Chapter 1 of BCZ has three main goals: To give more tools for the less powerful PC builds, To allow a greater variety of PC builds and, lastly, to mechanically represent PC concepts that didn't have rules support in the core book. While the robots always took priority, these goals were also present at the character scale.
I bring this up because all abilities address (or attempt to address) one or more of those issues at face value, Equipment Traits have the secondary effect of contributing greatly to the utility of Resources-based builds. Each new gadget added to the rules makes Resources more of a power stat.
The game has less Equipment than it does General Traits because, in theory, Resources can make you like Batman - with enough preptime and money, you don't need other Skills and Traits. BCZ only adds 9 new Equipment Traits, which is a good amount but not remotely close to enough for a Resources Ubermensch to take over and dominate Intermissions.
Let's have a look at the new devices in the inventory.
Call System
This is a handy way to access proxies, which are large and cumbersome by nature, to let you use them in situations where you usually wouldn't be able to. It is not a super amazing effect though, so it's cheap. A bit of Errata: This should say 'Specialist', because you can take it multiple times.
Nanomedical Vest
Intermission combat veterans know that pilots often feel like they are made of wet tissue paper. Even when they wear protective body armor, it feelsl ike upgrading from toilet paper to aluminium foil. The Nanomedical Vest helps by buying combatants another turn in the fight... Sometimes! Maybe. Only if the dice don't hate them. Okay, it is not all that great, but it is cheap so there. Maybe it should have been a guaranteed pass but have been more expensive? It would probably be more flavorful that way than as it is now, where it sometimes helps you and sometimes doesn't.
Portable Barrier
So 5 Defense is a very good bonus... But if you take an Action to set it up you're probably taking more than 5 during that setup Turn, therefore making it rather pointless. The problem here is that making this a free action would turn this Trait into 15-30 CP worth of defense for 5 CP, which is kind of silly. Perhaps this should have been a free action with a duration of one turn? Or maybe make it like Absolute Barrier and absorb a number of damage points (5? 10?) before it expires? I feel like this one was a decent idea that wasn't well implemented.
Tracking Device and Smart Manacles
When your game revolves around simple effects that can be described however you want, you have a problem when you have to coming up with special items. Equipment need to make more sense as, well, Equipment than as General Traits... Yet they must remain fairly simple, as if they were General Traits! Both of these Traits make a lot more sense as items than they do as, say, magic or other supernatural talents, so that goal was met here. There is one unfortunate problem with both of them, and it is that, mechanically, neither technically does anything. I somehow forgot to write what it means to be tracking or to restrain someone, as if the name and the flavor text were all you needed. How far can you track someone and how detailed is the information? What kind of actions are the manacles preventing? These get a one star rating and a frowning face for their review.
Smoke Bomb
This is like the opposite of I was Here all Along, but cheaper because it is generally less useful to get out of trouble than it is to conveniently be at the right place at the right time. This and Live Another Day are the game's Get Out of Jail Free cards, though both work in different circumstances and cost different resources or need different Skills. I like Smoke Bomb. It is good.
Performance Enhancer
What's cool about this Trait is that it adds an easy Advantage to many Miracles, for those of you that want to exploit Expanded Miracles. It is pretty straightforward, honestly. Though, in hindsight, this could have been an Advantage to all Tests just to make it useable in more builds.
Speed Booster
This Trait should've been in the core book. It is a simple effect that doesn't need much elaboration and even has an equivalent in the Mecha section's Overbooster. So um... That's all there is to say about it, really. Next!
Self-Destructing Note
And now for the star of the show: As if Electronics wasn't strong enough already, now it comes with the funniest way to kill somebody in the game. This Trait is hilariously lethal once you've sufficiently jacked your Electronics Tests. Remember how I mentioned Team Player and Leadership during the last post? Yeah, with the power of TEAMWORK you can create a bomb with a DN of 30+ that must be resisted with a naked Willpower Test. This should probably be weaker, but honestly it is difficult enough to use (you have to physically access the device and make sure the intended target is the one who reads it) to compensate for the power level. Also, it is funny. I love it.
Next: New Anomalies.
Gimmick Out.
Nov 26, 2017
Nov 19, 2017
BCZ Retrospective III: New General Traits.
One of BCZ's goals was to fix imbalance, build variety and concept representation problems in BCG, not just for the robots but also at the character scale. All 10 General Traits in the expansion address one or more of those issues. Let's have a look at them.
