Hey everyone! It's been quite some time since we last spoke about The Midnight Generation. So Kyle took the time out to write up an update which you are now reading with your very own eyes!

The Midnight Generation: Rewind

It's been a while since I shard on various social media platforms that we intended to update and rework The Midnight Generation into it's own thing. A year, almost to the day that we're going up be pushing this update to our Tumblr (did you all know we had a tumblr?: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/fivepointsgames ) and Itch.io. Other projects big and small kept me away from making any real progress on an update, let alone working out what I wanted to do with our little Masks hack that got way bigger than we ever expected. Now that A Monster's Tail is well behind me, Outlaw Hearts is in open playtesting and the other project that will be moving to open playtesting is almost done with its final QA push my attentions have been brought back to The Midnight Generation.

I can happily say that major progress has been made on what we will be calling Midnight Generation: Rewind. 

What's Changing?

A lot! 

The primary goal for Midnight Generation: Rewind was always to create a stand alone game, a game inspired by Persona (and other things) that didn't require people to spend money on Masks: A New Generation. While that game is great, it lowers the chance people are going to try our cool thing if they need to know the rules and own the book of another cool thing. Midnight Generation started off as an extra for our Kickstarter for The Worst Generation, itself a third party supplement for Masks: A New Generation so it just made sense to keep it tied to that product. Now that we've established ourselves more fully as a company that doesn't just do third party content, we want to have a little more freedom to express our own design ideas in the Persona inspired space.

The first part of that is our own Basic Moves and overall game structure. Midnight Generation: Remix still has the Basic Moves you'd recognize from a game inspired by Powered by the Apocalypse design. One of the largest hurdles we want to clear is the general sentiment that Persona inspired games are too inspired by one particular Persona game in specific (typically 4 or 5). In this way, we've developed the Cour system, essentially playsets that envoke the particular themes of each of the three modern Persona games along with rules to create your own Cours independent of the ones that will be coming with the final product.

Owing to this, the Basic Moves have been designed to be flexible regardless of which Cour you're playing in. The Basic Move that allows for this is simply called Take Action

With this primary Basic Move, the Player and GM build what the Basic Move is covering during play which allows the Player to have more weight in the narrative through said conversation. The Player is the one creating the possible stakes and directing the intended goal rather than those being baked into a number of Basic Moves. The GM, through our more streamlined Complication and Consequence economy from A Monster's Tail, Outlaw Hearts, and other games, has more of a guideline on when to use which and where each is appropriate. While the intent for Take Action is to be flexible, it is also intended to simplify the conversation during play and keep everyone invested in the action.

Another major change coming to Midnight Generation: Rewind is the Condition system. In the original Midnight Generation, we were forced to keep to Masks Conditions and how they effected rolls. While we enjoy that system, and as a company still greatly enjoy Masks both as a game and for its wonderful design, we'd like a more narratively flexible Condition system.  Conditions are now created by the GM when a Player incurs them and they can cover any number of narrative and mechanical effects. You can find similar examples of what we're aiming to accomplish in the Carved from Brindlewood system and other more modern PbtA games.

There's a lot more coming mechanically but we'll talk about those another time.

What's Staying the Same

At risk of this going over-long, there are some things we're not changing.

Influence: This system is streamlined and efficient and wonderful and is part of Midnight Generation's identity. While there will be some additional bits and bobs coming with Influence, the basic system will remain unchanged.

Arcana: Players will continue to have what are essentially two playbooks. The Arcana playbooks will be returning with a facelift. The Arcana system has been fundamental to a great many of our games post-Worst Generation and we have no intention of throwing it out here. Our hope is that it will be more streamlined and easy to pick up than the Arcana in Midnight Generation.

Playbooks: Playbooks will be returning under the title: Facade. While that term was what we originally used in place of Personas themselves, we feel the change of name fits what we're going for in this Rewind edition.

The Basic Mechanical Rigging: Midnight Generation: Rewind will be remaining as a 2d6 system with minimal math. We are bringing in Advantage/Disadvantage under the terms "Lucky" and "Unlucky" respectively but the basic fundamental system that everyone is familiar with will be for all intents and purposes unchanged.

Look forward to more from us here at Five Points games. You can always get information from us from the following sources beyond Itch.Io

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/fivepointsgames.bsky.social

Discord: https://discord.gg/sqxzZ9JA