What’s an Orc?
If you remember from last week's synopsis:
"The Orcs have a mantra: 'Kill Them All!'. This battlecry strikes fear into the hearts of all who hear it as what proceeds is a mindless rampage of destruction and mayhem which leaves nothing standing in its wake."
Your goal is to acquire resources when going on raids. If all your Orcs shout “KILL THEM ALL!”, you lose the raid along with the resources you’ve accumulated. But how do we know when they’ll do it, and how do we prevent them from yelling it?
Cue the "Kill Them All-o-meter"!
Kill Them All-o-meter
The KTA-o-meter is a visual indicator of how much rage an Orc can accumulate before reaching the point of shouting "KILL THEM ALL!". It is the same as "blowing a fuse" for us Humans. There are several ways to interact with the meter, and here are some examples:
When an Orc is hit, it increases!
When an Orc drinks a soothing chamomile tea, it decreases!
When an Orc sees a resource being destroyed, it increases!
When an Orc does Yoga poses, it will freeze the next time the Orc is to gain rage!
Each Orc possesses an individual KTA-o-meter. When it fills completely, the Orc will unleash a "KILL THEM ALL!" shout and enter a berserk state. While still active in battle, they become uncontrollable.
They're blinded by rage, and their only desire is to destroy everything.
Don’t worry, you can still finish the fight! If you win, the Orc will come back under your control, but their KTA-o-meter doesn’t completely reset, so another shout could happen at any moment.
If all of your Orcs shout "KILL THEM ALL!" during the same battle, your raid is lost. You will return to your camp, and live the consequences of facing your Warlord empty-handed.
In the end, this mechanic serves as an improvement for the Orcs’ "Motivation" system, first introduced in the Kickstarter Campaign. Back then, losing all motivation meant an Orc became depressed and stopped fighting, which was essentially just a reskin of a standard "Life" mechanic.
This isn’t your typical strategy game where units just lose health until they drop. Orcs don’t die so easily!
The Character sheet
In the Kickstarter campaign, we introduced the character sheet. As you’ve seen with the KTA-o-meter and the new concept of rage, we’ve made some changes to improve the game. Some statistics got a fresh makeover, while others stayed the same.
Here’s all of them, with how they were described in the campaign and how they’ve been updated.
Stubbornness
‘’The more an Orc is used in combat, the higher its Stubbornness can climb. Stubbornness is added to the base energy cost of your actions.’’
This will be explored further in Journal #3, but here’s the key change: actions are no longer tied to an energy cost. Instead, if it’s the first time an Orc uses an action, it is free. If that action doesn’t have a cooldown or a pre-determined number of uses, the Orc has the possibility of re-using it any number of times they want.
The twist: each time an action is re-used, the KTA-o-meter goes up.
It is a strategy game, after all! Will you push your units to their limits to save valuable resources and defeat your enemies?
Equipment
This concept wasn’t explored much during the campaign, but it is an important one. Each Orc can equip one body armor, one head armor and one weapon. These provide bonuses to various statistics and can determine new actions an Orc can perform.
This is a good moment to expand on the KTA-o-meter and explain that rage is not purely negative. Equipment can grant extra bonuses based on how much Rage an Orc has accumulated.
When Krunk wears a winged helmet, filling their Rage to the maximum grants them +3 movement. You’ll have a very mobile killing machine on your hands!
If Snorl gains more than 3 Rage in a single encounter, they’ll break out of their chain-garb and do heavy damage to anyone in the vicinity!
Capacity
‘’Despite the idea that bringing trinkets and tools into battle is a novel concept to Orcs, their enormous strength makes them well-suited for the job! Capacity dictates how many consumable items an Orc can carry.’’
Items vary in size, and an Orc’s capacity dictates how many they can carry. For instance, chamomile tea requires 1 space, while a croissant requires 4. An Orc with a capacity of 6 could bring 2 chamomile teas and 1 croissant to battle, or 6 chamomile teas. This system remains unchanged!
Movement
‘’Evidently, Movement represents the total number of tiles an Orc can move per turn.’’
Well, no need to reinvent movement in strategy games! This one stays the same!
Traits
‘’Each Orc has semi-permanent effects known as Traits. They can provide a bonus or penalty, sometimes both. Traits are discovered as you play and can be unearthed by examining an Orc's response to certain situations. If they refuse to go swimming, they may fear water. If they go into shock when they see a spider, they must be arachnophobic.’’
Here, we’re still deciding whether Orcs should begin with discoverable traits already bound to them, or if traits should instead emerge over time as you play, shaped by the events of your sessions. What do you think?
Overall, traits still function the same way: they may grant a bonus, a penalty, or sometimes both.
Bonds
‘’Orcs can develop connections between each other that help them work together in combat. This is achieved by doing actions that synergize, taking Orcs on Raids together or through special occurrences at Camp.’’
This is cool. It stays!
Passions
‘’Passions are represented by skill trees where you must properly allocate points in useful actions and passives. Progression follows a linear path, requiring careful consideration for optimal builds.’’
This is where mindfulness plays a major role! We’ll cover Stations in Journal #4, but know that there will be multiple ways to nurture your Orcs through their passions.
Moods
‘’Moods offer powerful temporary bonuses and penalties.They are always subject to change according to the situation and can heavily alter your strategy on the fly.’’
At the time of the campaign, our intention was for moods to function like classic status effects such as Burning, Electrified, Poisoned, or Stunned. However, because those concepts are already so familiar, we realized it was harder than expected for players to grasp how Moods influenced battles. Also, since enemies and Orcs function fundamentally differently (one is influenced by rage and the other by health), we found that adapting moods to both concepts made it cumbersome.
That’s why we decided to split the concepts and include traditional status effects in addition to Moods.
So what are moods? They are day-based modifiers, unaffected by enemies or allies in combat. At the start of each new day, Orcs may lose, gain, or switch moods. You can also attempt to influence an Orc’s mood at camp by interacting with them, having them participate in stations, and loads of other different ways!
Is Paprika sad because their best friend stole their axe? Give them a new one to be proud of!
Rolf started the day in a bad mood and is angry? Send them to the spa to calm down!
Bigarock is scared because you brought them to the Forsaken Mines? This one’s on you, you evil Warchief!
These journals are meant to track the evolution of the game from the Kickstarter campaign to where it stands now. For that reason, I haven’t explored in depth the statistics that stayed the same. Rest assured: we’ll cover them in future journals!
Coming next week: We’ll take a closer look at Raids, Events, and how Time itself impacts your decisions!
Remember: Don’t Kill Them All!