MASQUERADE: Update 2.0

Hello accursed undead! Thanks so much for helping us kick off a new Narrative Arc filled with intrigue, murder, and cryptic PNGs that must be mirrored during the correct lunar cycle. There’s a few major gameplay and above-table changes I want to cover, and a few special announcements (gay vampires).

SEASONAL JOURNALS

As touched upon in my previous update, Seasonal Journals will be rolling out towards the end of this month. Seasonal Journals will be tied to a specific Narrative Arc (in this case Masquerade), and will provide a number of thematic skill trees and unlockables to further progress your character once you have hit the Level 6 cap.
Some of these unlockables are permanent passive boons such as stat and skill increases, whereas others are unlockable abilities that can be triggered once per session (such as a gun). The design intention is to create abilities that encourage team play and creative approaches to the sandbox, with a focus on buffing allies or expanding your social and combat tool sets. Those that have accumulated an excess of stamps will be given the option to transfer this progress towards one of these progression trees!

CURSEMARK SYSTEM (EXHAUSTION)

As part of the Seasonal Journal roll-out, we will be introducing the Cursemark system. This is a thematic exhaustion system that will reflect the curse slowly eroding your soul. It’s intended to help us leverage tension throughout the monthly Quest Board, without having to rely upon Afflictions, which will be reserved for more lethal special events. Afflictions will remain unchanged, as we want death, and the choice to return from it at the cost of your humanity to remain a difficult decision.

The Cursemark will be represented by three cumulative levels of Exhaustion. To ensure that casters and martial characters are affected equally by this system, the exhaustion penalties will also affect Spell Save DCs. The Cursemark will spread as a response to fail-states and setbacks in Quests where you undergo significant physical or psychological trauma, but do not die. Cursemark levels can be lifted by successfully completing quests, or by achieving certain optional objectives during play (such as helping a healer escape captivity, or sitting down for a bit and contemplating the ghoulish nature of your own existence).

Once three Cursemark levels have been gained, if you gain a further level, you will receive an Affliction instead and be given the choice to revive your character. Fail-states or situations where you may gain a Cursemark level will be clearly declared and communicated to the table.

COMMUNITY TOWN HALL

Balancing all of these changes in an ongoing drop-in community game can be a challenge, and we want to make sure that we get it right. We’ll be trialing the seasonal journals throughout June, and will then be arranging a ‘town hall’ event in July where all members of the community will be welcome. We’ll address feedback we have received directly, reveal upcoming gameplay changes and tweaks, and host a Q&A.

SICKNESS

This is a polite reminder that if you are feeling unwell, please do not attend a session at the tavern. Our sessions are in an enclosed space, and involve being sat very close to other players for an extended duration.

TICKET SALES

All tickets for next month will be going on sale next Friday 16th at 19:00. This will include both Black Archives and Quest Board. Tickets for Beginners Night and Prologue are already live! Tickets for our next Narrative Event (LONELY HEARTS) will be revealed later this month.

SPECIAL EVENT TABLES

To address some of the feedback we have received, tables for special events will now include the name of which GM is running it. Tickets will remain capped at 2 per player to ensure everyone has an equal chance to play. This will go into effect from SECOND DREAM onwards. Our updated table list for SECOND DREAM is:

• CABIN I: Crisium (Maxim)

• CABIN II: Insularum (Gilli)

• CABIN III: Ingenii (Phil)

• CABIN IV: Serenitatis (Jenn)

• CABIN V: Marginis (Luna)

EIDOLON BRIEFINGS + ARG

We’ll be launching an EIDOLON briefing channel that will contain monthly briefings following each special. This will also contain a ‘traffic light’ system for when there are new puzzles to solve, to avoid horrifying descents into madness.

MERCH STORE / WEAR THE TAVERN ON YOUR FLESH

Very soon you will be able to wear things on your body that tell everyone that you died, and it was nice. Our merch store will be dropping next week, with Aeturnum and Tavern themed hoodies, t-shirts, beanies, stickers and sacrificial effigies woven from human hair and teeth.

SEVERANCE: TISIS MINI-ARC

Severance will be a three part self-contained mini arc set in the vampiric continent of Tisis. Severance is a prequel to Masquerade, a hallucinatory blood-fueled nightmare that explores the failed attempt to assassinate an ancient incarnation of primal hunger. Severance will be running in place of the regular Quest Board in certain months, to keep all rotations in sync with our specials. It will be ticketed separately and allow you to bring a separate Level 6 character using our Character Creation Guidelines. We’ll have more info to share soon, so watch this space.

