Dust To Dust Devlog #2 - Frontier Pains

Hello All!

It’s Raul from Carrion Pact back with another Dust to Dust update! After the initial feedback from the playtest, we’ve gotten some clear direction to continue expanding out the game mechanics, while working on the underlying math and feel of resolving skill tests in the system. Today I’m going to go over a key aspect of our game: Damage. Specifically, how you take damage when the frontier throws gunslingers, ghosts, and ghouls your way.  Let’s jump right in. As always, this is all heavily “in alpha” and will likely be subject to change after more playthroughs.

First is the tried and true “Hit Points” (HP). If you’ve played other RPGs, you’ll be familiar with the concept of HP, representing your character’s capacity to take physical damage. In Dust to Dust, players and NPCs take HP damage from physical threats, such as gunshots, falling great heights, or brawling. When NPCs have their HP reduced to 0, most of the time they die, no ifs, ands, or buts. On the other hand, when player characters have 0 HP, they are instead knocked unconscious, with any follow up hits being fatal. Players can either be revived by their comrades spending an action to “resuscitate” them and bring them back at 1 HP (or more if they’re playing the SawBones, our doctor class), or they can attempt to self-resuscitate. Self-resuscitation is an action unconscious players at 0 HP can attempt on their turn. To do so, they roll their Grit stat, and if they’re successful vs. a difficulty value of 2, they pick themselves up at 1 HP by default. Alternatively, players can elect to forgo the roll, and take 1 corruption damage (more on that below) and automatically resuscitate at 3 HP, representing the character making a deal with the devil(s) to save their skin in a dire situation. Overall, our goal with HP was to have an intuitive system for physical damage, that still had depth and some tactical options baked in for players to still have meaningful choice, even if their character is laying on their back nursing a gunshot wound.

Next is “fracture,” our take on sanity. While the world of Dust to Dust is an alternate version of the historic American Old West of the 1870s, the sudden deluge of magic and monsters into the world has drastically warped the frontier and how people survive it. The world of Dust to Dust has no shortage of horrific monsters, strange phenomena, and depraved human beings, all of which will wear down PCs not just physically, but mentally as well. As player characters endure the horrors of the frontier, their mind begins to crack. The source of the trauma can be mundane or supernatural, but ultimately it pushes your character to the edge of sanity. Mechanically, fracture works as a track that when filled, forces the player to develop a “quirk” for their character as their mind reaches its limit. Right now, the draft versions of these quirks feature both mechanical and narrative consequences the players must abide by. When a player develops a quirk, they clear their fracture track and continue playing. The players can max out their fracture track twice and gain two quirks. On the third time, the player character’s mind cracks for good, and they are no longer playable. The goal with fracture is to ensure that player characters are vulnerable to the stress and strain that comes with frontier living in a world filled with metaphorical and literal monsters.

Lastly, we have corruption. Corruption is damage and rot on the soul. Out of the 3 types of “health” players have, corruption is the hardest to maintain. Corruption is largely caused by interaction with the unstable magic in the world. Whether interacting with magical anomalies or being attacked by a magic user. At different corruption levels, players suffer different afflictions, some of which may offer benefits to different playstyles. If player characters ever max out their corruption track, they are no longer playable, as with maxing out Fracture for the third time.

Players will have various ways to heal these various types of wounds, though there will be few guarantees regarding their availability or reliability. Our goal with these systems is to reinforce the direness of the situation most people face in the world of Dust to Dust, as everything about their being is under siege by the elements, their fellow man, and the weird. The asymmetry is meant to reflect how easy it is for people to seek remedies for their different afflictions; for example, you’re more likely to find a doctor who can patch you up at a reasonable rate than it is to find an experienced magic user who can clear your corruption.

Well, that about wraps it up for how we plan to handle physical pain, mental strain, and a growing stain on your soul. Obviously though, we’ll see how this holds up against future playtests.

Stay tuned for more, especially as we make inroads into some of the lore for the setting!

Thanks for reading!