Hey everyone – It’s E. I’m going to be writing the very rare Work Blog post to help out a bit more since Dre is currently doing some heavy duty work on some other stuff that we’ll be sharing later this week.
Today’s post is going to be about Tokens for Ash and Flowers of Azraeém.
While working on the game, the thing we had to figure out was how to deal with something like initiative for Combat. We knew we didn’t want to just rely on the usual predictable dice roll to decide who goes when because it just gets really god damn tedious and boring to basically sit in a queue waiting for your turn to happen. After a lot of back and forth, we remembered that we wanted combat to feel dynamic. We wanted to create an experience where players were essentially being forced to stay on their toes to figure out what’s going to end up happening. We also knew that we really wanted combat to be extremely lethal (okay this was mostly Dre’s priority because she put a lot of emphasis on how there’s a Doomsday Clock driving the story and wanted to make sure that whatever we end up deciding on for combat will force players to treat every combat like their lives are on the line).
This is where I came up with the suggestion of using Tokens which ended up being a really relevant idea to the story as a whole because of how the Puck Courts operate which I’ll be discussing more shortly.
Tokens, Puck Trade (And The Fateful Four)
Dre was kind enough to do a really quick mock up of what Tokens within the world of Azraeém would look like.
The reason why they’re so important to the world itself is because while a lot of Azraeém relies on money for commerce, the Pucks actually rely on favor granting. In order to keep track of favors done for other Pucks, they keep a chain of coins that are stamped with a symbol connected to that Puck specifically so that if they need to call in a favor in a return, they’re able to (magically) do so.
While those coins used would look more like what we’re used to seeing in terms of coins that we have in our world, we wanted the Tokens that would play a more important role to look striking. For now, I’m only going to talk about The Ace and Joker tokens since those are the ones that Players will specifically be relying on for combat and for enlisting in being A Vanguard.
Aces, Jokers and The Outsider
Dre was kind enough to do a really quick mock up of what Tokens within the world of Azraeém would look like.
The reason why they’re so important to the world itself is because while a lot of Azraeém relies on money for commerce, the Pucks actually rely on favor granting. In order to keep track of favors done for other Pucks, they keep a chain of coins that are stamped with a symbol connected to that Puck specifically so that if they need to call in a favor in a return, they’re able to (magically) do so.
While those coins used would look more like what we’re used to seeing in terms of coins that we have in our world, we wanted the Tokens that would play a more important role to look striking. For now, I’m only going to talk about The Ace and Joker tokens since those are the ones that Players will specifically be relying on for combat and for enlisting in being A Vanguard.
I’d explain why but it’s just better to read what Dre wrote to describe it (the pink highlighted part is going to be from Savari’s narration in the book):
For those of you who don’t want to read, choosing an Ace or a Joker will play a huge role in the kind of character that you’ll also be playing to create an added layer of flavor and depth so you’re not just playing a random adventurer like you would in other TTRPGs. We are developing Backgrounds for you to choose from that will have added benefits and are heavily focused on the options being solely for people who are considered Outsiders to society whether you’re an ex-con looking for redemption or a complete outcast that’s been rejected from wherever you consider home to be.
The other thing is that whatever you’re fighting will also be getting a token and depending on what you pull, will add a special effect that they can use in combat to make things even more unnecessarily complicated and messy (in a fun way).
Combat Turns and Keeping it kind of Crazy
One of the things we really wanted is for combat to be not just a dynamic experience but also an opportunity to make memories at the table. We wanted it to be anxiety inducing, we wanted it to be filled with uncertainty and we wanted to find a way to create a way to make things feel organic instead of unnecessarily regimented. This is where the idea of Tokens came in. Since everyone will get a token (including whatever you’re fighting), the best way to just embrace the chaos is to just toss them all in a bag and see who ends up going next.
We felt like this just seemed way more natural when it comes to handling combat. You don’t get into a fight and take a number before you can start swinging. It’s usually highly reactive and honestly (especially if there’s a group of people fighting) incredibly unpredictable because you have absolutely no idea what could potentially set someone off to make them move sooner than you were thinking.
But this raised the question of what the fuck do we actually do about whatever you’re fighting. Since this is written to be GMless with the option of playing it Solo, there needed to be a way to give whatever you’re fighting the chance to “Think” and decide what it’s going to be doing. This is when Dre ended up coming up with the idea of using a Tarot Deck to help them decide which honestly I almost lost it over how genius it turned out to be because it alleviated a lot of stress for planning while also making it easier to continually embracing the potential chaos of dealing with combats at the table.
We ended up having a late night whiskey session where we took the time to spitball and came up with an idea of how to handle the cards when you pull the token for whatever you’re fighting.
Dre wants to actively apologize for how they’re kind of messy but I read them fine and also they’ll be written in the book anyway for you to read.
The biggest things to note is that we wanted to to have the Tarot Cards be something that’s relevant both within the world of Azraeém so they’re not just a random thing that you’re using for the game and to also add another layer for the narrative.
When it comes to the cards you want to be worried about pulling, there’s five cards you’ll probably hope to never see:
- The Emperor and the Empress: They represent the King of Swancoast and Thirteen (The Rogue Governor that’s making the world start ending). When you pull those cards, whatever you’re fighting is going to have a massive attack that has the chance to potentially kill everyone in the party or at the very least leave you barely standing.
- The Fool and The World: These are cards that will guarantee a TPK (a term that Dre taught me recently) that will force everyone to have to start over from a previously designated save spot (probably one of the Vanguard Stations so be sure to stop by!)
- and The Star: This card will make you roll a dice to even further randomize the possibility of whatever you’re fighting will end up doing.
Even though Players will get a chance to do up to three separate things per turn, we decided that whatever you’re fighting will only get One action because they do have the chance to completely kill everyone and we don’t want to ruin the fun for everybody.
We’re still a ways away from play testing but we’re genuinely excited to see how this ends up playing. We’ve both got a genuinely good feeling that this will help combat play as organically as we hope role playing will turn out to be.
Anyway, I hope everything I wrote was coherent. This is definitely my first time doing this but hopefully it was easy reading.
Take care