Hello everyone and welcome to a brand new version of Why We Fight! We’re immensely proud of this update, bringing a whole heap of fantastic improvements to the game in a variety of ways. Many of the issues we discovered came from finally getting the game in front of larger groups, since it’s very difficult to balance a game both for solo play and 5+ people. But we’re getting there! At this stage, we feel the combat and core resolution mechanic of the game is at a solid state (although we thought that last time, too…) so from here we’ll be looking to work on a new, flexible, player led Situation builder rather than a pre-determined roll table, and improvements to the way roleplaying is handled.

While these changes are the result of many playtests and a lot of feedback, and we’d like to take this moment to thank those players for thoroughly breaking our game (A good thing I promise haha), so if you play the game we very much want to hear from you! Come by our Discord (http://discord.gg/dW2aJmX) or drop a comment on our Itch page and tell us all about your adventures, and your experience in making them!

Not yet given the game a whirl? Enjoy watching people perform like some kind of ruthless theatre critic? I got you covered, here’s a video of me playing through a full mission of Why We Fight 1.1! Just don’t be mean about my handwriting :X

If you want to support our hard work, we ask that you jump over to our BackerKit page and sign up for updates through it. Building up these numbers is critical to a solid launch and potentially attracting stockists even prior to launch, allowing us to offer a bigger and better final product. So whether or not you plan to purchase the game your support there makes a big difference to us!

Finally, this update is launched in advance of the UK Games Expo (UKGE) which is being hosted in Birmingham, UK, from May 31st to June 2nd. If you’re going, come by stall 1-369 and say hello! You can play the game with us in person!

Right, here’s the nitty gritty of the changes for all you grit knitters:

NARRATIVE

• Fixed the opening letter to provide an early insight into the dynamic between the Community Alliance and the Guiding Hand.
• Adjusted a fair bit of wording and some imagery to better suit the ‘solarpunk’ aesthetic and attitude, a direction we’ll keep pushing with future updates.

COMBAT MECHANICS

• Changed how individual enemies are tracked, making them easy to track and change as you go.
• Added a new minimum Fight Rating mechanic, where the more enemy types there are, the more powerful they become. It creates a balancing act rather than incentivising adding in every enemy type possible.
• Added a maximum enemy group quantity, so you don’t end up with a squad of 25 troopers with an FR of 50. Talk about strength in numbers…
• Added the Effect ‘Clustered’ where you can maneuver your opponents into position to better take out more than one at a time.
• Adjusted the Move Suppressing Fire to apply either ‘Scattered’ or ‘Clustered’.
• Removed the Exposed Move and made it an effect. This means you need to use your environment to bust through armour, rather than just… doing it with arrows somehow?
• Gave the Flank move Athletics as its linked specialty, and Dash swapped to Navigation.
• Added Tactics as a linked Specialty to Get Creative. Now both social/physical specialists can attempt to Get Creative.
• Added new enemy varient: Scout Dirtbike, a high speed enemy that isn’t easy to flee from, and has unpredictable effects on defeat
• Small adjustments to other enemy types to improve clarity and distinction

MISSIONS & SITUATIONS

• So many balancing adjustments, since some were too hard, and others too easy.
• Fixed a bunch of errors and continuity issues. There was a whole section missing from ‘Stop a Public Execution’, how did we even miss that?!?!
• Used subtle visual cues (labels, colouration etc.) to streamline set up for “Escorting Civilians” as it works differently to the other missions.
• Better balanced the rolls needed for some challenges so they don’t become ridiculous with larger player groups.

ALSO We have spent hours scraping through the book and weeding out all kinds of mistakes, ranging from references to alpha stage rules that got cut, old terminology, missing explanations or references to things that really needed to be mentioned, and updating all the visuals and layout to better allow for an easier time playing the game for the first time. We’re comitted to making a game that balances ease of use with stunning visuals, and while sometimes that means a lot of rules crammed into two pages, we’ve done our best to make it all clear, concise, and ensure what you’re looking for is where you need it, and linked if it isn’t.

We hope you enjoy playing this new and improved version of Why We Fight! And don’t forget you can swing by our Discord to jump into our monthly playtests!

Laurie, Rhi & Rob - Team SDR