Iron Sky: The Roleplaying Game

Corona virus update
about 4 years ago – Sat, Mar 28, 2020 at 02:13:16 AM

Hi everyone!

As I've written before, we were forced to move a lot earlier than expected because of the corona virus measures. As it turns out, Belgium is probably cranking up the measures and we won't be able to go back and forth between Brussels and Ghent anymore, probably starting this weekend or a few days from now. We've managed to move most of the furniture that was ours and all of our games have been alphabetically ordered and put in the right place, but since we were renting an apartment that includes a bed, sofas, seats and a table, we're still out of a lot of the stuff we need to sit down and write comfortably. 

Luckily, the Telenet guy arrived yesterday and hooked us up to the internet. That was necessary, as I was leeching of my mobile phone subscription and I had completely depleted my allowed number of GB. Also, the wood we need to build some of our furniture arrived yesterday and today, so we can start getting up our closet and our seats. 

While we spent most of our time moving, we also had to deal with sickness, 11 cases of corona virus in our Brussels building, 2 deaths amongst our friends and several corona cases in our close environment. Luckily, none of our closest family members have gotten any of the major symptoms, but here's hoping the tests our government is going to be making available soon (or at least, that's the hope) will show we've already contracted the virus and are immune for a while, so we can start working for money again. Right now, I've ramped up the number of courses I teach online, but I'm doing them all for free for our students as they paid for live classes, not internet lessons, and I'm also helping out our PR clients for free. I'm hoping we'll be able to get some money in soon enough in order to feed my family and pay the bills, but since the government made the right call and extended all corona measures until late April at least, it'll be a while since we're able to do that. Luckily, Modiphius has asked me to get some writing in and as soon as we can actually sit down and I'm able to use my laptop without straining my back to death, I'll be able to finish the Quick Start editing as well.

I'd like to thank you all for the support mails I've gotten over the last 2 weeks. You've all been so patient already, but it was heart-warming to read you're willing to give us more to get the Quick Start out. However, we don't want to lose any more time, so I'm going to make sure there's no more than about a week delay before you get your first texts in. We've also been perfecting our Discord chats while teaching, so I feel confident we'll be able to have some great online sessions. I think I should be able to confirm some dates this night, so I'm hoping you'll join us en masse in order to discover Iron Sky: The Roleplaying Game with us. I need to spend the next few days trying to convince some artists to start drawing up some illustrations again, so there's a lot of phone calls to be made, but as promised I'll make sure to get some kind of temporary layout done while they're still unavailable.

I wrote the foreword to the Quick Start yesterday, but I'd like to thank you all through this means as well - you've been great, your patience has been a tremendous boon and I'm glad some of you actually reached out to me personally - we've had some superb talks and those of you who actually spoke to me were genuinely excited about what we're doing rules-wise, so here's hoping we'll be able to keep that going. 

I'll post a rules design update tomorrow, please don't hesitate to send me any feedback you might have. We'll go over Conditions, Damage allocation and Hit Locations.  ;-)

Greetz,

Dirk

Corona update, damage & Hit Locations
about 4 years ago – Sat, Mar 28, 2020 at 12:44:28 AM

Hi everyone!

We ordered some the bolts we'll be needing for our furniture yesterday as we don't have enough of them and we'll be getting the wood ready during the weekend, so here's hoping I get to work from an actual seat instead of the floor starting on Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest.

We didn't have time to do a lot over the last few weeks because of the corona virus and us moving to a different home and during the last week, our great two-year old daughter was with us. I can't lie, though: it was amazing to spend so much time with her. My ex-wife always demanded our girl needed to go to day care since she was still studying at the university, whereas I would have loved to have more time with her. Luckily, a few months after my marriage ended (my ex left me for a 'friend' who was actually one of the men of honor at our wedding - this all happened after the Kickstarter ended and also chewed away at a lot of my writing time), I stepped into an amazing relationship with my current fiancée, Laetitia, and she's been a superb mother to Alhana (named after the 'Dragonlance' character), so the time we're able to spend together (1 week out of 2) is always a blessing.

Now, let's talk about rules stuff!

