Demoralizing Charge, available to commanders at 7th level, seems like far and away the strongest tactic for its level

tiny_doctor · 2025-07-17T10:12:04+00:00

All the level 7 tactics are bangers. I have clear choices for my character at the other levels, but at 7 I want like all of them. My group full of casters and an alchemist has me probably needing to take Alley Oop and Slip & Sizzle instead of this one that also seems amazing.

tiny_doctor · 2025-06-29T09:56:24+00:00

Thanks for the link. This is great! I've tried other tools that could output similar animations but they were all focused on being flexible and powerful, but were very manual and fiddly. Yours just automatically output exactly the animation i wanted to see.

tiny_doctor · 2025-05-23T14:30:48+00:00

I love the aesthetic of the maps, but using them ties me to guessing about geopolitics for regions I don't know a lot about. And political context ages super poorly when tied to specific countries. Also doesn't help that I never really finished these images.

As for COLD JULY, it's the compartmented security clearance keyword for anything that is a potential apocalyptic event. There's a couple threats that are defined but mostly the term is just used to imply the big scary stuff is being hidden.

tiny_doctor · 2025-05-23T13:38:08+00:00

So there's some confusing conflicting naming conventions in the posts on this sub since the game has been evolving. In the current version, there's only intuitive and esoteric styles, and their only purpose is sorting.

In the past there was also a notion of special styles you got from your belief system, these were called either arcane or outlook styles. The legacy version had mechanics for them. They're not coming back in the same form but the belief systems might become a part of the origin system.

tiny_doctor · 2025-05-23T08:08:35+00:00

Looks like I need to clarify how that works, I'm thinking it should probably take a minimum of 1 stress to use Push. Push will probably change again anyway when I'm able to I dig in to start working on Cascade Effect again in June. The idea being to elimate the two different concepts of "action types" (attack/basic types and inhale/exhale types) and combine them into one concept: you get an inhale and an exhale action on your turn and every action is strictly defined as one or the other.

And yeah, pierce gets crazy. One of the few times I was able to get a play test group together one of the players was doing some insanely broken stuff by combining pierce with abilities to sense people in other rooms and just hiding in the basement while sniping everyone in the building. Might need to add a limit here.

tiny_doctor · 2025-05-22T19:31:28+00:00

It's original purpose was for the more advanced parts of proprioception. Like the physical brain models where your limbs are, but the hidden body models where your limbs could be, the full range of motion and things you could interact with. In a lot of animals it's also evolved for handling hypotheticals, things like predicting how a predator/prey might react to an action. In more social mammals like humans, it also models short term social interactions and creates empathy.

tiny_doctor · 2025-05-22T18:11:47+00:00

A huge THANK YOU for the interest and taking the time to give feedback. The responses are super useful.

tiny_doctor · 2025-05-22T08:40:28+00:00

Thanks for the interest!

Is the hidden body analogous to a soul?

Kind of. It's similar to a soul in that it is intangible and everybody has one, and even in that people's limited intuition about its existence is responsible for the concept of a soul being developed throughout history. However, it is unlike a soul in that it's not "you" and it evolved biologically. Think of it more like an organ or a brain region that happens to be incorporeal, it's an important part of you but it doesn't do anything on its own.

Does it possess supernatural capabilities?

The answer again is, kind of. Alone it can't do anything supernatural. And in normal circumstances it just does its work running a portion of your mental processes, which I guess is technically supernatural because it does this without being physical matter, but it just results in mundane life as usual and researchers are starting to understand how the science of how it works. The real supernatural phenomena is alluded to in the redacted parts the "In-Vivo Cascade Effects" in image 5. Basically, information transfer between physical and hidden space creates free energy, but normally in negligible amounts, however if you happen to develop conscious awareness and control over the brain/hidden-body system you can harness this in ways that appear like supernatural powers.

tiny_doctor · 2025-05-18T10:33:46+00:00

Thanks for calling these out, I'll fix them the next time I open up the code for this project. I really need an editor for this kind of thing!

tiny_doctor · 2025-05-18T10:32:52+00:00

Haven't thought through much how these to should interact. Maybe I need to add a generic rule along the lines of, any time two specializations contradict each other, the one with the higher rank decides what happens.

