Episode 3 Guest – Vanessa Hoskins

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Valor Live Episode 3 will feature our first Guest actor! Please welcome Vanessa Hoskins, who will be playing the fey performer LuminousGrove!
Vanessa is a table-top role-playing game author and actual-play podcast performer. She’s been creating games and adventures since she was 10 and raided the family board games for dice while using her vast LEGO collection for minis and locations. While currently living in upstate New York, her imagination and internet connection often transports her around the world. When not writing, running, or playing role-playing games, she enjoys narrative based video games, musical theatre, and spending time with her wife and their adorable cat.
She’s written dozens of titles for the Pathfinder and Starfinder RPGs from rules mechanics to adventures. Her latest adventure, Hands of the Devil (Abomination Vaults, Book 2) releases in February of 2021. As well as several short-form adventures for Pathfinder Society and Starfinder Society organized play programs. In addition to Valor Live, you can hear her play on Roll for Combat’s Fall of Plaguestone and Three Ring Adventure actual-plays, or Know Direction Network’s Stellar and Adventurous! podcasts.
On Valor Live, Vanessa brings the character of LuminusGrove to life. Lumi is a fey social influencer and online personality who uses performance art and pseudo-investigative journalism to fight for the Equalist cause! Accompanied by her heavily modified BZ-20 hover drone, nicknamed “Buzzy,” she exposes Traditionalist lies and scandals LIVE to thousands of eager fans. Lumi’s biggest fan is PageBoy74, a human man from Kelebree, who’s ready to come to Lumi’s aid at a moment’s notice. Find out what trouble Lumi and her little sprouts get into on episode 3 of Valor Live!
You can find a collection of Vanessa’s work and contacts below:
Roll For Combat: http://rollforcombat.com/
Know Direction Network: http://knowdirectionpodcast.com/

Valor Live Coming Soon!

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Get ready, Cavaliers! Valor Live will be launching on September 25th! The Stream will be hosted on our Twitch Channel and will run from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM Pacific Time every Friday. The 25th will be Episode 0, our initial character creation session, with the game officially starting on October 2nd. Look forward to it!

Valor Discord Community and Creative Commons

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With Best in Class almost complete and the launch of Valor Live just around the corner, one of the things we want to provide is a way for people who play Valor to build a community around it. Valor was designed to be highly modular and work with a lot of different stories and styles, so it’s important to us to make sure that those who want to play it are able to find other players, share their own homebrew, and receive support for playing the game.

To that end, we are deploying our official Valor Discord which can be found here: Valor Tabletop RPG Discord

The Discord will allow players to connect with each other, share notes, and organize online play sessions. It’ll also serve as a place for Patrons to discuss content as we roll out our Patreon, as well as discuss Valor Live as the show launches.

Another major aspect we want to highlight is the Creative Commons License Valor operates under. The operating license can be found here. It allows you to, with appropriate attribution, freely share and adapt the Valor rules. What’s notable under these rules is that users are able to create their own rulesets and even publish them for profit without any royalty requirement. The only major requirement is that all material published in this fashion must also be published under the same Creative Commons License, in essence you pay it forward by allowing creators that come after you to benefit as you did (those wishing to utilize a private license may coordinate with and license the system from us directly if desired).

We also have some logos for those hoping to make use of our Creative Commons License. These are free to use for all Valor Creative Commons projects, and can be found here:

 

Announcing Valor Live!

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We are excited to announce our first live campaign!

For our first campaign, we’ll follow the exploits of a group of Cavaliers, semi-professional adventurers as they help solve problems in their community. This game will take place in our first official campaign setting, Valress, a world of magic and fantasy that has reached the modern era. While many things within the world have changed, some things remain the same and among them are the need for skilled individuals to take care of unusual problems. Valor Live will take place Fridays from 7-10 PM Pacific Time. The official start date will be announced soon!

We’ll be revealing everybody’s characters a bit later, but we’d first like to introduce our players! We had a lot of amazing people apply for a spot and it was a really tough decision. Every player in this group really stood out in terms of what they could bring to the table, and we could not be more excited to have this crew on board!

