Tal's Spacebar

June 2025 Devlog

Welcome! This is REKT's second monthly devlog, and it's going to be quite the read, so strap yourselves in!

Previous goals I successfully accomplished:
Technically I only really gave myself one goal the previous month, and it was rather vague: Start polishing the corebook, starting at the beginning. Did I succeed in that?

Yes. And you can read the first chapter here. (Consider it like a demo.)

The corebook intro chapter - Chapter 1 - is now perfectly laid out and polished to a very strong degree. Instead of being what it was before - mostly a lore dump - it now has the primary purpose of being a massive hook. Let's go through some of my thoughts behind it.

The layout
We open with a little blurb about what REKT is, followed by a list of what makes REKT fun compared to other TTRPGs, followed finally by a list of what you need in order to start REKT. (It occurs to me now that I'm writing this that I really ought to have a section that says "So what IS a ttrpg?" But perhaps that should be before the first chapter in a foreword.)

After that, we have…

• Two page spread: Core Concepts (List of terms used regularly throughout the book)

• Two page spread: Overview of how REKT plays

• One page: The Art of Storycrafting (difference between players and the storymaster). Thinking of expanding this with the "what is a ttrpg" bit

• Four pages: The Hotel - a REKT play example

• Two page spread: The universe of REKT

• Final spread: directing the SM to printouts, list of chapters, and a summary of the grit/heroism scale and the Golden Rule.

"Progressive Disclosure"
Corebooks have a lot of info in them. A massive problem is information overload, especially earlier on, and trying to make sure that players are able to skim - because no matter how well you write, players will. To combat this, we have progressive disclosure. These work on the idea that players will skim if we have infodumps, so what we do is give them all the important info up front in a bite-sized bit. This naturally leads to glossing over a lot, but that's okay! We "progressively disclose" the information over two or three places in the book. For instance, we have this bit of information:

Players usually get two actions per turn, and each action can be something like moving, attacking, or anything else.

That's an excellent summary by itself. In a single sentence, it lets players know that…

• There are turns

• things you do are divided up into discrete parts, also called "actions"

• moving is an action, unlike D&D

• you get two actions per turn, usually

• it implies sometimes you can have more or less (which is true)

Then, later on, for players that actually do their homework (or, once you get the player hooked enough to make them want to do their homework) you have grittier details - what kind of actions you can do - things like Hunkering Down and Taking Aim. Then you delve into exceptions and so on. This is a lot more to read, but you can read it at your leisure, and even if you don't read it? You'll be able to move and fire your gun, most likely - even if you don't know exactly how it works, it's easier to walk you through it than dumping you into combat and having you ask the Storymaster "So, uh…. how does this work?"

The entire book is focused on progressive disclosure
It's true! We start with the intro chapter by giving multi-layer explanations. To start with, we have the tiny snippet of lore on the first page ("Get your gear ready. It's the year 3152") and then the "Why should I run REKT?" which gives you a brief overview of how it plays. Later on in the intro chapter, we break it down even further, pointing you to the appropriate chapters, and then those chapters will give you the full info. When we're almost ready to print, we'll have page pointers here and there (see p. 82) to help people navigate.

So, beyond progressive disclosure, what IS the first chapter?
In brief? A massive hook. It's all designed to grab players and especially prospective Storymasters. REKT's strengths are outlined very early on, and bits of info are carefully scattered throughout to show players how REKT is different from (especially) D&D. Most people who play TTRPGs (and even those who don't!) are most familiar with D&D, so it's inevitable that I'll get a lot of traffic from that direction. And that's good! D&D is great, and it's an excellent prep for something a bit grittier than D&D's hero mindset, while not being as hopelessly bleak as e.g. Cyberpunk Red.

• For prospective Storymasters, we have bits scattered throughout designed to hook them and make them think, "Damn, I want to make a story like this" - or "Oh shit, I could do this with a system like this!"

• For prospective players, I highlight the control that players have over the story. I highlight progression and the lack of a clear class structure. The idea is to say "You can really do anything you want in a game like this."

• For the mechanically minded, we have sections highlighting the mechanics. The most basic tenets of gameplay are gone over clearly so you have at least an idea of how crunchy the rule systems are.

• For the narratively minded, we put the story first, trying to draw them into the world of REKT and get them excited to read more. The NEZ is REKT's best hook - we try to capitalize on that.

• For those more interested in looking at new game systems in general, I provide a lot of what sets it apart.

And all of this has to be done very carefully so that none of the above groups lose interest while they're reading. I could probably go back through and try to add more campaign hooks, and probably will at some point, but for now, it feels quite solid.

I could probably polish the Gameplay Example (Stellar Hotel) a little more. The Art of Storycrafting section could probably set up table culture a little better. I could probably include something like an example of evasion - that's probably highly useful. But overall? I think I did great.

What goals did I fail to accomplish?
Nothing. I met my expectations this month.

