Hey Backers!

It’s been a minute, so I thought it high time to share some progress. Here’s what we’ll cover this update:

I originally pitched Quest Hooks & Ritual Feats as separate sections, but while writing I realized they belonged together.

Have you ever played a game, fought an enemy, and thought ‘that’s awesome! I want that’? At the table we usually call this “NPC magic,” and I hate it. There should be as little distinction as possible between NPCs and PCs. Basically, PCs should be able to do whatever an NPC does.

At times these differences are necessary for the story or mechanical balance, but the greater this dissonance grows the less players feel part of the world and more like they’re playing a video game.

This change benefits both Quest Hooks and Ritual Feats and allows the two pieces to reinforce each other. We’ll get richer, more personal Quest Hooks for GMs and deeper, more immersive Ritual Feats for players. This new section is called Red Mass.

Here’s a sneak peak at part of the rough draft for Blood in the Streets, one of the entries in Red Mass.

Rumors change as they spread from tongue to tongue, but you’d need not meet a gossip to know someone holds this city in a vice grip. At sunrise, the streets fill ‘til bustling, but look and see how they walk with eyes to their feet and never saying a word without need. At dusk, the streets clear, shutters slam shut, cats prowl, and the city listens with bated breath for a portent of the morrow.

Sacrament

Faithful may carry out ritual murders in the dark hearts of crowded cities to instill fear, provoke hatred, or elicit other emotions. This holy blasphemy is best suited for rogues, sadists, and anyone capable of killing in plain sight then absconding. To earn the Blood Queen’s blessing of Delectable Fear, a faithful must perform 5 ritual murders with the following conditions:

Delectable Fear - Ritual Feat

[REDACTED]

Here’s a few of the other entries:

Also, here's some new art from Amin Manaa.

I’ve shelved over a month’s worth of work that went into the second narrative dungeon. Hospital morphed into something that went beyond the bounds of a D&D 5E supplement. It grew into its own game involving characters made up of their constituent body parts and movement based combat. It is, in two words, a skirmish game. I’m proud of what Catacolyte designed, but the work is best suited for a different project.

So, where does that leave Hospital of Quiet Minds? The mechanical effort helped settle the core narrative elements. Hospital will raise questions like whether we are our bodies or our brains and force PCs to confront their own self-conceptions.

I stand by the core thematic aspects of the Medusite, but the mechanical execution didn’t feel right. Playtests revealed that we need to beef up the class' foundation and better integrate Inheritance Memories. While it needs a rework, I can’t wait to see how it turns out!

Sins of Our Mother is Catacolyte’s biggest project yet, and I’ve found the sheer size difficult to manage. Unfortunately, I may have to delay Sins by a few months. That said, this book is double Cult’s length, and page for page is denser. Sins already has more content than Cult even at just 30~ pages. Please look forward to its release, it’s going to be great.

Thank you for your support.

Ashton Baker, creator of Catacolyte Games

To new backers, welcome! To old backers, thank you so much for your continued support. I'll strive to live up to your expectations.

We crossed the finish line with 114 backers, raising over $2,700. Between this project and Cult of the Blood Queen, we have come so far this past year. I hope you have as much fun playing in this world as I have creating it.

We unlocked the Crisis of Faith milestone on the last day! These challenges will be standalone encounters GMs can slot into existing campaigns to test their players. These encounters could be boss fights, puzzles, or even moral quandaries. More on these soon!

I've spent an extensive time iterating on the layouts for Sins of Our Mother in an attempt to create something unique. I still have a long way to go, but researching fonts, graphical hierarchy, and general layout design has taught me Cult of the Blood Queen is still really raw. I'm committed to producing the best possible version of my work I can so I'll spend a short stint bringing Cult up to level.

Everyone who backed Cult of the Blood Queen will receive an updated pdf copy via Backerkit, and this new version will become the standard issue.

Happy Holidays!

Best,
Ashton Baker
Creator of Catacolyte Games

P.S.
The Lich Star Race won the Community Choice Poll by 1 vote. Woo!

Hello! We're in the home stretch, so I wanted to share what I've been working on while the campaign pushes past the finish line.

This is fantastic! Thank you all so much for your support. I've got a good feeling about Sins of Our Mother.

One of my goals for Sins is to innovate on design layouts in D&D and other TTRPGs. To this end, I've been hard at work refining and iterating on layouts to present the information in the best possible light. Here's a Traitor Duchess stat page before and after:

The iteration on the right presents the information more clearly, and contains more information. The attacks, abilities, and stat block are all placed with accessibility in mind. There are still problems to shave out (look how cramped the flavor and body text are), but this new iteration solves many of the issues I set out to tackle.

I've taken the same approach to the classes. One of the prevalent notes I got was that Sins didn't feel like scripture, or a bible. If anything, it felt sci-fi. I've reworked the class layouts to make them more on theme and convey the information more clearly.

Layout's cool, but what about the actual game design?