Adaptable Eyes
The character creation rules are written for human PCs. If you wanted to use BCG to portray alien species, fantasy races and intelligent animals you had to get by with aggressive reskinning. This Trait is one of many abilities in the expansion made to enable PCs and NPCs of inhuman origins, which are more common in stories that take place in fantasy settings or beyond our solar system. Conveniently, Adaptable Eyes works best in games revolving around exploration and horror, which are both genres that vanilla BCG struggles with. The expansion makes this easier by adding fear and insanity rules for the horror games and assists the exploration games with fantasy and attrition rules. It is not a particularly strong Trait, but it does what it is supposed to do.
Better Lucky than Good, Plan B and Practice Makes Perfect
I'm addressing all three of these at once because they have the same purpose: Making Skill-intensive builds stronger. In vanilla BCG it is more effective to raise your stats very high and buy a few Skills than to buy many Skills and raise your stats to above average. This is particularly true for the Attributes that have too many Skills, such as Intellect. These three Traits give you strong benefits to taking not just one but many Skills, balancing things back towards the middle again. If you're building to reliably hit a result of 15+ in your Skill Tests, Practice Makes Perfect helps immensely. If you want to make use of the Expanded Miracles in chapter 2, you pretty much need Plan B. Of all three, Better Lucky than Good is, well, the most random of the three, but at 5 points it is a very good deal and works very well with the Advantage system (each additional die rolled is twice as likely to be a 10). These three are excellent and probably my favorites (in no particular order) of this section.
Team Player
This one is a little like the three Traits above in that it encourages people to train Skills but I'm giving it a separate entry because it serves a different purpose. It is not the flashiest of Traits, but Help Tests are deceptively powerful. For the majority of Tests, which have DNs of 10 or 15, this is overkill and you might have been better off spending these points in something else, yes. Where it really shines is when you're aiming to let one person get a result of 20+, with multiple Team Player PCs and one PC with Leadership making it possible to hit the legendary DN 30 required for the strongest Expanded Miracles. Teamwork gets things done, people!
Ace in the Hole
I was already buffing Skill-intensive builds, so I figured I would buff Trait-intensive builds as well. That's it, there's not much more to say about this Trait. It gets the job done and, er, I like the trickster flavor, I guess? Next!
Enhanced Human (Specialist)
This is the first of the many abilities in the expansion that were commissioned during the Kickstarter to make BCZ happen. The original was an Anomaly called 'Mysterious Origin' and gave an advantage to all Tests of a specific attribute but had social repercussions, like being hunted by shady organizations or caused roleplaying issues with people who saw you. The first problem with this kind of ability is that, if your drawback is having plot relevance and requiring the GM to write specifically around you... Then it is not a drawback! Getting that kind of focus is a good thing, not a bad thing. The second problem is that roleplaying issues happen with the majority of Anomalies already and they don't suffer a mechanical penalty for it, except some which take a flat Charm Disadvantage. The Trait seemed to want to be all upside and no downside in mechanics so, after a little emailing back and forth, it became a General Trait with a temporary effect. As Enhanced Human, it lets you benefit from a specific Anomaly temporarily, using its benefit only when necessary, and avoiding its drawback until then. Depending on the chosen Anomaly, this can be as close to a direct upgrade as it gets.
Assassin, Deceptive Fighter, The Meat Shield
One of the many problems with BCG's on-foot combat rules is that most games either avoid it like the plague or have so much combat that all PCs build around it and become same-y in the process. These three Traits add a few ways to diversify Intermission combat roles by giving Charm specialists something only they can do. They also give an extra edge to those that raise both Fitness and Awareness instead of just one. In hindsight, more Traits like Deceptive Fighter (but using other Attributes) would have been preferable to Yet More Ways To Abuse Awareness, it is not like Fitness and Awareness don't already get plenty of use during combat.
And that's all for now. Mechanically speaking, I'd say The Meat Shield is the weakest of the General Traits in Z. It is only relevant for a specific kind of game and doesn't do much to make those games more interesting or varied. All the others are mechanically sound and make the game a lot better with their inclusion. The 2nd and 3rd place spots would go to Adaptable Eyes (which has at least another purpose) and Assassin (which flavorfully helps PCs survive the onslaught of BCG Intermission combat) so I still like them both.
Next: New Equipment.
Gimmick Out.
