Greetings! Jon here, for those of you whom I have not yet met, I am CEO and lead designer for DGS Games. I’m returning to blogging after a couple years off. While blogging moves in and out of favor, we have found that there is just no substitute for a single place to go for regular updates and thoughts about your favorite subjects. And since the shifting landscape of social media platforms can be daunting to some, we’ll just keep this right here on the one platform over which we have sole control.

What is this about?

This blog will be about games and gaming from the DGS perspective. There are a lot of ways to get a lot of different information from us. I’ll put all the links at the end for things like sneak peeks, rules questions, tournament announcements, world building, the podcast, etc. here, though, it’s just me letting you know what the hot game-related topics are here at the HQ.

The Inner Sea

First the Inner Sea Campaign. It's totally still on! Feedback from our players was instrumental in our choosing to aim for a target date right after the new year. Inner Sea will be a global campaign running over the winter. We discussed it in detail in our Sleeping Grush podcast, episode number 17 (see links below…). The campaign will feature a set of rules that allow your freeblades to be transported on and fight over and from ships, called Seablades. Players will be fighting on behalf of one of two sides in a war and at the end of the campaign will be instrumental in determining its political outcome as a part of the narrative of the World of Faelon. We’ve gone quiet about the Inner Sea, but let me assure you, it is very much alive.

A new, better, stronger Freeblades

The later than anticipated start time has given us room to work on another major effort that we are very excited about. Known for now as the streamlining project, the design team is reengineering the Freeblades rules to make them simpler to understand and teach and faster to play while at the same time retaining all the epic gameplay and narrative connection we’ve grown to know and love. We are all very excited about this project. It will be the most important event in the history and growth of Freeblades since its release. It does have an interesting side effect. We are in the middle of the work, not far enough along to start testing, but far enough along to know the direction we are taking. So, when we are looking at new models and rules entering the game for the next LRB, we are also looking at how that model or rule will play in the new framework. This is so we don’t introduce something that will need a lot of editing when we make the shift.

For example, we are looking to streamline the text of talents. Players typically play off the model stat cards. The model stat cards talent language is a summary of the main rule. In almost all cases the difference is a little extra detail for corner cases the talent may be found in. So, to get the text to be shorter and clearer, we can do a more effective way of writing the same rule. But that only goes so far, so we also need to excise some of the corner case material. Like say when a talent works in a very straightforward manner but needs extra detail when the model is flying, or on a larger base or in bad weather. We can do several things about that text, like the use of icons and keywords, but we can also just remove the corner case because, well, it's a corner case and doesn’t come up often enough to justify the extra text. Sooo, as we introduce new talents, we are looking ahead and taking those steps now.

And that is not all!

There’s not just a new global campaign in the works, but also…

• Our first board game: Tehradim - Gold and Steel, where patrons vie for power in the Free City.
• The Ankala Oracle kickstarter delivery, which includes a new deck of magic items for your Freeblades games.
• Significant improvements to BrightSword, with the eventual goal of a printed book full of illustrations set in the World of Faelon.
• A brand new game line, set in a new, modern day World of Isonia.

All that to say nothing of our next major model release on Black Friday and LRB 24-3 which will bring Familiars and Power Stones to your Freeblades games, along with two new club scenarios.

Busy, busy!

Jon

Our social media: https://dgsgames.com/social-media/

Our podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J43YvlAN-RI