so. many. changes.

Okay. Here we go. Frontier Kingdoms 0.8, along with an updated first sourcebook, and an entirely new second sourcebook all about the wild lands.

First of all, there are a bunch of little changes here, from special abilities to kingdom improvements to just little rules tweaks. I did not keep track of them and so cannot list them all. I apologise.

Ah! Actually, even MORE first of all, the format changed! Wide mode! Much more easily viewed on a screen! I think it's a big improvement. If you're printing out pages I recommend going 2-on-1, so they stack on top of each other.

Anyway, as far as big changes go, there's a whole new phase in each session now; Winding Down. During this phase princesses can have downtime discussions, either about whatever they like or rolling on a 1d100 table to get a random topic. Princesses can also create beliefs during this phase, things they're holding on to in the wild and chaotic life of a frontier princess. Beliefs are a new XP trigger, and can be used in actions to push yourself once without a Weight cost.

There's also a new free time action: Investigate. This replaces the default Forged in the Dark 'gather information' mechanic. If a princess wants information on something she can spend one of her precious free time actions investigating it, potentially earning hold to ask questions, the answers to which might give her increased effect or improved position on an action.

There's also the Take A Break free time action, which clears one Weight and lets you mark one segment in your healing clock, for the times when your princess really doesn't want to do anything much at all.

Princess can now Request Financial Support as a Reach Out action, spending Standing to (hopefully) get Treasure from a faction.

There's also a new random consequences table! Your mileage may vary as to its usefulness, but honestly coming up with consequences for failed rolls or partial successes is maybe my biggest stumbling block when running a Forged game. Sometimes it's clear what the consequence should be, but other times it's really nice to be able to roll on, or even just look at, a big table full of set consequences. And sometimes you'll roll and be like "well THAT doesn't work" but even that can give you something to build on. Anyway, it's there now.

The complications table has been somewhat expanded, with options for living dungeons and rogue libraries to turn up near the princesses' borders. Which leads us neatly to...

...the second sourcebook! The Wild Frontier has a whole bunch of information on all sorts of things, from monsters to rogue libraries to living dungeons to treasure palaces to rebel princesses to just, oh, everything. Like a section on evaluating effect when dealing with a princesses vs monsters situation, considering scale and tier and so on! Anyway, I feel that this sourcebook makes the game a lot more complete. No outstanding gaps left to be filled.

On that note, the first sourcebook, Frontier Society, has also been updated and expanded, with a bunch of new info on big picture clocks and faction goals, including a random goal table and a random tax/funding effect table. There are also rules for an 'intricate politics' variant, where every player takes the role of a faction and gains dice they can pledge towards supporting or opposing big picture clocks. It turned out to be really fun, a little game-within-a-game, but at the same time it's easily ignored if you want to keep that side of things simple. Or you can just ignore big picture clocks entirely! Out there on the border, maybe you're just so far removed that princess politics doesn't really touch you. Whatever makes your game the most fun.

Anyway, there's probably more that I've missed or forgotten about, but all in all this is a huge update that fixes a lot of little things and adds some big things that make the game smoother, more fun, and overall better.

So stay safe, have fun, and if you get something out of all of this, that's fantastic.

See you next time? Maybe? I don't know! Is this the actual finished thing? Probably not, right?