Game Master – Zack Maher

A self-proclaimed “King of Screaming,” Zack Maher is a voice actor who’s work you can hear in various indie animations and video games all over the internet. Notable credits include Dr. Sylvester Ashling in the animated series Epithet Erased, and various characters in the So This is Basically webseries. If you need unrivaled exuberance with a professional attitude and sound to match, look no further than having Zack involved in your next project!

Zack also isn’t a stranger when it comes to telling stories and crafting characters in tabletop RPG’s. For that past five years Zack has been creating laughs, delivering tears, and making unforgettable memories in various tabletop games. He is a frequent GM and player in different streamed shows that can be found at https://www.twitch.tv/surpriseroundrpg. This includes the Valor: The Heroic RPG system that has become a favorite of his in recent years. With the combined efforts of the rest of the cast, Zack hopes to tell an exciting and important story that inspires everyone to further pursue tabletop gaming, voice acting, or hopefully both!

When he’s not booking jobs or playing games, Zack is also pursuing the field of school psychology, where he hopes to provide kids the resources they need to succeed in their education. He also hopes to develop a speciality for transgender advocacy in the schools he’ll be working with in the future.

Francesca Calo

Francesca Calo is a New York City born and raised actor, MoCap performer, and voice actress.  She is half Chinese and half Spanish, and spent her childhood on film and television sets with her parents.  She began acting at the age of seven, and has since enthusiastically followed her passion.  She studied and performed with theaters such as the Moscow Art Theatre Company, New York Stage and Film, as well as with acclaimed international director, Adolf Shapiro.

She can be seen alongside Sandra Bullock in the Warner Bros film, Ocean’s 8, and with Tom Hanks in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.  Select THEATER credits include: Julius Caeser (Casca), King Lear (Earl of Kent), Macbeth (Lady Macbeth).

Finally, Francesca entered the foray of voice over six years ago, and can be heard on shows like Pokemon (Disney XD), Regal Academy (Nickelodeon), Webby nominated children’s podcast, Grimm, Grimmer, Grimmest (Pinna Audio), and more! More information about her can be found on her website at: https://www.francesca-calo.com/

Lily Lammers

Lily Lammers is a voice actress from Valencia, California. After studying theater at Mills College in Oakland, she’s returned home and currently resides in Los Angeles. Lily’s provided additional voices for anime including HunterXHunter and Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun as well as voicing main characters in indie games such as Chronicon, Negative Atmosphere, and A Field of Flower and Stars. During her time at Mills, she was lucky enough to study at both the American Conservatory Theater and Middlebury Language Schools. Lily staged numerous productions at Mills and ACT, often acting as a sound designer as well as a performer. At Middlebury, she studied Japanese language and culture, with a focus on performing arts, from rakugo to anime. In her free time, Lily enjoys listening to old radio dramas, practicing lightsaber combat, and learning new languages.

Paul Greene-Dennis

Paul Greene-Dennis is musician and voice actor who hails from Brentwood, NY. Paul recently graduated this year from CUNY Queens College with his Masters of Music in Classical Performance. Paul loves to sing opera. Recently, Paul has done productions at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Greenwood Cemetery and Queens College. When Paul is not doing voiceover or singing classical music, he is either working out, watching anime, or reading novels.

Tamara Fritz

Tamara Fritz is a British-American Voice Actress who has been producing work online under her handle ‘totalspiffage’ for more than 10 years, including original music, parody songs, and covers. She got her start in VO in 2014, in the MMO Hounds: The Last Hope, and has worked as a full-time VO ever since. She works primarily in the commercial sector, but video game VO is her passion.

Her more notable credits include Wargroove, where she played Queen Mercia, and Warframe, where she played a giant, evil spider called Profit-Taker as well as the lead quest-giver in the expansion Fortuna. She was also a cast member on Live Play series URealms for two years, where she provided voices for animations as well as performing on the show.

She currently lives in Columbus, OH, where she spends her free time writing music, streaming, and memorizing obscure video game lore.

