Howdy outlaws,

Today is a big day in Copperhead County history! Most relevant to you, if you are a Current Copperhead County Owner, is that last night I published a Major Update containing the game's first standalone PDF update, updated play sheets*, and slightly updated job modules to account for the other updates.

The second agenda item is that Copperhead County is included in the new Forged in the Dark Bundle of Holding alongside many other fine games. So if you do not yet own Copperhead County, this is a great way to grab it, and even if you do, this is a great way to save a ton of money on a lot of games anyway.

Are these two agenda items connected? Yes. I was planning on finishing the standalone update by the end of the month, and had taken additional time off of work this month to accomplish that. But then I was invited to participate in the Bundle and knew I had to get it done first, so I busted my ass this past weekend to do it.

That means that, although the game is done, the book is not 100% done. There's some stuff I really want in there that I had to cut for time. There's a LOT more art I want to add to this book's already currently high levels of art. But, there is a lot of new stuff and now it's all in a nice book PDF with bookmarks.

*At the time of this writing, the online sheets aren't updated yet! That's something I will take care of over the next few days.

CHANGELOG

There's a lot of new stuff! Over the past several months, I have intentionally left the previous, stable Early Access version of the game mostly alone so that I wasn't constantly updating it rather than working on this book. So the previously-public version increasingly lagged behind the version I was actually playing*, and even that lagged behind the in-progress version with which I was continuously tinkering.

*A huge influence over the past several months has been that I have converted from a Copperhead County GM to player—specifically, a Tortuga County player in our spin-off campaign GMed by my friend / genius game maniac Calum Grace. Tortuga County is amazing, and it isn't publicly available yet, but we will be making a lot of noise when it is. And it may be inspiring further alternate settings which may someday be announced...

BURNOUT

My favorite change is a slight shift on Burnout conditions. I'd been only 80% satisfied with the Burnout conditions but unsure about how to reach the final 20%. They worked fine in play. But while I was playing, of all mediocre games, Far Cry 6, I was hit by the sudden realization that the Burnout conditions could flip. Rather than describing your character gaining a bad thing, they could describe your character losing a good thing—the PCs actually burning something out.

That means, rather than your PC becoming Reckless, they burn out their Caution. Instead of feeling a new thing, they feel the loss of something. This is a small perspective shift, but it's actually been extremely impactful on my current game. My Stringer, Bobby Hicks, burned out his Trust, which is subtly different from feeling Paranoid. So rather than me, in play, feeling like, "How can Bobby act more paranoid?", I'm thinking, "Bobby has lost trust in everyone else." And that has fueled a huge amount of inter-PC conflict so far. I hope that explanation makes sense, but I believe players will really feel the difference in-game!

NEW HAZARD DROPPED

Not exactly, but in thinking about Burnout so much, I realized the Hazard was feeling a little pre-burned-out. There was a little too much Walter White in the mix. Their special abilities, to me, felt too much like "you're being an asshole." That's part of the Hazard concept—they're a very smart character whose brilliance can tip over into pride—but the balance wasn't working. So I remixed their abilities, increased the "Hazard am smart" angle, and arrived at an improved playbook.

NEW CLAIMS DROPPED

Yes, the system that will never die received another overhaul. Anyone who has followed the development of Copperhead County for a while knows the claims system has been redesigned about ten times.

This time, I still really liked the open-endedness of the previous system, but I was missing the direction that previous-previous approaches had. I also decided, after continuously stumbling over "claims"/"schemes" in my +1 Fwd appearance, to just give up and go back to "claims." It's a good word!

In finalizing this system, I ended up resurrecting an old approach that I had always really liked, but never totally figured out how to make work. The missing pieces of that system came from the innovations of the last few rounds. I think the current approach hits a good balance of sandbox play, but with more actual direction. Plus, I really love how it handles Turf.

STAY TUNED

Anyway, that's enough for now. The book will receive further content and art soon, and I must finally rest.