Adaptable Eyes
The character creation rules are written for human PCs. If you wanted to use BCG to portray alien species, fantasy races and intelligent animals you had to get by with aggressive reskinning. This Trait is one of many abilities in the expansion made to enable PCs and NPCs of inhuman origins, which are more common in stories that take place in fantasy settings or beyond our solar system. Conveniently, Adaptable Eyes works best in games revolving around exploration and horror, which are both genres that vanilla BCG struggles with. The expansion makes this easier by adding fear and insanity rules for the horror games and assists the exploration games with fantasy and attrition rules. It is not a particularly strong Trait, but it does what it is supposed to do.
Better Lucky than Good, Plan B and Practice Makes Perfect
I'm addressing all three of these at once because they have the same purpose: Making Skill-intensive builds stronger. In vanilla BCG it is more effective to raise your stats very high and buy a few Skills than to buy many Skills and raise your stats to above average. This is particularly true for the Attributes that have too many Skills, such as Intellect. These three Traits give you strong benefits to taking not just one but many Skills, balancing things back towards the middle again. If you're building to reliably hit a result of 15+ in your Skill Tests, Practice Makes Perfect helps immensely. If you want to make use of the Expanded Miracles in chapter 2, you pretty much need Plan B. Of all three, Better Lucky than Good is, well, the most random of the three, but at 5 points it is a very good deal and works very well with the Advantage system (each additional die rolled is twice as likely to be a 10). These three are excellent and probably my favorites (in no particular order) of this section.
Team Player
This one is a little like the three Traits above in that it encourages people to train Skills but I'm giving it a separate entry because it serves a different purpose. It is not the flashiest of Traits, but Help Tests are deceptively powerful. For the majority of Tests, which have DNs of 10 or 15, this is overkill and you might have been better off spending these points in something else, yes. Where it really shines is when you're aiming to let one person get a result of 20+, with multiple Team Player PCs and one PC with Leadership making it possible to hit the legendary DN 30 required for the strongest Expanded Miracles. Teamwork gets things done, people!
Ace in the Hole
I was already buffing Skill-intensive builds, so I figured I would buff Trait-intensive builds as well. That's it, there's not much more to say about this Trait. It gets the job done and, er, I like the trickster flavor, I guess? Next!
Enhanced Human (Specialist)
This is the first of the many abilities in the expansion that were commissioned during the Kickstarter to make BCZ happen. The original was an Anomaly called 'Mysterious Origin' and gave an advantage to all Tests of a specific attribute but had social repercussions, like being hunted by shady organizations or caused roleplaying issues with people who saw you. The first problem with this kind of ability is that, if your drawback is having plot relevance and requiring the GM to write specifically around you... Then it is not a drawback! Getting that kind of focus is a good thing, not a bad thing. The second problem is that roleplaying issues happen with the majority of Anomalies already and they don't suffer a mechanical penalty for it, except some which take a flat Charm Disadvantage. The Trait seemed to want to be all upside and no downside in mechanics so, after a little emailing back and forth, it became a General Trait with a temporary effect. As Enhanced Human, it lets you benefit from a specific Anomaly temporarily, using its benefit only when necessary, and avoiding its drawback until then. Depending on the chosen Anomaly, this can be as close to a direct upgrade as it gets.
Assassin, Deceptive Fighter, The Meat Shield
One of the many problems with BCG's on-foot combat rules is that most games either avoid it like the plague or have so much combat that all PCs build around it and become same-y in the process. These three Traits add a few ways to diversify Intermission combat roles by giving Charm specialists something only they can do. They also give an extra edge to those that raise both Fitness and Awareness instead of just one. In hindsight, more Traits like Deceptive Fighter (but using other Attributes) would have been preferable to Yet More Ways To Abuse Awareness, it is not like Fitness and Awareness don't already get plenty of use during combat.
And that's all for now. Mechanically speaking, I'd say The Meat Shield is the weakest of the General Traits in Z. It is only relevant for a specific kind of game and doesn't do much to make those games more interesting or varied. All the others are mechanically sound and make the game a lot better with their inclusion. The 2nd and 3rd place spots would go to Adaptable Eyes (which has at least another purpose) and Assassin (which flavorfully helps PCs survive the onslaught of BCG Intermission combat) so I still like them both.
Next: New Equipment.
Gimmick Out.
Nov 12, 2017
BCZ Retrospective II: New Miracles.
