Post-release vibes, new Horizons.

Right, so this isn't a big announcement or anything. I'm just gonna write about the future of Pathwarden, and what I have plans for.

First off, I'm happy to say that I'm slowly inching towards making a couple of adventures (The City Below and The Siege of Braunfen) for the game, but it's glacially slow, because... I'm working on WARDEN, a setting-agnostic version of Pathwarden.

There was also a humorous thing that came up during the Kickstarter for the new Cosmere RPG.

Adventures

Okay, yeah, I'm making some adventures. They probably won't take the form of "modules" as you usually think, they're more like prep sheets more than anything, sort of laying out the maps and everything you need to run the game, but not actually telling you what to do with it. So very non-linear adventures.

The Siege of Braunfen is supposed to be an introductory affair that explores the Adventure Map mechanic and provides the players with ways to manipulate the terrain and ultimately, thwart the threat of an invading army. 

The City Below is my take on a megadungeon, where there is a loose timer. The timer isn't about crumbling or anything, it's about other people discovering the place and destroying it for their own personal gain.

The timeline for when these adventures are coming out is nebulous. I would like to say I'll finish them this year, after I've written WARDEN into a playable state, and put it up for playtesting.

WARDEN

WARDEN is a setting-agnostic version of Pathwarden, with some new things but mostly old things, refitted for a more open-ended setting. Some renaming of features has happened, because the words "Hero" and "Fortitude" scream Medieval Fantasy in my face. But the mechanics are mostly the same, with some slight upgrades and further simplifications, even!

With WARDEN, I'm hoping to capture an audience beyond just the shadow of Pathfinder, sort of expand upon the idea of the system onto greener pastures. Medieval / Renaissance Fantasy is fun and all, but ultimately I want to explore other things, and provide something like, actually new. Like, to create the Universal Modern d20 game (and not d20 modern, that's a whole other thing). And I think it has chops to do that, actually!

The game is currently in drafting, it's gonna take a lot of text to hash it out. I'm probably gonna do playtests and then run a Backerkit campaign for it, see if I can capture an active audience for it.

Finnish Translation

Another big project I have not yet started is the Translation of Pathwarden to Finnish, my native language. It's going to be a long road, but I'm aiming to release it somewhere in the next year, hopefully before Ropecon 2025. It's gonna be free to any people who have already bought the game, though the print versions are still gonna cost, of course.

Cosmere RPG

Okay, so, if you know anything about Pathwarden, go check out Cosmere RPG. You'll realize that like 50% of the new innovations in that game (in comparison to most d20 games) are actually things already existing in Pathwarden. HOWEVER, I talked to the developers, and they seemed to confirm that they were not even aware of Pathwarden's existence, and the game has been in development and playtesting longer than Pathwarden! (I, of course, had not even heard of the game before the Kickstarter)

So what happened is that I somehow managed to have convergent evolution with the developers of maybe the biggest Kickstarter RPG this year! The list of similarities is truthfully uncanny: Path mechanics (slightly different but similar logic), Fast/Slow turns with 2/3 actions, 3 Defenses instead of AC or anything, codified character goals for characters... There were also many smaller changes in comparison to PF2e and D&D, but those were the major ones that stuck out to me.

But hey, that just means WARDEN is going to be a setting-agnostic version of BOTH Pathfinder 2e AND Cosmere RPG. So that's pretty good!