Back for another Tuesday update!

This update focused on improving the weapons and armor sections, improving the layout and readability along with more and better descriptions of the armor. This covers only a fraction of the additions though, the full changelog is below.

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Changelog

v0.9.3 2025-01-07

• Improve layout of talents to start more of them at the top of their own page
• Add some more fluff to the Stormwielder talent
• Reorganized, restructured, and reformatted the weapons tables, creating a clear separation between primary and secondary uses
• Added Burning and Freezing statuses
• Add hints on statuses for stacking with better explanations, removed “degree” in favor of “Stack” for statuses throughout
• Cold Pyramid rooms now use Freezing instead of Tired
• Fixed holdover from previous iterations where Wounds were called Injuries in the Gauge Overview Table
• Added Oasis Weirdness
• Renamed Settlements to Communities to better convey what they are and their purpose
• A large number number of minor re-wordings and tweaks, particularly in the Core Rules
• Added descriptions for all standard armor types
• Added opening blurb and explanations for the different weapon characteristics
• Added a stub for equipment statuses
• Added the damage divisor rule for vitals
• Rewrote the quickstart advancement rules to cover all the same ground as the standard advancement rules
• Start characters at Level 0 and minor rewrite of Character Creation
• Cleaned up a lot of rogue empty lines and blank headers
• Added many cross-references and internal links to make it easier to find things
• Added a stub of a biology section for Scarab
• Added talents to all three iconic characters (the Thrive talent slots are currently filled with Survive talents)
• Reorganized the How to Use These Rules section so that the “random tables” heading comes after the explanation of the different paragraph types
• Unified and updated logo
• Reordered the core rules a bit to make better use of space

Damage Divisor Rule

This was always part of the system but I kept waffling on the wording and details so it never made it into the public manuscript. I finally decided to add in a simple version so that combat isn’t quite so lethal. Instead of the version used by GIST Core, this one uses DUR/WIL instead of a flat division by 5.

Level 0 Characters

This makes Level 1 less of an outlier, and reduces the burden of character creation somewhat as new players aren’t required to select 3 Talents immediately. It also reduces duplication between the Character Creation and Character Advancement sections that I felt was confusing. The suggestion to start at Level 1 at the end allows, I think, for a more coherent way to start at higher levels while keeping the rules to a single page. It also means that characters get an additional CMP to their Max Strain and makes the math a little more intuitive. The one downside really are Tier 0 talents. Which currently don’t even occur in the core rule book so this caveat might be removed.