Wow thanks for all your amazing support! We'll firm up exactly what we're putting into the Witch Pouch reward - we've certainly gone a lot further than we expected to. There will stickers and art cards aplenty! (And for previous backers of Maskwitches these will be new stickers and cards - not just a repeat of the previous pack) Since this is a Ready-to-Ship campaign I don't think we'll do formal Achievements, but we'll see!
So! We've shown a lot of artwork - this is the easy stuff to get folks interested in Maskwitches. But what about the game system that powers it?
Maskwitches uses The Silver Road, which is available as a PWYW title on DrivethruRPG. While those rules form the basis of the game, there's some key additions to Maskwitches which really make it sing - we developed Maskwitches after months of Silver Road play. More on those additions below.
The Silver Road is a very rules light, narrative game, where the players and the GM share a lot of power over the story you tell together. It grew out of my home group playing games "wrongly", and realising we had a set of rules we should write down.
In the Silver Road rules every character is defined by two things they are good at, and two things they are bad at. These can be anything, and you make them up yourself. In Maskwitches there's a load of suggestions, which are largely practical things. But once you've played a few games you might want to try out some more esoteric subjects for "good at" and "bad at".
Play proceeds much as you'd expect for a tabletop roleplaying game, which each person taking the role of one witch, and a Game Meditator facilitating the opening of a story.
When your characters come up against an obstacle - and what constitutes an obstacle is varied and determines a lot of the nature of your individual story, you roll a single six sided dice, and your narration is guided by the result.
If it involves something you're good at, you succeed on any roll except a 1. If you roll a 1 you face a consequence, but overcome it on your next turn.
If it involves something you're bad at, you can only succeed on the roll of a 6. Otherwise you face a consequence.
Consequences are "pre-programmed" for each obstacle, and take the form of storytelling prompts, such as "someone is hurt" or "something is broken", and they're cycled through until the obstacle is overcome. Sometimes they can be a little more lateral, like "someone remembers something they'd forgotten" - they're not always negative.
Who you deal with a consequence, you as the player whose character is suffering it narrates what happens. It might not involve your character directly - "someone is hurt" for example, could be anyone in the scene. Or indeed someone somewhere else. It's up to you to play creatively and make a story together.
In the game you don't track any numerical resources. You're not trying to get to the end of the scenario with enough "mechanics stuff" left to win. Maskwitches isn't concerned with that stuff. Which is very freeing - you can take on consequences for your own character, or be handed them by someone else. You're not going to lose anything by such reverses - it's just a twist in the story.
In Maskwitches, the things your witch is good at are represented by masks. When you're wearing your "Good at convincing people" mask, you're good at just that. A key feature of Maskwitches is that you can swap masks around the group of characters, making their identities purposefully very fluid and posing some interesting questions about who they are. Sometimes you'll find or make new masks.
The things you are bad at are represented by amulets, which the witches carry as symbols of their human frailty and weaknesses. You may gain amulets as play proceeds.
The maskwitches exist to protect the hunter gatherer groups that roam The Land. When things go wrong for people, and disharmony starts to take hold, evil spirits are spawned and start to cause serious problems. This isn't "hiding things" or causing a bit of bad luck - they're 10,000 year old spirits from the ice made of dog teeth and birch tar, and generally they kill people. A Maskwitches scenario is always about hunting down a spirit and driving it off or destroying it.
The only weapon effective against a Spirit is the amulet of a witch. So Maskwitches hunt down a spirit with the intent of leveraging their own weakness, and thus destroying the spirit. Think of it as a bit of a scapegoat thing. The witches understand their human weaknesses, and suffer them on behalf of the community. Witches know there are a range of useful activities in pursuing the Spirit - its name, where it might be and so on, all of which empower them to defeat it.
In the final battle with a Spirit the players are seeking to gather all the faces of a die, rolled in battle with the Spirit, using their weaknesses.
