Well, we wandered into the office first thing this morning, only to find that not one, not two, but three stretch goals have fallen in your investigations. With this dedication, the Dark surely has no chance against your combined efforts to save the Earth (spoiler: it is going to get really bad...).
Stretch Goals
The stretch goals that have been passed already:
Friends and Foes: A decent range of Contacts, Allies, Rivals and Enemies for you to use in your campaigns. You will already have seen that you pick these guys up regularly during Operative Creation and while the Core Rulebook does have some random tables you can use to generate them, these will be fleshed out and ready to go - lovely for the busy Referee!
Ocean Swell: From the fevered mind of Cassie and the deranged writing if Bella comes Ocean Swell, a PDF that will cover a really nasty Dark Minion lurking in the North Sea, the DarkTech associated with it, and a Scottish cult that has sprung up. Plenty for your Operatives to deal with.
Bonus for Creatives: This is something we try to do in every crowdfunder we run. We have many freelance writers and artists who work on our games - they are paid well and quickly (all the art you have seen thus far has been invoiced for and already paid). However, we have a handful of freelancers who have worked for us for years and are regular contributors to all of our games. Frontline freelancers, if you will. With this stretch goal unlocked, we create a 'pool' from which bonuses will be paid to the frontliners after the crowdfunding has ended - usually decent four figure amounts. Most are busy beavering away on their latest creations and so tend not to read Updates like this one, so it tends to come as a nice surprise (it just appears in their bank accounts one morning!). If all goes well, we hope to have another stretch goal like this a little further on into the campaign (hopefully more than one, but let us not count our chickens...). Anyway, just our way of showing our appreciation for their tireless work.
Coming Up
We have oodles of previews and reveals planned for you over the next 30 days, so please stay tuned as we dig into Dark Conspiracy (incidentally, we ran a few previews on our Planet Mongoose blog, so you can dive into those right away) and showcase what we have done, where we are, and what we are planning.
One thing we will be doing very soon is running a poll to see what Operatives you are creating with the free download. In light of that, we thought you might like to see the different specialities some skills have so you can include those in your first Operatives...
Skill Specialities
Those of you familiar with Traveller will know how this works. Some skills have specialities that you select once you get a full level in them - so, ignore this at skill level 0 but, as soon as you get level 1, you choose a speciality, and the skill level goes in there..
Now, when you get another skill level int he same skill, you can either put it in the same speciality (to make it level 2) or pick a different speciality to be at level 1 - so, you get two level 1 specialities in the same skill.
Every other speciality is considered to be skill level 0, so you are at least competent in the other areas.
Skills like this in Dark Conspiracy are as follows (I think they are fairly self-explanatory)...
Animals: Handling, Training, Veterinary Art: 3D Modelling, AI, Instrument, Performer, Physical Media, Visual Media, Write Athletics: Dexterity, Endurance, Strength Computers: Coding, Hardware, Operation Drive: Hovercraft, Track, Wheel Electronics: Comms, Remote Ops, Sensors Empathy Use: Computers, Drain, Foreboding, Healing, Project Mind, Sense Mind Engineer: Aerospace, Civil, Electrical, Industrial, Mechanical Gun Combat: Archaic, Pistol, Rifle Heavy Weapons: Artillery, Portable, Vehicle Language: All the languages! Melee: Blade, Bludgeon, Natural, Unarmed Pilot: Airship, Rotor, Wing Profession: All the jobs! Science: And all the sciences - though pay particular attention to paraphysics... Seafarer: Ocean, Personal, Sail, Submarine
Should be enough to keep you going!
Core Rulebook Add-On
Some of you have said you wanted more than one Core Rulebook (and why not, eh?), and have requested this be included in the Add-ons list - we will be enacting this a little later this morning!
I think that is all for now. Thank you for your support thus far, and do let us know (either here, on our forums or on Discord) how you are getting on with Operative Creations - we really want to know what characters you are creating!