 

Casting Call – Voice Actors

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Valorous Games is seeking outgoing, talented people for a Valor Live Play program! This will be a paid position where actors will play a campaign of Valor within our upcoming Modern Fantasy Valress setting. The play sessions will be posted and uploaded, and depending on the circumstances they may also be streamed on Twitch. The games themselves will be run online through Roll20 using our Valor character sheet, and will use either Discord or Zoom for the recording. We’re specifically seeking voice actors or stage actors (established or not), especially those with interest or experience in JRPG and Anime acting. We also strongly encourage LGBTQI+ and BIPOC actors to apply!

Read more

COVID-19 Update and Bonus Content

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Hello everyone Austin here again, thank you all for your well-wishes and understanding as we navigate the COVID-19 crisis. We have some great news on our end, as well as an early release of some fun bonus content as an additional thanks for your understanding during this difficult time.

First, I’ve received an offer for a position which will eliminate the immediate funding crisis. I expect it will take a bit of time to fully ramp back up (especially since I’m running into issues getting my Unemployment due to the strain on the system and my Valor operations being incorrectly classified as income), but my hope is that by mid-May or early June we should be back on track. Additionally, since we did have some distribution earnings, I have resumed production on Best in Class, the distribution earnings aren’t enough to complete the project but they’ve got us working again so hopefully we’ll be able to return to the project in full soon and get this finished.

As a reminder, our Valor store sale is continuing through the rest of the month, if you’re looking for a Hardcover book at $10 off or an eBook for justt $5, now is a great time to grab it!

Finally, one of the things I am looking at is ways to get content I’ve been working on out to the general public earlier – while having it written is all well and good if I’m not able to get it released fully due to expense (such as with the entirety of the Foes book), it’s not really doing any good. I’m looking into a Patreon-based model to keep moving these larger book projects that require a massive amount of investment to complete, while I don’t have a full view of how it will look this is an example of content you might generally expect were you to back us – regular micro-updates of new skills and abilities. The abilities presented below are some of my favorite introductions in Villains, Creatures and Foes – the Personal Domain Ultimate Core and some related mods (as well as the Effect Lock standard mod). This Core allows you to create a domain of influence around the area and gives a lot of interesting and unique abilities, it’s especially handy for big, threatening bosses but can also be effective in the hands of PCs. Just make sure to come up with a dramatic chant about bones and swords so you can get that extra Valor from your GM!

Ultimate Cores

Personal Domain

You exert your influence over a part of the battlefield, generating a personal domain that empowers your allies and hampers your enemies.

Action: Support

Cost: 3 per Technique level

Effect: This Technique creates a broad zone that aids your allies and hinders your enemies, targeting every space within 1 space of the user per Season (2 spaces at Season 2, 3 spaces at Season 3, and 4 spaces at Season 4). When creating a Personal Domain Technique, select a combination of Flaws and Skills. Each point of Core Power for this Technique counts as 1 SP for flaws, or 2 SP for Skills, and the combination of Flaws and Skills cannot exceed the Core Power. Personal Domain may use Boost and Weaken-only Skills and Flaws. All Skills are automatically applied to the user and any allies within the Domain. When you use this Technique, make an opposed roll of any Active Attribute, chosen at the time of the technique’s creation, against all targets in the affected area. At the start of your turn, roll again against any unaffected enemies still in the Domain. A successful roll applies all Flaws to the character until they leave the Domain, at which point the Flaws expire at the beginning of your next turn. The defender may substitute an Active Attribute as if the Personal Domain were a Weaken Technique. The Domain persists until the end of the scene, or until the character who created it is Incapacitated. 

Special: A Personal Domain Technique gets 2 levels of Modifiers at no cost. Each level of a Personal Domain Technique that is not used for a Core Power counts as two levels for the purpose of non-Ultimate Modifiers. Ultimate Modifiers are exchanged at a rate of 1 Core Power for 1 Modifier Level, as with Ultimate Damage Core. A Personal Domain Technique is eligible for all Modifiers that can be attached to either a Boost or a Weaken Core. Skills attached to a Personal Domain may be up to one Season higher than your current Season. Modifiers attached to Personal Domain which typically have a single effect, such as Reposition, initiate at the beginning of each turn, but you must make an Attack Roll against all enemies as normal.