One thing I didn't mention when I did the BCG retrospective is that Miracles are actually very hard to design. You need to come up with a powerset that is broad and useful enough to make it worth the cost, yet can be successfully boiled down to two paragraphs and a handful of examples. Many of the Miracles in BCG went through multiple iterations in which they were streamlined, toned down or otherwise rebalanced compared to themselves and the other skills. The final result wasn't perfect (the power is particularly skewed towards Awareness and Intellect, which, well, read below) but it did its job well enough and was certainly better than the earlier versions.
While writing the first draft of the expansion, I had a handful of superpowers (4-6, I forgot how many) that could be found in anime as well as in other RPGs but weren't present in BCG. I initially tried all of them, but they didn't meet the qualifications in the previous paragraph. In the end only two remained. Life was present in a previous version of the game but got removed from BCG because it lacked the versatility to make it worth taking, while Portal was brand new to BCZ. I wish I could tell you what the other candidates were but I've forgotten them by now.
I'm going to review both of the Miracles in BCZ using the same system I had back for BCG, which is as follows:
Proactive - A good Proactive skill is one that can be used to advance the plot or further your PC's agenda.
Adaptable - An Adaptable skill lets you react to GM prompts and resolve the problems they present.
Synergy - This grades how well the Miracle Skill complements General Skills and Traits using the same stats.
Life
Proactive - Mediocre. It takes the least proactive aspects of Medicine and Investigation and combines them into a single Skill. You can find proactive uses for Life with some creativity, such as locating a plot-critical person or entity that can't be located with other means, or using your healing powers to form a cult around your person... But it just isn't as good as other Miracles at that.
Adaptable - Excellent. A buff to Medicine and Investigation in a single Miracle? Why yes, that does help you adapt to a whole multitude of problems. It is almost like those two are very good reactive skills and getting additional Advantages to them is really good or something. The only problem here is that you can't use Life to heal yourself, but Miracles hurt the user so doing that would be... Not very useful, to say the least.
Synergy - Good. Awareness and Intellect have lots of really, really good Miracles that slot easily into many different builds using those Attributes. This is a good one that also happens to benefit from taking some of the best Skills that those excellent Attributes have to offer. If you have both relevant Skills, this is a no-brainer. If you have only one, then this is a good reason to consider taking the second. If you have neither, then you have better options.
Portal
Proactive - Good. The only thing holding this back from being Excellent is that your Windows need to be set up in advance and that you can only have two at a time. It doesn't make Forces, Phasing, Athletics or Stealth redundant because you still need to physically reach the place you're going to first. Once you've been there though, you can come and go as you please. At least until you need to use another Window to reach somewhere else.
Adaptable - Good. The secondary use of Portals is the ability to create pocket dimensions. Anyone who has played D&D knows how handy something like this is. Need a place to hide something or someone? What about hiding you and your entire group from the enemy sentries? It doesn't actually solve any of your problems, but it sure can avoid them long enough that you don't have to worry about them until a better solution comes up.
Synergy - Good. You know how I mentioned that this Skill isn't a replacement for the other Skills that let you move around? Well, those Skills use Fitness (and Intellect, in the case of Forces), while this uses Awareness. If you don't want to actually invest in Fitness then this lets you have a way to escape from danger and get to places fast with a different Attribute. What is very interesting is that, unlike most Skills in competition for a similar function, Portals is even better when combined with its competition, because you can combine it with Forces, Phasing, Athletics or Stealth to get anywhere and transport your whole team afterwards.
I really like both of these. At least, I like them by themselves. My one problem with them is that the Awareness and Intellect builds already had some of the best General Skills and Miracles in the game, and this just gives them more toys to play with. By the time I did the BCG retrospective and realized this, the expansion was already out. If I'd caught wind of that a few months sooner, I would have made a serious attempt at coming up with more Miracles using the other Attributes. It is something to keep in mind for possible future supplements.
And that's all for today! Join me next week when we continue making our way through the Character options towards the Mecha goodness 5 pages away. We're getting there!
Next: New Traits.
Until then, Gimmick Out.
While writing the first draft of the expansion, I had a handful of superpowers (4-6, I forgot how many) that could be found in anime as well as in other RPGs but weren't present in BCG. I initially tried all of them, but they didn't meet the qualifications in the previous paragraph. In the end only two remained. Life was present in a previous version of the game but got removed from BCG because it lacked the versatility to make it worth taking, while Portal was brand new to BCZ. I wish I could tell you what the other candidates were but I've forgotten them by now.
I'm going to review both of the Miracles in BCZ using the same system I had back for BCG, which is as follows:
Proactive - A good Proactive skill is one that can be used to advance the plot or further your PC's agenda.
