Hello today! Happy new year! I know it's been a while, this year has been extra busy for me along with changes I made to how the game is developed, but the community on our discord server has been steadily growing and keeping the game alive, I would love to thank everyone there.

I will talk about it later in more detail, but this is it! This is the "first final" release of Rings and Running Shoes. Don't be sad, there are still ideas I want to add, our journey is far from over and I will keep working on this. As usual, if you're reading this, I'm assuming that you know how the system works, so there will be minimal context given. With that out the way, let's get to the fun stuff...

What's new in 1.10?

Playbook Art #7 - The Changed (by Peachy Owl)

Changed is a fascinating playbook, because it represents conflict and contrast. Changed heroes are typically the strongest people in the group, that are generally used as a power-level measure showing how much strong the threat is. They can be an emotional core supporting their friends, but also have the harshest breakdowns and emotional peril in the group. They can be used as a metaphor for disfigurement and illness, as much as self-improvement and metamorphosis. So in order to capture this feeling, there were two artists on this picture - the mechanical parts were drawn and designed by one of our players - Lieutenant-America, and then adopted and cleaned up by Peachy Owl.

Playbook Art #8 - The Rogue (by Peachy Owl)

For having such an interesting playstyle Rogue has probably changed the least in the time the game was developed, which I find very interesting. Playing this playbook "correctly" requires knowing exactly what kind of character you want to play and make sure everyone around it knows it, especially the GM. It requires an complex balance selfishness and self-awareness. There has to be allure of that great phase a lot of us went through, where the world is centred on you and, where a gun or a katana were the coolest things ever, and I think Peachy's art captured that perfectly, but let's get to the mechanical meat of the update...

Tinker Feature Rework

While I still love the idea of having specific rules for Frames, I decided that making Slots be simpler and better to understand was more important. Plus, especially with Frontiers coming out, it feels appropriate to highlight that Tinkers are able to freely change their Mechanism when they see fit. Also, with the new Gadgets, slots and description will highlight what kind of Mechanism you want it to be instead of an arbitrary choice of 3. For example, you can take a mech with an AI, which you couldn't before, or make your own completely unique thing. I don't believe we're losing any specific ones either, as Lucky Charm is now generic, and Armor and AI, representing old Frames individually, you can even combine them!

Guardian Feature Rework

My main goal in this game is to make every Playbook feel unique to play. I really like the streamlined Tinker, but I realized a problem - being a "Hero with an item that gives them a strong effect", they are now, more than ever, not just extremely similar to Guardians, but outclass them in every instance. So I reworked Guardian to hopefully help resolve that problem. New version uses Rings as their primary resource, expanding their use with the goal to provide support to specific playbooks and their features. That creates a number of benefits - mechanically, it makes the use more common than "once per stage", and narratively, it highlights the power and the mysticism around the Treasures, all while making the playbook unique to play. What is interesting, is that I didn't have to adjust as many moves as I thought, as Guardian already comes with a lot of Momentum-giving ones.

Find Out More Rework

For context, the main "inspiration" (aka thing that got ripped off the most) for R&RS was Monster of the Week, which is a great game. And FOM was one of the moves that changed the least. Now, MotW is a detective game about gathering information, while R&RS is explicitly NOT that, it's an action adventure.
I hear a similar action being performed a lot - "Do I see any traps?" "Roll Find Out More". That is an explicitly *wrong* way of using the move. Player's Ability, Playbook and GM's context should dictate what is visible for them with no need for any rolls, and FOM should allow them to create anything outside of what is established. Rolling FOM "to look for traps" is like asking the GM to create the traps for you. I think the new wording highlights that use much better, giving a good idea of what negative consequences it could create, as "you find nothing" is not worth getting XP for.

Live & Learn and Providing Context

I've been thinking about many ways of making this more streamlined and balanced, as it already gives a full success +2 Momentum on top and is the only rule preventing Attribute MM. "One per stage", "just 1 momentum" among others were in my list of ideas. In the end, I chose to remove the Momentum bonus completely… But return the bonus from rolling an Attribute. So, now you will have this - if you miss and make an Aspect, you can gain XP and potentially 2+1 Context and Attribute MM. If you don't want to miss and use L&L, you will gain your success + potential 1 Attribute MM.