Personally, I've never been a great fan of general damage. It always felt a little unrealistic to me. Three other options are only a tad little better: 1. Letting the GM decide which location is hit feels too aribitrary and leaves the game session prone to arguments. 2. Allowing only called shots to hit specific locations removes an element of luck that's always present in actual shooting (especially if the target is moving fast) and begs the question why the torso is always hit if not aiming (most experienced shooters will say they always aim for exactly that location because it's the biggest target and a hit can do a lot of damage). Worse, if called shots give you a penalty to hit, the shot usually misses entirely, so players aren't generally inclined to do called shots. This is a tough one, as everyone would make called shots if there's NO penalty involved. 3. Only allowing called shots if a Player Character has certain Feats or Advantages makes no sense to me. Everyone should be able to aim, even though most shots actually never connect.

I wanted to allow for generalized damage in order to accomodate Game Masters and players who hate Hit Locations. This is easy to do, as we have a General Damage Tracker you can use. 

On the other hand, our Synthesis Silhouette Damage system feels so integral to the game we did include Hit Locations in the Basic game as well. It's just a lot of fun to use AND it felt very realistic to our playtesters. The only RPG I know of that uses a similar system is 'Aces & Eights', which also uses a similar Initiative system, a major difference being that 'Aces & Eights' requires you to draw a seperate card to determine Hit Location (in 'Synthesis', Hit Location allocation is part of the roll to hit - something that's easy to do in a d1000 system), doesn't include a lot of silhouettes (although you can stick to a few basic ones if you're playing 'Synthesis') and has an Initiative system that gets stuck when you're dealing with large groups of combatants. Also, we deal with size and range way differently.

You see, weapon range should not influence your chances to hit all too much. Eyesight is way more important. Most projectile weapons lose accuracy only after a very long distance, it's mostly because it becomes very difficult to see a target without scopes that long-range attacks usually miss. Range modifiers also often seem arbitrary, so we solve the issue by having different-size Silhouettes and Crosshairs. Bigger target? Use smaller Crosshairs. Long range? Use a smaller Silhouette. It just makes sense. 

Damage Type is determined by the kind of weapon and has different results according to Hit Location. For example, Slashing weapons inflict cuts (doh) on most Hit Locations, but larger Slashing weapons can cut off a head or part of a limb depending on where they hit. In Synthesis, it's easy to see which part of the limb is actually dismembered, as you actually draw an imaginary line where the attack is, so your opponent doesn't automatically lose the entire arm or leg.

In Advanced, we have more types of Damage and more Damage Effects as well. Damage doesn't inflict a number of Hit Points Damage either, but creates Conditions, much like it does in 'Mutants & Masterminds', for example, but more detailed and Damage Type-specific. In Basic, this is sometimes more of a narrative effect than in Advanced.

More later, stay safe everyone!

Corona II
about 4 years ago – Sun, Mar 22, 2020 at 08:51:50 AM

So, we're in the midst of the corona virus crisis, we hope you're all safe and stay safe. Here's how the corona virus is impacting us.

Most of the Quick Start is done, it only boils down to editing and getting everything green-lit. We wanted to get the editing done 2 weeks ago, but we got impacted by the corona virus in a few major ways.

First, my entire family got sick, but we probably only caught a cold. There are no self-tests available and if you don't have symptoms, tests are generally unavailable, so we have no way to know if we already got the virus or not. 

Secondly, as most of you know, I run a PR agency and over the last few weeks, we pretty much lost all of our clients - temporarily, at least. I mostly handle PR for movies, TV series and the hospitality business so right now I have no paying clients left. I wholeheartedly support all of them, though, so I offered to work for free until the crisis is done, which is what I'm doing now. It requires a whole lot of restructuring, as we have to aim at online sales more than ever and we have to update a lot of platforms.

Thirdly, I teach acting in Antwerp, Brussels, Gent and Leuven, but we're not allowed to receive any students anymore. I normally teach for 4 hours on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and for another 8 hours on Sundays, but we're restructuring and teaching online for the time being. Since that's hardly the same thing, I gave all of my students 10 free 4-hour online classes so they won't get rusted and they can keep themselves busy. I'm also restructuring my classes in debating & presentation techniques, television, lie detection, communication, NLP, hypnosis and writing, but it's tough since most Belgians aren't very keen on online classes.

