Hey folks! It's been quite a while ~ Winter has been incredibly busy both in my personal life and at my fulltime job that I work, but I wanted to share a few updates with how Ver. Z.14 is coming along! First off here's a preview of one of the pages getting added that includes some much needed explanation and covering of edge cases for the MEC Perks:

It's nothing terribly fancy, but this level of detail and explanation is what's going to make Z.14 a much more complete work than Z.13. Other topics that'll be getting much needed explanations include: Part Breaks, Empty Part Slots, Totaling MECs and how best to use the Training MEC!

You'll also notice that Overclock has been returned to its original form! I'd initially changed it as a result of outside Playtesting, but after running more internal tests, we all agreed the original version worked a lot better. In general the purpose of Z.14 is to bring Steel Hearts' documents back in line with the game that I play at my table instead of splitting itself to cater to an outside niche that I don't necessarily understand (and thus can't meaningfully cater for). As a result I'm also adding the moniker "House Rules" to the game, because I think it serves as a healthy reminder of what the game is!

This isn't Lancer or Pathfinder or even any number of indie darlings. This is a home brewed, hobbyist, pet project based on my vision of the kind of tactics game I want to see. (And bringing that vision in line with tactics games that have never interested me was a huge mistake).

Overall I've learned a lot these past few months since Steel Hearts' launch, and am prepared to more thoroughly stick to my guns in terms of what I'm making and not trying to make something for everyone. The key (as always) will be expressing this on the game's product page. Part of that is the fact that building GM tools is feeling more and more like a fools errand. I think I'll settle on building the tools that I personally would use and accept that there's a large contingent of GMs who will never run this game because they're looking for a certain kind of experience out of the book that this game is simply not designed for. In a phrase: This is Gundam, not Battletech. 

In most of my playtests I curate each encounter based on both the Players and Builds to hone in on their tastes, and the enemies / stakes are cherry picked to foil those characters. That level of curation just isn't tenable in an out of the box Adventure Path style work.  I'd still love to add more lore books and bundles of enemies, but I think they'll be more of a toybox rather than a complete scenario where the GM can just step in as a ref.  This goes doubly so for adventures involving the various politicking of Steel Hearts.

In keeping with this, once Z.14 releases the game will be 100% free, that way no one feels entitled to changes or cheated if the game isn't what they want but they liked the pitch. Instead of Community Copies I'll have a donation tier for folks who really like what I do, and might even do some Itch Funding to cover the cost of the cover of Steel Hearts Black! Oh and also (as always) there's some more new content that's already out:

Minimalist Character Sheets

Now I know "Minimalist Character Sheet" is a bit of an oxymoron when it comes to Steel Hearts, BUT I've now made available some options for MEC and Pilot Sheets with less reminder text and much more room for Notes. This is geared towards Players and GMs who already have plenty of experience with the game and don't need simple explanations clogging up their table.

These versions (as well as the Character Sheets we settled on while playtesting Z.14) are now available to download for free if you'd like to start using them!

Form Fillable Sheets are also on their way ~ They might be part of Z.14 or possibly some future update, but I've finally got a computer powerful enough to cooperate with Adobe Acrobat long enough to make some Fillable Sheets that really look good.

Anyways, that's all for today! As always thank you to everyone who has given this project any of your love, money and attention! It's been my life's dream to release a ruleset like this and I'm endlessly flattered by how well its been received.