Playtest 0.4 is live!

As described in the previous devlog, the focus for 0.4 was the procedural generation and evolution system for Nightmares.  This is included and is feature-complete.  You can now run a campaign and watch Night creep in, as the growth and movement of Nightmares starts to swamp the players and eventually the inevitable fall of Night occurs.

Or you can change the mechanics and timing of the Night Clock so that doesn't happen.  The default is a world where failure is inevitable, but the fight is important anyway; if you prefer a different style, this is easily changed, and you can still use the procedural generation mechanics to create interesting Nightmares and events in your campaign.

There's some new spells and techniques too, I assume.  I wasn't keeping good track of those, they tend to get added when I have an idea.  The main focus was on our procedural generation mechanics and the math behind them, as well as the Island Modifiers that make each Nightmare a unique experience every time it moves; every Growth Phase, things might change, so if you think a Nightmare is a good adventure to go on now, you need to get there before it changes.

In addition, epilogues are added as an option.  Since every campaign is intended to end eventually, there's a table and some mechanics for how the world was left after your actions.  If desired, you can pick up the next campaign after your epilogue, in the same world with new heroes.  If not, you can start over each time you play.

Unless there's something major I've missed, this also marks a milestone; version 0.4 will be the last Alpha version.  Version 0.5 will be the first Beta version of Against the Fall of Night.  The focus for the next update will be on cleanup and editing; there's some references to older rules still in there and quite a few notes to self about design or plans and half-finished concepts in there.  For the first beta version, mechanics will be either finished, cleaned up, or removed.  (Removed mechanics may be added back in later.)  The goal for 0.5 is purely cleanup and polish; there shouldn't be anything exciting and new, but if you want to read through something that isn't quite so much work to parse, 0.5 will be the version for that.

Until next time, heroes!