[7:32 PM]Richard#0052: Hi all! I’m Richard (SprintingOwl on socials, kumada1 on itchio) and I’m kickstarting Dead Beats. Dead Beats is an occult brawler TTRPG where you play as heroic losers taking on demons for sub-minimum wage. The kickstarter page is here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rodreel/dead-beats-0?ref=ee9vspbrawling in a bedeviled 90s.
[7:32 PM]Richard#0052: (done)
[7:33 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Thanks, @Richard#0052! The floor is open to questions!
[7:33 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): I see that the time period is the 90s. Why then in particular?
[7:33 PM]HOO (Biological Male): Oh! a 90s setting! Great!
[7:33 PM]HOO (Biological Male): Good question. I’d like to know, too.1
[7:35 PM]Richard#0052: Honestly I did a lot of the initial worldbuilding sort of by reflex, but the 90s period is one of the early worldbuilding elements I didn’t change. The 90s feel modern, but without the prevalence of cell phone cameras. It feels a little more possible for the occult to exist in the 90s. Today, it’d need a really solid explanation for why it hasn’t been caught on film from five simultaneous angles.
[7:35 PM]Richard#0052: I was also channeling a lot of 90s pulp horror in my influences
[7:35 PM]Richard#0052: Constantine Hellblazer, Evil Dead
[7:36 PM]Richard#0052: Well, Evil Dead was 80s
[7:36 PM]Richard#0052: But Army Of Darkness was 90s
[7:36 PM]HOO (Biological Male): (that’s my decade)
[7:36 PM]HOO (Biological Male): 80s
[7:36 PM]Richard#0052: Nice
[7:36 PM]HOO (Biological Male): I see you have a crowdfunding page
[7:36 PM]Richard#0052: Yep!
[7:37 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): You touched on this, but can you tell us more about the PCs?
[7:37 PM]Richard#0052: Absolutely!
[7:37 PM]HOO (Biological Male): I glanced at it and I see that the game involves a deck of cards. Is it a standard deck, or a deck made from the game, and if so, is it a deckbuilding game? If an ordinary deck of cards is involved, how do the suit and rank play in the mechanics ?
[7:37 PM]Corgo: Congrats on making your funding goal!
[7:38 PM]Richard#0052: Thanks!
[7:38 PM]Corgo: I was about to ask the same question as hoo
[7:38 PM]Richard#0052: One sec, I’m going to try to tackle questions in order. First, the PCs. Second, the cards.
[7:39 PM]Richard#0052: So, player characters are the titular Dead Beats. Dead Beats are folks who are aware of the presence of the supernatural, and who intervene in situations where it’s affecting the lives of mortals. Dead Beats themselves are mostly mortal, but they have a few properties of their own and a somewhat casual relationship with death.
[7:41 PM]Richard#0052: One of the things that’s pretty consistent for Dead Beats is that their lives are a little bit in shambles and they don’t have much money. The work they do is stuff that needs to be done, but it doesn’t pay well and the powers that be are pretty thankless about it.
[7:42 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Are they broke because they’re monster hunters, or are they monster hunters because they’re broke?
[7:42 PM]Richard#0052: A big part of this is that Heaven and Hell are both kind of expansionist states in Dead Beats’ lore. They both want to take over the mortal world, and the only thing that’s keeping them from doing so outright is that neither wants to start a war with the other.
[7:42 PM]HOO (Biological Male): Hey, @Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe) : did you notice on the crowdfunding page that an artist for this game is named HODAG? This is the third Hodag1
[7:43 PM]Richard#0052: So Heaven and Hell are in a bit of a cold war, and both are happy to buy up powerful mortals or to buy out Dead Beats who are willing to sell their loyalties.
[7:43 PM]Richard#0052: It’s possible to go from broke to rich as a Dead Beat, but it typically involves selling out.
[7:44 PM]Richard#0052: Now, the cards.
[7:44 PM]Richard#0052: So Dead Beats’ core mechanics use a deck of playing cards.
[7:44 PM]Richard#0052: You pull a card, add the value on the card to your stat, and use this to pass checks.
[7:45 PM]Richard#0052: This lets you generate numbers a little bit faster than a die, but it also lets you keep track of what’s in your deck.
[7:45 PM]Richard#0052: And there’s player upgrades that let you do things like mark cards, add extra 7s, stuff like that.
[7:45 PM]Richard#0052: So it’s a little bit of a deckbuilder.
