Zephyr: An Anarchist Roleplaying Game Of Fleeting Identities

Zephyr Update #7 - Weaving Society
over 1 year ago – Tue, Feb 14, 2023 at 07:51:56 PM

Hi kinfolk!

Yesterday we had a cool push that got us past the 80% line, so hopefully we can continue to build momentum and fund within the next couple of days. Thinking about making Zephyr real takes me to think about everything that makes the game, and what people are going to enjoy the most, and among those I think Patterns are a pretty big one - so I wanted to talk about them this time.

Remember when we talked about Obligations? That time, I briefly mentioned that Windfolk tend to carve and give fetishes when establishing those obligations. Fetishes are small woodcarved figurines that are shaped in the image of the gifting Windfolk, and are wrapped in a linen roll - the end of which has a knotted needle, stored in the inside of the fetish:

These fetishes partake in the magic of Windfolk obligations, since the needle stored within cannot be removed before the obligation is fulfilled. In the character sheet, that's why they show up in the space to write down your Obligations!

When you do fulfill an obligation though, the needle can be removed, and so you can use it to weave a Pattern. Patterns hold a very special power and significance since they represent mutual aid, the reciprocal enrichment of windfolk lives through the fulfilment of obligations. When woven into your windfolk's scarf, you are essentially weaving the very stuff by which windfolk society is realized!

So, how does it work mechanically?

The book comes with a wide selection of patterns to choose from. Each pattern unlocks a certain power, which generally has to do with your scarf, and that tends to have different levels of intensity. Here's an example:

When you choose a Pattern, you have to first check its shape, seen above the name. This is important, since the Pattern is supposed to be drawn in the empty white space between your Bonds and the rest of the character sheet:

This Ancestral Coccoon pattern has a lenght of 5, since it passes through 5 holes. Your length of thread available is limited by the Oi of your fulfilled Obligation (basically, the bigger the obligation you fulfilled, the more, longer Patterns you can weave!).

Once the pattern is chosen, however, picking where you place it is important, since patterns draw power from your Bonds. For example, this pattern is connected to two Bonds (one about cooking, and another one about some place called "the valley"):

How do you use your patterns then? Simply put, you just evoke a chosen feeling - that is, you spend the CMYK tokens of that feeling, for example, 1 yellow, 1 magenta, and 1 black for Love. Then, you check the total intensity of Love across your woven bonds (in this case, you have Love 3 for Cooking plus Love 3 for The Valley, so 6) and trigger the corresponding Pattern effect for that intensity.

Of course, building those bonds of love, longing, etc. takes time and many tokens! This is why there's a challenge there in how you fit patterns and interweave them to make the most out of your established Bonds. Not to mention the fact that there are more complex Patterns that have vastly different effects depending on the Intensity, so you might benefit from having differing intensities across linked Bonds - so that evoking Sorrow gets you one effect, evoking Rage gets you a different one, etc.

Patterns are maybe a bit finnicky to convey but I find them super fun to experiment and play around with, and I'm making a comic page to explain it graphically in the book so that their mechanics are accessible for players :) I'm super looking forward to seeing how y'all weave yours across your adventures!

See you on the next one,

Fede

Zephyr Update #6 - Hunting & Cooking
over 1 year ago – Sun, Feb 12, 2023 at 10:23:33 PM

Hi kinfolk! We are out of the weekend now and entering the last week of the campaign. For those who are new to Kickstarter, the last few days tend to mirror the first few days, and given that we are edging into 75% now I'd expect these last few days to take us over the funding line and (hopefully) give us a healthy margin over it :)

Today I wanted to talk about two of the main subsystems of the game, namely hunting and cooking! Like we've been saying, tokens can be spent in several different ways, both to help you succeed at reveals, as well as to evoke the bonds that build up your characters' identity, utilize the magic of patterns, not to mention the fact that tokens are your very life energy - which you lose if you get hurt. How do you get those tokens back?

