Welcome back to Further Beyond!

Further Beyond has been in development now for a while and I am excited to show you what I have been working on. Thus, we begin with our developer log series where I will go through all the progress that has been made to the game, what has changed and what has been added since our core rules preview.
This first log will focus on the additions to the core rules as well as future instalments that will include information about player character creation and rules intended for behind the screen. Here we will show you what changes have been made to the core options players and game masters (or custodians) will have in playing and running the game.

Stress
A major addition to the core rules, and one that has found its way into many player character abilities, is the addition of a stress mechanic. Stress is a resource which players can spend in order to use special skills. By default, all explorers have the following two ways to spend their stress:

Push Yourself – You gain 1 stress to gain advantage on a check before you roll.

Get an Opportunity – If you are presented with an opportunity, you can gain 1 stress to get the opportunity without suffering any other consequences.

This mechanic intends to offer players more interesting decisions to make as they play. However, gaining stress comes at a cost. If you reach your stress limit (which is a number determined by adding your highest physical and mental stat together) you will snap. If you snap, your stress is reset to zero (horray!) but you must immediately make one physical and one mental stat condition save (oh no!). One thing to remember is that stress is not always in the player’s control. Sometimes a custodian may say that as a consequence, a player should gain stress. Spending stress is always a delicate balancing act between helping yourself, your teammates and to avoid suffering a breakdown.

Stat Condition Save Rework
Determining save targets by consulting a table and doing some maths felt too clunky and slowed down the pace of an intense moment. Instead, the save target for all stat conditions have now been set to 8. When you succeed on a stat condition save, the save target for that particular stat will increase by 4 and will keep increasing until you fail the save. When you fail the save, you will suffer the stat conditions and your save target will reset to 8. It gets harder and harder to endure adversity as time and consequences wear your explorer down. I hope this new system will be easier to track as well as offering new decisions over which stat a player will choose to make their save in.

Opportunities
Opportunities were a mechanic present early in this game’s development allowing custodians to offer a particular boon to their players if they succeeded on a check, while also risking a consequence. Now, opportunities have been brought front and centre so that players can be made aware of them and participate with their inclusion in the core rules. When an explorer succeeds on a check, not only will the custodian but also the players may put forward ideas for opportunities with the custodian ultimately deciding whether to offer one or not. Although, some tables may already find themselves participating in such a collaborative form of gameplay, but I wanted to make this obvious to those who were not already doing so and to promote a shared sense of creativity within not just the role-play but the core mechanics of the game as well.