Health Update

/0 Comments/in /by

Hey everyone, Liana here I wanted to give a bit of a health update and discuss some potential impacts to our production schedule.

About a month ago, I was formally diagnosed with colon cancer. I am fortunate in that we caught it early, so the cancer itself hasn’t spread and should be very much treatable. What it does mean, however, is that I am going to need pretty immediate surgery. I’m being scheduled for surgery next week, which will require a bit of a hospital stay and will incapacitate me for a bit longer afterward.

In terms of energy level, I’m expecting it’s going to be a near-term halt to all of my development operations, I’m slated to start a new job very soon and they’ve been wonderfully understanding about my condition but I am going to need to devote most of what energy I do have in early recovery to that job so my ability to manage development in my spare time is expected to be limited. Furthermore, due to the anticipated expense of the surgery, I will likely not have as much spare money to set aside for development as well. As many longtime Valor fans know, I currently self-fund most of our operations since I strive for a level of quality with our products that we haven’t been able to self-sustain with our current product lines and sales. This too will slow things down a bit in the near-term.

This may have some impact on the shipment of the completed Valor Core books for the Kickstarter as well, we’re expected to get them late this month so a lot will depend on my recovery in terms of getting them all packed up and shipped out. I’ll look to enlist in the help of some friends to get them out the door ASAP, so bear with us on that.

Ultimately, thankfully, this should not be a huge permanent impact. By my understanding the surgery should not produce much if any long-term negative effects to my life. I just need to get through this, and things should be well on the other side. As always, I appreciate the support of Valor players and fans, this is just a speedbump and while it’s a bit scary, I’m very lucky since something like this could have been so, so much worse.

I’m not at this time soliciting any donations, we should be able to handle it with our personal finances and we have family that can help support us if it comes to it. If you do want to help support us financially, the best thing you can do is buy our products, play our game, introduce your friends to it and use it in your Actual Plays. The more profit I make off Valor, especially during my recovery, the more I can devote to getting our production back on track when I’m well again and the more people playing Valor and spreading it around, the more I can leverage it to negotiate bigger and better things for the system in the future. If you’d like to support us, here are a few places you can do so:
Valor Storenvy (We’ve made our standard Hardcovers unavailable and are instead selling the remaining first printing hardcovers with eBook at a discounted rate)
Valorous Games on DrivethruRPG
Valorous Games on itch.io (Also has some pre-release content and smaller articles – any pre-release items bought at the current price will eventually garner a full updated version without any further payment)

Windriders Episode 18 Guest – Rook

/0 Comments/in /by

Valor Live Windriders Episode 18 will feature our second Guest actor of the season season! Please welcome Rook, who will be playing the river dragon Minnow!

Rookuri is a pansexual variety MMORPG content creator, shoutcaster, and host. As a Twitch and ArenaNet partner, she strives to spread smiles while helping players connect to the games they love by fostering a welcoming, diverse, and uplifting community online. Her previous work includes official Twitch events, Twitch’s Crown channel, World First Race hosting & commentary, FFXIV Duty Commenced & official ArenaNet GW2 reveal streams. She’s looking forward to bringing her acting and TTRPG experience to the table alongside the wonderful cast of Windriders!

In Valor Live she will be playing Minnow, a river dragon guardian of a small stream who has gathered the mundane and ordinary stories many feel are not important.

You can find Rook on Twitch , YouTube and Twitter.

We’ll add Rook’s character art later this week, stay tuned!

Valor Live Windriders Season 2

/0 Comments/in /by

Valorous Games is thrilled to announce the return of Valor Live: Windriders for a second season! Featuring an amazing cast of talented voice actors, Valor Live Windriders takes place in the modern fantasy world of Valress and follows the misadventures of four Cavaliers – professional monster-hunters-for-hire as they become entangled within their provincial politics and the machinations of the rich and sinister! Valor Live: Windriders will take place every other Friday starting April 7th at 6:00 PM Pacific/9:00 PM Eastern on Twitch! You don’t want to miss it!

If you want to get caught up with the original story and cast of Windriders, check out the complete season 1 up on YouTube!

Windriders will feature our full returning cast!

Zack Maher – GM
Francesca Calo – Callon “Kazhri” Lau
Lily Lammers – Bryn “Allez” Briar
Tamara Fritz – Gemma “HeartShine” Friedman
Paul Greene-Dennis – Faizon “S.P.” Black

Valor Core Rulebook Kickstarter

/0 Comments/in /by

We are excited to announce that we will be launching a Kickstarter on September 24th for a second, updated printing of the Valor Core Rulebook! You can find the pre-release page here!

The new book will include all identified errata, as well as an updated layout and updating the creator names. Anybody who has purchased the original book in hardcover or PDF form will receive the updated PDF free of charge, but the Kickstarter will offer some fun extras for returning fans as well! We hope you’ll support us again on this relaunch!

As one of the big items we want to cover is updating our creator names to properly reflect our identities, so too would we like to update the list of names from the original backers if necessary. We will not be printing additional backer names for the second Kickstarter due to the timeline of printing and PDF completion, but if you were part of the original group who backed Valor and would like to update your listed name for any reason, please email us at info@valorousgames.com with the header BACKER NAME UPDATE. Identify the prior name and the name you would like to update it to. We will not share these details with anybody outside our core team and only for purposes of properly updating the names.

If you have any questions please feel free to reach out! We’ll have more details on logistics as the Kickstarter gets rolling!