[7:46 PM]Richard#0052: The core mechanics change a little once you get into combat, but before I get into that I want to follow up on the mention of HODAG
[7:46 PM]Richard#0052: HODAG did the interior art for Dead Beats
[7:47 PM]Richard#0052: And he did it with pen and paper, in some cases all on the same page
[7:47 PM]Richard#0052: So if you’d like to pick up any of those original Dead Beats illustrations, there’s a contact email for him on the kickstarter
[7:48 PM]HOO (Biological Male): very cool. I do my own pen & ink work on paper for my own RPG and I so much appreciate that in RPGs.
[7:48 PM]Richard#0052: Rad!
[7:48 PM]Silverlion: What’s the system like?
@SilverlionWhat’s the system like?[7:48 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): He was just telling us.
[7:48 PM]Richard#0052: I’m super used to artists working in digital, so when the scanned pages came though I was pretty stunned. I’d be super nervous doing multiple illustrations in ink all on the same page like that.
[7:49 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Anybody named HODAG would have to be good.
[7:49 PM]Richard#0052: All good, Silverlion! The system is card-based and pretty combat focused. There’s a loose system for handling things outside of combat, and then a lot of powers and build choices that affect combat.
[7:50 PM]Richard#0052: HODAG is great! And the other artist on the project, Jonas Wittmann, is also awesome and I’ve worked with him on a few other books.
[7:50 PM]Corgo: Is there a bestiary included or is it all build your own
[7:50 PM]Richard#0052: Both!
[7:50 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Do you have a character sheet that we can see?
[7:51 PM]Richard#0052: Rules are included for creating your own monsters, but there’s a full bestiary and three scenarios as well.
[7:51 PM]Richard#0052: For character sheet, I should’ve been slightly more prepared. I do have one, but I need one second to turn it into a pdf real quick.
[7:52 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): No problem!
[7:52 PM]Richard#0052:Character_Sheet_Prototype.pdf31.93 KB
[7:53 PM]Richard#0052: That is definitely not its final form, but should show some of the silhouette of the game system
[7:53 PM]Richard#0052: So, some stuff on the sheet that’s relevant:
[7:54 PM]Richard#0052: Skills work like this. If you have a Skill, you automatically pass checks with that Skill, unless the check is particularly hard.
[7:54 PM]Richard#0052: Hit Points, Fury, and Evasion are your three combat currencies.
[7:55 PM]Richard#0052: Evasion makes you unhittable. Fury lets you go first and chain actions. And HP is HP, it does the thing HP typically does.
@Richard#0052Evasion makes you unhittable. Fury lets you go first and chain actions. And HP is HP, it does the thing HP typically does.[7:55 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Goes down?
[7:56 PM]Richard#0052: Yep! When you run out of HP you’re out of the fight. Unless you decide to stand back up, take an immediate super-turn, and then die at the end of the next five minutes.
[7:56 PM]Corgo: Is death final?
[7:56 PM]Richard#0052: Ish.
[7:56 PM]Richard#0052: Death for Dead Beats is not exactly a revolving door, but it’s not exactly a sealed bank vault either.
[7:57 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Are Callousness, Hatred, Instinct, and Reason what pass for attributes in this system?
[7:57 PM]Richard#0052: Dead characters can come back, but you end up a little low power for a session if you do. You also get a small bonus when your character dies, and this bonus carries over to other characters, so you could also say Dead Beats is a roguelike.
[7:58 PM]Richard#0052: You also get a lot of say in what happens if you hit 0 HP.
[7:58 PM]Richard#0052: You can just stay down and be fine if your teammates win the fight
[7:58 PM]Richard#0052: Or if you have certain stats or abilities you can slap the mat and get up a limited number of times per fight
[7:58 PM]Richard#0052: Or you can take that super-turn at the cost of definitely dying.
[7:59 PM]Richard#0052: For Dan’s question, Callousness, Hatred, Instinct, and Reason are indeed your stats
[7:59 PM]HOO (Biological Male): Will there be a 1990s feel to the game, not jus tint he movies that inspired the game, but is there an immersion in the 1990s culture and lore
[7:59 PM]HOO (Biological Male): ?
[7:59 PM]Richard#0052: Callousness affects HP, Hatred affects attack scaling and starting Fury, Instinct affects actions per turn, and Reason affects how many build points you get
[7:59 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Can you describe what you mean by “super-turn”?
