New Pins, Almost Certainly
We've stormed the center ground of the Planet Mercenary RPG Kickstarter, that calm patch in the middle when things slow down a bit. We're pretty close to the next stretch goal, at which point some company pins will be created for our favorite weapons manufacturers, including Strohl and Phubahr.
There may be a couple more as well. We have some other manufacturers whose logos are being locked down.
Jeff Zugale is currently working on the cover art while Alan and I pound on the core content of the book. It's amazing to see how much progress we've made in the last couple of weeks, and equally amazing to see how well some of these pieces are fitting together.
Saturday's pounding involved smashing Photoshop into the Mayhem deck until it spat out another draft for the backs of the cards, shown to the left.
The Mayhem deck informs your role play by adding information to about 25% of your successful die rolls. There are cards like"Let Me Show You How It's Done," in which your action was so successful that nearby grunts or players gain permanent bonuses. These are offset by cards like "That's Coming Out Of Our Pay," in which your success was mitigated by collateral damage of some sort.
Then there are middle-ground sorts of cards like "Somebody Just Earned a Nick-Name," which will have players scrambling to turn recent events into a nick-name for the lucky person who rolled Mayhem this time around.
How exactly these cards play into the story is up to you and the Game Chief. Testing has thus far shown that the general result is laughter, and it happens in-game, driving the session forward rather than derailing it. The Mayhem mechanic worked far better than I hoped, and I credit Alan for turning my hare-brained idea for dice-and-card blend into something so enjoyable.