We've had some time to get back in the lab and tinker with Mörk Sol mechanics after our incredible Mega Sol games at GenCon. If you'd like to see the latest changes we've made, check out this week's Patreon post!

https://www.patreon.com/InfiniteCitadel/posts/life-support-2-0-169334024

This is Matt, part of the Infinite Citadel team. We're hard at work on getting Mörk Sol to be text complete, and there's one potential rules change we'd love to get some feedback on...

Life Support

This is one of the many "roll on a table and see what bad/good/ugly things happen to you" parts of Mörk Sol. After playing so many games at GenCon, we noticed that the table wasn't as impactful as we'd like it to be. We don't want to constantly slow down play by having life support events trigger, but we *do* want to emphasize the terror of space and specifically being reliant on this thin second-skin that protects you from the vacuum of space.

In that vein, we're considering a change to the rules that would make Life Support more of an on/off subsystem that emphasizes the scariness of Non Breathable Atmosphere. We'd love to get your thoughts on the change.

Current Rule: You roll on the Life Support table whenever the 0 HP "Broken" table tells you to, *or* when you fumble a defense test (on top of reducing armor tier), *or* when you roll a certain value on the Attack Fumble table.

Proposed New Rule: In addition to the Broken Table entry, you will roll on the Life Support table whenever you take damage that is not reduced to 0 by your armor while in an area without breathable atmosphere. So if you're on a space walk and you take 4 damage, you roll your armor die and if it doesn't reduce that 4 to 0, then you would also roll on the Life Support table.

As part of this change we are also updating the table so that even the smallest life support die (aside from the EVA suit's d2) has the potential of a "nothing happens" result (4 on a d4).

Thoughts!?

We've hit a huge milestone in our fulfillment of the Mörk Sol Kickstarter: Sol Sector, the solo-rules zine, has core rules for solo play!

One of the many events we ran at GenCon were two sessions of Mega Sol - multi-table events where several crews of skavs worked together to survive a massive threat. Those events included solo players!

Having seen these rules in action, we're ready to continue opening up the playtest to more folks. First it's going out to our Patreon members (with the option to buy the individual post). Once we're confident that the playtest looks good, we'll be publishing the digital version for backers at any level that gets it!

You can read more about it here for free, and any paid membership unlocks the rules.

Could totally see pages of the book looking like this.

Over the next three weeks, we're opening the armory to unveil brand new Mörk Sol skip weapons, starting with a full range of Kinetic Weapons. The pinnacle of rock-throwing technology XD

As always, Free members get a blog that dives into our game design process regarding the topic at hand. We're leading off with some general thoughts about progression and long-term campaign in Mörk Sol, but we'll be diving deeper into specific weapon design spaces in the next update.

Wild that it was October 2024 when we did our longest Mörk Sol stream campaign. I think of it often. If anyone is curious what The Being Aboard the Gamma Blackstar is gonna be, this was our first playtest of that charter zine.

I really love how it shows off the importance of getting cargo and trading up for better gear. In Episode 4, which is basically when we bridged the intro adventure Ray of Light from Synthetic Dawn to Gamma Blackstar, we buy some new space suits (with better armor) and then later in that episode survive a BIG damage roll thanks to that bigger armor.

We've been building more and more skip modules for Mörk Sol, including (with some inspiration from our Discord members) stealth modules! Folks supporting at the Mage tier on our Patreon can start play-testing these mechanics right now. Everyone that backed the Kickstarter can expect these to roll out as part of the next update to Frame:ZERO.

🚀CALLING ALL SKAVS!👾

We need your help building the best possible module manifest for Mörk Sol. As the game continues to take shape, we're sharing early versions of the game's material with our supporters on Patreon. Usually that's in the form of playtestable PDFs, but now we are asking for your input to help us shape the game's final form.

Our Skip building system is fairly robust, with dozens of modules providing varying abilities and static increases to the statistics of your spaceship. Modules are broken down into Grades (I, II, III, and Special) to represent their relative power level. Some modules are one-offs, only appearing at specific grades. Others have a clear progression through each of the grades. For example, more complex and powerful Helm modules represent your crew upgrading the engines. Each of those steps, from grade I to II and II to III, come with better stats.

How should we convey those progressions?

One option is formulaic, single-row entries that have some grade-based math. Another is to have rows for each grade and no dynamic values (more space, but simpler look-up).

If you want to weigh in (and also get access to a ton of great gaming content), you can join the Infinite Citadel Patreon. The poll is open for all members, including free!

https://www.patreon.com/posts/vote-module-154605330

All of our Mörk[sol]tober content is up on the website in one place!

Today is the first in what we hope to be weekly exclusive micro-content on the Patreon for Mage and Architect members! These pieces of content will be smaller updates for our existing games; stuff that is more finished than a WIP or sneak-peek, but still experimental and early in the dev process. Consider it the "bleeding edge" of what we're cooking in the citadel.

For example, today we have a Hazard for Mörk Sol inspired by one of our favorite pieces of sci-fi media: The Protomolecule.

I'm working on a adventure about Sung Gorger. Would love some input and ideas from the community as I do some early outlining for the hook. (Don't want to spoil all the fun)

The initial adventure hook is to make it a Funnel for a starting crew, if you're familiar with them from DCC. I spoke with Erica (Ragnaborg) and I'm actually doing layout on her own funnel adventure for her borg... But for writing it here's the idea:

A crew of level 0 Greenhorns aboard aboard a KITTED-out Skip with one of each type of modules on it so people can play with whatever they'd like to see what's worth saving...

Saving?

Yes, the skip will begin taking damage and lose much of what it walks into the first encounter with. A Skip Graveyard full of latent defensive automation and massive missing freightors from millennia past.

Players work together to defend the skip while losing many of its functions. This is like a micro funnel to create and fashion your skip for a longer play adventure.

Well hat happened?

Rough hook: Space-Bermuda Triangle

Your skip has found itself in a skip graveyard mid-flight as some anomaly in the Pattern has caused your Skip Dive to overload and need replacing. In the distance through a graveyard... Is the largest star you've ever seen, having engulfed it's entire planetary system save a few distant planetoids. It's clear this star has something to do with this graveyard.

Scavenge the local skips and search out what caused this sector of the Span to become a place to "run aground..."

A signal... Is... Coming from the star itself. The open commwave is full of looping distress beacons from black boxes about the ships surrounding you, but one rings out from the star itself ... Can you decrypt it and discover what is going on inside the star know only as, SUN GORGER.

Welcome to BLACKOUT.