Alteration Modifiers

Effect Lock

Your field effects stay trained on you no matter where you move.

Applicable to: Personal Domain, Technique with Persistent Effect and Blast Radius

Season: 2nd

Level: +2

Effect: If this Technique is centered on a target, it will stick to them for the duration of the effect, moving as they do. If the target is an enemy, it only sticks to them if technique hits. If it misses on a later turn, it stops sticking to the target.

Special: If this Technique is a Mind Technique, the level is reduced to +1

Ultimate Modifiers

Astral Form

Even when outside your Domain, you can still influence it directly.

Applicable to: Personal Domain

Season: 2nd  

Level: +2

Effect: If you are not within your Personal Domain, you project an Astral Form inside of it which occupies the center of the Domain and creates a Zone of Control. You may attack through your Astral Form as if it were you. The Astral Form does not block movement.

 

Astral Mobility

Your Astral Form can move within the bounds of your Domain.

Applicable to: Personal Domain with the Astral Form modifier

Season: 3rd 

Level: +2

Effect: You may move your Astral Form within your Personal Domain in addition to yourself when you use a Move Action.

 

Influential Control

Within your Domain, you exert a greater Zone of Control

Applicable to: Personal Domain

Season: 1st 

Level: +3/+3

Effect: While inside your Personal Domain, your Zone of Control extends 1 additional space.

Level Up: Extend your Zone of Control by 1 additional space. 

Special: Bonuses from Influential Control do not extend outside of your Personal Domain; if your Zone of Control reaches the edge of the Personal Domain, the bonus does not apply to any spaces outside of the Domain.

 

Locked Domain

People cannot enter or leave your Domain without your approval.

Applicable to: Personal Domain

Season: 2nd 

Level: +2

Effect: If a character attempts to move out of your Domain, they must make an opposed Attribute Roll based on the Attribute assigned to the Domain. If successful, they may leave the Domain. If not, their movement stops at the edge. Techniques being used on an area inside the Zone from outside the Domain or vice-versa suffer a -2 penalty to their Attack Roll if applicable. This includes techniques used by allies, unless you apply the Smart Area of Effect modifier to your Personal Domain. If the Technique is one which requires no roll, it instead costs 4 additional Stamina per Season of the User.

