Malefactor Development Diary #1

Following some really insightful feedback, I’ve made some fairly major changes to Malefactor. The following outlines some of the changes recently made and the rationale behind them. Thank you to the people who provided this feedback.

Major Change 1 – Simplified Dice Mechanics

I’ve had mixed feedback on the old dice mechanic, which was that the size of the dice pool gives all of the dice a modifier that is the size of the dice pool. This means when rolling 4 dice, all dice get +4. So if you rolled a 3, 4, 4, 6 then it would be a 7, 8, 8, 10. While some people really enjoyed this, as it led to a single Villager being incredibly weak when compared to a well-trained Hunter, it also led to a lot of slowdown in the rhythm of the game. This meant that while the idea was good in practice, it often meant that people had to stop and add 5+6 or 3+4? And I don’t want to make people do maths, I want them to enjoy the game.

So, how has this been changed? I’ve stripped away the modifier, so no more maths. It is still an opposed dice roll with a pool that grows defending on supports or other factors. The Hunters have larger stats, which lead to larger initial dice pools, and the size of the pool is the tie breaker. This still simulates the horde growing and becoming stronger than the individual Hunter, but without the overhead of adding numbers together. It keeps the game running smoothly. I think this change makes Malefactor a much better game.

Comment below on the change, or get in touch to tell if there should be any other changes?

Major Change 2 – Reframing the Death Toll

This change was hard. I had some feedback that bascially said the original framing of Hunters accidentally killing Villagers in a collateral death sort of way, was not something they would enjoy playing. And I had never thought about the game in that way, so this was a wake-up call. I referenced this feedback in my Malefactor Deep Dive article as well.

Pinball Alert

Pinball: I am shooketh. You mean people weren’t cool accidentally killing Sally the washerwoman while trying to save her from being mind-controlled?
Nevi: When it’s put like that, it feels so obvious. When I was writing it, I was like it’d be cool mechanically to add extra risk of interacting with the Villagers.
Pinball: And now?
Nevi: You can choose to tactically “kill” Sally if it benefits the moment, but rather than her being dead, she is purified and removed from the battle that way instead.
Pinball: Alas, poor Sal, I knew her well.

And now there is no more accidentally killing an innocent mind-controlled Villager. The “critical” fail of a Villager previously known as Deadly Knights now purifies the Villager. So they don’t die, but are removed from play. This keeps the risk-reward dynamic, but flips to make the Hunters want the roll because it gives them a new way of winning and means they are automatically brutal, morally grey, with the blood of innocents running from their blades.

They can still choose to cut down a Villager if they absolutely need to, but there is now a significant penalty – they lose actions, and if they do it twice, they are removed from play. This means that it is still tactically possible, but doing so has an immediate impact that discourages overuse. This also continues the tone and framing that the Malefactor is a threat to be stopped, and while I need to do some work to flesh out the Knightly Orders, as in my head they are less noble knights and more the only solution to an even worse problem, they are not meant to be framed as worse than the Malefactor.

I think this change does two things. Firstly, it opens the game up to more people and makes it far more inclusive. This is through not forcing people to accidentally kill innocent people, but also by allowing them to play the Hunters how they want and add their own narrative to the Knightly Orders. Secondly, it gives more mechanically interesting ways for the Hunters to win other than killing the Malefactor. There is still a Death Toll, but it is now on the Hunters to keep people safe rather than only really worry when that limit is being reached. This makes each Villager’s death more impactful.

Potential Change – Should I Change Malefactor’s Name?

Another comment that I had was about the name. I need to do some thinking because the feedback was on whether the name bottlenecks the possible narratives of the game and gives it a “de facto bad guy”. And while, yes, it does, and that was always meant to be the point, I need to think about whether that should always be the case. I toyed with some alternative names for the Malefactor when writing the first draft, including Galdor (Old English for spell), but settled for Malefactor as it felt more imposing. I need to flesh out the world next now that I’ve done a lot of the mechanical rules work, and potentially this is something that gets changed to allow for different types of hidden mage characters.

If you have any name suggestions, let me know.

Malefactor Playtest Rules

Click the link below to find the playtest pack for Malefactor. It has the updated rules with the above changes and more.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17FZsdB294RGTjEF_iZsN1KTE5ux9nmd0?usp=sharing

Thank you for reading our first development diary. I’m considering chunking these up into short videos for YouTube and Instagram. Let me know if that’s something you’d be interested in or if the written format is better. Until next time.