Did I accomplish anything I hadn't planned?
Absolutely yes! My efforts go wherever my passion takes me, as per usual.

Star map
I have finished an official starmap for the REKT universe. You can check out the link here. Community member Silverware was going to make me a fancier version that's timeline-capable, but I think he might have forgotten about it, ran out of time, or lost interest. He's got a pretty busy life so I'm not too miffed. I have plenty else to focus on.

For now, just enjoy the glorious fact that the star map is finally finished! We have names for all the micro-sectors in the REKT galaxy now.

The Stellar Hotel (art piece)
For starters, have an image of the Stellar Hotel! It's from a two-hour art duel I did with Narwhalz on the discord.

Tried to make it look like it was backed up against the interior wall of a massive space station, as per the original in-chapter description:

Storymaster: "The dark shape of the Stellar Hotel towers above you, built half into the outer wall of the space station's interior, vanishing through the high ceiling into the levels above. There are several gardens on its flat rooftops - patches of sickly, half-kept green that stands out against the dark grime of the over-patched station walls. Beyond the glass doors in front of you is the lobby, two stories tall with a vague attempt at elegance. It's dotted with random patrons, some of them seemingly waiting for something, or someone.
"You don't need to roll Intuition to know something's off."

Commissioned cover art
I commissioned cover art from community member Trigger, because he has experience doing book covers and he consistently does a fantastic job. His signature style is vector art mixed with a bit of painterly fog and land texture, usually with a silhouette at the foreground, always with bright, dramatic setpieces thrown in. So I gave him this monstrosity:

The idea was that you have a REKT soldier in near-silhouette (maybe a bit of light glinting at the corner of his armor) standing in a darkened canyon beneath a foggy distance fading into a starry sky above. In the foreground, to the right, you have a patch of anomalous materials - streaked with purple lightning and glowing vividly and dramatically, casting light on the ground nearby, while a CASKET flies overhead. I am terrible at shading and even worse at coloring so I kind of didn't even bother. I'm quite confident that Trigger can pull it off, but before he did, he did this!!!

It's a 3d CASKET WIP with modular parts. The idea is that he'll eventually be able to 3d print a full CASKET, which sounds phenomenal.

Meanwhile…

Swarm Mechanics
For those who haven't followed along closely, a big part of REKT is the occasional feel like you're fighting through an army. Original REKT - back when it was a forum game - had a beautiful scene where the players were fighting through a massive gang war with over a hundred combatants:

And I love that fight so much I still drop images anywhere I can get an excuse. Naturally I want to be able to do this in tabletop REKT, but that's considered kind of insane. If every enemy takes even just half as long as a player to move, then you're still looking at a stupid amount of time to resolve the enemy side of combat… unless you do some clever rulebending and create… Swarm Mechanics.

Swarm Mechanics are straightforward: all enemies are assumed to have two hitpoints, identical stats and skills, we move them all at once instead of one at a time, you can kill multiple with a single shot (or swipe of a sword) and then we use a few tables to determine how bad it hurts to keep standing near them. Spoiler: it hurts pretty bad. We've done a bit of playtesting and I think it should work fantastically. Once we get the kinks ironed out.

Publishing plans and feedback
Is it too early to think about publishing REKT? I don't think so. Earlier the better, right? If I can start thinking about it now, I'll be a lot more likely to get something done - and so, I've already started talking to one potential publisher and I actually have someone who's considering hooking me up with someone else that's published a game before. We'll see where that goes! In the meantime, I'm passing my corebook's intro chapter to everyone I can and excitedly awaiting feedback.

The biggest hurdle is just going to be to hook people to play. Moving to a new system is rough. It's like moving to a new country. You really don't want to do it unless you have to - or unless you become a Francophile out of the blue one February and now it's all you can think about, which is almost certainly not something I have ever experienced myself and is purely a hypothetical scenario. Really.

I'll update with feedback when I get more feedback back from the feedbackers!

Next up… Did we do a REKT session?
Yes we did! REKT session was on June 7th, I believe, and because of certain technical difficulties got split up into two videos:

https://youtu.be/bgwXIFNo_B4?si=mu_QchiecEOnnfrD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aT9HRsK0uI

For a summary, the inmates followed Spala down a tunnel where they met a Giant Cave Spider that attacked them. Clearly not expecting anyone to fight back, the GCS quickly succumbed to shotgun blasts until it turned around and attacked a Ballpoint squad instead. Then the inmates continued on down the secret tunnel to the vent shaft at the back of Tnai Roggus's room.

After that… we did a playtest with swarm mechanics! Hapchazzard had to leave halfway through the session, so we decided to just test swarm mechanics for the rest of the time. Verdict: Looks awesome, moves fast, but needed some tweaks. Enemies felt about right to kill, but were altogether too weak, and a lot of the weirder weapons were entirely problematic.

