Covenant Update for October 23, 2023

Welcome to this week’s free post for Covenant!

As you might have noticed, we’ve moved our weekly free posts to our existing devblog here on WordPress. We hadn’t been using our devblog for anything else and, really, any public information we have on the game belongs here. So let’s get started.

We had a good playtest on Sunday. As a recap, our four-armed thk’kok swordsman was part of a two-man team rescuing acoes from a secret laboratory. Two of those acoes were PCs: Tweak, a wolf-like anthropological aco from a discontinued line, and Cozen, an executive assistant model with a secret past. They managed to escape and were about to board their ship when four armored cars entered the spaceport firing their guns and their ship took off without them.

That’s where we left off last week.

The FM had planned for the PCs either to fight the soldiers – who were corporate security for Rekana Industries, the company that owned the lab – or lead them on a chase through the city. Instead, the players saw that they were outgunned – only one of them had a gun – and instead decided to do some guerrilla warfare. They unhooked the fuel line on their car and then, when the soldiers got close, Tweak threw a laser cutter into the pool of fuel, burning the soldiers alive.

They’d hoped to hide in the spaceport’s nearby berths and find another ship, but they were unable to. The armored cars then dismounted more soldiers, including an eight-foot-tall risu named Kem. Kem was a cruel guard up at the laboratory whom Tweak and Cozen had tangled with before, and they had the broken bones to show for it. There was no way he was going to show them mercy.

There was another row of spaceship berths, and they decided to make a run across a row of blacktop absolutely devoid of cover to see to see if they could get find a ship there. Tweak threw a Molotov at Kem, and their sniper Dun the gun fired at him, too. Both hit, but they didn’t take him down.

Kem and the soldiers were about to open fire when an ancient ship that looked like a cross between a Veritech and an A-10 Thunderbolt II buzzed the landing field at supersonic speed. They managed to destroy two of the armored cars and make Kem and the soldiers dive to the ground. The other two cars survived, though, and they raised their guns to deal with this new intruder.

And that’s where we left Sunday’s game.

What was notable about this game, at least from the Force Majeure’s perspective, was how much work there was to be done. The FM had to introduce two new PCs who were flying the ship that strafed the armored cars, so he was constantly going back and forth between the main Discord chat where the game was and the private chat set up to introduce the two players. As such, he ditched a lot of more advanced rules and even let the players automatically succeed at some bids just to reduce his workload. This indicates that the rules should be further simplified.

One of the new players, who is also running an aco, also said that they didn’t understand the game’s bidding system, despite getting a cheat sheet and having the basics explained to them. Of course, they’ll be playing several experienced players, including two of the game’s creators, and we’re pretty good at explaining the game’s systems.

Not everyone is going to be able to play with the game’s creators or with experienced players, though. It makes us wonder if we shouldn’t simplify the game or at least try to explain its rules better.

That’s it for now, though. We’ll have another post for our patrons this Friday at the game’s Patreon, so if you want to know more about the game – including getting early access to game material – then think about supporting us.

In any case, we’ll talk to you again on Monday!