Adaptable - An Adaptable skill lets you react to GM prompts and resolve the problems they present.
Synergy - This grades how well the Miracle Skill complements General Skills and Traits using the same stats.
Life
Proactive - Mediocre. It takes the least proactive aspects of Medicine and Investigation and combines them into a single Skill. You can find proactive uses for Life with some creativity, such as locating a plot-critical person or entity that can't be located with other means, or using your healing powers to form a cult around your person... But it just isn't as good as other Miracles at that.
Adaptable - Excellent. A buff to Medicine and Investigation in a single Miracle? Why yes, that does help you adapt to a whole multitude of problems. It is almost like those two are very good reactive skills and getting additional Advantages to them is really good or something. The only problem here is that you can't use Life to heal yourself, but Miracles hurt the user so doing that would be... Not very useful, to say the least.
Synergy - Good. Awareness and Intellect have lots of really, really good Miracles that slot easily into many different builds using those Attributes. This is a good one that also happens to benefit from taking some of the best Skills that those excellent Attributes have to offer. If you have both relevant Skills, this is a no-brainer. If you have only one, then this is a good reason to consider taking the second. If you have neither, then you have better options.
Portal
Proactive - Good. The only thing holding this back from being Excellent is that your Windows need to be set up in advance and that you can only have two at a time. It doesn't make Forces, Phasing, Athletics or Stealth redundant because you still need to physically reach the place you're going to first. Once you've been there though, you can come and go as you please. At least until you need to use another Window to reach somewhere else.
Adaptable - Good. The secondary use of Portals is the ability to create pocket dimensions. Anyone who has played D&D knows how handy something like this is. Need a place to hide something or someone? What about hiding you and your entire group from the enemy sentries? It doesn't actually solve any of your problems, but it sure can avoid them long enough that you don't have to worry about them until a better solution comes up.
Synergy - Good. You know how I mentioned that this Skill isn't a replacement for the other Skills that let you move around? Well, those Skills use Fitness (and Intellect, in the case of Forces), while this uses Awareness. If you don't want to actually invest in Fitness then this lets you have a way to escape from danger and get to places fast with a different Attribute. What is very interesting is that, unlike most Skills in competition for a similar function, Portals is even better when combined with its competition, because you can combine it with Forces, Phasing, Athletics or Stealth to get anywhere and transport your whole team afterwards.
I really like both of these. At least, I like them by themselves. My one problem with them is that the Awareness and Intellect builds already had some of the best General Skills and Miracles in the game, and this just gives them more toys to play with. By the time I did the BCG retrospective and realized this, the expansion was already out. If I'd caught wind of that a few months sooner, I would have made a serious attempt at coming up with more Miracles using the other Attributes. It is something to keep in mind for possible future supplements.
And that's all for today! Join me next week when we continue making our way through the Character options towards the Mecha goodness 5 pages away. We're getting there!
Next: New Traits.
Until then, Gimmick Out.
Nov 5, 2017
BCZ Retrospective I: New Terrain.
A little over a year ago, I started to write a series of posts reviewing the mechanical aspects of BCG. Today I start the review of BCZ, judging how well the mechanics do the job they were created for. Along the way I will be sharing behind-the-scenes information and talking about game design in general. Much like with the BCG Retrospective series, this will take many months, but at least updates should be weekly on average. I will be going through BCZ in the order of the book's contents, which means we'll start with the new Terrain types that BCZ introduces to the rules. It is not the most exciting new content, but it serves an important purpose, so let's get started already.
Interference Terrain
Interference Terrain uses the same rules that Stealth Field from BCG does. I don't remember when stealth became synonimous with 'Two Disadvantages to non-AoE attacks' but, if I'd known how much it would stick conceptually, I'd have made a Stealth keyword or status condition so I wouldn't have to repeat the rules every time. it was solidified like that. One unique thing about Interference Terrain is that you can't ignore its effects by flying over it. This is for two reasons: The first is that Interference Terrain doesn't represent something you walk over but rather a cloud or mist in the vein of Minovsky Particles from Gundam. The second is that you could exploit flight + Interference Terrain to grant yourself an insane edge against non-flying units.
Sliding Terrain
Sliding Terrain started as a way to represent strong gravity, winds, currents or other terrain that would move units around. Originally, it was going to be used by several abilities as an indirect way to move both enemies and allies around. At some point I realized that it was much more more convenient to simply slide targets around directly, leaving Sliding Terrain as a tool for the GM when creating battlefields.
