitely be done some time next week. We expect to need two weeks for the rest of the appendices, which means we should have the whole rulebook done somewhere around Christmas. That will give us two whole weeks to edit and polish everything and improve the layout before distributing Covenant’s rules to our playtesters on Feb. 28, 2021.

BECOMING A PLAYTESTER

Do you want to become a playtester? Just drop us a line at radiofreecovenant@gmail.com, and we’ll put you on the list when the rules are finished at the end of February.

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That’s about for now. Talk to you next week!