Ohoy Kadungganan!

First off, the main reason why I wanted to get this PDF out is because Dyl finished the Buwaya Lancer drawing and I wanted to give it to you guys. Check himb out:

Doesn't that make you want to pick up Buwaya Lancer techs?

Also peep this Rajahnate sigil made by @rajavlitra on Twitter!

Secondly, I found a few more formatting errors, especially in the table of contents, which I have now fixed. As I did, I got a bit indulgent and decided to add a paragraph or 2 the Discipline lore texts as well as some of the Techniques themselves. Nothing much, just for flavor, and hopefully for plot hooks. Additionally, I fixed some more wordings.

Thirdly, I wanted to make some changes to the Disciplines. These are not balance changes, so I don't count them as moving the Beta forward just yet. But these are sure to make Disciplines more exciting to use. Explicitly for the Sentinels, I didn't want them to have too homogenous Features. And so...

There's a few smaller Tech changes that are only clarifications, so keep that in mind.

Kalabaw Kshatriya 

Rampart Kalabaw Presence. Your opportunity attack’s range extends to 2. While you are flanked by foes, you gain Accurate to all attacks with melee weapons.

Baril Witch 

Baril Witch's Forbidden Technique felt like a wet fart. So instead, I moved the Sinag Kiyapu into a Technique that can be used (with a shorter range), and gave this to the Baril Witch as their Forbidden Tech:

Forbidden Technique: Final Bullet Revel “Kill Your Gun”
Action
Target: All combatants | Range: The battlefield
Attack: None | Effect: You bring out the diwata of your gun and shoot it. The spirit infuses the battlefield, and in its rage, explodes into a firework of bullet patterns, resembling mandalas, lotuses, and flowers. A veritable bullet hell. Anytime a combatant of your choice moves either voluntarily or involuntarily, they suffer 3 + base damage in damage. If they have armor, this instead destroys the armor first. This can trigger only once per combatant per round. 
Special: Spend 3 Favor to use this during the third round of combat or beyond. You must Worship Gods and Ancestors to use this again, as you must call back the diwata of your gun.
“Anything it takes,” the ancestors tell you. Anything it takes to win? You’ve forged such an intimate connection with your GUN. “The gun is but a tool,” BALAHARI GILUSOT tells you. “Do not get attached to beings that have never been human. Fool, kill it! Kill it now! Before it realizes your soul and shoots itself through you! A Gun Diwata is new and excited, and it does not now yet its power. The power to level entire nations. Now KILL IT! Bask in the bullet hell you’ve made!”

Ayam Hunter

Trapmaster > Balatik. You have access to a balatik, a miniature bamboo ballista, which you use like a crossbow. 1/scene, you may fire it to inflict violence upon all foes in Close Line 5.1, with the Effect: Inflict Immobilize.

Sarimanok Knight

Mounted Barricade now has the following text: Mounted Barricade. All spaces adjacent to you are considered Difficult Terrain for foes.

Digmapari

Lunas is now 3/scene.

Strife Awitan

Healing Strife Song is now 2/scene.

War Babaylan

Healing from the diwata can now only be 1/ally per scene.

Pangasi Belligerent

Reckless Drunken Brave now has the following text: You have a Drinking Aura that is close burst 2. Whenever an ally within your Drinking Aura is damaged, you gain 1 Barrier, which stacks with other barriers.

Dancing Divine Alak Diwata now has the following text: Dancing Divine Alak Diwata. Your Drinking Aura enlarges to Close Burst 3. Whenever a foe within your Drinking Aura attacks one of your allies, you may immediately spend 2 Favor to rush up to the target’s space and push them 5 spaces away. If they cannot be moved, they will be. 3/scene.

Sundang Balaknon

Flower Tongue Singer now has this text: Flower Tongue Singer. You sing the song of your war band. Whenever an ally adjacent to you is the target of an attack, you may roll a d8. On a 1-4, you suffer the attack. On a 5-8, you cancel the attack. 1/round.

Violent Song has been replaced with the following: The Harrowing Herald Sings Your Praises. Your weapons are tasseled with bells and chimes. When you Stride, ignore difficult terrain. 

Devlog Portion

Fourthly, I wanted to talk a bit about the design process that has led to the beta, although I'm sure if you've seen my threads on Twitter. I wanted to highlight Three Major Game Design Goals and Three Minor Goals. These are Goals that might not have been there since the beginning, or might have.

Goal 1: Tactical Martial Arts

I think this one is pretty easy. I wanted to do a tactical combat game. Not just tactical combat, but tactical martial arts. That includes what you would see in Martial Arts movies from Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Japan, with a bit of wuxia in there. The goal of the game was not to model military troopers, but exemplary martial artists. Thankfully, the fiction and source material (Precolonial Philippines) was actively supportive of this. 

