Thank you for your time, and thank you to game writers such as James Mendez-Hodes and Meinberg for articles that have challenged me to reassess my own messages, and for designers like Sean K.
Most importantly-. My wife suggested that I could take the parts I liked from that design and use it for Tears of a Machine. With only a few tweaks I was able to begin playing Tears based on that design. First and foremost, a new rules system. There have been some subtle, but important changes to the game setting as well. I am as committed as ever to bringing more accessible features to gaming. Tears first edition is still available as a free synchronized-text audio book, and the new edition will be too.
However, with this second edition I started from a foundation of accessibility. The only numbers needed can be tracked with short stacks of tokens. Fate or Fudge dice are used because they are easier to read, and the limited possible results balance flexibility with focus. It is a new system, custom designed to tell these mechadrama stories. Really, I had hoped to be finished with the beta draft by now, but life and the world have not been kind to my writing output.
More updates on that soon! Thank you for your interest in my game. Until then, stay safe, stay sane, and remember that from knowledge, comes victory. Press play to listen. This past year I began work on the next game from Robot Claw.
Afterworlds is about people trying to save the world from ghosts of the subconscious. Everything people do leaves marks on our collective minds — Echoes.
Though most are passing thoughts and fading memories, especially strong feelings can hang on and negative emotions can fester. Pandoras have faced their Echoes; they have seen their negativity but accept it. They have turned their Echoes into Avatars, wells of psychic power that make them strong enough to face dangerous Echoes.
Helping others with their troubles, building friendships, and bonding in close relationships can protect people or even save them from their Echoes. To be a Pandora you need to be a good friend as well as a good fighter. You can see a first play test on my YouTube page. Subscribe to the robotclaw blog or follow me on Google Plus or twitter robotclaw for updates. Thank you, as always, to the excellent staff, organizers, and attendees of Metatopia.
This is my favorite convention and I think any designer is well served by attending. Metatopia is always a lovely, welcoming event and my biggest disappointment is that I have to stop being there.
Honestly, I felt a bit intimidated by this collection of experts at my table first thing in the morning. We launched right into it and I was happy to see the game in action with these players banging on all the moving parts. The strengths of the design stayed strong and the weaknesses were, well, weak. I need to overhaul the scene economy or a single session will run eight hours. Character motivation is still slim. I need more time set aside for character development and growth which means simplifying the strategic element or hiding it away.
The structure held up, the concepts were solid. I might need to re-adjust the number of cards in play however. A lunar senator fell in love with the cyborg police officer who defended her from a rioting crowd. Even though society frowned on the crudity of cybernetics and her wealthy fiance stood in the way she went with him into exile on Mars. As he sank into obscurity and depression his cyborg parts broke down and with no one to repair him the senator donated one of her own flesh-and-blood lungs.
The operation cost her life however, as her own weak heart gave out and the officer disconnected himself rather than go on without her. Both Matt and Jim want to show it to their other musical friends and see what they think. I have some grand plans for what a final product might look like but definitely need a longer list of successful playtests before going forward with any of those schemes.
Some things I overheard are going back into GET9 and might help me around the issue of balancing strategy and improv. I would suggest screwing the opposite top screw in relation to the picture through the mounting hole on the side of the servo.
Put a nut on the end of the gear and squeeze it with your index finger and your thumb on the other end for stability refer to picture , then use your screwdriver and thread the screw through the nut. If you screw it too tight, the servo will start to cave in towards whichever side you are screwing and shifts the alignment of the servo gear.
After you get the first screw in and the servo gear looks good, start on the second screw. Apply pressure to the first screw so that the servo gear gets as far away from the mounted claw gear as possible. The reason for this is because if you screw the servo on too close, the two gears will be too tight, not allowing the claw to open and close.
By pinching both of the nuts against the screws refer to the picture , you can work on both screws to make the servo gear as parallel as possible.
You do not have to mount the servo on very tight, just tight enough to keep it in place. Now that the servo is mounted, slip the loose claw gear with the servo horn over the servo gear, mating the two. The reason for this is because the servo only goes degrees. If you do not put it in its max counter clockwise position, the claw may not open all the way, or at all. If everything went according to plan, you should have a assembled, fully functional robotic claw!
