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January Update

I promised an update in January... and I'm sliding it in at the last moment.

I had written some updates much earlier in the month but I suppose the honest reality is that I really don't want to write these. The continuation of Myriad is pretty much directly tied to my mental health, so coming back with an update is just reflecting on how that's still not going great and what my...

Myriad Hiatus

The patreon is paused. No payments can be charged and new members cannot join. This will be the case until I have more concrete Myriad plans. Every plan I currently have is drastic and I need some time to really think things over. I may not have an answer until January, but this would always have been the case as I do not wish to run any campaigns during Nov-Dec holiday season. 

With...

Gamedev: Item Generation Evolution

A lot has changed in the Myriad system. So, for a long time I've known that I do not trust the item generation system to make something sensible. On the spot, if I had to make a random equipment for players to find, there was a sizeable chance it would be outdated or completely broken. I finally dug in for 2-3 days and did all the boring tweaking required to start a bit more fresh with some new...

The Next Game

First of all, I apologize for the long break between Myriad content.  I paused the Patreon in the last month so that members would not be charged while not much work was being done. Truthfully, I am heavily conflicted about the future of Myriad and how strongly I can actually follow through. This is amongst mental health issues I wish I could elaborate on to give a better picture, but I wo...

Post Aegis Recruits Patch Notes

Here is a list of 'patch notes' I've currently documented with some reasoning behind them. The primary goals are to reduce prep time for campaigns, sessions, and to simplify existing mechanics into their best parts.

Some of this is still being worked through while I await the release of the next Maptool update, which will resolve the issues of players not being able to load maps or the ca...

Aegis Rejects: DM Insight

The campaign dubbed 'Aegis Recruits' successfully destroyed all traces of the Aegis Order on Highsword during their first mission for them (Ep9, Aegis Recruits). Here is some insight on the intent as a DM.

This isn't the campaign I planned for them from the beginning, but it became clear to me this would be the best way to move forward for a lot of reasons. When something this bi...

Simple Breakthrough

Hey! For you patreon enjoyers I thought I'd write a nerdy explanation of how one simple programming change can make a huge impact. 

Its 5 days before Aegis Recruits is scheduled to start again and I just realized something I previously thought was impossible isn't that complicated at all. And its good that I realized it now, because it requires modifying a lot of different types of t...

Rewards and Items

One of the most important things in a ttrpg is the rewards you get for completing your quests. I spent some time overhauling how items work and settled onto some stuff I'm pretty excited about.

My philosophy with consumable items is that... well I usually hate them. I've played some campaigns where the players are all holding 20 healing potions and fighters with enough Fly scro...

Consistent Baselines

Hey guys! Today I want to talk about finding some consistency for character art, enemies, and world elements and some plans that have been put in place to efficiently create them moving forward.

Ashle always wanted all the NPC and creature art to match wherever possible and is pretty passionate about that goal. Naturally with her willing to do that artwork, I agreed and didn't ...

The System Changes

I needed an extra week to push some changes into the Myriad system, and the players finally reaching their goal of the Aegis Order castle seemed like a good time for a pause while I modified their skills. Due to the horrors of holiday time scheduling, there may be even more time. I'll be using the time from any missed sessions in the near future to prepare for other games or to make preparing g...

Could we have started in a month?

Apparently not. Here's the update.

The Myriad will return in early September. I am confident in this because if I absolutely had to I could start a character creation session for the players now. Unless something happens with the players or there is an unforeseeable doomsday, this is the plan. There is no exact date because I haven't talked to players yet.

Can we start in a month?

After visiting Surefour and being coerced into committing to a date when he can play again, I reluctantly told him one month from now the next Myriad campaign will be ready. That would be July 21st as a date for character creation for the returning original group. A month sounds like not a lot of time to me right now, but it is entirely realistic to have enough done by that poi...

Whats Next?

The Fate of Sideways campaign has come to its conclusion! Here's an overview of the immediate work being done before the next campaign starts.

#1: What games are next? When?

I expect to run a short (3 session max) campaign with Jerma (no other players confirmed at this time) as soon as it is ready. Unfortunately, there is a lot to get ready becau...

Lessons From Launch & Plans

The Myriad is 2 episodes in and I've already learned a bunch. It has been very exciting watching new players interact with the system and reflecting on myself as a DM and what I'm best at. I've been realizing how I need to tailor things moving forward to work best for me. The collection of all of these insights have led to to one major epiphany shortly after session 2 had ended.... I'm going to...

Myriad is starting next week!