COVID-19 Update

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Hello everyone, this is Austin MacKenzie, owner and lead designer of Valorous Games. I wanted to speak directly today to talk about the current situation, how it’s impacted us, and how we’re working through this. These kinds of updates are unfortunately common at this point in time, so I wanted to make sure to provide as much transparency as possible.
Some of our regular convention attendees are probably aware of this but others may not be – Valorous Games is a tiny studio and labor of love managed by myself and funded by my day job as a Procurement professional. I insist on a certain degree of professional production and design because that is the kind of product I want to make and deliver. In mid-February, just as the COVID-19 situation was starting to ramp up, I lost my job and haven’t been able to secure a new one at this point in time. This, combined with the cancellation of Sakura con which has always generated a great deal of revenue for us, has forced me to place development on a temporary hold. It’s important to note that I never ask for the full amount of money that I need for development, I always expect to fund at least half, often more of a product out of my own pocket and base my projects and available money around my monthly contributions so while the Kickstarter money has given me the ability to continue development a bit beyond the initial job loss, those funds have dried up and I have nothing available to replenish them with.
Fortunately, the state of Washington does have some money available for small businesses like ourselves who were impacted by COVID-19. The cancellation of Sakura con was by direct order of our Governor in response so we should qualify. I am working through an adviser with the Small Business Association to work to secure these funds, if we are able to do so it should theoretically cover the last bit of development (we have about 18 pictures left to complete and the final printing and import, so we’re very close). I don’t at this time have a time-frame as to when this will be completed as the state is, understandably, seeing a large amount of requests for this level of support.
With all this uncertainty, I am also exploring other options. I am working with the SBA to refine our business plan with the intent to court investors. It’s always been my dream to eventually work on Valor full time, and while we are still at the small startup phase today there are a number of actions I am looking into that could exponentially expand our reach and profitability – so long as I can receive the funding to carry it out. Beyond that I am, of course, still searching for a new day job, postings and interview requests are starting to pick back up and we are somewhat fortunate in that Washington State’s social distancing initiatives seem to have blunted the effect of the virus in our region which leaves me hopeful that securing a new day job soon isn’t out of the question.
In the interim, I am doing whatever I can to secure funding. That is why for the entire month of April, we will be offering a $10 convention-level discount on all hardcover and hardcover+ebook bundles on our store, as well as a $20 discount on the base Valor ebook – if you’ve been interested in Valor but on the fence, you can now obtain a digital copy from us for $5. Please allow up to 24 hours to receive it – our process for sending ebooks is at this time still 100% manual (our web infrastructure being about as good as I can afford through self-funding, which isn’t saying much). You can find the sales active now on our Storefront. The bottom line is I will get this book out come hell or high water, and I am working all of these paths simultaneously in hopes that at least one of them will pay off. Best in Class has hit me with so many unexpected production issues at this point I suspect it is driven by some kind of malicious spirit to thwart me, but said spirit underestimates my stubbornness. I WILL get this book out, one way or another.
And for those looking to try out a new system and taking advantage of this deal? I recommend Roll20. Roll20 is a great, free program for tabletop RPGs in general, and Valor co-creator Quinn Gordon has created a character sheet on it that will do most of the math and calculations for you, it makes creating characters and running the game so much easier and the online grid and voice features let you run RPGs even if Social Distancing has you housebound. We’re currently testing new content through this platform ourselves using this exact character sheet, it works great.
Finally, there are a few things I am looking into, as this situation has, if nothing else, given me an abundance of time. With the help of my lovely, talented and all-around wonderful wife we’re looking into an official Discord channel for Valor as a place for people to congregate and set up games together. Our primary concern is if a combination of bots and available people are able to properly mod it – if we were to host an official Discord it is imperative to us that all players feel welcome and included no matter their race, creed, sexual orientation or gender identity. Every Valor fan we’ve met thus far has been wonderful, and I want to make sure if we create this space you will feel valued and protected. The other thing I am looking at is, potentially, an early content release, perhaps through Patreon or some other platform, to get some of the finished material out sooner. The text from Valor: Villains, Creatures and Foes remains more or less complete although I am retooling the story text to make it more in-line with our setting as it comes together, so this would be a great way to release less polished but fully playable rules for people to test. I am also sitting on a fair few new mechanics for Valor: Tools of the Trade, the major book release I am working on for after Villains Creatures and Foes with expanded skills and abilities that I’d love to release to people sooner. I’m working on a few potential ways to release this and some of the content will likely be made available for free on our website either way, so there will be more information on that as we work on it.
If you are interested in any of what we’ve talked about, I’d love to hear from you! I’m opening up our [email protected] email to receive feedback, if you want to send some thoughts, wishes, or critiques please feel free to send it to that email. I understand folks are likely rightfully frustrated at the continued delay, as I am, and I want to make sure to give you the opportunity to be heard. It’s tough right now, but I am confident we will get through this, and I am doing everything in my power to deliver on what I’ve promised. Thank you to everyone for being amazing, and I’ll keep you all posted as things develop.
Note: This is cross-posted with our Kickstarter, there is no difference between the two posts.

How to Use the Roll20 Character Sheet

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Many of the people who play and develop Valor are scattered across the globe. To help facilitate easier play and testing of new rules and content as well as to just make playing the game easier, we’ve used Roll20 to schedule and play games online. To make this even easier, Valor co-creator Alan “Quinn” Gordon developed a Character Sheet for the platform, which is now available to the public. While this character sheet doesn’t have the full capabilities of the character builder application we are developing, it’s still a great tool for GMs to easily put together NPCs and players to put their own characters together. It does require the Valor core rulebook to use, but even if your game meets in person, this is a great tool to make the experience easier.