[8:01 PM]Richard#0052: I didn’t lean super hard into creating a historical feel for the game. It’s 90s, but it doesn’t canonically take place in a Blockbuster Video or anything like that. You could lean harder into it with GMing, or you could lean away if the historical element isn’t part of what draws you to the game.
[8:02 PM]Corgo: Is this a one shot game or campaign style typically?
[8:03 PM]Richard#0052: Re: the super-turn. If you get knocked to 0 HP and decide to stand back up, you refill all your resources, get all of your powers back, and get a turn immediately, even interrupting an enemy turn. You can absolutely light an enemy up this way. It’s a burst of player agency in exchange for losing your character.
[8:03 PM]Richard#0052: One-shot and campaign play are both supported.
[8:03 PM]Richard#0052: One of the playtesting groups did long campaign play with lots of advancement. I’ve done lots of short tests.
[8:04 PM]Richard#0052: There’s a lot of stuff players can spend character build points on, so it’s definitely possible to run a game where the power level becomes quite high.
[8:05 PM]Richard#0052: And I’ve included some mechanics for enhancing the monsters in the bestiary as a campaign progresses.
[8:05 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): What powers can Dead Beats have, and where do they get them?
[8:06 PM]Richard#0052: So, a lot of Dead Beats’ kits are bought using Devilbucks. Devilbucks are, in-universe, pieces of angels and demons that have been shaved off voluntarily, and that are traded as currency among occultists.
[8:06 PM]Richard#0052: Your Reason affects your starting Devilbucks.
[8:06 PM]Corgo: Along with that is there a class system or just free build
[8:06 PM]Richard#0052: With Devilbucks, you buy weapons, utilities, and outfit motifs.
[8:07 PM]Richard#0052: Every Dead Beat starts with some weapons and utilities and motifs, but the more Reason you have the more you get to customize.
[8:07 PM]Richard#0052: Weapons affect your overall playstyle and each have their own ways they approach combat.
[8:08 PM]Richard#0052: For example, the Gluttony Shotgun has high damage, but is relatively close range and knocks struck enemies back, giving them more Evasion.
[8:08 PM]Richard#0052: You can only attack enemies when you have more Range than they have Evasion, so you need to carefully manage enemy Evasion when using the shotgun.
[8:09 PM]Richard#0052: On the flipside, the Pinion Rifle is a sniper rifle that fires angel feathers, and it works great on high Evasion foes, but it requires you to have a little bit of Evasion when you’re using it or your shots take a penalty.
[8:09 PM]Richard#0052: Evasion and Fury are both resources that you manage in combat. You can spend actions to gain more, or to remove Evasion from enemies
[8:10 PM]Richard#0052: And weapons like the Gunshoes encourage you to do that, triggering bonus effects whenever you remove Evasion from someone
[8:10 PM]Corgo: Is melee a thing? Magic?
[8:10 PM]Richard#0052: Yep!
[8:11 PM]Richard#0052: All attacks are done through weapons, but how each weapon works varies quite a bit
[8:11 PM]Richard#0052: Like the Metatron’s Voice is an orbital laser
[8:11 PM]Corgo: Well that’s fun
[8:11 PM]Richard#0052: The Marionette Prosthetic is a set of strings that you can use to steal skills from enemies or create dummies with
[8:11 PM]Corgo: In my mind it just sounds like Alan Rickman tho
[8:12 PM]Richard#0052: I wasn’t specifically channeling Dogma, but you could definitely compare the feeling of Dead Beats to Dogma
[8:12 PM]Richard#0052: Oh, as long as I’m talking about weapons, I should also cover the meat of combat
[8:13 PM]Richard#0052: So, one thing I like in TTRPGs is when you decide a roll is really important to you and spend everything on your sheet to make sure that roll succeeds
[8:13 PM]Richard#0052: Another thing I like in combat is getting to take a bunch of actions during your combat turn
[8:14 PM]Richard#0052: So in Dead Beats, after taking a combat action, you draw a card, add your Instinct, and subtract your Fatigue
[8:14 PM]Richard#0052: If you get a 10 or higher, you gain a Fatigue and take another action
[8:14 PM]Richard#0052: This means you can chain a ton of actions during your turn if you get good pulls and have high Instinct, and if you don’t you can also spend Fury to boost individual card pulls to keep going
[8:15 PM]Richard#0052: There are some limitations. You can’t attack with the same weapon back to back. But you can freely weapon switch, and some weapons also break this rule.