Hunting is likely to be the main way you get those tokens back. Same as Windfolk, all living beings have a Zephyr constitution, which in the game indicates the kind of nourishment you can get from them:

A hunt, however, has a very particular place as ritual in Windfolk society. Like many other things, hunting is seen as the establishment of an obligation that needs fulfilment. Knowing of how painful life and death can be in the sentient landmass, Windfolk focus on killing their prey in one shot, dealing death quickly and decisively - sparing prey from a prolonged death later on. If the hunter cannot do this, or if their shot misses, it's for them a clear sign that the prey does not consent to their life ending at this point. 

Furthermore, there is also a sacrifice involving hunting in Windfolk society. This sacrifice is called the Shedding, and involves letting blood out when taking a shot (meaning that, if you are going to make a Hunting Reveal in game, you need to discard a token). This isn't an "exchange of blood" by any means; it's a way to imbibe the idea that, if the hunter were to bleed others indiscriminately, they would create a world in which the hunter themselves could be bled out in such uncaring way the day after. 

Windfolk hunting tools are thus woven with braided brambles at the handle, helping do the shedding when the time comes around.

The actual mechanics for hunting are, after that, quite simple - needing to add Harm equal to or higher than half of the prey's Constitution tokens. Adding to Harm depends on several factors (your tool, tactics used, effort spent, technologies employed, etc.)

Leaving hunting aside, I also wanted to touch briefly on cooking, since I think the mechanics for this are quite fun. What is cooking, after all, if not some basic chemistry meant to break down and ease-in nutrient intake? In Zephyr, this is the same.

Say that we have managed to hunt the Wheatfiend I showcased before, and we have their body and its constitution (1 black token, 4 magenta, 4 cyan and 5 yellow). How do we eat that? Well, to be able to do so, we need to break down this huge 4 token combination into a combination of three tokens. Basically, one of the colors among those has to go. This makes logic sense since the known, digestible emotions of the windfolk are always three color combinations! How do we go about cooking it though?

The cooking reveal is very simple. Basically, after our characters prepare the fire, and start cooking, you take all those tokens in your hand, and discard one at random without seeing. Then, you check how many colors are left. If you still have four colors, you repeat the process. This means that there are ideal scenarios, and situations in which a cook-out can be better or worse. 

For example, if we end up discarding those five yellow tokens, we'll end up with 9 tokens left to distribute for the party. It might not be a very fulfilling meal for the risks taken. However, if we manage to cook out that black token, we'll be left with 13 tokens! That's on point. Generally speaking, cooking technologies give characters an edge in this process - allowing them to target and discard certain colors of tokens, as well as getting bonuses for what you get at the end of the process. This doesn't just affect the way you plan how your party will tackle food, but also what prey's they'll favor, which in turn might condition how they'll plan their route of travel (maybe following in a herd's footsteps?).

Anyway, I've written enough now! Hope to see you around for the next one, and thank you for the help in promoting the Kickstarter :) see you soon!

Best wishes,

Fede

Zephyr Update #5 - The Festivities
over 1 year ago – Sat, Feb 11, 2023 at 12:34:02 AM

Hello kinfolk!

We are going into the weekend now and I'm expecting to see some progress on the campaign during these two days, as folk get new emails announcing Zephyr and we continue the push on social media. The Campaign is edging 70%, and we are firmly in the mid-Kickstarter lull: For those who don't know, Kickstarter campaigns tend to have U shapes for funding, meaning most of the money we pick up is during the first and last 3 days! The good news is that Zephyr had a very strong start (considerably stronger than for my last game) and a lot of people signed up to back the game at the end, so we shouldn't have any problems not just funding but doing so quite comfortably. If you want to help out promote the game, feel free to retweet the stuff I tend to post at the Araukana twitter :) every bit helps!

With that aside, I want to continue to talk about the Zephyr system :) specially, since we already have seen how tokens work, as well how character get created, I wanted to talk about what tends to be the final stage of preparation before the journey - The Festivities, where Obligations are taken!

The Festivities are essentially the rites in which young windfolk, eager to embark on their journey, take in Obligations from folk of their community. In your games, this is the instance where not only the main goals of your party are determined, but also when you determine your characters Technologies, their initial spread in terms of talents and skills, and thus when you get to flesh out their role.