CONCLUSION

Thanks for reading and for all the continued support! I’d like to close out this update with another of my favourite sagely proverbs: 8 0 8 2 6 9 8 0 6 5 8 2 6 9.

1.2 Update: ‘Rebirth’ - December 2024

PROLOGUE SPOILERS AHEAD 

Hello accursed undead.

Before we properly get into things, I just want to thank everyone who has come down to the Tavern, died- and then proceeded to roll dice to escape arcane wage slavery with us. The tavern itself was always a long-shot, and launching a healthy and sustainable drop-in world on top of that felt like a cosmic gamble. To see it not only take off, but also resonate so much with people genuinely means more than I can express. The community that has formed around our games has been so supportive and welcoming, I honestly couldn’t be prouder to welcome people through our doors.

I also want to take a moment to thank all our fabulous House GMs who have helped usher this strange psychic nightmare into reality. I couldn’t do this without you, and it has been a genuine delight to embark on this journey together. Big shout out to the rest of the tavern crew for putting up with my b*llshit, and for keeping things running even during the hectic heights of Bloodtide. 

Aeturnum as a project is hugely personal to me, and I’m so grateful for all the support we have received these past few months since launching.

My key intention with this update is to clearly define our vision for the nightmare world of Aeturnum going forward. I want to solidify the foundations we have to keep the game accessible and to shape the experience so that it remains sustainable for everyone involved.

This will address 2024 rulesets, house rules, afflictions and enhanced player progression as more and more of you fill up those journals. 

To wrap there will be a brief preview of our 2025 roadmap, including the next major narrative arc following Bloodtide. 

THE HORRORS (OF CRUNCH) 

Aeturnum was launched amidst an incredibly chaotic time, as the tavern was still finding its footing. We’d never opened an immersive tabletop gaming tavern before (the horror) learning to run a persistent 5E world on top of that was always going to have some growing pains. Thank you for all the feedback (and patience) as we have professionally f*cked around and found out these past few months.  

As our player base has grown, I’ve been keen to maintain a constant momentum and to introduce new content both at the table and beyond. To be candid: this was never going to be a sustainable workflow, especially when running a business in the background, and the Descent (Bloodtide 3: This time It’s Personal) special marked that crashing point and a mounting burnout I can no longer ignore.  

Whilst a difficult decision to make, I’ve decided to cancel our two planned specials for this month. With this Quest Board rotation complete, Aeturnum will return on January 8th. This will give all of us time to rest, regroup and plan ahead. There has been little chance to pause or reflect these past few months. I want to take this opportunity to find ways to make Aeturnum a healthy project that can continue to grow alongside our players into the future.

This may mean a slower schedule as 2025 begins, as I’m keen to retain a consistent level of quality, and to avoid further crunch (or sleeping in the Guild Hall). 

I’d like to reach the point where we run smaller, more self-contained narrative events each month, with the bigger full day specials being reserved for arc finales. Bloodtide has been a lot of fun, and a great opportunity to experiment with format, but this experience still needs some tweaking to make it viable in the long term without driving all of us insane. 

WHAT IS AN AETURNUM

From the beginning, we always envisioned Aeturnum as a narrative-focused and immersive experience with a clear emotional core. That said, there is little precedent for launching an experience like this- and it becomes tempting to lean on certain established crutches in the format. Guilds, Shops, Crafting, XP. I myself echoed a lot of these sentiments (they must be popular for a reason after all) without truly believing in them, and I feel like it resulted in a directionally confused experience at launch. That internal friction between grinding for gold and XP whilst also contending with capitalist sky wizards was always going to lead to something buckling.

Pretty quickly we learned to trim the fat, and focused in on what resonates with our players (emotional trauma as it turns out). 

There’s still some lingering confusion however, so I want to clarify for the record: Aeturnum is not and never will be an MMO-like experience. 

Given our time-limited format and game schedule it makes little sense to pursue such an experience, especially when other games/venues cater to this particular niche much better. It’s simply not an experience we are personally interested in delivering. 

As part of the 2025 site update, a large Aeturnum rework is planned which will better communicate the player experience to prospective adventurers. This will also include a few quality of life improvements such as:

• Seasonal Recaps

• Character Profiles

• World Primer

• Improved New Player Guide 

HOW LONG IS AN AETURNUM?

One of the core issues we have with the ‘persistent world’ model is maintaining an experience which remains accessible to new players & GMs. The longer a game runs, the more dense and impenetrable the numerous storylines and lore become. There is also a social component to this, as established players form in-groups, which can be daunting to new players (especially those jumping in solo).  

