October Update Week 3
over 5 years ago
– Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 01:39:54 AM
Ahoy Cortex-Philes,
I’m on the road for two weeks with my family as we visit the east coast before our big departure. My kids were born in Pennsylvania so we’re visiting there for a few days until taking off to New Jersey for Metatopia. After that it’s New York City, Washington DC on Election Day, and then Colonial Williamsburg.
I’ve been making good progress on Settings, but our house is a disaster so I’m left to sneaking time at the keys late at night once packing and bagging is done. Apologies for missing last week’s update. I’ll post an after-Con report on Metatopia next Monday, though.
Peace in our time,
Cam
October Week 3
over 5 years ago
– Tue, Oct 16, 2018 at 01:42:11 AM
Ahoy, Cortex-Philes!
Prime Settings is coming along slower than I expected, but I attribute a lot of that to the complete chaos our house is in right now with boxes, bags, and piles everywhere. Among the collections of things we're trimming back before we move to New Zealand in December is my substantial RPG collection, which I've been building for the past quarter century. It's not easy letting go of things, but I accept that I don't need all of it (which is different from not wanting it...)
I've got Eidolon Alpha and parts of Hammerheads and Trace 2.0 in place, and I want to finish up the actual genre toolkit before I send out a new draft of the handbook. That toolkit includes a section called "Pick Three and Add Cortex" which includes, among other things, a way to take something like, say, Young Adult Superhero Drama, or Science Fiction Western Action, and run a game in that setting with Cortex Prime. I think you know where I'm going with that, I hope.
Speaking of these settings, I ran a short session of Hammerheads for a podcast called Game School, which was a lot of fun. You can listen to it here, and they also include the character file for Rachel Gladstein/SCORPIO, the crisis response specialist featured in the one-shot. Bonus: you get to hear my weird accent describe how Hammerheads uses crisis pools. And it ends in a cliffhanger because we ran out of time.
I've been asked to do more things like this - short, setting-specific audio or even video actual plays of Cortex Prime. It should be entirely doable once the Game Handbook and System Reference are in the bag, and might be a fun way to show off the many Prime Spotlights unlocked by the Kickstarter. Let me know what you think in the update comments!
Peace,
Cam
October Week 2
over 5 years ago
– Tue, Oct 09, 2018 at 12:42:22 AM
Hey Cortex-Philes!
No new Cortex Game Handbook update tonight but I did want to jump in and let you know a couple of news items.
The first is that with Google+ announcing plans to sundown in 10 months, the RPG communities that hang out there are making plans to relocate. There’s an active Cortex group that’s in the process of scoping out new homes for the sharing of ideas, rules hacks, and play reports. Alternatives include Discord (which already has a Cortex group), Diaspora, Reddit (there’s a r/CortexPlus subreddit there already too) and MeWe.
The latter is a new social media platform that I’m trying out. Not sure if it’s going to be any kind of replacement but some folks are signing up. Check out the Cortex System RPG group I launched today: https://mewe.com/join/cortex_system_rpg
The next item is that some preorder backers realized they weren’t getting the preview downloads. BackerKit lets me set up a download to go out to all backers with a specific item in their order, so I’ve keyed it to the Game Handbook. If you aren’t getting one of those you might not be seeing the digital download in your email. I’ll try to figure out a better way to handle that.
Finally, some folks have asked about the System Reference. I’m going to be distilling that once I’m done with Prime Settings, so you’ll get all the rules content from each chapter in the System Reference preview I share before layout. That may clear up a few other Cortex Creator Studio questions I’ve been getting, too.
Until next week, thanks for sharing your Cortex Prime stories, actual play reports, and feedback. I love getting that stuff!
Peace
Cam
October Update Week 1
over 5 years ago
– Tue, Oct 02, 2018 at 01:45:41 AM
Ahoy Cortex-Philes,
If you're a backer at a pledge level that includes at least the Game Handbook in PDF, you should have a new email notification of the updated Game Handbook draft that includes Chapter 5: Prime Sessions. This file also has more content in Prime Scenes, a few tweaks in Prime Characters, and a slight development pass on the other stuff.
It's been a pretty wretched week all things considered, which is also why I didn't post an update (my wife's been very sick, then the kids got sick, and there's the productivity-killing news here in the USA related to certain high ranking job interviews), but I'm happy to say that things are moving again. This week I'm handing over all the Spotlights to Josh Roby to do their development pass on them, but not until I get the three settings for Prime Settings in shape for them to review those, as well.
This means that I should have the core content of Prime Settings to you next week, albeit with more work needed on it. That should hopefully address the issue of "what do we even do with this game?" that some folks have raised with me in emails and messages. The expectation is that Prime Settings not only includes Hammerheads, Trace 2.0, and Eidolon Alpha, but it also includes basic frameworks for a bunch of other generic settings that may or may not resemble previous Cortex games. No promises on how deep the serial number filing goes.
As always, comments, feedback, and suggestions can be sent to me via the Kickstarter message system or direct to my seth AT magic-vacuum DOT com account. I try to respond to that within 24 hours.
I'm also regularly on Twitter as @boymonster, which is for some reason much easier for me to update, but I'll do my best to respond to comments here, too. Fair warning: I do a lot of lefty political ranting there as well as talk about my kids and my day job at Atlas Games, but anyone who knows me already probably isn't going to be terribly surprised.
Peace,
Cam
September Update Week 3
over 5 years ago
– Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 01:04:43 AM
Ahoy Cortex-Philes,
I returned mid-week from our Colorado vacation and immediately hit the inevitable pile of things to catch up on that we set aside for six days, so I'm still wrapping up Prime Sessions for you. If I don't post it up later this week, it'll be in the next update along with the tweaked content in Prime Characters and Prime Scenes that I added back into the text from my tangled notes.
One thing that's now clear in the text is that resource dice (if you're using this mod that's originally from Smallville) aren't added to the dice pool, but rolled separately. This makes them a lot more like hero dice than, say, signature assets, which they've been compared to. The key difference is that unlike hero dice, you don't need to spend a PP to use them. Instead, they're "spent" when used and you have to wait until you can recover them in a later scene.
I like resources, and I use a version of them in Hammerheads. Every Hammerheads team has a big flying vehicle loaded with supplies, gear, and other useful things - resources, in other words. For each Hammerheads mission you might have 3d6 Tactical Support, 3d6 Food and Shelter, 2d6 Medical Supplies, and 2d6 IT/Network. During play, you spend those dice to give yourself a better shot at managing the crises that your Hammerheads team has been despatched to deal with. Run out of your resources, and suddenly everything seems a lot more desperate.
Next week I'll be sharing more on Hammerheads with you as Prime Settings takes shape. Thanks again for your comments and for discussion of Cortex Prime rules and hacks over on Google+ and Reddit r/CortexPlus— I always appreciate seeing those posts!
Peace,
Cam
