Rulebook Vibes & Some Answers

Hello Friends, Family and the Devil Lurking In The Corner,

This post is to give a little sneakpeak of the vibes of the current core rule book and also answer "some" questions that I am pretty sure is on some people's mind.

Core Rulebook Sneakpeak!

"That looks awfully like D&D's Layout"

Yes...Intentional. I think it makes sense to go with a layout that drives some form of resonance to most TTRPG players. I intend to fill the book with more ART moving forward, but getting time to draw... is difficult. 

I am considering to use AI-art but I don't necessarily agree with the ethics of the programme. But I maybe I could use it as placeholder while I slowly get artist or (find time of my own) to draw. -- JUST FYI, all of the art you see now is not generated by AI art at all.

Core Lore - Updates!

Sorry to all pure-fantasy lovers.... but I've 100% commited to getting Soulinked to be Part-Fantasy & Part-Modern world?.

The core lore right now is that you will play as someone who have "died" or "supposedly going to die". Instead, your life is saved by the "Hotel" which now forces you to partake in deadly missions in order for you to keep living. By completing missions, you will be able gain credits/points in which you can use to gain special abilities, money, or ultimately your freedom.

The lore takes very close reference to the manga - Gantz & also the chinese novel Apartment from Hell. 

Why the shift & how does this affect the monsters we fight?

I have shifted it from a pure fantasy lore mainly to : "Drive resonance on how fragile humans are".

Also, I think lore wise it will be easier to document and explain -- ( I can skip the "How was the world created bit").

Regarding monsters, Don't worry. We will still be fighting beasts, abominations, gods and demons.... (lots of demons and heretics).

The idea is that every mission ordered by hotel is to prevent a demon incursion or a god incursion. Something found their way into earth, and its up to the residents of the hotel to stop it from happening or at least prevent it from causing anything irreversible.

Most of the time, incursions have already took place. Which mean humans or animals have already been "possessed", "plagued" or "affected". As such, missions could involve mystery all the way to full blown fight to the death in hell moments.

How are you planning to explain all the battles and how it affects earth?

1. Natural Disasters like typhoons, earthquakes, accidents.

2. The Class that Wipes Minds.

For the players, there is something known as the "awareness" meter. Which is how much public information about the hotel and powers of the residents are leaked. When the awareness meter is maxed, the hotel will immediately execute all residents and erase the memories of all living humans as a safety mechanism. 

As such, it is the resident's duty to ensure this meter does not go above the threshold. Simply not using abilities in front of non-resident humans is usually sufficient, but at times wiping memories yourself is required.

More to explain down the road :)))

What is left in development?

Most of the core rules for version 12 is drafted. Its mainly writing it down. For the big things that have yet to be decided are :

- The New Class System

- New list of items

- Monster & Adversaries

The New Class System: In Brief.

In the past, Soulinked uses a point buy effect system which allows players to choose different effects and modifiers to build abilities. I am planning to still use the same, BUT, introduce classes that holds only a certain set of effects/modifiers.

Why? -- Simply because in playtests, I found that people are often stump with so many choices AND there are no "commited" decision in progression.

The new class system will allow us to keep the "customization aspect' albeit more focused on a theme and also force players to make a decision to gain either "XYZ effects" or "ABC effects" to buy from.

EXTRA: how a monster sheet looks like...

I am still experimenting but this is what a monster sheet looks like for now... There will be some big updates but most of it will stay the same! Looking forward to getting more content yall!