Our solution is to end the game!

Kind of. 

Aeturnum will be broken into Campaigns. These will typically consist of Three Arcs (consider them to be acts in a traditional story). Actions and consequences will of course carry across and echo through future games, but there will be a clearly defined end point. This will allow new players to organically jump in without feeling completely out of their depth. It also provides a natural point to ‘retire’ a character if you wish before beginning a new adventure. 

Campaign One (Initiation) will consist of three arcs, the first of which you are already playing. These will be:

• Arc One: Bloodtide

• Arc Two: Masquerade 

• Arc Three: TBA 

Each arc will contain ‘narrative event’ specials to drive the overarching story along, typically run at the end of each month.  

GAME SCHEDULE 

Speaking of which. Beginning in 2025 Prologue and Black Archives will be running on alternating Fridays, to ensure that there is a regular opportunity for new players to join the world.

Specials will always be run on the final Saturday of the month, to ensure that more players are able to join. 

Quest Board will remain on Wednesdays (for now), but I may expand this to a second night if tickets continue to sell out. 

With this fixed schedule, I also plan to put tickets on sale sooner to help players plan out their dice rolling for the month.

2024 RULES & CHARACTER TRACKING 

Arc Two (Masquerade) will see us switch to the 2024 ruleset. This will be rolled out as part of a planned narrative event, with a transitional period to allow players to adjust their characters. I’ll finally be sitting down over the holidays to read up on 2024 so expect more news on this soon. 

This decision is based on player and GM feedback, and our intention to make Aeturnum accessible to newer players who may not be as familiar with the 2014 ruleset. 

Accepting the cold and irrevocable march of time is never easy, but we’re in this one together. 

With this switch to a new ruleset, we are keen to begin registering and tracking player characters for perfectly nice reasons, and will be providing a standardised list of house rulings. These will be enforced across all tables to ensure consistency (cherish your Flanking whilst it lasts). 

NEW AFFLICTIONS 

Good news, dying just got worse! 2025 will bring fresh new afflictions as we begin expanding the system. 

ENHANCED PROGRESSION

Oof the most consistent points of feedback since launch has been player progression. This is a nuanced subject which crosses the tennous boundary of game design and balancing, but I’ll try to break down our thoughts on this as clearly as possible. 

We’ve decided to run with a low level cap for a number of reasons:

• It keeps all players on an even field, and prevents incremental power-creep across seasons. New players should never feel like disadvantaged spectators at a table they have paid to be at. 

• It makes balancing encounters far more manageable for GMs and helps guide quest design during writing. 

• Our 3 hour format for weekly Quest Board naturally limits the toolbox we can provide players. Higher level characters have the capacity to break or completely subvert encounters which might otherwise prove engaging. Writing and running a Quest in a tight 3 hour window is already a challenge, without having to take into account the hot fresh nonsense that higher level characters are capable of. 

It’s for these reasons that we have avoided player economy and trading. Beyond the logistical constraints of fitting shopping into an already tight format, if everyone that has played for a year has a +2 weapon and optimal armour, newer players will naturally feel disadvantaged. Experientially this adds little to the game, and has the potential to cause player churn and toxicity at the table as higher level players have to ‘babysit’ their squishier companions.

We do however recognise that character progression is a core driver for many in their RPG experience- especially as more and more players approach the level cap. Whilst narrative, immersion and RP will remain our core focus, we are looking to explore asynchronous progression outside of leveling. One of our focuses will be building reputation and contacts, providing you with new options to approach encounters.

We are interested in exploring equippable ‘perks/kits’ which would expand your social and combat toolset, without relying upon incremental +1 power increases.

This will need to be tested and discussed more internally, so will not be an imminent update- but we have heard your feedback. For the time being, rolling out 2024 rules and solidifying the core experience remains our design priority. 

MASQUERADE 

Bloodtide will conclude next year, and after a brief intermission season, we will return with a new Narrative Arc... 

Masquerade will be a high stakes spy thriller set in the beating heart of Adrestia. Allegiances will be tested as you unravel a sinister conspiracy, and confront the dark force that gave you life. 

Masquerade will also see a new faction emerge, with special quests to accept. 

It’s still too soon to reveal more, but we are very excited to usher in this new chapter, and another year of Aeturnum-based trauma.  

Thanks again for playing, I hope to see you all on the other side! 

-Maya Luna Alexandra 

Game Director