[8:15 PM]Richard#0052: Also, when you as a player attack, you hit
[8:15 PM]Richard#0052: If your target’s in range, you hit, it just works
[8:16 PM]Richard#0052: If someone attacks you, you draw a card
[8:16 PM]Richard#0052: And then you decide to stand or fold
[8:16 PM]Richard#0052: Stand, you might dodge the attack entirely or you might get clobbered for extra damage. Fold, you reduce the incoming damage, but you definitely get hit.
[8:17 PM]Richard#0052: And there are utilities and outfit motifs that work directly with this system, making your folding more effective or letting you redraw cards or letting you tank or punish being attacked etc.
[8:17 PM]Richard#0052: The ideal feeling of combat in Dead Beats is that you do a ton of stuff during your turn, lightning fast, and then your turn ends and you have to survive an equally fierce onslaught from an enemy.
[8:18 PM]Richard#0052: Devil May Cry was an inspiration, as were the mechanics of fighting games.
[8:19 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): It sounds like all of the weapons used by Dead Beats are supernatural in nature. Is that the case, and is unarmed combat a thing?
[8:19 PM]Richard#0052: Yep!
[8:19 PM]Richard#0052: There’s actually mundane weapons as well
[8:19 PM]Richard#0052: Every character by default has fists and a holdout piece as weapons, and they have their own upgrade trees
[8:20 PM]Richard#0052: Oh, also all the weapons have optional upgrade trees
[8:20 PM]Richard#0052: Fists has a lot of variation in its upgrades, but the big keystone one lets you warm up a big superpunch and if the enemies don’t get out of your way by next turn you hit for massive damage.
[8:21 PM]Richard#0052: The holdout piece has an upgrade where you can mug enemies for temporary Devilbucks mid combat
[8:21 PM]Richard#0052: There’s also a SAM launcher and sort of a generic “mundane weapon” which could be a sword or a gun or whatever the player wants to flavor it as
[8:22 PM]Richard#0052: Oh, there’s a rope dart as well
[8:22 PM]Richard#0052: You can bind and reel in enemies and it actually pairs pretty well with the shotgun
[8:23 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): “Get over here!”
[8:23 PM]Richard#0052: Yep!1
[8:23 PM]Richard#0052: As I was working on the system I was musing about how it could be used for Mortal Kombat as well
[8:24 PM]Richard#0052: Admittedly, it’s not really built around pvp, but it can do it
[8:27 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Speaking of Mortal Combat, does Dead Beats have a martial arts system, or is it all straight-ahead brawling?
[8:27 PM]Richard#0052: So, kinda.
[8:27 PM]Richard#0052: Dead Beats kind of routes all of its attack actions through the different weapon types, but the fists weapon has upgrades that are related to different martial arts
[8:28 PM]Richard#0052: Way Of The Dragon lets you counterattack when you fold. Way Of The Tiger lets you spend Fury to hit harder.
[8:29 PM]Richard#0052: I did a little bit of southern shaolin irl, although this was years ago, and it lingers in my game design
[8:30 PM]Richard#0052: Likewise, stuff like the rope dart has some degree of martial arts included in its basic attacks and abilities
[8:32 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Is there a flying guillotine?
[8:32 PM]Richard#0052: Hmm, not yet, but there’s plenty of room to add stuff
[8:32 PM]Richard#0052: I’ve been trying to hold myself back (and failing, lol) from adding too much stuff to the book, since there are kickstarter backer levels where people can add custom weapons or upgrades or monsters
[8:33 PM]Richard#0052: And the weapons are kinda complicated to add. Each one has to have a different, and viable, playstyle plus like 8 optional upgrades that all do something interesting.
[8:33 PM]Richard#0052: But I do keep adding stuff anyway, so flying guillotine isn’t out of the question
[8:34 PM]Richard#0052: I’d also really like to add a three section staff, but I’ve been mostly succeeding in keeping myself from writing those mechanics thus far
[8:35 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Are all of the monsters affiliated with Heaven or Hell?
[8:35 PM]Richard#0052: Nope!
[8:35 PM]Richard#0052: Angels and demons are in the bestiary, but there’s also werewolves, witches, puppets, zombies, etc
[8:36 PM]Richard#0052: There’s plenty of supernatural things that are native to the mortal world that are just as much of a danger
[8:36 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): (brb)
[8:36 PM]Richard#0052: Np!