Alongside this are three other key parts of play:
Magic numbers. Every player has a magic number. When it appears at the table during any roll they can “butt in” and change the direction of the story with a “but…”
Knap tokens. Witches that carry out witch activities like crafting, consulting an elder witch, reading patterns in the ice caves and the like, which are all detailed in the book, in order win knap tokens. These let players shift a die roll by one face per knap spent. That means they can avoid consequences for them and their friends, get to butt in, and most importantly move the die faces in that final battle to get a faster win without enduring too many consequences.
Predestined Events. The GM maintains a list of events which are triggered when so many of a particular die face are rolled. These can be anything they like, and you can play with them open, so you know when things are coming down the pike, or you can play closed without knowing.
Well hello! Thank you so much for taking part and being here for Maskwitches.
We're hard at work right now finishing up all the various art for the GM's Companion, the main body of which is all written and laid out.
If you're interested in learning a load more about the project, head over to the Masking Maskwitches blog. There's lots to read over there, with loads of behind the scenes stuff. You can even sign up for future updates.
Here's a selection of things just from today.
I've been making a pierced rod or command baton, which is more commonly associated with the preceding era - the upper paleolithic, but we do see some examples from the mesolithic, and so why not?
I started with some wire as a foundation, and built up with clay.
Eventually it was done, oven fired, sanded and painted, and it appears in some initial shots looking something like this: I want to shoot some more images yet - maybe pick up a bit more of the texture. I used a real antler to roll on some suitable surface detail, but it's a bit lost here. But you get the idea.
I've also been making some "bead nets" which are a thing in the setting, and which the GM's Companion uses as an aid for understanding the structure of scenarios. These are resin beads, strung together with some hemp and nettle fibres.
And lastly for today, there's a new witch! She sports a never before seen kind of mask, inspired by the Star Carr pendant. I made loads of mini pendants to make myself a set of tokens for playing Maskwitches, and embedded them in resin. Check them out.. just for backers, below.
I'll be taking part in the ENnies Emporium livestream, if all goes well with the technology, so maybe see you there? (4pm EST, Tuesday 7th July - that's 9pm UK time). You can watch it at The Ennies YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOl2vrCD2ck
Thanks again for being a part of this, and tell all your friends:
Well hello! Thank you so much for taking part and being here for Maskwitches.
We're hard at work right now finishing up all the various art for the GM's Companion, the main body of which is all written and laid out.
If you're interested in learning a load more about the project, head over to the Masking Maskwitches blog. There's lots to read over there, with loads of behind the scenes stuff. You can even sign up for future updates.
Here's a selection of things just from today.
I've been making a pierced rod or command baton, which is more commonly associated with the preceding era - the upper paleolithic, but we do see some examples from the mesolithic, and so why not?
I started with some wire as a foundation, and built up with clay.
Eventually it was done, oven fired, sanded and painted, and it appears in some initial shots looking something like this: I want to shoot some more images yet - maybe pick up a bit more of the texture. I used a real antler to roll on some suitable surface detail, but it's a bit lost here. But you get the idea.
I've also been making some "bead nets" which are a thing in the setting, and which the GM's Companion uses as an aid for understanding the structure of scenarios. These are resin beads, strung together with some hemp and nettle fibres.
And lastly for today, there's a new witch! She sports a never before seen kind of mask, inspired by the Star Carr pendant. I made loads of mini pendants to make myself a set of tokens for playing Maskwitches, and embedded them in resin. Check them out.. just for backers, below.
I'll be taking part in the ENnies Emporium livestream, if all goes well with the technology, so maybe see you there? (4pm EST, Tuesday 7th July - that's 9pm UK time). You can watch it at The Ennies YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOl2vrCD2ck
Thanks again for being a part of this, and tell all your friends:
Wow thanks for all your amazing support! We'll firm up exactly what we're putting into the Witch Pouch reward - we've certainly gone a lot further than we expected to. There will stickers and art cards aplenty! (And for previous backers of Maskwitches these will be new stickers and cards - not just a repeat of the previous pack) Since this is a Ready-to-Ship campaign I don't think we'll do formal Achievements, but we'll see!
So! We've shown a lot of artwork - this is the easy stuff to get folks interested in Maskwitches. But what about the game system that powers it?
