Blood and Skulls: The Crucible - Overview. Be the Hero, or Become Mad, KO.

Planning to be the hero of the story? Easier said than done. Your teammate will help, but death isn't the only thing standing in your way in The Crucible. >> And today, we'll show you a quick how to play or overview for Blood and Skulls: The Crucible. And do check out the project page for the game. We'll put a link to that in the description below.

>> And hi everyone, it's Stella >> and Tarant. Welcome to Maple University. >> And hey, if you enjoy this video, you really help us by like, subscribe, and comments. You know what to do. Now, let's get to the classroom. >> Blood and Skulls: The Crucible is a dark narrative game in which players are battle and torment wearied adventurers in a sinister and mystical world.

It was designed by Jesus Martin Ggo and published by Nocturner. The game plays one to four players in 90 minutes per scenario and is of medium complexity. In this video, we're showing you an early prototype of the game, including only a small proportion of its final intended content. The rules, art, and components are not final.

In The Crucible, players are adventurers who inhabit a dark and dying world filled with horrors, dangerous beasts, and the sinister force known only as the Reflection. all threatening to drive the players to madness, addiction, or death. Over several interconnected and branching scenarios, players will try to survive, defeat enemies, and unlock the mysteries, all while bearing or suffering the consequences of the choices they make.

The Crucible is a true hybrid of a game. It melds the tactics and mechanisms of a grid-based mini skirmish, >> but with deep RPG style narrative and character development. Because your choices matter, they leave their mark on both your and your teammates characters. To begin, choose your characters.

You'll track their stats and progress on an RPG style character sheet. To begin a scenario, seed the board with scenery. Prepare the scenario's enemies and read through the story and scenario rules and objectives. The game plays in turns and each turn has three phases: descent, crucible, and sanctum.

First is descent. Each player may take up to two actions, and these can be to move, which will be orthogonally up to the character's movement range, to use a ranged weapon or ranged magic if you have any available, or if you're engaged in close combat with an enemy, roll your agility to attempt to disengage.

For this and many other attribute roles, both roll a d10 and add the attribute. In this case, it was agility to determine the winner. After all players act, the enemies act, moving up to their movement range to engage the nearest player in combat. If an enemy had a ranged attack, it would move only as far as needed to get within range.

Second is the Crucible. Resolve each close combat. You and the enemy each have an agility and an endurance, which are the base numbers of dice that you roll for attack and defense, respectively. There are three types of attack: frenzied, [music] direct, and relentless. The enemy's type will be specified, while you get to choose your type.

Within each combat, all frenzied attacks roll first, rolling dice equal to half their agility rounded up. Direct attacks roll second, rolling full agility. And relentless attacks roll last, but roll agility plus strength. Where there are two attacks of the same type, let's suppose they're both attacking direct.

Then each side rolls a d10 and adds agility to determine who rolls first. Balancing how strongly you attack against how early you attack is a key tactical choice since [music] dying early in the battle means missing a later attack. The attack itself is a roll of d6s. And do note the final dice will have symbols, not numbers.

There'll be two sides showing hit, two sides showing push, and two showing miss. The defender then rolls for their endurance value with any rolled hits cancelling hits and any rolled pushes cancelling pushes. Every uncancled hit causes a minor level of pain. And after both sides have attacked, any uncancled pushes cause the target to move one space backwards, causing further pain if there's nowhere to move.

There are also rules for resolving multi- combats with each combatant rolling only once and splitting dive results among the opponents. After the Crucible is the sanctum phase, and any players who aren't engaged in combat can now exchange equipment, cast healing spells, or perform rituals. These intuitive yet involved combat decisions make for intriguing skirmish tactics for players to explore throughout a scenario.

But where [music] the game stands out is in the dark narrative character development that your skirmish actions will unfold. In this dark and twisted world, near everything has the chance to bring ruin upon your character. You have these three runes of ruin. Physical pain, mental rupture, and psychological terror.

Your actions may cost you minor levels in these runes, [music] and reaching nine minor levels ends your character's journey. You could flirt with the ruins of madness or corruption. Using the arcane or forbidden items, which you'll loot from the scenarios may drive you towards madness or corruption.

While for volatile spells from the Shadow Veil or Whisper Schools of Magic, even attempting to cast a spell causes you pain, while failing the spell's die roll leaves you with a choice. Either take the failure or voluntarily slip into madness or corruption to change it to a success. The madness and corruption ruins can drive several different paths and consequences.

Will your madness drive an inner rage, compelling you to stampede foolishly into danger? Or perhaps other madnesses like delirium or emptiness? Will corruption turn you to a bloodthirsty destroyer, benefiting at first from additional attacks, but eventually driving you to turn on and attack your allies.

Whichever path you take, the deeper you slip into madness or corruption, the more severe will be its effects on your character's play. Or perhaps you'll succumb to addiction. Using addictive items comes with benefits, but you're now compelled to use that item again, getting more and more addicted every subsequent turn.

Each time with greater benefits, but also steeper downsides. [music] Reach the end of any one of these ruin tracks and your character will fall, leaving behind an emotional legacy which persists for its allies. Only the rituals you'll perform in the sanctum phase can reverse these ruinous paths. The Crucible ambitiously combines a grid-based skirmish with deeply consequential character building and character destroying.

This is in a dark RPG setting which will involve thematically role-playing my character as they corrupt. It's replayable with eight characters and many dark paths to explore and optional features including turbulences which change the global rules and secrets to give players individual missions. The game will also come with a full range of minis, maintaining Nocturnal Model reputation as a top manufacturer of quality paintable tabletop miniatures.

>> Thanks for watching, and if you like this video, maybe you'd like to watch this next one. Have a great day. Say bye.