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Rumors of Chaos Alpha Version 0.3

Rumors of Chaos Full Board

Rumors of Chaos

Game Concept

Rumors of chaos are cropping up throughout the city-state of Kaldor, and the call has been sent out for brave adventurers to step up and seek out the sources of these rumors. You have answered this call! As you investigate these rumors, you will find enemies to fight and threats to resolve. As you defeat these threats you will gain equipment and experience, becoming more powerful and gaining new abilities to face the ever increasing threats to the kingdom. Eventually you will come face to face with the mastermind behind these events. Will you defeat the mastermind and save the kingdom? Or will the city fall, plummeting Kaldor into the depths of chaos?

Rumors of Chaos is a fully cooperative fantasy adventure board game where the players take on the roles of 4-6 heroes as they investigate a number of rumors cropping up throughout the city-state of Kaldor. Each game is unique, with the players picking three of the themed rumor sets to combine. Each combination of two rumor sets (and each set by itself) has its own unique mastermind. This means that for each game, there are six unique masterminds that could be the source of the game’s events. Additionally, you will be leveling and gearing up your characters, with meaningful choices of special abilities each time you level. Together, these customizable characters and varying villains create a unique game experience each time you play! With varying rumor sets and masterminds, each play-through will encompass the experience of a full RPG campaign in the compact time of 90 minutes. Welcome to Rumors of Chaos.

Key Mechanics

-A Fully Cooperative Fantasy Adventure Game (Not a dungeon crawler!)
-Players can face challenges together (Don't always have to split the party)
-Each Rumor set has new and different combinations with every other rumor set
-Each combination of 3 Rumor sets used in a game session have 6 unique possibilities for what the final confrontation and challenge will be
-Heroes can level and gear up in a meaningful way that makes them more powerful
-Gear and abilities are integrated into the player board, creating a sense of a developing and filling out character, not additional pieces being tacked on the side

Game Development So Far

Rumors of Chaos is in a mid to late alpha stage of development, meaning the mechanics are in a solid state after lots of playtesting and revising. The physical design of most components is in place, and a decent amount of preliminary graphic design has been done. A couple of components (most notably the Mastermind cards) are still in a text only, waiting their turn to get a design layout. Additionally, only 1 of 4 rumor sets and 4 of 6 heroes are fully designed and playable.

All the components I have printed out currently are on 100lb cardstock. Most of those components (tokens, rumors, etc) will be chipboard for actual production.

Importantly, the game is a fully playable state and has been completed in numerous playtests now, though it gets a bit repetitive with only one rumor set (and therefore one mastermind)

Just to be clear, everything is subject to change at this point.

Game Rules

The game rules are fully written out in a text document, but will definitely need further editing and formatting, as well as examples and images to make them more clear.

If you're interested you can read the rules in a google doc here.

Next Steps

There's still lots to do before Rumors of Chaos will be anywhere near kickstarter ready, but here's a rundown of the next few things I'm working to get finished in the next month.

-Internal Playtesting
-Designing the Mastermind Cards
-Designing enemy tokens (some enemies are generated by rumors and masterminds, rather than the rumor or mastermind being the enemy themselves)
-Formatting and printing out 2 additional rumor sets
-More Internal Playtesting (Always this!)
-Revising anything as needed
-Early External Playtesting

Gencon Alpha Playtest

I'll be attending Gencon. If you're interested and not bothered by random chits standing in for pieces or games not being fully developed and still having hiccups, feel free to send me an email (alex@epicnerd.net), and I'd be happy to demo my current prototype. Once again, note this is still in alpha and will not be polished!

Final Words

Wow, if you got through all of that I'm impressed! I'd love any feedback anyone would like to give on any aspect of Rumors (or this post). I'm always looking to make things better. After all, the point of games is for them to be fun. I'll post updates to this thread as I have them.

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blog | by Dr. Radut