Plans for the future:
All right. So! What am I planning for the next month? Let's see!

1. First off, I really want to get Swarm Mechanics polished up and finished. This is a high priority goal.

2. I want to get the The Galaxy chapter (chapter 2 of 16) finished up and done. The Galaxy is a short chapter focused on the lore of the galaxy, mostly focused around human sectors. The idea is to give inmates an idea of what humanity looks like in 3152, and to have an idea of where their character might originate from. Logically, that needs to go before the chapter that shows you how to make a character - but we'll use progressive disclosure to make sure players can skip most of it if they want.

3. If I have time, I want to start looking at the Characters chapter. It's fun, but it's massive and bloated. I probably need to trim on it a bit.

Wrapping up…
That's all for this month! Honestly, this has been the most productive month I've had in a while. The idea of being able to have tons of stuff I can dump into a devlog is a nice motivator, as is having people to look at and enjoy my work - which was one of the main motivators behind getting Chapter 1 finished this month.

Thanks for reading, and I can't wait to see what I manage by next month!

Dino's log:

• Argued with Tal about swarms (part 2)

• Proofread the intro chapter (not much all in all, Tal did a good job)

• Made this thing which I'm a little sad nobody except Tal seems to have listened to

Hey, I might have a terrible opinion of just about everything else I do, but I at least know I can write.

Writing this all out reminded me of when I used to do REKT posts. That was fun. It felt so good to have a bunch of people waiting for my massive posts and then jumping on them the second they came out.

And yeah, I noticed not many people mentioned the Gareth music. Maybe you should've done a ping for the players involved in the fight... you know, call them out. Isn't it you always telling me to do pings?

I do, but I figured since nobody posts anything but art in the rekt art channel and I posted it twice they kind of had to have seen it

But if you call them out then they have to respond

@everyonethatplaysrekt look at my musics, ye mighty, and despair

This devlog is fun to see, that's a lot of progress this month.

Great first chapter, I think it can really draw people in

Hekx wrote: Wed Jul 02, 2025 1:10 pm

Great first chapter, I think it can really draw people in

I take it you've looked at it now? And yeah, the main purpose of the first chapter is to draw people in. I can't get them to read the rest of the book if I can't hook them ASAP.

Yes, I've read it, except the big table at the beginningish which I took as a "come back here if you don't know a term but you can skip it now"
The example at the hotel was wonderful, just enough battle played out to give a sense of how it goes and then quickly switching to a summary instead of the details of before, so it becomes readable. If you kept it that detailed people would lose interest - "this is not my fight, I don't know these characters", but you kept the speed perfect

---
Also, a lot of not-novel books have their beginning chapter: here's why this thing we are explaining is important, over and over again. For example it would be "painting is good for the soul, it helps with depression, blablabla" and I would just think "yesyesyes you don't have to convince me to start painting, that's why I picked up the book how to paint"
Yours on the other hand is not "RPGs are great, have you thought about playing yet, here's why RPGs are popular ", instead, you immideately go into the specifics of your particular book, ie Rekt. That's great

Talvieno wrote: Wed Jul 02, 2025 12:54 pm

But if you call them out then they have to respond

@everyonethatplaysrekt look at my musics, ye mighty, and despair

Apparently they don't have to, in fact

I suppose so! Whatever the case, I thought it was fantastic.

Hekx wrote: Wed Jul 02, 2025 6:48 pm

Yes, I've read it, except the big table at the beginningish which I took as a "come back here if you don't know a term but you can skip it now"
The example at the hotel was wonderful, just enough battle played out to give a sense of how it goes and then quickly switching to a summary instead of the details of before, so it becomes readable. If you kept it that detailed people would lose interest - "this is not my fight, I don't know these characters", but you kept the speed perfect

Yeah, that would've dragged on forever. Horrible pacing. Besides - it would've made it seem like the point was the mechanics. The point is never the mechanics - it's the story told with the mechanics.

Also, a lot of not-novel books have their beginning chapter: here's why this thing we are explaining is important, over and over again. For example it would be "painting is good for the soul, it helps with depression, blablabla" and I would just think "yesyesyes you don't have to convince me to start painting, that's why I picked up the book how to paint"
Yours on the other hand is not "RPGs are great, have you thought about playing yet, here's why RPGs are popular ", instead, you immideately go into the specifics of your particular book, ie Rekt. That's great

Part of this is that my primary audience is people that have already played RPGs. If someone new wants to pick up the book, that's great. But there are resources elsewhere. I don't need to weigh down my first chapter with stuff everyone reading it probably already knows. I've always written the corebook with the idea that everyone looking at it has probably either played or has a decent understanding of D&D, specifically.

Besides, the intro chapter is supposed to be a hook - and more than that, a right hook - one that comes out of nowhere and makes you stagger back and say, "Holy shit." Now I just have to keep up that momentum through the rest of the book.