REKT Devlog: July 2025
July 2025 Devlog
Welcome! It's a bit of an odd month for anyone expecting I would actually stick to my goals. A combination of less free time and a complete priority shift led to things turning out very differently from my expectations. Nevertheless, progress has been made!
In case you're curious, the main reason for the priority shift is that I have a tentative in-person group willing to play REKT, for the very first time. The group consists of three people, which is just enough to run a game of REKT the way I want to. (You could technically do just two, but that would be a bit rough to do, so I don't recommend it.) With three people willing to actually playtest REKT semi-regularly in person, naturally I wanted to get something playable as fast as possible - something I could add to the corebook. Details follow below!
Previous goals I successfully accomplished:
The Swarm Mechanics got worked on a little bit by Dino and they're in their own chapter of the corebook now. She did a pretty great job organizing it and making adjustments to the rest of the corebook to reflect the new design changes. Specifically, we split some of the status effects that had multiple effects into separate ones to make it work a little more smoothly with the swarm mechanics. This entailed going through the whole corebook and searching for status effects that needed to be split into various parts. We'll have a nice status effects table in the back of the book for quick reference, but we're not quite there yet. It's on the list!
What goals did I fail to accomplish?
Quite a bit, actually. This month went entirely off the rails. Sometimes that happens! The important thing is that I'm making forward progress, though, so remember that.
I had originally intended to write a chapter immediately after "Welcome to REKT" establishing the lore and different locations around the galaxy - but now I'm wondering if that's really even necessary. The Characters section of the corebook has a brief overview of some of the most common places - a very brief overview, that is. Specifically, it's filled with little snippets like...
North Bend - The comfortable middle-class suburban planets near the coreworlds
Borderworlds - high-crime militarized planets on the edges of alien reservations
Brave Frontier - The wild west. A smattering of tech. Don't cross the law men and you'll be fine
Which is just enough to get the ball rolling on creating a character. If we want people to play REKT - if we want to hook as many people as we can, as quickly as we can - we want to make sure the barrier for entry is as low as possible. Having a huge chapter to flip through right at the start of the book about lore, and locations - that's a bit much. Someone that just wants to make a character won't want to read that - but if we get them hooked first - if we have them put in the time investment doing something fun right off the bat (creating a character) they might be hooked enough to go read that. So I'm actually thinking I ought to write that location-lore chapter after the Characters chapter.
It makes sense! And the Characters chapter is up next on my to-do list. I think I'll make the Characters chapter have lots of little info tidbits that would be useful - how skills and stats work, how to know what stats make up Ballistic vs Energy, all of that. The goal is that you can make a character for REKT using just the Characters chapter, thus minimizing the amount of reading a player has to do in order to play. Because, when it comes down to it, they really shouldn't be required to read anything beyond that. It can be better for the Storymaster if they do, sure, but onboarding players is a challenge already. I'd rather be able to simply give someone a character sheet and then watch them hit the ground running.
Did I accomplish anything I hadn't planned?
Quite a bit! I'll try to detail everything in order.
Weapons Chapter Layout
Because of this massive shift, I ended up trying to experiment with the design layout of the corebook, implementing a little of what I'd always intended to do to see if it was feasible. Specifically this, if you haven't seen it, this is about how a single corebook page will look like in the Weapons chapter:
Spoiler
Of course, this page isn't going to stay this way thanks to a conversation I had with Dino, who pointed out that having Ballistics and Energy (as an example) mixed together might be useful for newer players, but is more obnoxious for older players that have decided on a single weapon type to use. Eventually we're going to split it all apart: Ballistics, Energy, Blade, Blunt, Exotics, PSI, all into separate categories and sub-chapters.
We had a lengthy argument, she and I, about whether this even made sense. I prioritize onboarding above all else, while Dino prioritizes ease of access for established players. It was a tense discussion, but we eventually agreed on a compromise: a "shop window" of a two-page spread where we could show players the easiest and most effective all-rounder weapons for newbie players, without needing to list out full statblocks. It's exactly like a shop window: it introduces things that catch your eye and say, "hey! you might like this! here's why!" without dumping unnecessary information.