Generally, players can start either with their Obligations (creating your "quest") or from their Technologies. If you start with your Obligation, you have to choose different parameters for the quest (how long is the journey? how dangerous, who stands to benefit from fulfilling the Obligation? etc.) and check to see how much each aspect of the Obligation adds to your Oi Points. Oi Points are a measure of reciprocity, and you are going to use them later on to buy Technologies.

If you start off with your Technologies, you'd do the opposite - first check what you wanna get, add up the Oi Points, and create your Obligation with that in mind. But... How do you know which Technologies to get? There's like 50 or so!

Simply put, the ideal way is to pick what you think is cool, and what you think might fit the party well. It's a bit like when thinking of the classic "tanker, DPS, healer" model, but in this case you are thinking of cooking, hunting/gathering, crafting, and how different tasks for survival will complement each other. Maybe someone decides to be a dedicated cook and start adding up several cooking technologies, or maybe you split the responsibility so that one Windfolk gets tech for cooking big slabs of meat, while other specializes in soups and the like.

Here's two examples of cooking tech, featuring their Oi cost, a description of its effect, and background information:

One thing to note is that there are two types of technologies - Internalized and Externalized. Internalized tech is basically knowledge (the 50 or so listed in there), while Externzalized tech comprises special objects that are the result of very succinctly applied knowledge, artefacts that go out of the ordinary - what you could call works of art by all means. There is an important distinction between these and normal objects, because while everyday things can just be added to your bag without really asking, Externalized Tech carry a lot of emotional weight to them. The way they work is, in essence, you pick any object from the Storehouse section (where you have all the selection of items for your adventure) and start investing Oi points in it for added effects:

Once all technologies are picked, and the Obligation they are linked with is established, the players decide what equipment to take, how to distribute it among the group, and then they're good to go!

I think that's quite a bit for today! I will think of what we should tackle next, most likely we'll start looking into the subsystems and survival in Ophoi. Remember that the Technologies chapter and the Rules chapter samples are available to download for free on the Kickstarter page :) and that if you have any questions, you are more than free to send them to me or come in to the Araukana discord server!

Have a nice start of the weekend, 

Fede

Zephyr Update #4 - Life-Giving Myths
over 1 year ago – Tue, Feb 07, 2023 at 07:49:32 PM

Hi kinfolk!

I hope you had a nice day! We are entering the lull period of Kickstarter now so to keep y'all entertained I gather I would write about one of the parts I like the most of Zephyr - that is, character creation!

A game of Zephyr beings when your Windfolk is born. But what does that entail?

Windfolk are conceived during the eve of a Maelstrom - a very special kind of storm that combines eruptions of the four colors of the Zephyr. These happen every few years: In preparation, lifespring traps are mounted specifically where the Maelstrom winds will blow.

At the beginning of the game, then, players get infused with color from the Maelstrom by grabbing nine Zephyr tokens each from a bag (without looking). These tokens will be used throughout character creation!

Starting off, they get to pick their clan, and can then start spending tokens on clan-specific traits (as you can see in the following Wind Clan and Frontier Clan example)

Players are free to spend any number of tokens in these options (knowing that Traits, unlike Technologies, are only available during character creation). Then, with their remaining tokens, the proceed onto the Windfolk Myths bit...

For this part of character creation, I wanted to echo some of the writing of anthropologist A. M. Hocart, specially The Life Giving-Myth, and make the mechanics speak about stories, about how stories make who we are and how we tend to see not just ourselves but the larger society and world through the lens of stories. Basically, the players will go through six different myths - each represented in a comic spread - that is told by an elder at the campfire. The first page of each myth tends to give the setup for the myth...

And then, players get six different "interpretations" or outcomes for the Myths finale to choose from. There are four finales that can be accessed simply by spending the right token...

...and then there are two "special" finales that are accessed either without spending any tokens, or by spending two tokens of any color. The former tends to come with a mechanical disadvantage...

...while the later tends to grant a particularly outstanding trait.

The cool aspect of this system is not just how players get to engage with the fundamental Mythology of the world, but also that they need to think what finales they wanna prioritize according to the colors they received from the Maelstrom, as well as their approach (playing more conservative and doing mostly single-token spends, or going more reckless and taking in large boons and banes from each story).

