Encounters for the Holidays

Hey there, Mark Della-Croce, Lore Link Product Lead here to close out the year. It’s been a big year, but it and we are done yet! Let’s talk!

Since our last newsletter, Mike stepped into the driver’s seat on our Twitch channel and led several amazing streams. First, what would the holidays be without time for fun? Mike kicked off December by planning and then running the Lore Link Players through a goblin holiday raid that spelled disaster for Santa Claus in the DnD 5e adventure Crashing Winterfest. Then, for our Indie Creator series, Mike had a great discussion with Brian Bautista about his post-fantasy Diselpunk game Twenty Flights. The hook? Playing gnomes piloting bombers in a great world esque era! Check out that video on our YouTube channel if that makes you want to learn more! Also in our Indie Creator series, myself and the other Lore Link players sat down with Justin Pierce to talk about and play his upcoming horror game, Reel Fear. Quick character creation and straightforward rules lend themselves to an excellent horror game built for great one shots, which can then be chained together to create a horror movie franchise campaign! Check out that video here!

Coming up for the end of December, we’ll get one more guest stream in before we break for the rest of the holiday season. I’ll be sitting down with Epidiah Ravachol (the creator of Dread, which you’ve heard me mention before!) to discuss his upcoming re-release of Swords Without Master, an epic storytelling game. Following a fun video game stream on December 23, we’ll be taking a well earned break so that the Lore Link team can spend time with their families for the end of the year.

However, that’s not all for 2025! Last, but not least, the Encounter Manager is coming! We’re wrapping up development on it now, and assuming that it passes QA (I will NOT burn out our QA team during the holidays for this feature, as much as I want to get it out), the Encounter Manager will help you sort out your encounters separately from all of your other Lore in the game. You’ll be able to include quantities of various types of Lore. That means that you can add 6 Skeletons from your Creature Lore to the fight or 5 potions of healing from your Item Lore as Loot. Of course, it doesn’t have to be a combat encounter. Encounter Management will work with a political meeting, for competitors at a dance competition, or any other activity where multiple actors might gather together. This version of the feature will be available to ALL tier levels of Lore Link. Coming next year, you can look forward to the ability to turn these basic encounters into Active encounters which will allow you to establish initiative, track current health and wounds, and more!

Well, I should get going on all of that, because we’re just as busy as Santa’s elves around here. ‘Til next time, may the coal of the random distractions your players give you turn into the brilliant diamonds of unplanned-for story!