Withering Terrain
This almost suffers the same fate that Sliding Terrain did - the few abilities that create Withering Terrain almost got rewritten to halving the target unit's energy. Halving someone's energy regeneration isn't quite the same thing as halving their currently available energy, though, and most of the abilities that create Withering Terrain also create Difficult or Extreme Terrain as well, so sticking to Withering Terrain is simply more elegant.
Variant Anti-Air Terrain
This rule is mostly there for GMs. If the entire PC squad is flight-capable then your battlefields might as well be flat Boss Platforms. By using Anti-Air Terrain the GM can force Flyers to avoid specific areas and keep Antigrav users in the ground to make them choose between the dangers on the ground and those on the air. It is also handy for PCs who can create two instances of Terrain during one Turn (like, say, using Surprise Minefield twice) to force a target to take the effect regardless of whether they fly or not.
Lastly, there's the sidebar about how multiple instances of Terrain stack. This was a rule back then in BCG as well, but the rules effects weren't properly spelled out and, I figure, the addition of new Terrain types is a good reason as any to write everything down. All the effects are pretty intuitive, but I think Extreme Terrain might deserve some explanation. Originally, stacking Extreme Terrain simply added a Disadvantage to the Test, but that didn't feel as lethal as it should've been. I tried two Disadvantages as well and, while that was sufficiently lethal for two stacks, it was thoroughly insane for three stacks and above. Now you add Tension multiple times to the Test, which is sometimes rather anemic and sometimes absurdly overpowering, but the transition happens over time in a natural fashion instead.
That's it for today. Think of this update as a short appetizer, we'll get to the main dish and its walls of text soon enough.
Next: New Miracles.
Until then, Gimmick Out.
Interference Terrain
Interference Terrain uses the same rules that Stealth Field from BCG does. I don't remember when stealth became synonimous with 'Two Disadvantages to non-AoE attacks' but, if I'd known how much it would stick conceptually, I'd have made a Stealth keyword or status condition so I wouldn't have to repeat the rules every time. it was solidified like that. One unique thing about Interference Terrain is that you can't ignore its effects by flying over it. This is for two reasons: The first is that Interference Terrain doesn't represent something you walk over but rather a cloud or mist in the vein of Minovsky Particles from Gundam. The second is that you could exploit flight + Interference Terrain to grant yourself an insane edge against non-flying units.
Sliding Terrain
Sliding Terrain started as a way to represent strong gravity, winds, currents or other terrain that would move units around. Originally, it was going to be used by several abilities as an indirect way to move both enemies and allies around. At some point I realized that it was much more more convenient to simply slide targets around directly, leaving Sliding Terrain as a tool for the GM when creating battlefields.
Withering Terrain
This almost suffers the same fate that Sliding Terrain did - the few abilities that create Withering Terrain almost got rewritten to halving the target unit's energy. Halving someone's energy regeneration isn't quite the same thing as halving their currently available energy, though, and most of the abilities that create Withering Terrain also create Difficult or Extreme Terrain as well, so sticking to Withering Terrain is simply more elegant.
Variant Anti-Air Terrain
This rule is mostly there for GMs. If the entire PC squad is flight-capable then your battlefields might as well be flat Boss Platforms. By using Anti-Air Terrain the GM can force Flyers to avoid specific areas and keep Antigrav users in the ground to make them choose between the dangers on the ground and those on the air. It is also handy for PCs who can create two instances of Terrain during one Turn (like, say, using Surprise Minefield twice) to force a target to take the effect regardless of whether they fly or not.
Lastly, there's the sidebar about how multiple instances of Terrain stack. This was a rule back then in BCG as well, but the rules effects weren't properly spelled out and, I figure, the addition of new Terrain types is a good reason as any to write everything down. All the effects are pretty intuitive, but I think Extreme Terrain might deserve some explanation. Originally, stacking Extreme Terrain simply added a Disadvantage to the Test, but that didn't feel as lethal as it should've been. I tried two Disadvantages as well and, while that was sufficiently lethal for two stacks, it was thoroughly insane for three stacks and above. Now you add Tension multiple times to the Test, which is sometimes rather anemic and sometimes absurdly overpowering, but the transition happens over time in a natural fashion instead.
That's it for today. Think of this update as a short appetizer, we'll get to the main dish and its walls of text soon enough.
Next: New Miracles.
Until then, Gimmick Out.
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