[8:37 PM]Richard#0052: Hopefully I’ve caught everyone’s questions so far, but if there’s anything you asked and I missed please feel free to jump back in!
[8:37 PM]Richard#0052: Or if you have a new question! I’ve covered a pretty broad sweep of the essentials, but if there’s more about something specific that you’d like to know go right ahead.
[8:37 PM]HOO (Biological Male): i think those are all my qs
[8:37 PM]Richard#0052: All good!
[8:38 PM]Richard#0052: I appreciated the one about the 90s, since that was sort of a weird element in the game for me.
[8:38 PM]Richard#0052: I was a 90s kid, so my perception of it is kind of like “the normal time when everything was normal”
[8:38 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): (back)
[8:39 PM]Richard#0052: Which made having to specifically think about what made the game 90s a little surreal
[8:39 PM]HOO (Biological Male): My game is 1980s, so i appreciate period games.
[8:39 PM]Corgo: This sounds really cool and I’ll be backing it I think
[8:39 PM]Richard#0052: Thanks, Corgo!
[8:39 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): About how many entries are in the bestiary?
[8:40 PM]Richard#0052: Lemme do a quick monster headcount
[8:40 PM]Richard#0052: About 40, as of right now
[8:41 PM]HOO (Biological Male): are they inspired by 90s creatures?
[8:41 PM]Richard#0052: Each category of critter has a mob, grunt, brute, boss, and superboss version
[8:41 PM]HOO (Biological Male): interesting
@HOO (Biological Male)are they inspired by 90s creatures?[8:41 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): What would you consider to be a 90s creature?
[8:41 PM]Richard#0052: They’re not specifically inspired by classic 90s movie monsters, but now that I’m thinking about that it’d be a really fun way to expand the bestiary
[8:42 PM]HOO (Biological Male): like creatures found in 90svideo games or iconic horror movies
[8:42 PM]Corgo: Do you have like big bads?(edited)
[8:43 PM]Richard#0052: So the broad categories of monsters are currently angel, demon, animal, construct, human, inquisition, and wraith
[8:43 PM]Richard#0052: The superboss versions of those are stuff like Cacodemon, Mech, Cambion
[8:44 PM]Richard#0052: And you could use them for campaign villains
[8:44 PM]Richard#0052: But the big bad of the setting is more, like, the desire of Heaven and Hell to try and take territory in the mortal world
[8:45 PM]Richard#0052: To that end there’s a bit of lore embedded in the book about the last time Heaven and Hell had an outright war
[8:46 PM]Richard#0052: And also about why they’re in a cold war now
[8:47 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): There are mechs in the game setting?
[8:48 PM]Richard#0052: Yep! There’s a fair few elements that are more advanced than the usual technology of the 90s, and they’re a result of angels and demons meddling and introducing extra technology and funding to certain mortal groups
[8:48 PM]Richard#0052: You won’t see a mech out on the streets in broad daylight
[8:48 PM]Richard#0052: But if you break into an arms manufacturer’s lot you might get chased back out by several tons of angry tempered steel(edited)
[8:49 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): On a related note, how “under the radar” is the supernatural (and supertech)?
[8:50 PM]Richard#0052: Relatively. I’d compare it to how stuff like World Of Darkness and Dresden Files handle the occult. Once you’re in the know you kind of see it everywhere, but the average person isn’t clued in.
[8:51 PM]Richard#0052: Mortals also kind of naturally avoid it. You go into an old house, you get a bad feeling, before you can think about why you’ve already left.
[8:51 PM]Richard#0052: This can be mitigated through exposure, though.
[8:51 PM]Richard#0052: So the folks who have a diplomatic relationship with angels or demons don’t forget about their diplomatic relationship overnight.
[8:54 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): How would you compare the prowess of a typical Dead Beat to that of any well-known superheroes?
[8:54 PM]Richard#0052: Hmm
[8:55 PM]Richard#0052: I think a pretty easy comparison is to a character action game protagonist. Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, that kind of thing. Or to a fighting game character. Street Fighter, Mortal Combat, anything at a loosely human-but-very-skilled power level.