When starting a new game on Roll20, you’ll have the option to select a character sheet. Simply select “Valor” from the drop-down menu and you’re ready to go!

There are three parts of the Character sheet, Attributes, Skills and Flaws, and Techniques.

The attribute section will automatically calculate all of your attributes based on your level, skill selection, and primary attribute array. The level and type will also factor in, if you are playing a PC or Elite you will receive the full stats but if you select Soldier or Flunky you’ll note dramatically reduced skill point and stat totals to reflect the different enemy type.

The skills and flaws section lets you input skills and flaws. Every skill and flaw in the Core Rulebook is included, but no descriptions are present in the Character Sheet so players will need to refer to the rulebook for the effect. Any skills or flaws that directly effect your base stats will be automatically calculated into the character sheet. You can also input custom skills, in this case the level of the custom skill equals the amount of skill points it removes from your character.

Finally, the Technique tab makes the hardest part of Valor character creation much easier. You can select from any cores within the book and assign an attribute, which will determine how Modifiers and Limits interact with it. All Modifiers and Limits can be typed into the respective text boxes with a number at the end signifying their level. These inputs will populate the text section with a full description of the Technique, how to use it and what it does. While all modifiers are loaded into the Character Sheet, you will still need the core Valor rulebook for their names and the level requirements.

The Valor Character Sheet is completely free to use for anyone with a Roll20 account. While Valorous Games is not in any way affiliated with Roll20’s service, we use it quite a bit, and hope it will help some of you either for building characters and NPCs, or even for running whole games online with friends all over the world!

Errata, Roll20 Character Sheet, and Upcoming Releases

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Hey Valor fans! We’ve got a number of announcements, so let’s dive right in!

  • Official Errata: The official Errata has been released, and can be found here. We will be releasing a printable PDF document of the Errata in the coming weeks, as well as working to update the Valor Core Rulebook PDF to reflect the changes in the Errata.
  • Roll20 Valor Character Sheet: We are pleased to announce that the Valor Character Sheet is now live on Roll20! This character sheet requires the Core Rulebook to be used properly, and will perform all stat calculations and Technique calculations based on the information you input. It will also allow you to create different classes of enemies such as Soldiers, Swarms and Masters, making it an excellent tool for GMs even if the builds are intended for offline games. The Character Sheet is the work of Valor co-creator Alan “Quinn” Gordon and has seen several years of development. The character sheet is up to date to all current Errata except for the minimum Stamina Cost to Healing Cores, which was rolled out too late to be added to the initial release and will be added at a later date. As a disclaimer, Valorous Games has no affiliation with Roll20, but we do use their product internally for a number of system tests.
  • New Adventure Path – Best in Class: We are officially announcing our first Adventure Path, Best in Class! The cover art can be seen featured in this post. Our goal is to launch a Kickstarter for a print release in mid-April, with the Adventure launching later this year. Best in Class will be the first Adventure Path in our first official campaign setting, Valress. The world of Valress is a realm of fantasy and magic that has ascended to the modern era, and Best in Class follows the exploits of members of an elite university as they complete their studies to become full fledged Knights. We will roll out more information on the campaign setting as we approach the Kickstarter.
  • Valor: Villains, Creatures and Foes Update: As many of you know, Valor: Villains, Creatures and Foes unfortunately failed to meet goal when it was on Kickstarter, but it does remain very much in development. We are raising funds in the background and working to complete the book. We are working to release adventure paths in the interim and bring out a number of other tools such as the Roll20 sheet to continue to support the system while we work toward releasing the next core book. We’ll have more news on this book as it approaches completion.
  • Convention Appearances: We’re slowing increasing the number of conventions we attend! We’re working on adding a few more to our list and we’ll be posting up a full convention schedule soon! For now, we’ll continue to attend Sakura con in Seattle as we always have, and have added Kumoricon in Portland to our list. We hope to add more in the months to come!

International Tabletop Day Demo Podcast

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In celebration of International Tabletop Day, the Valor team got together and put together a podcast of an adventure for your enjoyment! You can listen to the trailer here:

The full version can be found here: