Shadows of Malice MEGATHREAD

If anyone is interested in the free Hunger of a Shadow Vile print and play expansion to Shadows of Malice, I made the card set available on DriveThruCards. This is only for people who want to pay for manufactured cards rather than print out their own. The set includes 24 cards (16 Corruptors ability cards [enough to handle up to 8 avatars], 4 Fate cards, 4 Lux Beacon treasure cards). The link is www.drivethrucards.com/product/229379/So...+cities&test_epoch=0 .

Nice! I just ordered a couple of samples from them for a project I might be working on. I'm hoping the quality is good; I'm working with old art files and am concerned that my formats won't be great.

They do very solid work -- I typically have them make all my prototype cards. I believe that you will be very pleased with their cards!

I don't know where to post this to take full advantage of the awesome insight, experience, and brain power embodied in F:AT users... so I will post it here. Basically, I'm thinking about a second edition for Shadows of Malice and I would love people's input as to what they think are the primary issues that are awkward, broken, or begging for tweaking in the game. Additionally, if there any elements of the game that you like and think could be improved, please feel free to let me know that as well. Thanks in advance!

Hey, folks! I'm dabbling in upgrading the Shadows of Malice rulebook and had a thought...

Currently, an avatar gets 1 MOVEMENT followed by 1 ACTION on their phase, and combat counts as an action. (Thus, the rule that movement must precede their action so that combat can consume the post-movement action if necessary.)

I'm debating changing it to a player's avatar simply getting 2 ACTIONS each phase (actions being Travel, Recover, Use City, Use Mystic) and let combat be free (e.g., you may defend if a Shadow moves over you, you may attack a lair if your travel action puts you there). This would do away with auto recovery (as it would be an action) but also allow an avatar to use a City or Mystic more than once (as they could use 2 actions there). It would also allow avatars to defer actions during a turn -- maybe use one action and then wait to see how things progress before using their second.

I invite your thoughts and comments as I debate this change.

I would like to see the locations able to be used more than once if it would be helpful. I also like allowing players to hasten recovery by taking recovery actions. It's a rule change that makes sense to me, though I haven't tested it or anything so grain of salt and all that.

xthexlo wrote: I don't know where to post this to take full advantage of the awesome insight, experience, and brain power embodied in F:AT users... so I will post it here. Basically, I'm thinking about a second edition for Shadows of Malice and I would love people's input as to what they think are the primary issues that are awkward, broken, or begging for tweaking in the game. Additionally, if there any elements of the game that you like and think could be improved, please feel free to let me know that as well. Thanks in advance!

I'm late and I didn't respond to this but i can tell you exactly what I think would help this game---some sort of ruleset for +/- bonuses that was random yet didn't need to be recalculated every turn. It doesn't seem that bad until you have a bunch of items and are about to get in a real rumble. It grinds what is a nice quick game into wrist-ey, rolling insanity for very little gain---they aren't dramatic rolls though they are super important. Someone on BGG used a only check bonuses every 3 turns. That's an inelegant way to do it, but I like the basic idea there. I hate the "only roll once" solution, but on the other hand it does solve many problems with the pace of the game to not roll up your bonuses every turn.

I also think there's some weirdness in the rules about invulnerabilities and opponent decision making. I think a player should be rewarded heavily for having the right invulnerability against the right enemy but OTOH I do agree that fighting things they are invincible against is a little anti-climactic. I remember having to make a lot of judgment calls and I think the rules around invulnerabilities could be cleaned up and made consistent with whatever your view is.

I've gotten a lot of requests for a reprint of Shadows of Malice. The problem is that I'm currently well into the design and funding of a new game (about cosmic, world-eating frogs) and SoM is an expensive beast to produce...

A friend of mine suggested that I set up a one-time Patreon for the reprint and use it as a pre-order system that would only trigger payment when the total committed hits a level sufficient to support a significant portion of the production costs. This feels a little... dodgy... to me and smells too much like a KickStarter. I'm curious to know what you guys think.

I'd say it is essentially the same as Kickstarter, but people wanting a copy of the game would jump through that hoop in order to get it. I don't know how their percentage shakes out. I assume it's less than Kickstarter, which takes 10% I think.

As for the "significant portion" of the production costs... if you go down this road, you may as well set the goal at ALL of the production costs.

Have you considered partnering with a good publisher like VPG? I know you’d rather self-produce, but their operation could likely get it scaled up to reduce the cost.

A 2nd edition is a great idea...as you go down that road I think you’ll find a lot of opportunities to streamline.

Honestly, I think you should just do Kickstarter if anything. Have few or no stretch goals if you don't want to fuck with that or audience expectations. Your work is like the definition of the honest, cool version of Kickstarter's vision of people funding creators.

It worked for Dungeon Degenerates, which I also think is a good fit for the more authentic use of the platform.

Michael Barnes wrote: A 2nd edition is a great idea...as you go down that road I think you’ll find a lot of opportunities to streamline.

I would like to do a second addition, but that’s a couple years out. This would just be a reprint of the original version with a new rule book and some streamlining of play.

A second addition would have more maps, more color abilities, and incorporate both of the two expansions.

Regarding Gary’s note about bonuses: I’m working on a game that you pull dice from a bag in four colors. Each color has three different permutations of bonus.

Thus, when you get a level up, you take a green die and roll it. That’s the random bonus/blessing. Kill a monster? Pull a die. WHOA! He had a bad ass red die (sword, whatever).

Works well when you want random but don’t want to always use a CRT

I know kickstarter has become a bad word but I'm with Gary on this. It's what it was made for before it was perverted by stretch goals and whatnot.
Edit: And it would provide valuable, provable data about demand for a second edition.

WadeMonnig wrote: I know kickstarter has become a bad word but I'm with Gary on this. It's what it was made for before it was perverted by stretch goals and whatnot.
Edit: And it would provide valuable, provable data about demand for a second edition.

I appreciate your and Gary's comments about this... but still find the thought of KickStarter distasteful. As you all know here, I am not a fan of crowdsourcing my games and I have a particular aversion to everything KickStarter.

That said, I think I can support a one-time Patreon funding campaign without sacrificing my soul simply because the SoM reprint idea is being driven solely by player requests: a reprint is not a project on my current agenda, so I have not budgeted funds to cover it. A Patreon campaign would help reveal the level of actual demand. If that demand is sufficient to justify a reprint, I can trigger production; if not, I don't have to take anyone's money.