Roadmap

What’s next for Magewinds?

Magewinds is not “finished” and nor will it ever be! While the game feels complete in its current form, there are always going to be improvements to make. This article is about my ambitions for the next six months or so.

Visual Design

In the immediate term, James is working on the number one thing that is missing from Magewinds at present - visual flair! I’m talking logos, icons, font choices, page layouts - things that seem like wizardry to me, but which James is very good at. I mean, look at this:

A non-final title logo that blew my socks off. I still cannot find my socks.

All the work he’s doing currently is going into PDF-format rules. While the web rules have turned out rather nicely (if I do say so myself), PDFs have some advantages over the web format, mainly being easier to download and print. They are going to look fully sick!

In the background of that, I’ll be adding some more illustrations, including diagrams, to the rules, and incorporating some of what James cooks up into the website.

Game Design

There’s still a lot I still wanna do with Magewinds. It’s a very flexible game system with a lot of possibility space to explore as a designer, so over the coming year (and, hopefully, beyond!) you can expect to see a number of updates which will expand on what experiences the game can offer its players.

New Fighters

In no particular order, I’m hoping to add the following new fighter profiles to the Fighters of the Tempest pack:

• Alchemist
• Animal
• Assassin
• Druid
• Duellist
• Mesmer
• Minion
• Ranger
• Seer
• Thief
• Warlock

Each of these will greatly expand the variety of warbands that players can assemble. I’m very excited about them all!

Most of these won’t make it in in the next six months, I reckon, as there’s a lot of prototyping and playtesting to do for each of them.

New Scenarios

Also in the pipe are more scenarios for the Into the Tempest pack. It’s always nice to have more scenarios to choose from when setting up a battle, and there’s lots of potential for weird and wonderful missions to challenge players with.

New Ways to Play

These additions will provide optional ways to expand Magewinds. I have the following vague ideas planned:

• Rules for a campaign/progression system. This will sit on top of the Fighters of the Tempest pack and add ways to level up your fighters after they take part in battles.
• Rules for larger battlefields.
• Rules for verticality i.e. climbing up stuff and standing on top of things.
• Rules for larger fighters and, more generally, having a bit more control over a fighter’s attributes by giving them special traits.
• Rules for playing on a grid, be it square- or hex-based.

Expect maybe one of the above within the next six months, as I’ll be focusing on the new fighters and scenarios and other work.

Playtesting

If you’re interested in helping playtest any of the things above please join the Discord server and ask there to join the playtesting group. I always need more brave testers!

Patches

Of course, there will also be patches for the rules that already exist. As more people play the game and discover things that are unclear - or even broken - that could do with a bit of clarification or a rewrite. So expect the odd patch or two, at occasional intervals - I’ll post about such updates here and make a big noise about it whenever there is one so nobody misses it.

As ever, if you have questions about the game or any feedback, please get in touch with me on Twitter or via Discord (you can find me on the official Magewinds server or directly message me at rachel#8465)¹.

Tabletop Simulator

During development I created a Tabletop Simulator mod (if that’s the correct term?) to make remote playtesting easy. It’s very rough, so not something I’d generally release, but I’m sure with a few licks of paint and a bit of attention it can be made available to all on the Steam Workshop. Watch this space!

Blog

I’m beginning to write a “Meet the Fighters” series on this blog with one entry for each of the profiles in Fighters of the Tempest. This should be a good way to provide some background, flavour and player guidance to the roster, which at present it is sorely lacking. We can also explore the setting of Magewinds a little while we’re at it.

As mentioned above, there will also be posts about updates.

Did you know there’s an RSS feed?

Conclusions

Oh no! There is so much work to do! I’d better get to it…

May the Tempest be kind!