New Mechanics: Story Moments, The Spotlight, and Cascading Dice

The Forests of Faera is a light-hearted, cooperative roleplaying game in which you and a few of your friends embark on short, fantastical stories as a party of fae creatures. Your story will unfold over the course of a few hours, and one player takes the role of the Guide to lead everyone through it together.

Good to see you again, traveller!

Come, now. Let’s take a seat by the fire and share a story or two.

Where to begin? Well… so much has happened since our last update. Looking back on the past few months—on the global pandemic, working from home, switching to remote meetings, tragically losing friends and family members, and the struggles that we’re all going through with our desperate need for human connection—it is terribly exciting to see how far we’ve come. We have managed to keep on keeping on, and it’s awesome.

We have been making steady progress on The Forests of Faera in our weekly sessions! We took a couple of days off work recently to have our own two-day workshop, and by goodness did we get a lot done. We finalised two huge parts of the game: Callings (what drives you as a traveller) and Creatures (the wondrous beings that you’ll encounter on your travels). Our core rules are now just a leaf-span away from being entirely written!

We have also totally revamped our profile and game pages here on itchio. We think they look much better!

Now, writing the rules is just the first step, but we have a solid plan for what’s next. Once we’ve completed these draft rules, our next steps include entering into our edit phase (this’ll be a big one), finalising the layout design, transfering the rules into the layout spreads, finishing all the art, and putting everything together into a package to upload here! We’re also exploring ways for you to get a printed copy of the game. 🤩 There’s still a lot for us to do, but we’ve really polished the mechanics of the game recently and have a great idea of how it’ll work. It’ll be so much fun and we’re so proud of it (and ourselves, too!).

The Story

Your story begins in The Grove—a sanctuary amongst the trees and wild magics of the forests that fae creatures of all kinds, including you, call home. The Grove is a place of calm and quiet, but also full of life. Treetop homes, mushroom villages, winding marketplaces full of magical, wondrous trinkets, and birds, creatures, and critters of all kinds. Most of all, The Grove is a place where all kinds of fae creatures can recharge for their next adventure.

Outside The Grove, the enchanted forests grow wild. The magics of the forests seep into everything, coursing through leaves, trees, and bodies that linger too long. These magics bring the spark of life to the mundane, but also weave threads of chaos through everything. The unkown can be terrifying, but it can also be amazing. You’ll only discover which once you step into the forests and start your story.

Playing The Forests of Faera is all about experiencing a journey through ancient, magical forests with your whimsical, fae companions. You will meet extraordinary creatures, overcome great obstacles, and craft your own fantastic story as you go. The game is a conversation between you, your friends, and your Guide. You are all in it together, so make sure you keep an eye on each other.

Guiding The Story

We have developed two systems to guide players through the game together: Story Moments, and The Spotlight.

Story Moments

During a story, travellers stick together. Each story is made up of three story moments that travellers experience during the arc of the narrative, and the various challenges and obstacles that lie in between. Each story moment describes a key obstacle that makes up a fantastic moment in the story—often standing in the travellers’ way to challenge your body, mind, or spirit. This is represented by a test. Once you and your companions have completed the goal of a story (currently named the story drive), everyone returns to The Grove by performing the ritual of return, waking up for post-story celebrations. Your Guide will narrate this as an epilogue, and then the game will wrap up as you decide how the world has become changed and record it into the World’s Journal.

The Spotlight

The Spotlight provides a clear and fair structure to help everyone settle into a nice rhythm from the start of the game, and it ensures that everyone gets an equal chance to play.

You will be in the Spotlight while your traveller is performing an action. Once they have finished their action, the spotlight will move to the next traveller so they can act. This will continue until each traveller has been in the spotlight once, then everyone will have the freedom to act once more. Feel free to decide between you and your companions who will take the spotlight next, and talk with your Guide to ensure that the gameplay and narrative make sense. If you or one of your companions don’t wish to act, or your traveller is not able to, let the spotlight move on. As always, ask your Guide if you’re unsure!

Cascading Dice

From early in development, we have wanted The Forests of Faera to be free from step-by-step math, +1s, subtraction, or complicated formulas. To this end, we use an elegant, special die mechanic where certain dice can cascade—one step at a time—along this cascading die chain:

We think that all of these elements come toghether to create a friendlier, more streamlined way to play The Forests of Faera than in the earlier version. It means that you and your friends will be able to meet and play a whole story in one sitting.

In our last devlog, we talked about using an ability and weaving a spell. These two actions are what you will use when you are attempting to overcome an obstacle in your path—a test.

Composure & Enchantment

You rely on your composure to use an ability and your enchantment to weave a spell. The more of each that you have, the better your chances are for success. Your composure and enchantment are represented by two cascading dice: your composure die and your enchantment die.

Your composure is a measure of the physical ability and mental willpower you need to continue an activity. It is gradually whittled away as you explore the forests, and it is tracked using a cascading die called a composure die. When you leave The Grove, this die is a d8. Each time you lose composure, your composure die becomes smaller.

Enchantment is a measure of how deeply you have succumbed to the forests’ charms. It is gradually increased as you draw on wild magics to weave spells, and it is tracked using a cascading die called an enchantment die. When you leave The Grove, your enchantment die is a d4. As you become more enchanted, the forests mark you with additional runes, your enchantment die grows, and you become able to draw on stronger magics to weave more powerful spells.

Becoming Distressed

If your composure die cascades below a d4, or your enchantment die cascades above a d8, you become distressed—you cannot perform any tests on your own, but you can still talk, move about, and travel with your companions. You are also able to draw on a reserve of energy to help a companion perform a test. Your story continues while you or at least one of your companions is not distressed.

If every traveller in your party becomes distressed at the same time, there is no-one left to perform the ritual of return. Your story ends for now as you all become lost in the forests, unable to find your way back to The Grove in your distressed states.

Creator Day Sale

We’ve put together a collection of high res creature and traveller concept art ruffs—designed by @cosmicnimbus. If you’d like to support us, then you can pick them up from today’s Creator Day sale and onwards. Purchasing the art pack will also grant you access to the new, expanded and fully-realised version of The Forests of Faera v1.0 on release.

Thanks for your support!

Thanks!

It’s been a wild journey for us over the last few years, trying to squeeze in weekly meetings and have really poured our energies and souls into bringing this game to life. In a nutshell, it is our baby. 😊

Hold on just a little longer and we’ll have it ready for you to play soon!

Aaron & Oliver

🌲