Update for the Week of October 29, 2021

(Covenant’s playtest rules are out! Download a copy now and tell us what you think! If you like what you see, think about becoming a patron!)

Featured Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

We held our fifth playtesting session and started writing up the domain summary for the Archimedean Confederation! Find out more below the fold.

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

• The results of our fifth playtesting session
• The Archimedean Confederation
• The game mechanic of the week, prompts
• How to become a playtester

PLAYTESTING

We held our fifth second playtesting session on Sunday! The PCs converged to the Flameout Tavern, where they would hopefully get into a bar fight to get the party together (hasn’t happened yet).

We didn’t do anything with the rules this session. It was another pure roleplaying session. The players seem happy and engaged, though, and the storyteller has been ceding more and more story control to them as the game goes on. For instance, the Flameout is at the entrance of a valka hide, so we had the person who designed the valka species describe it.

We should get around to a good old-fashioned tavern fight to get everyone acquainted at our next session. This will be the first real test of the fighting rules. We’ll let you know how it goes next Friday.

ARCHIMEDEAN CONFEDERATION

We started writing up the Archimedean Confederation’s summary this week. We also finished its history today, from Slice o’Heaven’s scientists and engineers being driven from the Terran Federation, to these “founders” creating the company-states, to the indigenous worlds in the Archimedea Confederation trying to fight back.

Next section is a summary of the company-states. We’ll start work on that this weekend.

We’ll release Covenant’s domain summaries to the public when we finish all of them. However, if you become a patron, then we’ll send each one to you as we finish it!

GAME MECHANIC OF THE WEEK: PROMPTS

Players who want more tokens and, thus, more control over the story in Covenant can do so with prompts. These give you tokens in exchange for neutral or negative effects on your character.

To use prompts:

1. Describe the prompt that you want to use and its effects.
2. Have your character take the consequences of that prompt.
3. After the prompt is resolved, your character gains 1 token.

Prompts can include:

• Your character likes another character towards whom xi is supposed to be neutral or hostile.
• Your character dislikes or hates another character towards whom xi is supposed to be neutral or friendly.
• Your character knows another character or place that xi is supposed to not know.
• Your character fails an important bid that has either immediate or far-reaching consequences (EXAMPLE: letting another character die, losing a fight, letting a bomb explode).
• Your side loses a scene and must retreat, be captured, or suffer other consequences. Everyone on your side must agree to using this prompt and gains 1 token from it.

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