Time of the Essence Project, Reworked

Hi everyone!

A bit of a lengthy post today, but I wanted to write a bit about Time of the Essence and where it's headed (I know I've been kinda silent about it for a while, but not for lack of activity on my part).

After the pandemic and the Italian release of Fabula Ultima, I've had to re-evaluate my view of games; not only what they can do (and how I want to experiment with them), but also their production, distribution, and structure.

Time of the Essence started as a tabletop RPG with a GM and 1+ Character Players, with a crafting dynamic involving the repeated printing and destruction of paper bits, to add a DIY element and reinforce the need to play "physically", at the same table. It had a campaign, a map you explore, a bunch of notes to take, and would likely end up a thick (if colorful) booklet. But my goals changed.

Right now, I have reimagined the game as a boxed experience, using card placement systems to remove as much bookkeeping as possible, and using a combination of different decks to remove the need for a fixed Game Master.

If the game ever gets a physical release, I want it to be made with environmentally-friendly materials and as little plastic as possible (wooden dice, paper straps to hold cards, and so on - all from recycled paper). It strives to provide a "legacy" element which can be reset, and to enforce the scarcity of natural resources through a limited number of components.

Here's a tentative list of components. Things will likely change, but the general aim is to store everything inside a small box, smaller than A5-sized.

> STRUCTURE OF PLAY
The general idea is to have gameplay be structured around days, with each game session featuring a morning phase, afternoon phase, evening phase, and night phase.

• During each phase, every Character gets a scene (they're called Lead Character for that scene). Note that there's no GM; the person to their right is the Narrator (kinda like a GM) for that scene.
• Characters can do different things in a scene: explore, craft, or rest.

Each day, the group will receive requests from the people in town. The goal is to complete as many of these as possible before night falls. Requests also grant happiness, which is then used to purchase goods from the town (no money in this world).

> EXPLORING
When a character explores, they choose one of the six available areas and draw 1 exploration card plus 1 ingredient card from that area. The Narrator weaves together the scene: if you're near the Shimmering Shores and draw Unstable Passage and Echoing Shell, for instance, the alchemist might spot a colorful shell amidst dangerous-looking sea rocks. Each exploration tells you what to do to overcome it (maybe you need an item with the Climb trait, or you could instead attempt an Ice Check to steel your nerves).

If you succeed, you avoid trouble and get the ingredient.

If you fail,you suffer the consequences but still get the ingredient (unless the consequence says you don't).

Some exploration cards trigger battles against the dangerous creatures that populate the world: golems (constructs left by the ancients who caused the alchemical apocalypse), oddities (rogue ingredients and materials), or shadows (echoes of the creatures devoured by the Gray, the catastrophic phenomenon triggered by the ancients).

Battles are more complex and dangerous, and are also a bit more time- and resource-consuming. The dice rolling is kept fairly low, however.

Note: characters may join forces on the same exploration attempt. I've yet to decide whether this eats up that part of the day for all people involved, or whether it doesn't. It's also possible we shift from a day structure to a week structure, I don't know yet.

> CRAFTING
Crafting is a lot simpler than it was in my original draft. Each item lists the ingredients needed to craft it (such as "Ore, 2xWood") and if you have those ingredient cards, you place them under the recipe card, leaving the ingredients' traits visible. You can also use an additional, non-required ingredient, if you wish.

An interesting aspect is that, since I can't provide infinite recipe cards, you can't keep crafting copies of the same item: you first need to use or dismantle previous copies.

> RESTING
Not much to say about this: resting lets you recover HP (Hope Points), which is otherwise accomplished through cuisine items (potions, on the other hand, remove conditions).
I kinda want to tie resting to gaining new recipes (drawn from a deck), but perhaps it's easier if all recipe cards are accessible from the start.

WAIT A MOMENT, WHERE'S MY ROLEPLAYING???
Reading all of this, it might seem there's a lot of boardgaming and very little roleplaying involved, especially for those who equate roleplaying to creative problem solving, out-of-the-box thinking, and shaping the game world in an emergent way.
These concerns make total sense, so I want to highlight a couple important features:

• When making a Check, an Alchemist may declare EUREKA! and destroy an ingredient or item in their bag to automatically roll max number on each die. They need to explain how that item lets them turn the situation on its head, and the Narrator must impartially adjudicate the action.
• Whenever a never-previously-encountered ingredient is found, whoever is the Narrator gets to compile that ingredient's entry and lore in the Grimoire. If anyone plays with that specific copy of the game (or at least that Grimoire), that will be the canon lore for that ingredient during that session. This is the biggest legacy element of the game.
  I'm tempted to diegetically present this as the Grimoire being an amnesic talking book created by the Ancients, who suddenly "remembers" information.
• When an Alchemist crafts an item, they need to describe its appearance according to the ingredients they used. A sword is a sword, yes, but what if you used glowroses and ancient fossils for it?

WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE US?
As you likely figured out by now, there's a LOT of work to do to get this to a barely playable prototype stage. Considering the current world situation, I'm researching options to get a digital prototype into your hands, one you can play through a free virtual tabletop (maybe you'll need to login with some kind of credentials, but that's it).

Patrons of hunter and shaman tiers can find the WIP spreadsheets in the google drive; for questions and thoughts, you can reach out to me on Discord as always <3