Hello outlaws,

Happy holiday weekend! Copperhead County v9 is now available.

This is a major update! I'm very excited for you to see it because it reflects a ton of really excellent development over the last version. This game, already IMO very good, is now better than ever and extremely fucking good. For those of you nice enough to be currently playing the game, I hope it doesn't break anything too bad for you, but please feel free to bother me if you have any update or conversion questions.

Before I break it down, a general note on the state of the game: it's been a while since v8 came out! But, if you've followed this dev log, you've seen various previews and things-in-the-works. My plan was originally to keep the EA version of this game stable while I worked on the final product, so I've was hesitant to push a big update like this for a while. 

Well, then this hell year happened, and I've felt increasingly regretful about the gap between the version of Copperhead County that's available to the public and the one I have, with all the shit I've done to it since last October. So, after having some time off work the last few weeks, I finally just updated the damn thing. Since the v8 release, I've also converted all work from InDesign to Affinity Publisher, so part of this v9 release involved me rebuilding the document in Publisher—which was a pain, but which allowed me to port stuff over from the big book to this doc, and should hopefully make any future updates easier.

v9 CHANGELOG

Anyway, let's see if I can remember everything.

FACTIONS & SETTING

The updated Factions chapter I posted recently is now fully implemented in the EA doc. This was a major push for me rebuilding the EA doc so I could port stuff from the book file into it, and I did it because I love you.

Also, I added two cut factions back into the game: Outlaw Country and Copperhead Extreme Wrestling. Neither of these factions were supposed to disappear entirely, they were supposed to just go into the setting chapter, but I was convinced (shout out to Tyler) that they were cool enough to put back in.

Speaking of the setting chapter, all of the area entries got some revisions. Honestly, there was more I was hoping to add here, including job ideas for each area, but I just didn't have time this weekend. At some point I'll do a version v9.5 that will have some more new setting things for you.

PLAYBOOKS

All character and crew playbooks have received some revamps since v8. If you saw the beta playbooks I posted a while ago, you've seen some of these changes, but they've been further updated since then. Unique crew upgrades got a total revamp due to other changes which we'll discuss shortly.

CAPTAINS

The cohort-replacing Captain system I've posted about is fully implemented in this release. In addition, a new Gang system has replaced the old one. In short, your crew just has one Gang, but the number of members you have depends on the number of Leader-type Captains you recruit (there's also a Brick special ability where you can be your own Leader).

Like Captains, your Gang has a limited number of action ratings, which are shared across all gang members. This brings Gang members in line with Captains, and also restores a bit of variety and customization to your Gang, without going into the standard  Forged in the Dark gang-types thing, which I've never liked for this game.

Because of those changes, all special abilities and upgrades involving experts, gangs, or whatever have been updated or replaced, and I added a couple of new ones, too.

DRIVES

This is an experimental change which is both a little big and not big at all.  "Vice" has been renamed "Drive" and all Vices have been renamed as well. On one level, this is a cosmetic change, because mechanically, Drives and Vices work about the same. On a fictional level, though, this is intended to approach the Vice concept from a different direction, and give you better inspiration during character creation and during play. In my games, I've never really been satisfied with how Vices have played out, and I wanted to make them a more active, maybe more optimistic, part of your character. So give it a try and see if it works for you.

CLAIMS

The Claims were revised, and some of them were reorganized in a way I think is really nice. I collapsed a couple of them together and also added a couple new ones.

GAME SETUP

In this version, I'm experimenting with an alternate game setup approach which combines character and crew creation into one smooth process. The main reason for this is to better support the Blood crew, so you can decide if your characters are in the same family, you know, before you create them. But I think it should be better for everyone else, too.

INJURY & RECOVERY

The Injury changes I posted about a while ago are fully implemented, and I also updated the Recovery rules. My main beefs with how Injury was still working were that Recovery took too long, and that PCs would still just have Injuries on their sheets forever. Now Recovery is much smoother, but, if you have an Injury, it's mandatory for you to Recover during downtime. However, if you don't want to spend an activity on it, you can grit your teeth and roll 0d—which might make your Injury get worse! Check it out.

ONLINE PLAYBOOKS

The Google Drive playbooks are now available here. BUT I HAVEN'T UPDATED THEM YET. Please give me a little while to do so.

GENERAL STUFF

I also just edited a lot of text, fixed a lot of things, and made things better. Of course, if you see any typos, outdated stuff, or whatever, please let me know.

Now on to other topics.

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GAME CORNER

I'd like to salute my fellow crime-fiction TRPG Cartel for releasing their full book last week. I don't know if you can get it yet if you weren't a Kickstarter backer, but if you were, and like this game and haven't played Cartel yet, you should!

I recommend doing what I did with pals, and Copperhead County contributors, Michael and Adam and playing a linked anthology series of one-shots. In our first game, I played a pathetic, corrupt federale who got out of his problems by killing several people, including his partner and Adam's PC. In our second game, I played a cool sicario who was tragically killed by my federale from the first game (who was then an NPC under MC Michael's control). What a time!

MUSIC CORNER

My weekend soundtrack for the many hours spent on this update was the Drive-By Truckers' Live at the 9:30 Club shows which the band recently released on Bandcamp. These are both really great, a Friday and Saturday show with largely different sets, recorded this February before the death of live music. Since I was robbed of seeing the DBTs perform this year, and probably next year too at this fucking rate, these shows have been a great balm.

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WELP

Welp, that's it. Please read and enjoy v9, and if you read or enjoy it, please consider saying something nice about it on the Copperhead County forum, or maybe to your friends and associates who don't own the game.

Stay tuned for future updates!