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Hello gamers and wage slaves,

Sorry this update is so late. March was supposed to be focused on the new layout ahead of the physical release (hopefully more info on that soon), but we hit a number of hiccups and also my brain is at the mercy of The Chemicals.

In cooler news, HyperMall was at Breakout in Toronto! Got to meet so many extremely cool people and play a ton of extremely cool games. Justin Vandermeer (https://shoutingcrow.itch.io/) is a huge sweetheart and an amazing GM. I'm still thinking about the session of Sordid Truths of Fire he ran. You need to check out his stuff. I command it.

11dragonkid released a review of HyperMall (ON MY BIRTHDAY, HOW COOL IS THAT?) and many of you are here because of it! It's an awesome video and I'm really happy with it. Again, thank you to 11dragonkid and everyone that watched the video, you literally paid my rent for the next couple of months.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc6JnakhfuM&t=24s

WE HIT OUR ITCHFUNDING GOALS WHICH IS CRAZY THANK YOU.

Y'all voted and chose HYPERMALL: ORION KILLERS as the 3rd DLC… and then smashed that goal like it was nothing. What the fuck. The stuff I have drafted for Orion Killers is insane and I can't wait to show it off. 

As for major game updates: AMMO. With the help of basically everyone I know, we've come up with a new ammo system because the old one sucked ass.

Armour now protects your whole body. I know it doesn't really make sense for a helmet to protect your feet, but the old system of locational armour confused people in playtesting. I may revisit this decision and add little boxes next to every hit location on the character sheet so you can fill in your armour, but HyperMall has never been a particularly realistic game. Also armour is almost never useful compared to the amount of damage you're likely to soak up. And you can just resurrect, you baby.

Work on Freakshit Catalogue is progressing well. About half of the new Backgrounds are done and need art. The rest need a few more passes. I'll post teasers on my twitter (@ratbastardgames).

The basic mechanics for Posthuman Blues' mechs are pretty solid so far. I'll be playtesting over on Discord at some point in the future. 

I released The Rat System SRD, a 1 page pdf going over the dice mechanics found in HyperMall. You can get it for FREE here https://rat-bastard-games.itch.io/the-rat-system-srd AND you can join The Rat System Game Jam HERE: https://itch.io/jam/rat-system-game-jam 

I'm working on a dark fantasy dungeon crawler called Coffinkeep using the Rat System. It's pretty fun! Check out my twitter for updates and art and stuff. 

I love you. 

-- JD

Oh also here is the discord link. I am terrible at discord. If you would like to talk game design, give feedback, or do playtests, the Rat Bastard Games Discord is for you. If you are a fucker, it is not for you. 

https://discord.gg/JwTra4hu

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CHANGE LOG 1.2→1.3

ADDITIONS / CHANGES

• Added a little bit of new art.
• Stat x 2 rolls have been removed because there are many situations where they would be better than using Stat + Skill. Character Sheets will be updated soon to reflect this (and the ammo changes).
• Corrected Security Grade 3: "Psychic Commandos" correctly listed as "Psionic Commandos"
• Changed Accelerate Decay to work on living things, because why not?
• Changed "Physic" to "Physick" because a lot of people didn't get what it was at first glance. This won't help but at least now maybe some Elden Ring players will be like "oh yeah"
• Death Vision now provides a +1 to Astral Navigation, which just makes sense. You're able to see the Death Dimension after all, meaning you should be able to see where it's weakest.
  • Death Vision also causes you to gain +2 Stress (or reduce Stress Threshold by 2 if you get CEO Mindset Injection).
• Armour now protects your entire body. You can layer multiple pieces of armour as long as it makes sense / is funny.
• Kevlar Vests no longer break after 4 uses. This was just annoying to track.
• Healing from rest no longer exists. May remove Gorging entirely for the simple reason that it discourages death (even though chugging soda mid-gunfight is very funny). 
• New and improved Ammo Rules:
  • When combat ends, roll an attack for each weapon you used. Burst weapons take -1 to the roll. Automatic weapons take -2. On a Full Success, that gun still has ammo. On a Mixed Result, that gun has 1 Round in the chamber. On a Failure, your mag is empty. Disposable weapons melt on a Failure. 
    • Single Shot weapons and weapons with fewer than 3 Rounds track ammo manually.
• Simplified Ammunition available. Removed Explosive Bolts because you can just tape a grenade to a bolt.
• BELT-FED - A wondrous instrument of death. Belt-Fed weapons treat mixed result Ammo rolls as if they were full successes.
• Sweeping the Kissinger now empties the fuel tank (you get an automatic success on everything in front of you, so pretty worth it)
• Having negative debt is now referred to as "In the Black" and having Debt is referred to as "In the Red" → may expand on this further in future updates. 
• Reduced the number of successes needed for Psychometry and Remote Viewing's highest success level from 6 to 4. 
• Reordered phrenology results so 1 is generally friendlier than 6. 
• Generally de-capitalized and de-italicized words. There are absolutely some I missed.