The stories cover anything from the why the Windfolk's faces are masks, to the origin of Ophoi, or the origin of customs (with their own mechanics) such as the Shedding, so they work really well I think as a gamified intro to the setting :) (I am actually working right now in finishing these comics, with about half of them done!)

Here's a sample of the one tied to the Origin of Ophoi:

And another one on the origin of the practice of Shedding, and Windfolk obligations to the other denizens of the living landmass:

That's all for to day! Hope these make you at least a bit as hype as I am for seeing them played with, and I'll be back again very soon to share more with y'all.

Best wishes,

Fede

Zephyr Update #3 - The Living Landmass
over 1 year ago – Sun, Feb 05, 2023 at 07:07:15 PM

Hi kinfolk! Hope you had a nice day!

The third day is behind us and we are now past the 60% line! We are on a steady course now and entering the plateau period of the Kickstarter. If my predictions are correct I'd say it's likely we will be funding in around 9 days (though I still have a couple of promotional levers to pull here and there). To give you an idea, we are raising about 30-40% more than Araukana's first game Nibiru, so numbers wise I'm pretty happy with the course, specially given the higher ambitions production-wise of the core experience of Zephyr :) 

Today I wanted to talk about one of the most exciting parts of the game, which is... Ophoi! The living landmass! The place you will be traversing in the game. There are differing tales about the origin of the creature, but the one that is front and center in the book is that Ophoi is the offspring of the four moons, born on the night of their eclipse. The first of the Stories players go through during character creation speaks exactly of this event:

The newborn Ophoi went on to wander endlessly across the salt flats that cover the world. Within its body are four lungs, each corresponding to a color of the Zephyr, each bursting forth in eruptions, maelstroms, rains, etc., mixing and giving shape to the landscapes and lifeforms that would soon spring from the creature's back.

Preset day Ophoi is, according to the Windfolk, divided into several regions that are mainly separated by the huge rifts that open on the creature's joints. While some of these regions are largely unknown, the most expansive ones are the Plaques (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black) that correspond to the land that extends above each lung, as well as the Grand Valley at the geographic center of it all. Windfolk tend to live in the outernmost regions of the Plaques, while the Salt States - ever dependent on flatlands for their agriculture - populate the Grand Valley.

Naturally, one would be right to think that if you have land settled on top of a moving creature, earthquakes would be quite common. Indeed, they are a weekly occurrence - especially across the plaques. Furthermore, the seasons of Ophoi tend to revolve largely around the creature's breathing: When any given lung inflates at its maximum capacity, the land above it is pushed inwards, with entire mountain chain bowing, casting shadows and placing vast swathes of land into microwinters. Small streams turn into rapids and entire lakes dry up, flooding the lands closer to the geographic center. Animal herds follow the water, and also travel towards the center to stay close to their watersources. Huge gaps between rifts close, allowing kinfolk to cross previously separated regions. This is known as the Bowing Season. When one plaque is in the Bowing Season, the plaque opposite is in the Leaning Season, which sees water receding and animals returning to the innermost parts of the plaque. 

This dynamic greatly affects gameplay, not only due to our rules for Weather, but also because mountain passes, rifts, etc. may become usable/unusable depending on the season (which is determined at random at the start of your Zephyr game, on the first session). 

The thousands of scars, the constant seismic activity, and the jagged, irregular terrain of the Plaques might seem hellish to inhabit, but for the Windfolk, it's a blessing: The Plaques are what James C Scott would call a "Shatterzone of Empires" (which is why I call the home of the Windfolk by that term). The land is openly hostile to the advance of marching armies, the logistic chains they often require, and the establishment of permanent settlements. Salt States incursions can only happen during seasons in which the mountain passes are sealed in, when rivers are tranquil enough to take supplies up and down, and so it is that the Windfolk consider the Shatterzone, its mountains, roaring earthquakes, and capricious terrain as their greatest ally in keeping life peaceful.

There's plenty more to say about Ophoi, but I think that's a good rundown of some of the things that make venturing into this world so special :) I'll be writing the next update soon, and hope to see you around in our Discord (which I totally forgot to link to the last time!) to keep the conversation going.

Best wishes,

Fede