It's beta release day!

Version 0.5 Beta of Against the Fall of Night is now available.  The changelog is below.  There are also some other things to note.

First, you may notice an additional file here, Dreamlings.  Sword World 2.5 has a very cool system called Fellows, which lets you use other people's characters that are totally unrelated to your own game to help out in yours, and then you can tell them about it, or you can set up your character so they can use it.  You just grab a character from social media or a game store or a friend or whatever.  Dreamlings are that system, but for Against the Fall of Night; when you enter a Nightmare, if your group is using the Dreamling system, you can summon one or more Dreamlings to assist you.  This system is totally optional and you don't need to use it, but it exists.

Second, you may notice that Heroes Rise is gone.  With the changes that have been made to campaign structure in the last few versions, the way that adventure was written no longer reflects the way that PCs go adventuring in AFN.  It will be rewritten and return in version 0.6 as a starter Nightmare.

Finally, you might wonder what makes this a beta and why did I bother changing all mentions of 'playtest' to 'beta' on the page, instead of just being Playtest 0.5.  The answer to that is placeholders.  In playtest versions, I left in all the placeholders and notes to self and comments and thoughts.  Those have been removed; the beta version is better for public consumption and is just the game.  Notes like references to page [[XX]] still exist, since of course page numbers aren't finalized, or indications that the following paragraph would be a sidebar, but no more lists of unfinished content or asking myself questions like [[does this need to exist]].

Enjoy cleansing Nightmares, heroes, and I hope you see the Dawn!

Changelog v0.5

Wealth is now the default rule, tracking coin is optional.

Added prosthetics to the equipment section.  Also, redid equipment section in general to account for Wealth.

Added some setting information.

Major editing and wording pass.  Many wordings have been changed, few actual effects have been changed.  This is still a work in progress.

XP progression has been changed away from a sandbox-type generic XP into being specifically about cleansing Nightmares to fit into the expected gameplay progression.  You get XP for engaging with the premise.

The Downtime Phase has been updated to utilize a system of Downtime Characters that give you access to Downtime Actions.  Players will need to engage with the world and work with specific characters to do things in downtime.  It was not stolen from His Majesty the Worm and the fact that HMTW was added to the mechanical inspirations list in this release is a coincidence (it was definitely inspired by HMTW).

Removal of all todo notes and TBD text.  I still have them for myself in another document, but this is a beta version and is supposed to look more professional than me including comments like [[Figure out what the hell I was talking about here]].

Refactoring of multiple game elements to bring them in line with current project scope (for example, rituals now interact with the phases of play and don’t just do random things.)

Shift keyword added – Shifting is when you move without becoming Vulnerable.  I got sick of writing “move X distance without becoming Vulnerable” so we’re keywording it now.

Added new magic item classifications.  Added new magic items. (Still needs more magic items, but this is an amount that exists.)

Glossary added.  Glossary is not complete and will be expanded over time.

Added new content; attack techniques, defense techniques, spells, hybrid techniques, feats, and so on.