Ohoy Kadungganan!

Greetings in BATALA! 1.4 is finally out, the final release of Gubat Banwa before the big news soon! This is going to be the penultimate release before the final layout: for the most part, the most important goal of this version was creating a much more readable layout, one that’s easy to have both on laptop screens and tablet screens. 

Mechanically speaking, I went through the entirety of the game and revised it accordingly, following feedback, with a mind for ease of onboarding and lesser overhead in mind. Taking a balaraw, I shaved off much of the unneeded complexity while keeping as much of the fleshy complexity in there. 

Finally, the most important change is the move to a more robust narrative system to help create a scaffolding for future narrative mechanics and modules. The five alignment system has become wanting, so we finished the weak link so to speak in Gubat Banwa’s design.

Narrative System: Actions!

Instead of Alignments, you now have Actions, which are 8 Verbs (in the vein of FitD) that are attuned to the 8 Elements (the core 5, now including Lightning, Light, and Dark!) These verbs cover a wide spectrum of interactions that Kadungganan are expected to go down. It still has that vibe of “tell me how you’re doing it” that Alignments had (“All right, you’re trying to persuade the warrior. How are you, doing it? Are you appealing to their spirituality to Consort? Try to Reason with them? Observe something about them? Or maybe outright Destroy them?”) but are easier to eyeball now and hopefully make it easier to immerse into the game’s setting!

Narrative System: Facets!

This is the same as Crown, Mask, and Sword, though now its named your Wrathful Facet, Gentle Facet, and your Royal Facet, and there are now 8 Elements to choose from to create a nuanced view of your Kadungganan.

Narrative System: Passions!

Alongside Convictions, Passions are smaller kind of smaller Convictions: these are reasons for why you live. The little things, the little knowledges about your character: what way of cooking they like their rice, or if they have a hatred for a particular kind of swords. Your Passions can change, and often will, but letting them lead you to worse, more dramatic situations is integral to gaining Thunderbolts, which are important to actually surviving in the Sword Isles!

Narrative System: Adventuring!

A more robust scaffolding for adventuring has been implemented! Similar to a loose Mission style of gameplay, its there to help facilitate progression as well as action!

Combat System Revisions!

It mostly plays the same with a large number of streamlining put in place. Elements are gone, though they are replaced with a more robust system of Elemental Interactions and Statuses. Think Breath of the Wild-style interactions: a warrior set aflame can be doused to remove their flame. This is important, because the fiction first interactions of the game are carried through these Tags in Violence.

Discipline Build Revisions!

I went through all of the Disciplines and tuned them up while streamlining them down to get rid of all the unnecessary fluff that only adds to mental overload and doesn’t contribute to the Develop Your Own Martial Art build-system that I had in mind as a principle. 

Each Discipline now has a Discipline Trait that is simpler but more powerful and more impactful. 

Each Discipline now has an Enlightenment as a Passive Benefit they get once you learn 2 Signature Techniques on it (which means you get it on Legend 1!) Enlightenments are designed to be the Reactions in a way. You can equip any 1 Enlightenment that you have equipped. This means even if you’re Kawal, you can have the Busalian’s Thunderbolt Body Enlightenment equipped.

The ultimate attacks are now known as Liberations, and they are still gated behind Resounds, but the 1 Liberation per Fight now no longer exists. All Kadungganan can use their Liberations if they still have it! It is still once per Downtime however.

Each Discipline now has only 4 Signature Techniques, but each Technique is more powerful even at its 1 Beat version, and they have boosted versions by spending more Beats to use them. This feeds well into the new 8 Technique Limit (you can only equip up to 8 Techniques at a time now! This helps limit the explosive versatility of Kadungganan while also lessening mental overhead (especially considering that the Inflict Violences are Techniques in and of themselves!) This means you’ll have an entire kit at Legend 4. And the Legend now goes from Legend 0 to Legend 12. You gain 2 Signature Techniques every Legend growth!

At the "sweet spot" of Legend 6 that's going to be 12 Techniques to play around with, and the important part is that you can only equip up to 8.

At Legend 6 that's going to be 3 Enlightenments and Liberations to mix and match with. In Final Fantasy Tactics speak this is like having a bunch of passives and commands from three Jobs.

At Legend 12, that's going to be 6 Enlightenment and Liberations. The play becomes proper slotting of Techniques, Enlightenments, and Liberations with a large pool of Techniques to choose from. You can technically "master" up to 6 Disciplines now.

Only having much less Techs to be able to use (8 slots) is a major cutting down of the overhead where it matters (during combat). Slotting Techniques in and out you can do out of the session, so it can be done with leisure. People don't even have to memorize their entire Learned Technique repertoire once they've decided on a build

Anting now have more powerful effects per Anting, but you can only equip up to 3, and you can only equip 1 per Rank (so Rank 2 you can equip up to 2 Anting). This synergizes with the fact that Enlightenments are also passive reactionary effects now as well.

A lot of the design here goes toward the build principle I had in heart, which was to sort of develop builds on their own, with the Active Discipline being a huge part of the build but not the defining part. Instead of “Death Dancer with X and Y”, its meant to be more “X and Y Technique, Z Enlightenment, working through AA Discipline, with the following Anting.” This works with the philosophy of basically creating your own Martial Art as you rise in Legend!

Everything else has been revised accordingly, with Enemies having multiple Threats so that their Stats scale properly with the exponential versatility that Kadungganan gain. 

That’s it for now. 

I hope you enjoy First Edition Gubat Banwa at its peak! I’m very satisfied with it now, it having a much more streamlined feel for the game. I hope you all revel in it as well! Until Glory!