Optional Rule - Initiative

PbtA is an freeflowing system, and learning how it flows is a big step to everyone not familiar with it, and extra-so for people that have been playing a more rigid battle-oriented games most of their lives, so I write an optional system to "ease-in" people into it. "Optional Rule - Initiative" is there to give structure to early GMs and players, showing them the most rigid "by the book" way to run encounters with step-by-step instruction on how to present a situation and collect reactions. Running it 2-3 times should be plenty for GMs and players to get used to how the game works.

End of Stage Update

This one came in fairly late, but stock the landing very fast. We had interesting feedback of players feeling bad for not being able to do something in the original version of the question list and failing the whole team from getting XP. The new method came in and everyone enjoyed it a lot more - it lets players relive the adventure we just had while giving XP and not leaving anyone actively "at fault". If there is something I'm not sure about is how easy it became getting the full 5 XP, I tried limiting the potential of this by specifying that events have to be unique but even then, I don't believe we had a team go below 5, if you feel the same way, maybe add 3-5 points to the total needed. Either way, the feeling of ending the stage has greatly improved, which is a win in my book.

Case and Formatting Update

Here is my idea on solidifying capitalization rules: If it cannot be increased/reduced/lost/found/counted or otherwise tracked - then it's not capital, with proper names like individual attributes (Force), features (Mechanism) and moves/playbooks (TTL, Tinker) being exceptions to that. Same with heading/titles/chapter names. The idea is to reduce the stress on items that are not active in the moment-to-moment gameplay. A hero just exists, even if he's "downed", but a Defense is a list of items that are created and updated every moment.

Same with states and identifiers - "charged Speed Type", "+1 forward", "star attribute" and "(revival)", as they don't actually change and are just identifiers to provide context on specific use of an item. On the other hand Super Boost is an individual, countable, action under an ability type, so it's capitalized. 'Ability' should remain capitalized - it refers to a specific component of the character sheet (and thus is traceable) and it has a meaning specific to the system that is more precise than its dictionary definition, among other factors.

With that in mind, here are lower case "terms": hero, stage, boss, armor, attribute, advantage, disadvantage, feature, playbook, success, mixed success, miss, result, die, roll, character, damage, enemy, charged, forward bonus, ongoing bonus, assist bonus, star attribute, move, basic move, playbook move, improvement, advanced improvement, final improvement, adventure moment, ignore armor, (revival), (burned), (rest)

Plan for the Future

There is a reason why it's called it "the checkpoint update", as this will be the . So here is the main thing - I really like this game as it is, there are some quirks to work out, mostly Ability Types and maybe once over for some of the weaker moves, but it's good. And what I have planned next is a deeper core rework of basic moves of the game and some systems knowing and having the experience of playing this for so long. At least that's the vibe, we'll see where 2025 will lead me.

List of 1.10 Patch Notes:

Core Rule Updates:

- Kick Butt - Battle Information - added "When to Kick Butt" to explain why we only need one per phase, plus some minor wording updates to remove repetition and make it more readable.
- Kick Butt - clarification on the fact that Defenses can be removed by anything.
- Find Out More - re-worked to make it more obvious on the intention of the move.
- From The Heart - changed "Bosses and Hostile Enemies" to "Characters and creatures that you can't easily communicate with", as understanding is more important then hostility.
- Stand in the Way - specifies "somebody else", before you could technically argue that you can stand in the way for yourself, which wasn't intended.
- Focus - Creating a construct is now specified to be "about the size of a hero" as it should.
- P&Q - Clarification on creation of Set Pieces and Boss Aspects.
- Take Five - now gives advantage on (rest) moves.
- Take Five - clarification that you can use rest OR take five options.
- Take Five - you can send Buddies for extra options, but GM can endanger them.
- Take the Lead - added a clause saying that it counts as Teamwork attribute in addition to the original. Won't change too much, but could cause some fun interactions.
- Ability Types - Support - updated to be less Mystic-related.
- Optional Rule - Initiative - added to the book, for people that need some order.
- Momentum - clarification that it requires a roll to happen, unless a move states otherwise as it was causing confusing interactions with some moves.
- Rings - protection and Start attribute functionally was removed from the rules, along with Guardian rework.
- Rolling Dice and Calculations - Forward can now be held on to! - Final Improvements - added implication that you shouldn't respec a character that has one.
- End of Stage Ranking - new questions - redone the system completely.

