Update for the Week of August 6, 2021

Covenant Playtest Rules:

• Basic rulebook: tinyurl.com/covenant-playtest-rules
• Quickstart Rules: tinyurl.com/covenant-quickstart-rules
• Cheat Sheet: tinyurl.com/covenant-cheat-sheet

Radio Free Covenant Discord Server: https://tinyurl.com/radio-free-covenant-discord

Radio Free Covenant Twitch Channel: https://twitch.tv/radiofreecovenant 

Featured Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

We’ve gotten some more work done on the Archimedean Confederation! Find out more below the fold!

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

• The Archimedean Confederation
• The game mechanic of the week, bids
• How to become a playtester

ARCHIMEDEAN CONFEDERATION

Gonna be a short one this week. Sean started a new job on Monday, and he’s tired.

We’re still working on the Archimedean Confederation. Here’s what we worked on this week:

• The foreign policy aims of the company-states and indigenous states
• The corporate, “happy fascist” nature of company-state culture
• Company-state pop culture, which they sell outside the Archimedean Confederation and which is similar to K-pop in look and how it recruits talent
• A period called “the Winnowing”, when the Archimedean Confederation’s indigenous peoples destroyed the weaker company-states and turned the stronger ones into what they are today
• The company-states’ judicial system
• A social credit system for the company-states, which we may or may not use (the company states are already dystopian enough)
• Slavery and piracy in the Archimedean Confederation
• How the company-states get around the Covenant’s rules against using slave labor by using prison labor from the Terran Federation, peasants and serfs from the Old Empire, and contractors

We’ll make all these domain summaries in Covenant available to the public when we’re done. However, patrons can read them as we finish them for the low price of $1 a month (hint hint).

GAME MECHANIC OF THE WEEK: BIDS

Last week, we talked about how you use your character’s discipline to track xir expendable resources and to accomplish tasks. You accomplish those tasks by spending this discipline on bids.

In order for your character to succeed at a task, your bid must be:

• Greater than a numerical difficulty for tasks against the environment (EXAMPLE: moving, surviving a fall, climbing a surface, jumping over a crevice)
• Greater than another character’s bid (EXAMPLE: trying to hit another character with an attack, trying to find a hidden character, trying to pick a lock or hack a computer made by another character)

Of course, you don’t have to make bids for everything that your character does. The Force Majeure (FM) can handwave your character’s actions, which means they automatically succeed if:

• Your character is capable of doing it.
• Your character has the equipment and information that xi needed to perform the action.
• The other characters don’t try to alter or stop your character’s action.
• Nothing in the environment tries to alter or stop your character’s action.
• The FM doesn’t object to your character’s action.
• Your character’s action advances the plot.

BECOMING A PLAYTESTER

Have you downloaded Covenant’s playtest rules yet? Did we mention that they’re free? If not, do it now! They’re free! All we ask is that you tell us what you think about them. You can send your feedback in two ways:

• Email us at radiofreecovenant@gmail.com
• Join our Discord server

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