Now we need to put it on an Arduino microcontroller. Refer to the next picture:. One of the quickest ways to see if your claw is working is to hook it up to an Arduino. I used an Uno, but any 5V Arduino compatible board can be used to control the claw.
Respectively, hook up the correct colored servo wire to the following Arduino pins:. Once you're hooked up to the Arduino, it's time to upload some code. Any version of the Arduino IDE should work. After the sketch pops up, upload it to your Arduino and watch your claw open and close! If your claw is trying to open or close and everything is hooked up correctly, it may be possible that the robotic claw gears are too tense and too close together.
You will just have to mount the servo on differently and push it over a bit so the tension loosens up or loosen the mounted servo gear a little to relieve tension.
Having the joints too tight will cause too much tension and not allow the claw to move properly, so leave a little slack. To tighten the joints, just get a pair of pliers and a screw driver. Use the pliers to keep the nut in position and use the screw driver to drive the screw through the nut.
I hope this helps some folks out there. By giving them a backstory that includes those days of peace, when the visitors lived alongside us, it opens the door to peace again. Sometime, somehow, the war between the Preservation Force and the Venator must end.
If the Ven are only monsters, then it only ends with an extermination. But if they are something else then the possibility exists for the world to go on once the Saints and Magnas fall silent. Robotech was my first mecha-focused anime. It is spoiler alert the music of an up-and-coming idol that appeals to the Zentraedi.
Their commanders find a common understanding as pop songs connect them to emotions that were suppressed by their conditioning as cloned soldiers. In addition, the earthlings get their first insights into the minds of their foe when the Zentraedi ace Miriya infiltrates the SDF-1 to kill ace pilot Max Sterling.
In a rather ham-fisted scene, the two recognize that they are star-crossed lovers and marry to create the first union between Earth and Zentraedi.
Those character arcs made Robotech different to me. They inspired me to think beyond the immediate story of our pilots and their war in The Tears of a Machine SC.
The Tears of a Machine SC is now live and accepting your backing. Help us to make this game something that we can share far and wide. Your support will allow us to transform the text with more art, professional layout, and release in physical and digital formats. Visit the Kickstarter page to learn more. Share the news and ask your questions. Thank you all for helping us to make this game happen!
The Tears of a Machine S. The full text of the book is written and in editing. The fancy new logo is ready, courtesy of Nathan Paoletta , and cover and interior art is already in progress with Jennifer Rodgers and Rashad Malik Davis. When I first created Robot Claw Design for my first edition of Tears of a Machine , I made a commitment to better accessibility for role-playing games.
I will continue that intent by creating a human-voiced audiobook of the new edition, and even taking that a few steps further. I can take further advantage of that to include video demonstrations, as well as audio narration, and even embed the book into a Robot Claw website, allowing it to be its own standard reference document release.
And it can continue to grow from that. We have the ability to include interactive features that could even become learning tools for teaching people to play! Russell Collins February 24, Get involved wherever and however you can to help support people fighting oppression and pushing for societal reform. Visit the official Black Lives Matter homepage, donate to the bail funds, donate to the street medics, but also look to the Black voices in your community, offline and on, asking for help.
Scroll through your Twitter feed and see who you can help with a gofundme or ko-fi donation, or even a simple share. Still unsure? Check out this card. Change is not a sprint, it is a marathon; so get involved now, pace yourself, and see the challenge through. Making sure our work sends the right message is a challenge to creatives.
There are other changes as well on the way, but they are more specific to the content itself, such as emphasizing the role of the Preservation Force as an emergency response effort, rather than an army. I may share more about them as writing progresses. Thank you for your time, and thank you to game writers such as James Mendez-Hodes and Meinberg for articles that have challenged me to reassess my own messages, and for designers like Sean K. Russell Collins June 5, Most importantly- Why a new edition?
My wife suggested that I could take the parts I liked from that design and use it for Tears of a Machine. With only a few tweaks I was able to begin playing Tears based on that design.
What makes it different enough to warrant a new edition? First and foremost, a new rules system. There have been some subtle, but important changes to the game setting as well. What about accessibility?
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