Work has been going well! Euphoria and Sloth are in the beginning phase of development, but they're already shaping up to be really, really fun.

Here's a surprise piece of Euphoria art, the Mosquito Syringe! I love it.

I originally conceived of Vow of Beauty, Medusite, Flesh Singer, etc. as subclasses that would heavily modify existing D&D classes. I wanted them to feel like corrupted versions of the classic archetypes, but this idea did not survive playtesting as people would inevitably work in their favorite class abilities and wreck the game balance.

For example, people playing the Vow of Beauty would keep trying to cast Lay on Hands. I've decided to pivot to just full, independent classes while maintaining a few, key abilities. This gives us more design space to play with, and opens doors we deliberately closed to maintain the boundaries we'd set for ourselves.

The Vow of Beauty has seen some minor tweaks and I plan on improving some Flawless Executions, but right now I'm pretty happy with this class.

The Medusite may be low key my favorite in Sins, but its development has been a little difficult to nail down. Some abilities, like Voracious and Medusa's Wrath, were incredibly fun but over powered. I've taken her back into the shop for a rework, and things are promising.

We're keeping Inheritance Memories, but slightly retooling the other abilities.

The Flesh Singer went through a soft revision. Stress is gone. Instead, Bardic Inspiration and Hit Die are now one and the same. This ability actually lets you sing with your flesh and grow steadily in power as you level up. Pretty fun!

Furthermore, the Flesh Singer's abilities changed into spells to maintain the pure spell caster mechanics. While powerful, these abilities cost Bardic Inspiration die. This 'balance of power' between the Flesh Singer and their inspired creatures will see a lot of playtesting in a campaign, but so far its been fun in the one-off encounters.

The Lich's Star Race & Inquisitorial Tyranny are tied, so get in there and vote before it closes at noon on the 14th. The house wins in case of a tie!

Catacolyte will take a short break for the holidays, and then come back and lay some ground work. I'm going to quickly update the digital version of Cult of the Blood Queen with what I've learned about layouts working on Sins. This update won't be major, but it'll clean the document up and make everything more readable.

Then, it'll be back to work on Sins to push towards our October release date.

Hello and welcome to the first campaign update! Thank you all for your support. Let's keep climbing higher and higher!

Sins of Our Mother includes 4 narrative dungeons that I'm super excited about. They're heavy with body horror and interesting paths. The Traitor Duchess & Estate of Undeath prototype is finished while Sickle City and Hospital of Quiet Minds (names pending) are entering the drafting phase.

But what's the fourth adventure, you ask? That's up to you! Check out our new Community Choice poll and vote for one of the following:

We've unlocked quite a few milestones, and it's high time I share a little more about what they are!

Radiant Cannon - $300

The most science-fiction Radiant Weapon in the VoB's arsenal. This thing doesn't pack a big punch by itself, but its attack can leap to nearby enemies with the Chain mechanic.

Chain 2 - This weapon’s attacks can ricochet to up to 2 additional targets. On a hit, attack another creature within 10 ft of the hit creature, and then again against another creature within 10 ft that hit creature. Missing an attack ends the chain.

Radiant Ballerina - $600

Elegance for the elegant! The Radiant Wire's dance is deadly for your enemies, and a source of life for your allies.

Euphoria Fighter - $900

The Euphoria Fighter embodies the sin of lust. She forsakes even her own flesh for those delicious and fleeting physical pleasures others spurn out of fear for their health. Nothing, not even loss of limb or life, can stop this woman's unbridled pursuit of mind melting ecstasy.

We also unlocked Overdose at $1500! This'll bring the Euphoria Fighter's drugs and other physical pleasures to all characters through a universal system. It's too soon to say what this will look like, but it'll add re-usable potion-like items to all players repertoire.

Sloth Druid - $1200

The Sloth Druid guards death's churn and ensures no life goes to waste, even in decay. They plant seeds in the cavities of corpses and spool carrion into materials for new life. Their dark kingdom is one of maggots and mushrooms, of regress and rot and rebirth.

Lazarus Myrtle (2nd level spell)
------------------------
You plant the seed of a Lazarus Myrtle on a space with a corpse within your Root Network range. At the beginning of the round, the tree births a Spore Pod. On your turn, the Spore Pod moves to the closest enemy and explodes, dealing 1d12 poison damage to all adjacent creatures who fail a Constitution save.

One of my goals for Sins of Our Mother is to innovate on the traditional D&D layout. This is partly because Sins is all about transgression and breaking tradition, but also because of my own infatuation with modern design. In my opinion, the standard portrait layout doesn't play well with art or even really the body text.

To me, the information in RPG books tend to bleed together and quickly become difficult to parse. It's really telling that I turn to the web rather than flip open the book sitting right next to me.

A more modern and distinguishable layout will help readers parse information and stop what I call "text blob." The Sins PDF will also come with as many page links as possible to help readers move between sections without scrolling for an eternity. This'll be a huge help since Sins is already difficult to navigate.

What do you think of Catacolyte's more modern design? Too much or too different?