GAIA and ANANKE redo
Two of our most classic PSI mods saw a complete overhaul this month. GAIA was something I've had problems with since its inception - Dino was the one that designed this one, and I only briefly looked at it before okaying it. No excuses - that was just a silly mistake on my part. What ended up happening is that ANANKE (gravity) is powerful but mostly niche, while GAIA (telekinesis) has its main use as being able to move units very far across the map - something I take huge issue with because it doesn't feel very REKT to me.
REKT is, at its core, a "stompy infantry game" with "zoomy space combat". Infantry feels weighty to me - it's how I like it. You've got cover mechanics, hunkering down, different gear that help you secure a location and keep it (medkits, toolboxes) and the idea is that while movement is fast... once you get there, you shouldn't end up moving too far. GAIA turned this on its head with the ability to move an enemy most or all of the way across any standard-sized battlemap - at endgame, with good rolls. Even watching a fraction of this power was enough to make me recoil. So, prior to the next REKT session, I decided to rework it - in a panic, no less.
GAIA is now a harassment amp. You can trip people, make them miss their shots, and all sorts of other little things - mostly off your turn. That's its special power now - what sets it apart: you have the ability to use it even when it's not your turn. It's all about adapting to the situation and making someone's day miserable. It's a taunt amp.
ANANKE got reworked so it's less about the AoE and more about getting things done - less about physics and more about violent knockback, stunning people and knocking them prone, making them disoriented so they miss shots. It's targeted, violent crowd control. It's all about deciding to really screw over a specific enemy's day - or at least their next turn.
Together, they're pretty powerful, and they play off each other well. We were going to test them out during the next REKT session, and once we do, I'll get back to you on how they turned out.
The Crossbow
The crossbow has been a problem child ever since 2020, when we started migrating REKT to be a tabletop game. The original crossbow was very narrative - it had different types of bolt tips, different types of shafts, and all sorts of different ways you could combine them. An acid bolt could have a blunt tip or a syringe tip, with different narrative effects depending on if you shattered the bolt and splashed it on an enemy, or if you injected them with the acid. (Yes, really.) There were tons of different fluids, mixtures, effects, and so many different things you could do that it was a bit dizzying - which was tons of fun to look through, but horrifying to try to translate to actual gameplay.
So I finally got around to fixing it.
New crossbow lets you have two "Offensive Bolts" and one "Utility Bolt". The Offensive bolt types are:
Spike (high AP)
Frag (AoE burst)
Incendiary (thermite AoE)
Blast (shred)
Shock (stun)
Hunter (additional accuracy for future attacks)
Utility bolt types are:
Cover (creates two tiles of half-cover where it lands)
Smoke (smokescreen AoE that grants cover)
Camera (it's like a scout drone, kinda)
Flare (It's like a flashbang, but also easy to see)
These very easily-explained bolts streamline all the old combos while also allowing a lot of creativity and utility, which is exactly the niche that the crossbow is intended to fill. And it all fits on a single page, too, which is one of the weapon requirements! Very happy with the new system, but we still need to test it out.
Introductory Oneshot
The big thing that happened this month is that I wrote out the introductory oneshot that will be included at the end of the Corebook. The idea is that you can use this oneshot with players that don't have any prior knowledge of REKT in order to introduce them to the systems and the world. And naturally, this also means...
Character Pregens
I wanted six character pregens that could be used with the introductory oneshot. There's a lot of requirements for this, and I ended up putting a lot of thought into how these characters were put together.
They have to work well with each other in any configuration - the mission should always be completable no matter which three are selected by the players (three because the recommended player count is 3-6).
Each character needs to feel very unique, so that everyone feels like they stand out uniquely - not just in terms of mechanics or loadout, but general feel.
They need to be designed so their personality reflects their playstyle. As an example, the Tank needs to be someone keen on rushing into battle - a leader, basically.
They have to be well-rounded with decent default stats, good at landing hits and good at avoiding them.