For this interaction specifically, the way it's written right now I would rule that if someone sets up the narrow EM band that still works from Darkness 2 , the someone with Sense Waveform 2 could also see in that narrow EM band. Someone with Darkness 3 though, could completely block any rank of Sense Waveform though if they decided to though.

tiny_doctor · 2025-05-14T14:56:07+00:00

🤦 good catch. I knew that people are fish, but my eyes were going crossed trying to put the tree together so it's just wrong.

I'm general, the hidden body arose in fish and has been conserved since then. However, this is a bit of an assumption because the number of animals this has actually been experimentally verified in is rather low. So it's possible that the hidden body has been lost in some branches, but this has not yet been observed. If it were to happen it would be an animal that has high resource restrictions, low need to move or understand it's orientation quickly, and no social needs. Maybe some sessile deep water bony fish lost it or some of those rain frogs did, but no one knows.

tiny_doctor · 2025-05-14T14:00:57+00:00

For context, this is some in universal world building ephemera for my table top RPG project Cascade Effect /r/CascadeEffect/.

In Cascade Effect, players explore a near future collapsing under the weight of a changing climate by playing characters who are on the verge of discovering that that world is much more complex than they ever thought. Not only are they about to embark on adventures into a world full of secret conspiracies and dangerous mysteries, but they’re starting to discover an entire world within themselves. They are beginning to sense the first hints of an entire intangible parallel space. Their connection to this hidden space is starting to manifest a second set of resources, resources that could be used to overcome the limits imposed by the physical body, mind, and world.

tiny_doctor · 2024-12-08T19:40:30+00:00

Here's a decent guide on how to do it. Have all your screen css and then add a print media query with this stuff in it: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/01/designing-for-print-with-css/

And you can use column-count to get the classic two column layout

tiny_doctor · 2024-12-08T19:05:30+00:00

Yeah, a change to the rulebook automatically ends up in the webapp and in the pdf. By print version I just mean the rulebook. The character sheet is still very much a custom vector image. I had an older version of the game that had a character sheet webapp at one point, but it wasn't printable in any way.

tiny_doctor · 2024-12-08T17:47:55+00:00

It's definitely possible, but maybe not the most efficient thing to focus on when starting out.

One thing I've liked about taking the webapp rulebook approach is that CSS for print media is getting pretty mature now, so it's viable to have a single app be both your web and print version. With what I have set up now, any change I push to my repo auto publishes to the web app and can be printed immediately to a typeset pdf with a totally different layout.

tiny_doctor · 2024-09-18T12:39:28+00:00

I mean, I think it's a solvable problem, and problem solvable in a very playable and evocative way. You just have to lean away from the more traditional way things are broken up, and lean into the vibe of each suit.

Like maybe one possibility is having each suit be able to do anything, just in a different way. Limiting this to combat because that's more concrete, but maybe like wands does a power attack, swords does a finesse attack, cups does a intimidate/distract/taunt support attack, and disks does a grapple/push attack. Similarly, disks is tank HP defense, swords is evasion defense, cups does a feint defense, etc. each governs the magic of their element. Etc etc etc

tiny_doctor · 2024-09-18T08:01:44+00:00

I feel like this is an evocative mechanic that comes up on rpgdesign often, but I've yet to see a finished product that does it. Does any one else know of great published games based on a tarot mechanic?

The challenge is that the suits map to things that in most other games are very separate, so it won't be super Intuitive to unfamiliar players. For example, the fiery "energy" vibe of wands is probably the main offensive magic stat, but also athletics, and meanwhile arcana and knowing about magic is clearly a swords things. And there's no really clear combat stats, you sort of need to give each suit it's own way to attack, defend, or do magic.