Last week, we were in Rotterdam to review restaurants, hotels and entertainment businesses for some of the magazines and websites I write for, but we needed to leave after 2 days since all of the hospitality businesses in the Netherlands got word they needed to close.

Lastly, we were supposed to move from Brussels to Ghent on the 1st of April (no joke). However, we got word moving companies would stop working a few days ago, so my fiancée's father quickly called in a few favors and we moved most of our heavy furniture the morning after that, at 8 in the morning (since there was a partial lockdown announced at 12 noon). That screwed up our schedule, as now we're constantly moving boxes by car from Brussels to Ghent. Our internet connection isn't on yet either, the Telenet guy is coming over on March 25 in order to get our connection up.

We're almost done with most preparations. My great 2-year old girl is joining me and my fiancée today and is staying with us until Saturday. She'll require a lot of attention, but I should be able to get some editing done in-between and shift to the highest gear immediately after that weekend.

Mostly, this all impacts the Quick Start layout and illustrations. None of the artists we use are working right now. Obviously, this is a job you should be able to do at home, but they're getting inundated with high priority demands (for example, businesses that quickly need visuals because of the corona virus measures), one of them has been afflicted by the virus and another one has gone into internet-free seclusion until this all blows over. If worst comes to worst, I'll have to do the layout myself next month and I'll have to utilize more pictures from the movies than I would have liked to, so we can have a finished full version next month.

As it is right now, I'll be able to send out text-only versions of the Quick Start soon. I'm probably going to do a minimal layout kind of thing so they're easily readable and send out the Quick Start in a few different parts so you all won't just have to scroll through Word documents, but I'm definitely doing the best I can given the current crisis. I'll make sure to send you all the first part by the end of this month, as promised, as that part has already been green-lit and the editing is near-complete.

As soon as our internet connection is up in our new location in Ghent (Steendam 72A, for those of you who need my address - it's not a secret), we'll start up those Discord sessions again as well!

Greetz,

DIrk

Corona!
about 4 years ago – Thu, Mar 12, 2020 at 07:31:25 PM

Hi,

As most of you probably know, Belgium has been hit by the corona virus. All our schools are now closed, all of our restaurants are closed, our bars are closed, all events hosting more than 1,000 people have been cancelled (with smaller events to follow), we're not allowed to travel to the US anymore, and so on. Our country isn't in full lockdown mode (yet), but we're getting there.

My little girl and my fiancée were both sick for about 5 days, I followed and I've been feeling better for about a day now. It probably wasn"t the corona virus, although we can't be sure, as there are now 4 confirmed cases in our building. 

This all will have little impact on the writing. We've incurred a delay of about 7 days, nothing more, so unless I get really sick, we should be more or less on track before our deadlines. Worst case scenario: our illustrators get sick and we can only send you the RPG texts until they get better and get the illustrations done. 

One thing we are going to do: we're going to re-announce our online sessions and ask you to please pre-register, as I've already heard from some backers they got sick and most of you don't seem to be in the mood to roleplay right now. I'll post the announcements over the next couple of days, please let me know if you'll be joining us so we can be sure we're not wasting valuable time setting up the live sessions. 

Everybody please stay safe!

Dirk

Illustrations green-lit!
about 4 years ago – Wed, Mar 04, 2020 at 12:02:45 AM

Hi everyone,

Yesterday, Timo, Iron Sky's director, sent us a mail telling us the style of illustrations we're going with has been green-lit. This is a major plus for us, as we now know we can continue with the artists we've hired. 

We'd also like to rectify two pieces of misinformation that have been thrown out there by a third party.

1. We definitely DID send a Discord link to all backers who preregistered for the Discord session. Please find proof below.

2. Timo and Tero most definitely have been involved and we do need everything to be green-lit in order to go ahead. 

This weekend, we'll be sending about half of the final Quick Start text to Timo and Tero to get it green-lit. We'll be able to send them the second half this very month, so we're still on track and very very very relieved we're able to tell you all that we're making good progress and communication with the Iron Sky Oy team has become smoother than ever. 

Greetz,

Dirk