My three main RPG inspos (eg. what I stole from) were D&D4e, Strike! RPG, and Lancer. 4e for the baseline, since I truly believe they basically got it right there. Strike! RPG for the fiction first and relatively rules-lite approach to tactical combat (Strike is a good game for this), and Lancer for the modularity and for inspiring going through with that narrative/combat divide.

Vidya-wise I had Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, Devil May Cry, and Mario+Rabbids in mind.  FFT and TO as the foundation for everything. DMC to help inform the fiction (because Kadungganan must be badass or they die), and Mario+Rabbids for simplifying stats and focusing a bit more on the joy of movement.

Goal 2: War Drama In Precolonial Fantasy

This one was a bit easier to do, because I didn't have to balance things. I had to go with feel, what could lead players naturally into situations where they had to face what they didn't want to face, or had to change something intrinsically connected to their character. I think the current mechanics are conducive to that experience, and I like the general vibe of it.

For Precolonial Fantasy, I'm just glad I was able to make a fantasy setting that's in our own terms. Not one where I have to write it in a way to make it palatable to people who don't know Precolonial Philippines. This is extra hard because Precolonial Philippines is almost never represented in western media (in the PH there's been a resurgence, thankfully, and Amaya which is great in some aspects, and does melodramatic Precolonial PH great). This is why I keep saying that it's unapologetic (even if I may be), because I'm presenting these things to you as if that is what Fantasy is. I'm presenting Gubat Banwa without baggage in the word fantasy. I'm presenting it in the most literal sense of the word: the faculty or activity of imagining things, especially things that are impossible or improbable.

A truly noncolonized Philippines is improbable, but we imagine it here anyway.

Goal 3: Build Variety

This one I'm not super sure of if I've accomplished just yet, although in the playtests and campaigns I've run I feel like I have. The other side of my love for 4e, continued only by Lancer and something I wanted from Strike! RPG (other than interesting lore) was their ability to create another layer of gameplay in the form of character building. All those character options to build a character that you wanted to play as, something unique, something built up from the setting. I wanted to do that. I think I've created something at least conducive to that experience, as I've removed for example stats being a limiting factor to builds. If anything, the primary limiting factor is the weapons you can wield or the concept you had in mind (as well as, of course, the Discipline you are in and the Role you have taken up). 

These were probably the main gripe or frustration I had in 4e. If I wanted to make a weird character concept, I had to jump through a bunch of hoops to make it optimal or viable. In Lancer it's a lot more fun, that's for sure, because it was made with multiclassing in mind. That's what I wanted for Gubat Banwa: an extra layer of character build optimization. It might not be as make it or break it than 4e (as really anything you pick up would work in the game, afaik), but its still an integral part of the gameplay, and I consider it the third pillar of the gameplay of Gubat Banwa. I realize that players love the characters they create, the characters that they roleplay as.

It also conveniently a great way to ride with the fiction of a martial artist perfecting their art by learning from a conglomerate of other martial arts, which is how Filipino Martial Arts are.

Minor Goal 1: Inspired by FFT and Tactics Ogre

This was a much more major goal in the past, but as the game went on, I made it less of a guideline and more of a nice little addition. I love those games not only for its emergent strategies, but also (mostly) for its narratives. However, whatever things I did in the game that hit that same feel as playing Tactics Ogre is an immediate bonus. Some examples include having a damage range band (rolling a dice but all the modifiers and base damage is flat), a focus on Height mechanics, and shorter ranges (the farthest one can get is 4, because diagonal ranges are wack).

Minor Goal 2: Weird High Fantasy Setting

To me and the other guys in the art team, this is a normal Philippine Fantasy. But to the taxonomy of the west, ours may be categorized as a "Weird" Fantasy setting, along the lines of something like Tales of Flat Earth, Bas-Lag, Dark Sun, Kill Six Billion Demons. And this is good, if I have to subject myself to the taxonomy of western genres I'd love to be in the weird fantasy genre because that's where my favorite fantasy works reside.

But its also a high fantasy setting as well, in the sense that it's filled with wonder and magic and an elevated goal of discovery. Its a setting that's new, fresh, while still being high fantasy (despite it being pretty melancholic because, you know, war.) 

Minor Goal 3: Very Filipino

All of the art for this game has been from Filipinos, and I intend to continue that. Mostly because its cheaper and easier to transact with other people from the same country (salamat Gcash), but also because in a very real sense, when I describe or try to realize things to them, they somehow will find a connection to it, because that's what the ancestors did.

That's it for now. Thank you for putting up with all these minor updates, but Gubat Banwa is in a very very good place now,  I think. Even better than 0.9, the Beta synthesizes all the things I learned from 0.1 to 0.9, from how I wanted turns to look, to how strong I wanted Kadungganan to be, to how painful foes have to be, to how the Disciplines interacted with each other, to how combat looked and felt. Beta will be mostly for balancing, so please stay tuned for that. Be sure to jump into the Discord if you haven't already to find games and such!