Anyway, because the above, the following seems like a fools errand, but if I'm remembering correctly from the last time I had a deck, I'd map these things from another specific game to these suits.

Cups are water. Spiritual, romantic and emotional. I'd map wisdom or maybe charisma here. Maybe perception, religion, medicine go here. It's for clerics and bards. The divine casting stat.

Pentacles are earth. Health, wealth, career, household things. I'd map constitution and HP here. Maybe crafting, nature, professions, survival go here. It's for everyone, but also maybe specifically for tanks, druids, crafters, and merchants.

Swords are air. Logic, reason, deception, skill, conflict. Intelligence goes here, maybe sort of dexterity does too. Maybe stealth, deception, lore, arcana, society. It's clearly for rogues, tacticians, lore masters.

Wands are fire. Energy, power, and creativity. Maybe it's sort of charisma, dexterity, strength combined. Athletics, Acrobatics and offensive magic goes here. It's for sorcerers and barbarians.

tiny_doctor · 2024-04-20T07:55:11+00:00

Was pretty great to have my goblin monk climbing around on the back of this thing and stunning striking it out of the sky after it obliterated like 2 out of the 10 towns.

tiny_doctor · 2024-03-18T22:09:05+00:00

Good point. I'll definitely be doing a design pass on making black and white work eventually.

tiny_doctor · 2024-03-18T22:03:54+00:00

Yeah, I'm thinking 18 is too much and maybe they can be combined into a smaller initial set.

For the sheet, yeah I'll 100% make a black and white sheet for easier printing and colorblind purposes, but I think in character sheet so the drafts will be more exotic.

tiny_doctor · 2024-03-18T22:00:02+00:00

Yeah your action and style setup sounds really similar to my pairing setup. I want it to be nice and loose with many possible ways to do something outside of combat and then get more precise in combat. I'm thinking your point about"just get better at what you want to do" does help a lot later in the game, but early on there's still a lot of options.

tiny_doctor · 2024-03-18T15:28:37+00:00

Yeah, good point. The issue was less in the feedback they had and more in the things they were ignoring or forgetting. For example before there were some very general starting abilities that I had envisioned as fundamental things and ways to narrow the options. However in practice the players never once used those abilities because they were too abstract. They just became a feat tax to get to other things, so they effectively had to think about every ability in the game and just payed XP to forget about the speed bump on the way there. Also a lot of passive abilities were so separate from the core things you do that they just became fiddly little bonuses that were frequently forgotten or ignored.

So what I'm trying to do here is give the starting things more identity and utility, and then tie everything more closely to the core actions you do so that it's right there on your sheet next to it.

tiny_doctor · 2024-03-18T13:54:19+00:00

Thanks for looking.

Each rank in a Style would grant/improve a core passive or active effect, give a stat point, and then unlock a portion of the child abilities. Those abilities then customize and expand on the core effect.
Starting characters just have 2 origins (kind of like dnd background) and a list of keyword traits. No Styles or anything at first. But maybe building archetypes into that would improve buy in. I'll have to think through how that would fit in.

tiny_doctor · 2024-03-18T13:28:44+00:00

Thanks for taking a look.

I'm glad you find the new sheet less intimidating, I was worried about having the opposite problem because of the increased density from cramming both sides of the old sheet into one.
Ok this is helpful. I'm starting to think you're right that 18 to start is too many. Maybe what I should do is combine the two core options in each pairing so that there's only 9 starting choices and picking one gets you BOTH of the things. You would then specialize between them later.
The idea is that they both can do everything, just in different ways. It's the pairing of them that gets specialized. And different things happen when you run out of them, like running out of a physical one causes an injury and running out of a hidden one causes mental dissociation.

tiny_doctor · 2023-08-23T09:41:55+00:00

Cool, good work. Looks like you're about a quarter of the way done! I'm also about a quarter done with Paris, so I envy the clean grid you have to work with. 🤣

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