Hello outlaws,

I just uploaded a new version of the Copperhead County sheets, named Copperhead County Sheets 08.08.22 (Experimental Branch). Since this is an Experimental Branch update, it doesn't yet replace the previous version of the sheets, so those are still up.

Experimental Branch Update

What is the Experimental Branch update? Well, it introduces changes to the game which haven't been thoroughly tested yet, but that I want to put out into the world. Also, I'm not ready to release the next book update yet, so these experimental branch changes are not described in there yet, either. They are contained only within the Experimental Branch sheets PDF.

Most of these changes involve downtime. I've always wanted to give the Recovery mechanics another pass, because although I like the broad strokes, I think the implementation has still been too fiddly.

Then, I recently had some other downtime ideas I was able to discuss with some of the Copperhead County brain trust yesterday while we played Tortuga County. I owe a big thanks to my smart friends and collaborators Calum Grace and Michael Crowley for this very fruitful discussion.

So, what are the changes?

Rest and Recovery

The biggest change to Recovery is that it no longer requires a downtime activity to do. This is something I've never liked, going back to Blades in the Dark. It essentially means that a PC who takes Harm/Injury/etc has to pay an additional Downtime Tax on top of the penalties for being Harmed in the first place. Earlier, I tried to address this with CC's Minor Injuries, which cleared automatically during downtime. But it still meant that an Injured PC could be fucked out of multiple downtime activities to recuperate. Which really means that not many PCs are getting Injured in the first place! Who would want to take that consequence when it fuckin' sucks so bad?

So in this approach, at the top of downtime, the crew has a Rest and Recovery step. We'll get to Rest in a minute. During Recovery, which happens once per downtime, all of your Injuries go down one level. A Critical Injury becomes Major, Major becomes Minor, and Minor becomes nothing. This happens automatically, every downtime, and while serious Injuries still take multiple cycles to fully heal, PCs no longer have to waste their downtime activities at the doctor's office.

So what's Rest? Well, when I made the Recovery change, it felt weird to have it floating out on its own. So it also includes the Rest step: at the beginning of downtime, PCs clear stress equal to their current Bank level. This further incentivizes increasing one's Bank, while giving PCs more options during downtime, since now they don't necessarily have to blow so many activities clearing their stress. PCs can still take the renamed Live Large activity to further clear their stress, especially since poorer PCs will still have a lot of stress to clear. I also killed the legacy "You gain stress equal to your Trauma/Burnout if you don't relax" rule, since it no longer fit, and is also one of those fiddly rules which are hard to remember.

I'm less certain about this change. I like it in theory, and I feel like it makes sense, especially at lower levels. Will it fall apart in the late game if PCs are clearing 3+ stress every downtime? I dunno. It might need something else to reel that in.

Risky Projects

The most experimental change, however, is to long-term projects. Formerly, as in Blades in the Dark and other FitD games, when one pursued a downtime project, you basically just stayed on your grind until it was done. Downtime projects were a safe space with no consequences. Well, sometimes that makes fictional sense, and sometimes it doesn't. What if working on a project were an action roll, subject to the normal rules of action rolls? What if project rolls could be Controlled, Risky, or Desperate, depending on the fictional situation at hand?

This change is 100% influenced by the game Citizen Sleeper, which I just discovered last week. Holy shit, have y'all played this motherfucker?

I'm guessing the devs must have some Forged in the Dark familiarity, because the entire game basically plays out in FitD-style downtime. It reminded me a lot of how downtime already works in Copperhead County, where free roleplay coexists alongside long-term activities. However, in Citizen Sleeper, the project clocks your PC pursues also have FitD-style positions, so depending on your roll, you make more or less progress, but you might also risk getting hurt, losing energy, losing money, or advancing a Bad Clock connected to the project.

This all rules, and it made me wonder why I wasn't doing the same thing. Well, now I'm trying it out!

August Update + Productive Autumn

Those are the big changes, but I'm very curious about how they'll feel in play and what people think. Well, stay tuned. There are some smaller changes in there too, many involving playbook special abilities that had to change because they interacted with rules which no longer exist.

How is Copperhead County going, in general? Pretty good. My main project clock this summer has been finalizing the setting chapter, which has involved a lot of editing, rewriting, and a ton of new content, as I discussed a couple of months ago.

This is going well, but also pretty slowly since I continue to juggle my responsibilities to Copperhead County with my responsibilities to work, eat, and live in this horrible nation we all love so well.

However, without going into my whole life, I'm planning on using the rest of 2022, at least, engaged far less in the work of capitalism and engaged far more in the work of indie tabletop publishing. My primary goal is finishing this book, and my secondary goal is launching a new project, which will run on a lot of the downtime DNA I've been developing for Copperhead County.

So, all of that is to say, I think a Productive Autumn awaits us in Copperhead County. As always, watch this space for more news and updates.