I Ran Alter Arms at AwesomeCon this past weekend and had players had some good positive feedback to round out the rules. I'm currently at the stage where I'm finalizing the rule-set for blind playtests and hope to send them out to people who have signed up sometime in the early Summer. Thank you for your patience!

Two players from a demo of Alter Arms at KatsuCon I had a great time at KatsuCon this past Saturday in their tabletop room where I was able to run multiple demos of Alter Arms for eager players! "I never thought that being an edgy super hero (WHO COULD TRANSFORM!) would be so cool! This was an amazing experience." -JD (@rise_medica on Instagram: https://t.co/XGNd6slH15 ). Thanks to all of the players from @Katsucon this weekend! #KatsuCon #tokusatsu #ttrpg pic.twitter.com/2iN8tsqXB1 — Alter Arms (@AlterArms) February 18, 2019 I had one return player who played a demo last year, who also expressed enjoyment at how the game is turning out. One takeaway I found was that the Defender archetype needed to be tempered to make it so that it didn't make it too easy for players to earn experience compared to the others. Archetypes are classes that characters have that represent their role on the team, kind of like how sentai teams have "the support...

Big thanks to all those who tried out Alter Arms as part of the MAGFest Indie Tabletop Showcase! Players had epic battles against mystic knights, vampire lords, technopathic bikers, and demonic stock brokers, and did so in awesome setpieces they came up with. One team had a member's giant robot combine with their shapeshifting alien ally to form a sword, which was used by their ally in an even bigger giant robot to attack their opponent as they fought in the middle of a weapon testing facility; Another group had a  combat robot use their battle computer to find an enemy's weak points and destroyed them in a missile barrage; A magical girl took control of an armored car through use of spells so she could bash a pursuer with her flaming mace, while her partner shifted from their beastial form to their cyborg form to take out their opponent; An extraterrestrial peacekeeper summoned their transforming robot starship to knock down a door (and conv...

New Alter Arms players. I just got back from PAX Unplugged, a major tabletop gaming expo in Philadelphia where I had some great playtests. I am grinding away on the blind playtest rules, which is good because more and more people are asking for copies to play with their friends. Minor musings: The rules can be grasped by young children, as a group of playtesters quickly and eagerly leapt into the game. I was also able to test out character creation, which I've been able to streamline to about 5-10 minutes. A BLOCKBUSTER! playtester holds up the character sheet for their actor, Bick Thudgun, star of such films as Time Spiders , You're a Monster! , and The Green Desk Lamp Knows All (as the Lamp). Also, I played some large playtests of my other game, BLOCKBUSTER! which I have been working on as a side project. I'm likely going to be publishing that before I publish Alter Arms just because it will likely take less time since the rules are so streamlined An...

During the first week of November, I was lucky enough to attend Metatopia , a gathering of tabletop gaming professionals from around the country and beyond, who come together to talk about the industry and gather feedback on their games. I want to give a brief overview of how my games were received, and what I thought of the games I played. MY GAMES Alter Arms is a tabletop roleplaying game (RPG) that I am designing themed around Japanese super heroes . Players are able to take on different forms with a variety of powers in order to solve problems and defeat enemies. It got the most exposure at the convention, with one hi-test (where only other developers played with the intention of dissecting mechanics) and one lo-test (where casual players and other developers can try out games). Both went well, with the hi-test giving me feedback on how mechanics can be abused and some of the character Powers need clarification in their rules.  One mechanic that was noticed to have...

I'm currently working to finalize the rules for peer review from volunteers, and hope to get this done within the next month. My next major playtest is going to be at Metatopia in Morristown, NJ, 11/1-11/4, where I'll be showing off the updated version to fellow game designers. What's Changed? Mechanics-wise, a major change that has occured with the game is in regards to the Gimmicks (formally Trappings. This was changed to be more thematically appropriate as tokusatsu characters usually have gimmicks that act as their powers and forms). Before, they were used as a simple framing device for the action a character can take, bestowing a small numerical bonus to skill checks, but they've changed to become a much more versatile aspect of character expression. Now, Gimmicks are the "theming" of a character; like if they have fire powers, are psychic, have tentacles, or super-speed; they determine what unique actions a character can take. They are expr...

After thorough testing, the Alter Arms system is almost complete. The next step is going to be to get blind feedback from playtesters interested in using the playtest rules to make their own characters and run their own adventures. This means sending out copies of the rules for players to review. I have been gathering emails from interested players, but if anyone would like to take part in this playtest, feel free to contact me by commenting on this post, or notifying me via @AlterArms on Twitter. In addition, I am going to look into running games on Roll20, and will update on that in time.

Me running Alter Arms for playtesters during Break My game at Labyrinth Games & Puzzles. (Photo Courtesy of Labyrinth) This past weekend I visited Labyrinth Games & Puzzles in Washington, D.C. for a couple of playtests as a part of Break My Game , an organization that sets up public playtests for tabletop game developers. I had two playtests with three people each. The first had two adult males and one teenage male while the second had two adult males and one adult female. Each session took about two hours for the players to complete the scenarios. WHAT’S NEW? UPDATED CHARACTER SHEETS For this session, I updated the character sheets to match the suggestions proposed during my last playtest at JohnCon. I moved the Arms Name labelS to the top of the sheet in order to hopefully make clear that each column at the top of the sheet represents details about a character when they're in that Form(A). UPDATED ARCHETYPES Between JohnCon and this playtest, I was a...

My playtesters during BFG Con. I was able to get in one playtest at the Big Frederick Gaming Convention this past weekend with some lovely volunteers and wanted to go over the session and feedback I received. I had two players - a father and son - who had prior experience in role playing games and were familiar with the tokusatsu genre who took part in a two-hour playtest session. This gave me the opportunity to take things a bit slower for each player, and gain more focused feedback. WHAT'S NEW? For this playtest, I incorporated new features including unique benefits for Finishers, the consequences for Crashing, and what I'm calling Trappings that are tied to different forms. FINISHERS As before, Finishers are all-or-nothing attacks where players can max-out their Drama so that they at the brink of Crashing, but gain access to the next-highest dice-type (a characters in form 1 who normally uses a d6 would have access to a d8). For this session, I tied spec...

This weekend I'll be running playtests at the Big Fredrick Gaming Convention. Hope to see you there!

Hi everybody! My name is Duffy Austin, and this is the production blog for my tokusatsu-themed tabletop role playing game, Alter Arms. Like a lot of kids who grew up in the 90s, I was blown away by the Power Rangers phenomena. At the time, it was astonishing to see such care and dedication being put into creating a live action television show about people in brightly colored costumes fighting crazy monsters with lasers and giant robots. Looking back, a lot of the series hasn’t aged well, but the charm of it, and of all special-effects driven shows like it, remains. No matter how silly the special effects, or plots, or lines seemed, the fact that the creative forces behind them sincerely presented them made them real and important. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I discovered the original Super Sentai series that provided the footage that was used to make a lot of Power Rangers. The franchise, and the entire genre of tokusatsu , had been around since the 1950s...