Wow…three months goes by quickly. It’s time again to look at how Encoded is doing, what we are up to, and things that are coming in the near future. In terms of the team we have not grown, nor are we planning any future growth at this time. With the current team, we have all the skills we need to design, write, and create books and other publications. When I started Encoded, I never thought that...
Welcome, students. Up to today, we have covered three major periods of the history of Elhal. They are not equal in number of years, but rather are grouped out of significance. The first time period was Before the Empire, when Elhal went from an unorganized group of humans into Kingdoms, and ending with the formation of the Empire. The second period was the Imperial Age, where the Empire ruled over Elhal. It was in retrospect a...
September 15, 2015 - Encoded Designs is teaming up with artist Matt Morrow to create the Character Cache, the blending of character art and game material for GMs and players. As a GM you will be able to use the Character Cache as a collection of NPCs. The content includes different ways the character can be used in your campaign. If you are a player, the content supplies an illustration of the character, and provides questions to...
Before we conclude our discussions on the Reign of the Demon King, having already covered it's effects on the kingdoms and organizations, I thought I would take a lecture to discuss with you my own personal experiences during this period of time. So as we conclude this section of lecture, if you do not mind a more personal and less objective historical recount, I will tell you about some of my experiences during this period in recent history. My...
For an imaginative young DM growing up in the heyday of AD&D in the 1980s, the hours and days and weeks spent creating fantasy worlds was anything but wasted time. Starting with the expansive creation stories for your home-brewed gaming world (a staple for excited young—and old—DMs), you inevitably had to focus on the adventures—the places where your players would actually interact with your world. And for me, at least, one piece of adventure design...
We continue our discussion about the Reign of the Demon King. In our last lecture, we talked about the fate of the Kingdoms, during this thirty year period. This week, we look at some of the major organizations in Elhal, and how they fared under the rule of the Demon King. The Organizations In all the Demon King, and by extension, the Demons were mostly hostile to any organized group of humans. As a student of humanity,...
So I started working on an Apocalypse World engine game. I’m not sure if I’m ever going to release it or if it’s just something I want for myself, I’d like to release it at some point. In any case it’s a lot easier these days than it ever used to be to design a PbtA (Powered by the Apocalypse) game because there are so many of them out there. You just cut and paste...
Greetings once again, students. Today’s lecture covers the thirty-year span in Elhal’s history where the Demon King ruled over Elhal. There is no darker time for humans than this period of time. All that was built in the thousand years of the Empire would erode under the dark presence of the Demon King. Left unchecked, it is possible that humanity and all of Elhal would have perished. Today, we will cover what happened to each...
Welcome back, students. I hope you enjoyed your time off as much as I did mine. In our last lecture we discussed the state of Elhal in 1024, after the Demons solidified their hold on Arelean. In that lecture we talked about King Therion's plan to rebel against the Demons. Today, we will look more into Therion's plan, and his foresight. The Quiet Before the Storm For six years, from 1024 to 1030, Kotkala prepared for a war...
One does not simply return from Gen Con. You don't simply immerse yourself in the best 4 (or more) days of gaming, and then walk back into normal life unscathed. The dive into the deep ocean of tabletop gaming nirvana brings you to magical places, but the decompression sickness can break you as you surface. This Gen Con was much different for me. I am usually running 20 - 40 hours worth of games, and this time...
So I was kicking around some ideas, and I came across this one and felt the need to share it with you folks out in reader land. A lot of Eurogames, ala Splendor, Ticket to Ride, and Dominion, have the limiting of choice, or an action economy, as part of the game play. D&D and Pathfinder have action economies in their combat systems that limit what you can do on a turn. Savage Worlds limits...
We are now a few weeks into Quarter 3 of 2015, and I wanted to updated everyone on what Encoded has been doing and how things are going. While we are still building our team and our products, this past Quarter marks our first major project going out the door. The most exciting news we have this Quarter is the addition of a new member to the Encoded Team, Tim Jones. Tim is a graphic artist...
Hi folks. So I'm a big believer in game creation mechanics. From the Dresden Files City creation, which is stripped down to game creation in Fate Core by Evil Hat, to Spark by Genesis of Legend Publishing, to Microscope by Lame Mage Productions with it's things included and excluded from the game. I put territory creation as a cooperative experience in Part-Time Gods of Fate so of course I dropped it in our initial design...
This past weekend the Encoded Designs team finished the manuscript for our Fate version of the Third Eye Games RPG Part-Time Gods. (The Kickstarter for Part-Time Gods of Fate continues apace.) The final push included a fairly intense round of editing and proofreading by the entire staff, with a particular weight of that falling on Encoded’s own Bob “THE EYES” Everson. The proofing round just completed got me thinking about editing in general. One of the...
In today’s lecture we return to the discussion of our history, and we look at the early reign of the Demon King. We will start by looking at how each of the human kingdoms dealt with the Demon Kingdom, and then how one human kingdom was moved to action. This was a trying time where the fate of humanity was uncertain. The Early Reign By 1024, after the crushing defeat at Nendar Moor, the military might of the...
I'm still evolving my little part of the Encoded Designs blog space and since I do enjoy talking about design and why I'm making the choices I'm making I thought I'd share a bit about the newest design we're working on. So we're making a new game called Cybertek which is using a new design process, something I guess programmers call Scrum, you can read more about it here. Anyways it's supposed to be an agile, incremental, and iterative...
Today, we talk about one of the more controversial factions who were present during the Reign of the Demon King: the Brotherhood of Steel. To some they were a band of vigilantes, exacting a harsh justice in the lands outside of the control of the Demons. To others, they were a noble line of soldiers who refused to lay down their arms and give in to the Demon King. As with all contrasting views, the truth...
Welcome back, students. We have recently completed our review of the castes of Demons. Before that, we discussed Elhal’s ancient history, the rise of the Empire, and its Fall to the Demons. Before we get into the next major era, The Reign and Fall of the Demon King, I want to spend the next few lectures discussing the major groups and institutions which will play a pivotal role during the Reign of the Demon King...
I'm reading the War of Art by Steven Pressfield, and within this marvelous book for creatives is the idea of resistance. Resistance is those things that keep us from doing the creative work which makes us who we are. There's about 40ish pages of what resistance is, how it effects us, and how it hinders us. The worst part is it's all self inflicted. I'd overcome some of the aspects of resistance that hinder me but there were...
Here at Encoded Designs we've been designing a Fate version of Part Time Gods, a Third Eye Games IP that I'm quite fond of. For those who don't know, you're playing regular people who've been gifted with a divine spark and now they need to balance the problems and responsibilities of the divine world they find themselves in against their human ones. When we were conceptualizing this game the thing I wanted was to make "godly magic"...