(Don’t forget to tune in to the latest episode of the Radio Free Covenant podcast!) We said last time that we would talk about the types of damage that your character can face in Covenant. Let’s do that now.Your character’s armor has a rating just like their weapons. If they are hit by a weapon […]
Tag Archives: games
Radio Free Covenant: Episode 2 – Fascism and Noodles
So, we’re trying a shorter format that we hope we can get out on a more regular basis. I hope you bear with us through our birthing pangs. For now, join Sean and Sazzy as they talk about: Why fascism and autocracy may be the inevitable outcome of our current politics and economics Why it’s […]
Episode 2 Is In the Can!
Sean and Sazzy’s schedules kept falling out of sync this week. The planets finally lined up tonight, though, and we finally wrapped up recording today. Expect Episode 2 – and our discussion of how to depict fascism and autocracy in an RPG like Covenant – to drop on Tuesday.
Covenant Game Design: Areas and Tactical Movement
(Don’t forget to tune in to the latest episode of the Radio Free Covenant podcast!) Last week, we promised that we’d talk about how Covenant handles tactical movement during scenes. Let’s do that now. Before we start, though, let’s narrow down our subject. When I say “tactical movement”, I mean the kind of character movement […]
More on Failing Forward
We’ve talked about Covenant‘s fail forward mechanics, but I want to touch on something more fundamental here: how the Force Majeure (FM) can prevent failed bids from grinding their games to a halt. This was inspired by a post on the RPGdesign subreddit from xxXKurtMuscleXxx entitled: “A new (?) kind of social mechanic“. The rule […]
Episode 2 Is In Progress
Sean and Sazzy just finished recording the first half of Episode 2 tonight. We talked about how to portray the Covenant’s rivals in the game. These rivals are all either autocratic or fascistic, but there are reasons why they’re autocratic and fascistic, and we want to portray them in as empathetic a light as possible. […]
Covenant Game Design: Size
(Don’t forget to tune in to the latest episode of the Radio Free Covenant podcast!) Covenant is filled with sapient species of wildly different sizes, from tiny acoes to hulking valka Matriarchs. We handle that by assigning everything – people, creatures, even gear and vehicles – a numerical size based on their longest dimension. See […]
Covenant Game Design: Story Control
(Don’t forget to tune in to the latest episode of the Radio Free Covenant podcast!) Last week, we talked about how a character can fail forward in Covenant – that is, how they can succeed with consequences or fail with benefits. Failing forward is one kind of story control in Covenant, but not the only […]
Covenant Game Design: Failing Forward
(Don’t forget to tune in to the latest episode of the Radio Free Covenant podcast!) Bids aren’t simple pass/fail affairs in Covenant. Instead, it follows the recent roleplaying trend of allowing characters to fail forward – that is, to let them succeed even if they’re incapable of doing so, but with consequences. Characters can usually […]
Covenant Game Design: Ties
(Don’t forget to tune in to the latest episode of the Radio Free Covenant podcast!) So, characters in Covenant spend Discipline to make bids and accomplish things. This Discipline represents a raft of things: their money, their mental and physical health, their social standing, and more. This begs the question, though: From where does a […]