They have to be simple enough to be playable by anyone just picking up the game for the first time.
They have to be deep and memorable enough to play even after the intro session. I want players to be able to stick to the pregen if they start to feel attached, or if they don't feel like making their own.
They need to, collectively, cover all the base mechanics.
And a whole slew of other things not mentioned here, of course - there's a large handful of tiny little notes and thoughts behind their conception, but these are the main ones.
So we ended up having:
Atlas - a tank with a riot shield and a good point-blank weapon (plasma baton). Bold, fearless leader.
Seraphina - a sniper-medic. Her medkit has multiple defensive options. Timid, compassionate defender.
Kai - PSI Adept with warp bracer and a chaos gauntlet. Wildly aggressive, balls-to-the-wall asskicker.
Milo - Engineer with multiple drones for a drone playstyle. Rather nerdy, squishy, hangs back.
Nova - Very charismatic hacker. Highly intelligent, uses plasma + gauss pistol.
Jax - The stealth user. Straight up ninja archetype - even has a katana and kunai.
This covers a little bit of almost everything - ranged, melee, exotics, PSI, hacking, engineering, and stealth - with a oneshot designed to make every one of them shine in different ways. (And also, someone knowledgeable with a keen eye might notice that three of the characters are from a short story I did once.)
The oneshot itself
The title is "Mineshaft Meltdown". On the little mining colony of Oedipus, the Mine Foreman made the poor choice of holding an open-house to show off the Anomalous Material Reactor powering the entire colony. Among the guests he was hoping he could sell the tech to were saboteurs who intended to blow the entire mine sky-high and cripple the colony - and in desperation, with the reactor inching ever closer to an explosion, they asked some nearby REKT inmates for help.
It's a pretty straightforward 3-4 hour oneshot, with all the main hallmarks of something uniquely REKT. It starts simply: take stock outside the mine entrance, then descend down the elevator shaft (while learning REKT mechanics gently), and then when you reach the bottom, it splits out into a little open-world sandbox where you can make various choices that lead to a lot of different dynamic endings.
The entire oneshot runs on a Meltdown Timer that starts at 12 and slowly ticks down as players make decisions, travel, and fight. The timer is intended to add tension and spur the players onwards. When it reaches 0, the reactor at the bottom of the mine explodes, killing everyone not wearing a combat suit and severely injuring everyone else (including the players) - possibly even killing them if they've already taken severe injuries.
Technically anything is counted as a victory as long as the players extract alive (and the notes reflect this) but there are different things you can do to raise your (narrative) score. There are people to rescue, goods to collect, and even ways to potentially be the hero of the story, if you want to be really risky.
I wanted the scenario to be as replayable as possible, so there are a lot of different options people can take, especially after they get to the sandbox half of the mission. It acts as a bit of a jumpstart to a campaign as well - from here, there's a lot of different ways the Storymaster could develop the narrative. It's really everything I needed for the corebook, and once it's all polished up, it'll be ready to slot right in.
Next up… Did we do a REKT session?
Nope! Almost did, but a player had to cancel last-minute. One of our players is presently in a place that is very unfriendly for playing REKT, so there won't be a session this month either, unless I can pull together an in-person group, or perhaps playtest with a missing player.
Plans for the future:
All right. So! What am I planning for the next month? Let's see!
I need to polish up the Pregen Character Sheets, and get those finalized.
I need to finish polishing up Mineshaft Meltdown.
I'm going to skip the Local Lore chapter, ditch that (or slot it for later in the book), and get to work on the Characters chapter - polishing that up and making it shine.
Wrapping up…
It's been a productive month! I've never actually written out a oneshot before, so it's been a challenge, but I'm happy with how it's turned out. I am really looking forward to testing some of this stuff at a table. Ideally we'll be able to actually test out the new oneshot soon - I hope to have someone else run it so I can finally see REKT in someone else's "voice".
Thanks for reading, and I can't wait to see what I manage by next month!
I was kind of pushing forward on the hope that it would all fall into place, and so far, it kind of is.
