Malifaux is, and has always been, a character-driven game. Each model has a personality, both in the sculpt and the rules, which makes every moment in the game connect with players. Whether you’re using Pandora to cast Self Loathing, forcing a target to hurt itself, or slicing your foes in half with Viktoria’s mighty Masamune Nihonto, Malifaux ensures that each moment weaves into the narrative of the game. When we set out to write Ripples of Fate, the newest Malifaux book, we knew we wanted to add new Masters to the game. It had been some time since a new Master was introduced, and it seemed like the perfect book to make some waves. Since this was a Malifaux book, we knew we had to start with character: personality, motivations, and story. The first Master we created was Parker Barrows for the Outcasts. Malifaux has always been a game with wild west elements, and Parker was a great opportunity for us to make a train robber. We wanted him to embody a bandit, complete with a bandana to hide his identity. As his story came together, so did his rules. Parker Barrows is able to make his targets drop loot, in the form of Scheme Markers, that are beneficial to his enemies. But, like any good robber knows, the more your mark has, the more you can take from them. Parker is able to use enemy resources for bonuses, making sure opponents always know that what’s theirs is his. The creation of Parker invigorated the design team. We decided to tackle something that Malifaux had been missing: the fae. Faeries have the potential to be dark and otherworldly, which made them obvious candidates for the Neverborn Faction. It seemed only appropriate to have a fae queen, and thus Titania was born. It was an easy choice to make her look like our original Fate Deck’s Red Joker, and similarly, we tied her into one of the most meaningful times in the world’s history: the fight against the Tyrants. With a background established, Titania fell into place. She’s survivable and lays claim to the land, and she is more than happy to let her minions get in the thick of things in her stead. From there it all began to come together from ideas we had been discussing and planning for since the release of Second Edition. Unsurprisingly to anyone, the Ten Thunders gained an oni Master, Asami Tanaka. Asami needed a human side, so we decided that she was a normal girl that had been possessed, and that the oni possessing her intended to use her as a vessel to bring other oni into the mix. All of Malifaux’s characters are strong, though, and Asami is no different: she resisted the oni’s influence and maintained some portion of her free will. The struggle in her backstory gave rise to Asami’s game mechanics. She is able to summon oni to life, and she also gains bonuses when the opponent is winning the game, mirroring her own struggle against the oni inside of her. Nellie Cochrane, the Guild Master, arose out of a desire to represent the influence of print media in the world of Malifaux. We often like using newspaper headlines to complement stories in our books, so it was a natural fit. Our first conception of Nellie had her as an Arcanist Master, writing propaganda pieces to undermine the Guild, but as her story came together it became much more apparent that she would make a better character for the Guild. This switch allowed her to directly confront her foes by name, becoming a sort of investigative journalist… albeit one that is only trying to uncover certain kinds of secrets. This development led to Nellie having more of a control play style, warping the story to fit her needs. On the flip-side of the coin was Sandeep Desai, who was originally a Guild Master. With Nellie shifting to Guild, Sandeep fell into place as an Arcanist. His history with the Guild stretches back to his native India, where the Guild committed atrocities in the name of control. Sandeep has struggled ever since with the core conflict of his character: does he follow his master’s pacifist teachings or embrace his anger and seek vengeance against the organization that oppressed his people? This internal conflict plays out on the table in his mechanics, as he both teaches those around him and also takes up his mighty gada to lay waste to his enemies. From there, the design team tackled Zipp. We wanted Zipp to be a Gremlin with aspirations of greatness and immense confidence in his own abilities… all while being a bit full of himself. It made sense to have Zipp luck into some of his good fortune, all while his loyal crew – who are quite effective by themselves – remained somehow oblivious to his shortcomings. After a few of our own rambling diatribes about how Zipp should work, we settled on making him annoy the opponent. He became a Master that, no matter what you do, seems impossible to get rid of (or shut up). All of this led to Zipp being the first and only Insignificant Master, making him reliant on his crew to get the job done. With that said, Zipp is amazingly adept at stopping your opponent from getting anything done. Such is the power of a well-delivered monologue. If Zipp was the most fun Master to design, Reva was the most difficult. Reva was conceived as a sort of psychopomp, dawning from the various guises of death that can be found in multiple cultures. While interesting, this approach made Reva nearly impossible to identify with, so she swung around to being a woman with strange powers over the forces of death. Unlike many of her Resurrectionist fellows, though, Reva does not focus on bringing the dead back to life; she is far more interested in helping people pass on to their next life (whether peacefully or not). By refocusing her theme on a different aspect of death, her mechanics followed suit. Reva is capable of causing serious destruction channeling her power through the dead, allowing her to strike at enemies standing near corpses and dealing damage from a distance. With the seven Masters designed, we knew the ideas we had settled upon would create quite a splash. Ripples of Fate is a pivotal book in the continued growth of Malifaux, and it gives players the options of additional crews that ooze with personality, all without invalidating their earlier choices. Of course, as much as Malifaux is about the game, it’s also about the world. Each Master gets its own story in Ripples of Fate, allowing everyone to become more immersed in the personal stories of these new characters. We’re all very excited to see this book released, and we’re glad to finally share these lovingly-crafted characters with our community. When players pick up these new crews and read their stories, it breathes life into the world and ultimately leads to the next question: what will happen next on the other side of the Breach? ••• Aaron is the head of the design team at Wyrd. He likes learning about new games, derailing forum discussions, and pretending that he loses games on purpose. |