The Myriad session 0 will be this Saturday, January 8th at 3pm CST! 

I've got a week to get as much done as possible, so not much else to say here! 

After session 0, which is used for creating characters, introducing players to the world, and making sure they have properly installed things, it should be about another 2 weeks before it officially begins so that Ashle can dr...

Design vs. Capability

Nearing completion of the Myriad framework I naturally had to stop and review all of the current systems and see if I'm happy with how everything is. I don't think anyone would be surprised if I said I wasn't happy.

The truth is that I designed a tabletop system about a year before I started talking about 'The Myriad' that I was quite happy with. I went back and looked through the old fil...

Myriad Wiki

There is a Myriad Wiki fandom page that has been created. I've loaded it with a lot of preliminary basic information, primarily descriptions of the different cosmic entities (Aspects) which each have a longer explanation wh...

Recent Testing

Hey! Not that long ago we had some test streams to make sure the combat was stable and functional so that I could finally bring a group in to play a real campaign. Lots of bugs were found, fixed, and I feel confident that the system is stable enough for a group. However, testing help me feel confident that some things needed to be changed. These are not time consuming changes, but they have tak...

The Capitol Concept

Here is a finalized concept for The Capitol city! (Art by: Pedro Cardoso) This is a massive metropolis that no other settlement even comes close to in size. It is home to the most fierce advocates for the prosperity of Humanity and stands proudly as a shining example of what can be accomplished when mankind binds ...

Enemy Intentions

I've been spending so long on character creation and itemization that I haven't worked on what players will actually be fighting in a while. Now that I've made a full circle back here and have had a lot to consider, it's pretty awesome for me to see how it has all tied together within the pre-established mechanics, resources I already have available in the code, and new things I've learned how ...

Finalizing Lore & Art

This past week I've been working on some final revisions on the cosmic chart, which basically acts as the pantheon of Myriad. So - we can talk a bit about that work process instead of game mechanics for a change!

This is the last opportunity I have to make significant changes on how th...

Skill Checks & Social Skills

One of the most important goals for this working phase of The Myriad has been the implementation of a 'Social Skills' section of character progression. This will explore how rolling a skill check works now and how I came to deciding to do it this way. All that and more...

Goals & Past

Originally, there really weren't skill checks outside of combat. Players would loo...

Want to make custom Myriad item descriptions?

Hey patrons! Want to help contribute a little something to The Myriad?

You can respond to this post with a comment of a specific type of random item description to be put in the game! Temporarily I will also be adding a channel to the discord where you may post descriptions or links to pastebins if you go crazy.

Let me explain how it works:

First you will select a...

Finalizing Item Generation

Some significant progress has been made on random item generation! I thought I'd go through one weapon and point out everything that went into this image from top to bottom:

Battle Claymore of the Turtle: Items now have a much more robust naming system built in to every step of t...

Your Myriad lets you have 2 Actions?

I fully committed to giving characters  2 actions in order to answer a question as old as time itself:  How does dual wielding work?

Seriously.

I've thought a lot about that and never have had a great answer. On one hand, dual wielding somehow always ends up being a bad option in tabletop games that force you to take feats to cover up the strict penalties for doin...

Progress: Skills & Items

Hey! Quick update on the progress being made. I would have liked to do a post sooner, but honestly, this part of development really is just a significant amount of quantity being made to populate systems I've already described. You can always have more skills and more items.

Skill Progress: Everything has been going smoothly, creating more mechanical options for players a...

Myriad Character Creation Progress

I threw together a video to demonstrate how character creation works and the progress that has been made on laying a nice framework so that modifying character skills is as easy as possible.

The Time Consuming Parts

I don't have as much done with Myriad as I thought I would have by now, but that's because I severely underestimated how complicated some simple changes would be. I've bounced around between a few different areas of focus, but this one thing has taken the large majority of my time and is essential to do well before moving forward with anything else. It's the framework for generating weapons and...

Playing Path of Exile reinforced this concept for me

I'm not really sure how long it's been since the last post, because I've been in a self induced Path of Exile coma. Due to your ability to completely turn your brain off and think of other things while you endlessly grind  in PoE, I wouldn't say it was entirely unproductive. People often ask about inspiration from other sources, so I'll spend this post describing the one major thing I feel...

Character Creation & System Changes

Character creation is very important to me. Building a cool character can be as fun as playing the game. It is also the perfect time to introduce players to the world and I have always wanted the system to fully represent that. This is a huge step in that direction.

Note that this is all work in progress and heavily subject to change.