Text Updates:

- Blue intro - updated to signify "official release".
- What's this about - proofreading, streamlining and case-adjustment in the text.
- Game 101 - did a lot of minor wording changes and clarifications, nothing major just re-read it and tweaked it where I saw repetition or unclear text.
- Hero Traits and Basic Moves - proofreading, streamlining and case-adjustment in the text.
- Dialog Boss Battles - updated pretty extensively.
- Sheets - I'm starting to add game version numbers to sheets! I will try to keep it up to date, if I don't forget!
- Sheets - large text field font reduced a little to let you see more!
- Sheets - Updated font sizes, so all of them follow the same rules.
- Basic Move Summary - now has a text box for tracking score.
- Letter casing and terminology update of all text!

Playbook Updates:

- Lead - Hey, You Hurt? - specified how XP and Momentum is applied in a re-roll.
- Lead - Never Fear The Fall - wording about it not negating negative roll results.
- Lead - Heroic Leadership - minor cleanup and clarification on Momentum.
- Lead - Backstabbing - clarification that you can do some shenanigans with it.
- Lead - Dear My Friend - specified that you can only have one.
- Tinker - Feature - Frame and Slots reworked and united into The Instrument.
- Tinker - Are You Out Of Your Mind?! - updated wording.
- Tinker - Hand it Over - clarification on a 10+ result.
- Guardian - Feature - reworked to be more focused on Rings, some of the features were adopted into the new one.
- Guardian - My Work Is Not Finished - rewritten to be less actively evil and open to more roleplaying possibilities. The effect is functionally the same.
- Guardian - Martyr Complex - minor wording update, to make it flow better. - Guardian - Unknown for M.E. - usage clarification.
- Guardian - Charging Up - they found the chairs.
- Guardian - Operation Big Wave - 10+ now lets you choose a thing to get hit by and miss doesn't affect teammates.
- Guardian - Removed "Catch me if you can" - was very specific and not too appropriate for the playbook.
- Guardian - I Felt Something - replacement for "Catch me if you can", brings back the old improvement of "armor with treasure" with some hopefully fun conditions.
- Destined - Feature - made special wording for "learning a clue", all the related moves got this clarification.
- Destined - Feature - no more Aspects that activate on a failed Mystic roll, as they are harder to track.
- Destined - Appeal to His Better Senses - wording slightly updated.
- Robot - New Mission Parameters Accepted - now doesn't specify "first" roll.
- Robot - Cannot Destroy My Soul - tweaked for Find Out More wording.
- Robot - Final Improvement - redone to allow for full feature customization, since the current one didn't account for passives. The new one is somehow even stronger, but being Final is fine. Enjoy!
- Robot - Sheet's Stamina is now a gray heart instead of a red one! Fun!
- Changed - Feature - minor wording fixes in the book.
- Changed - Take Control - reworded a bit to make the Ability Type connection be more clear.
- Changed - Integration - wording updated and tweaked for Find Out More wording.
- Changed - I'd Say It Went Well - not not mandatory to use.
- Changed - Back Off! - removed the Stamina cost from it and even counts as a "crit", but reduces the next roll by 1 and now requires you try and fail first, I think it's an interesting "aggressive" take on an Outburst and flows better.
- Changed - Transformation - re-worded to be more to the point and use less words.
- Changed - How Many Upgrades - removed the "robotic" damage requirement.
- Changed - Back Off! - specified on what the -1 is about.
- Changed - Integration - clarification on disadvantage.
- Changed - Special Occasion - renamed "Tokens" to "counters" to follow format of other moves.
- Rogue - Smash and Grab - tweaked Find Out More wording.
- Rogue - Mold This Power - now much more open on what happens to the target, instead of it being tied to the roll result.
- Rogue - Mold This Power - clarification on when/how the artifact breaks.
- Clumsy - Sounded More Convincing - re-made with the new Find Out More wording.
- Clumsy - Plenty Back Home - changed "Treasure" to "unique items" and added a minor specification on use.
- Clumsy - Sounded More Convincing - removed, it was a copy of Plenty Back Home.
- Clumsy - You Should See The Other Guy - replacement for "Sounded More Convincing", good new armor move.

If you got this far:

This year we also removed even optional fees from the list, so if you want to support this game - feel free to leave a star rating and comments! They help a lot in many ways. If you still want to throw some money our way, please support the artist of the game on her ko-fi. Thank you! <3