[8:55 PM]Richard#0052: For popular superheroes, hmm
[8:56 PM]Richard#0052: Bit stronger than Daredevil or Punisher, but definitely not anywhere near Superman
[8:57 PM]Richard#0052: Chainsaw Man was also part of the inspiration soup that produced the game, if manga comparisons aren’t off the table
[8:57 PM]Richard#0052: Jonah Hex, maybe?
[8:57 PM]Richard#0052: That’s probably the closest I can get to exactly a Dead Beats character in superhero media
[8:57 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Actually, speaking of superheroes, can Dead Beats have superhuman ability levels, like superhuman strength?
[8:58 PM]Richard#0052: Constantine, despite being an influence on the game, is actually way stronger and more competent than a typical Dead Beat(edited)
[8:58 PM]Richard#0052: Dead Beats can push the edges of human capability, and they can also kind of effort their way past that
[8:59 PM]Richard#0052: A Dead Beat in a fight with enough Fury can absolutely punch a mech hard enough to make it sit down
[8:59 PM]Richard#0052: Hmm, Suicide Squad might be the right comic book comparison for Dead Beats
[9:00 PM]Richard#0052: Definitely not level-a-city power, but a Dead Beat can 1 v 1 an angel
[9:00 PM]Richard#0052: Well, a low ranking angel
[9:01 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Teen Titans, maybe?
[9:01 PM]Richard#0052: Oh, no, they’re way stronger
[9:01 PM]Richard#0052: They have resources
[9:02 PM]Richard#0052: At least two of them can rearrange the fabric of the universe
[9:02 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Ah. I did not know that.
[9:02 PM]Richard#0052: Comics are not my strong suit so it is possible I’ve made some critical error in any of what I’ve written above
[9:03 PM]Richard#0052: If so I apologize to the fans
[9:03 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Heh. No worries. I’m pretty out of the comics loop myself these days.
[9:03 PM]Richard#0052: But I would def not rank a Dead Beat on the same sort of level as Starfire or Raven
[9:03 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Gotcha.
[9:04 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Aside from their magical weapons and martial arts abilities, what other powers can Dead Beats have?
[9:04 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Can they, for example, use magic spells?
[9:04 PM]Richard#0052: In fiction, sorta. They can use tech that belongs to angels and demons, but so can regular mortals.
[9:05 PM]Richard#0052: Probably the biggest thing that Dead Beats have is determination.
[9:05 PM]Richard#0052: Oh, I guess also fashion.
[9:05 PM]Richard#0052: I mentioned it earlier, but outfit motifs are a thing you can spend Devilbucks on(edited)
[9:06 PM]Richard#0052: They’re stuff like death motif, gambling motif, and they’re reflected in your character’s outfit
[9:06 PM]Richard#0052: They also affect how your character plays. One lets you mark cards. Another lets you change what’s in your deck. Another turns aces into jokers.
[9:07 PM]Richard#0052: Dead Beats as a system doesn’t really care if your character has body armor on, but it does care how much time they’ve put into their wardrobe.
[9:08 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Cool.
[9:08 PM]Richard#0052: The motif system is also built to be flexible. Taking death motif doesn’t mean your character has to wear a specific t-shirt. The motif can be reflected as coffin earrings, a tattoo, memento mori stitched into their jacket sleeve, etc
[9:09 PM]Richard#0052: I don’t usually put a lot of time into imagining how characters are dressed, so I tried this as an experiment and it added a surprising amount to the feeling of character building
[9:10 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): What are some songs that you’d put on a Dead Beats soundtrack?
[9:10 PM]Richard#0052: Hmmm
[9:11 PM]Richard#0052: I think 90s grunge, an assortment of punk and classic rock, some speed metal
[9:11 PM]Richard#0052: Maybe some old country?
[9:12 PM]Richard#0052: I don’t have an exact tracklist in my head, and I sorta don’t want to just pick something spur of the moment
[9:12 PM]Richard#0052: But that’s where I’d start looking
[9:13 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): No game is for everyone. That being the case, what sort of gamer will not like Dead Beats?
[9:13 PM]Richard#0052: Oh, wait. Kenny Wayne Shepherd’s Blue On Black
[9:14 PM]Richard#0052: That’s not as forceful and energetic as I think the rest of the soundtrack would be, but it’d definitely be on there
[9:15 PM]Richard#0052: So, folks who won’t click with Dead Beats will, I think, either not vibe with my interpretation of Heaven and Hell as expansionist states (totally fair!) or not want a game that’s as centered around combat
[9:16 PM]Richard#0052: If you want to dig deep into the relationships between characters in a 90s supernatural game, Dead Beats doesn’t stop you, but that’ll be more supported in something like Monsterhearts
[9:17 PM]Richard#0052: On the other hand, if you want to air juggle the devil until coins fly out, Dead Beats does want you to stylishly flow your way through combat
[9:18 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Also, no game is perfect. That being the case, what is your least favorite aspect of Dead Beats?