Maskwitches uses The Silver Road, which is available as a PWYW title on DrivethruRPG. While those rules form the basis of the game, there's some key additions to Maskwitches which really make it sing - we developed Maskwitches after months of Silver Road play. More on those additions below.
The Silver Road is a very rules light, narrative game, where the players and the GM share a lot of power over the story you tell together. It grew out of my home group playing games "wrongly", and realising we had a set of rules we should write down.
In the Silver Road rules every character is defined by two things they are good at, and two things they are bad at. These can be anything, and you make them up yourself. In Maskwitches there's a load of suggestions, which are largely practical things. But once you've played a few games you might want to try out some more esoteric subjects for "good at" and "bad at".
Play proceeds much as you'd expect for a tabletop roleplaying game, which each person taking the role of one witch, and a Game Meditator facilitating the opening of a story.
When your characters come up against an obstacle - and what constitutes an obstacle is varied and determines a lot of the nature of your individual story, you roll a single six sided dice, and your narration is guided by the result.
If it involves something you're good at, you succeed on any roll except a 1. If you roll a 1 you face a consequence, but overcome it on your next turn.
If it involves something you're bad at, you can only succeed on the roll of a 6. Otherwise you face a consequence.
Consequences are "pre-programmed" for each obstacle, and take the form of storytelling prompts, such as "someone is hurt" or "something is broken", and they're cycled through until the obstacle is overcome. Sometimes they can be a little more lateral, like "someone remembers something they'd forgotten" - they're not always negative.
Who you deal with a consequence, you as the player whose character is suffering it narrates what happens. It might not involve your character directly - "someone is hurt" for example, could be anyone in the scene. Or indeed someone somewhere else. It's up to you to play creatively and make a story together.
In the game you don't track any numerical resources. You're not trying to get to the end of the scenario with enough "mechanics stuff" left to win. Maskwitches isn't concerned with that stuff. Which is very freeing - you can take on consequences for your own character, or be handed them by someone else. You're not going to lose anything by such reverses - it's just a twist in the story.
In Maskwitches, the things your witch is good at are represented by masks. When you're wearing your "Good at convincing people" mask, you're good at just that. A key feature of Maskwitches is that you can swap masks around the group of characters, making their identities purposefully very fluid and posing some interesting questions about who they are. Sometimes you'll find or make new masks.
The things you are bad at are represented by amulets, which the witches carry as symbols of their human frailty and weaknesses. You may gain amulets as play proceeds.
The maskwitches exist to protect the hunter gatherer groups that roam The Land. When things go wrong for people, and disharmony starts to take hold, evil spirits are spawned and start to cause serious problems. This isn't "hiding things" or causing a bit of bad luck - they're 10,000 year old spirits from the ice made of dog teeth and birch tar, and generally they kill people. A Maskwitches scenario is always about hunting down a spirit and driving it off or destroying it.
The only weapon effective against a Spirit is the amulet of a witch. So Maskwitches hunt down a spirit with the intent of leveraging their own weakness, and thus destroying the spirit. Think of it as a bit of a scapegoat thing. The witches understand their human weaknesses, and suffer them on behalf of the community. Witches know there are a range of useful activities in pursuing the Spirit - its name, where it might be and so on, all of which empower them to defeat it.
In the final battle with a Spirit the players are seeking to gather all the faces of a die, rolled in battle with the Spirit, using their weaknesses.
Alongside this are three other key parts of play:
Magic numbers. Every player has a magic number. When it appears at the table during any roll they can “butt in” and change the direction of the story with a “but…”
Knap tokens. Witches that carry out witch activities like crafting, consulting an elder witch, reading patterns in the ice caves and the like, which are all detailed in the book, in order win knap tokens. These let players shift a die roll by one face per knap spent. That means they can avoid consequences for them and their friends, get to butt in, and most importantly move the die faces in that final battle to get a faster win without enduring too many consequences.
Predestined Events. The GM maintains a list of events which are triggered when so many of a particular die face are rolled. These can be anything they like, and you can play with them open, so you know when things are coming down the pike, or you can play closed without knowing.