[9:18 PM]Richard#0052: Oh man. I love the playtesting, but I have gone through maybe 20 major balancing passes since I started the first draft.
[9:18 PM]Richard#0052: It gets better every time, and I owe a huge shoutout to my playtesters for helping to make it better
[9:19 PM]Richard#0052: But every time I spot a bug and it affects more than one ability and I have to overhaul a small part of the book there is a little bit of suffering involved
[9:19 PM]Richard#0052: I also do wish I could include a bit more support for out of combat stuff
[9:20 PM]Richard#0052: The skill system works fine, and it gets out of players’ way and lets them roleplay
[9:20 PM]Richard#0052: But I’d love to add, like, basebuilding and social links and stuff like that
[9:20 PM]Richard#0052: It’s just, that way lies infinite scope creep
[9:21 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): A solid answer!
[9:21 PM]Richard#0052: Thanks!
[9:21 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Oh, speaking of skills: You mentioned that they’re auto-successes unless the action is particularly difficult. What happens then?
[9:21 PM]Richard#0052: Then you need the skill to attempt the action, and you pull a card and add your stat
[9:22 PM]Richard#0052: This is almost exclusively for out of combat stuff
[9:22 PM]Richard#0052: In combat as a player you have pretty full narrative control over your character
[9:22 PM]Richard#0052: If you want to John Woo dive while firing handguns akimbo, you just say you do and you do it
[9:23 PM]Richard#0052: If you want to bank a shot off of a ceiling fixture, you just do it
[9:23 PM]Richard#0052: I don’t want stopping to check whether a character succeeds to interfere with them being stylish
[9:24 PM]Richard#0052: There are ways skills get used in combat, though
[9:24 PM]Richard#0052: Where the combat takes place is, mechanically, considered its arena
[9:24 PM]Richard#0052: And each arena has different things you can do with different skills
[9:25 PM]Richard#0052: Think of it like a fighting game stage in Injustice, where there’s a few objects you can interact with to affect the flow of combat
[9:25 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): In the time remaining, is there anything we haven’t covered that you’d like to bring up?
[9:26 PM]Richard#0052: Honestly, this has been pretty comprehensive, but let’s talk about recipes
[9:26 PM]Richard#0052: So, while I was planning the kickstarter campaign, I wrote down one backer level called Shredded Beets as a joke
[9:26 PM]Richard#0052: And that backer level includes a borscht recipe
[9:27 PM]Richard#0052: Since launch, I’ve also added six more recipes
[9:27 PM]Richard#0052: You get a salad, pickled beet stems, kvass, borscht, beet molasses, beet molasses cookies, and a tangy beet spread
[9:28 PM]Richard#0052: I am not much of a cook, but I’ve been testing these recipes over the past couple weeks and successfully brewed my own kvass without screwing up
[9:29 PM]Richard#0052: It is still kind of a joke backer level, but I’d love to see more ttrpgs doing stuff like this. Including recipes or even just thinking about what food’s like in the setting.
[9:29 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Good idea!
[9:29 PM]Richard#0052: In my case that second option wasn’t too interesting, since the setting’s just the 90s, but I got to try a lot of beet recipes and for me that added to the overall experience(edited)
[9:29 PM]Richard#0052: You can run Dead Beats and serve your players a multi course meal of dead beets, and that’s something(edited)1
[9:30 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Thanks very much for joining us, @Richard#0052!
[9:30 PM]Richard#0052: Thank you for hosting me!
[9:30 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Usual reminder: If you’ve enjoyed this Q&A and would like to treat me to a coffee or two, you can do so at https://www.ko-fi.com/gmshoe. Anything’s appreciated! Ko-fiBuy Dan Davenport a Coffee. ko-fi.com/gmshoeBecome a supporter of Dan Davenport today! ❤️ Ko-fi lets you support the creators you love with no fees on donations.
[9:31 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): If you’ll give me a minute, I’ll get the log posted and link you!
[9:31 PM]Richard#0052: Thanks!