Valor Live/Asians Represent Charity Stream to Support Trans Rights

/0 Comments/in /by

We are excited to announce our first Charity stream! The stream will be on Saturday, June 25th at 10:00 AM Pacific/1:00 PM on our Twitch Channel. Additionally, we’re thrilled to be partnering with the phenomenal award-winning Asians Represent Podcast! This stream is a Pride Month stream supporting the Transgender Law Center, a cause near and dear to our hearts as Valor was developed by two trans people. The game will be a one-shot adventure designed around martial-arts inspired action and combat styles inspired by Bleach and Demon Slayer. Join us and our amazing crew to raise money for a great and necessary cause!

Here is our cast!

Emma Yasui

Emma Yasui (she/her) is a mixed Japanese-Canadian archaeologist who has found herself in the world of TTRPGs in the last few years. She started this expedition with the Asians Represent! podcast, discussing topics related to representations of Japan and the Japanese diaspora, and she now works as a writer and cultural consultant on TTRPG content. Emma also tries to be a professional academic, researching ancient foodways in northern Japan during the Jomon Period and teaching courses on the intersections of the past, pop culture, and diaspora experience. She loves squirrels, playing games, and knitting socks. She currently resides in Toronto with her cat Hunter, who has appeared on Asians Represent! live streams almost as many times as she has.

Lily Emil Lammers

Lily Emil Lammers is a bigender voice actor from Valencia, California. Their pronouns are she/he/they. After studying theater at Mills College in Oakland, she’s returned home and currently resides in Burbank.

Most notably, Emil can be heard as Ash in the Nintendo mobile game Fire Emblem Heroes, in addition to appearances in SMITE, Genshin Impact, and Negative Atmosphere. He’s also provided background voices for anime such as HunterXHunter and Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun. Outside of anime and games, she was lucky enough to provide narration for the audiobook of Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens, now available on Audible.

In their free time, Lily enjoys listening to old radio dramas, practicing lightsaber combat, and learning new languages.

Steven Hyunh

Steve Huynh (he/him) is a Vietnamese tabletop RPG writer and gaming enthusiast based in Toronto, ON. He is a co-host and Discord Admin for the Asians Represent! podcast. His most recently writing credit was for Unbreakable Vol 1 where he wrote an adventure based on his childhood memories of climbing mountains in Vietnam. He edited for both Unbreakable: Revolutions and Unbreakable Vol 2 releasing in 2022.
He works full-time as a business consultant and spends the rest of his time pursuing cooking, lifting heavy stuff, cosplaying, and trying out as many RPGs as possible!
With a background in education, Steve loves RPGs for their ability to give you space to tell stories that both bring you joy but also give you a safe environment to explore and play with feelings and thoughts – with people you love and want to grow with.

Tamara “Tide” Fritz

Tamara Fritz (she or he) is a genderfluid British-American Voice Actor 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 and has worked as a full-time VO ever since. She works primarily in the commercial sector, but video game VO is her passion.
His more notable credits include Wargroove, as Queen Mercia, Magic the Gathering: Arena, as Freyalise, and multiple roles in the MMO Warframe, as the evil robotic spider Profit-Taker as well as the lead quest-giving NPC Eudico in Warframe’s expansion, Fortuna. He was also a cast member on Live Play series URealms for two years, where he provided voices for animations as well as performing on the show, and a podcast for Demon: The Fallen called “Ladies of Darkness”.
She currently lives in Columbus, OH, where she spends her free time writing and playing music, gaming, and memorizing obscure video game lore.

Coming Out

/0 Comments/in /by

Hey everyone, I wanted to share some personal news today. Up to this point, I’ve generally been presenting as male within my work, including during the livestreams we produce. This presentation, however, hasn’t been exactly correct for awhile now. While I am still early in the process, in my personal life I’ve begun transitioning to feminine presentation and pronouns. It’s been getting harder and harder to continue presenting as “male”, when that’s honestly not who I am. I am a trans woman, and I want to present myself honestly in my public life.

So what does this mean for Valorous Games? Functionally, very little. We’ve been working to make our programming inclusive, portraying gender, sexuality and racial diversity wherever possible. This won’t change. Valorous Games is committed to portraying, hiring, and giving creative voice to a diverse range of creatives and performers. I’m proud of the work we’ve already done, and want to improve even more. The major change will be in our content, for our Developer Streams and for Best in Class, you’ll see me more authentically.

For future content, we’ll be working on a reprint of the Valor core book once Best in Class’s printing is complete. With both of the creators having since come out as trans, and with our initial print run almost depleted, now is a great time for us to add in the errata and put our proper names on the cover. Best in Class is already being printed under  my proper name, and all content we produce going forward will bear that name as well. We will continue to support and work with any creatives who want to play or write for Valor, and encourage everyone, especially POC and LGBTQ+ groups interested in working with us to reach out!

My dream has been to turn Valorous Games into an independent small studio where I can work with other amazing creatives and make games full time. That dream hasn’t changed. We’ll continue to do everything we can to make amazing Valor content, and hope you’ll continue to support us! We have a lot of projects in work, and are excited to share everything with all of you. Thank you again for all of the support you’ve given us so far, and can’t wait for what’s to come!

 

Liana MacKenzie

Valorous Games Owner

New Year Update

/0 Comments/in /by

Happy New Year everybody! A few quick updates on Valor and what we have in store for the next year!

First, we’ve added a PDF to the Errata page – we were initially thinking we might be able to get the fully updated PDF pushed through but given our current development timeline we decided it’d be best to just release the Errata-only document. You can find the Errata here

Second, Best in Class development continues with the final layout, we have some final text double-checks that need to be completed before the full layout can be placed, we’re hoping that will be finished within the next few days pending layout schedule. Announcements on Best in Class will generally still remain on the Kickstarter page.

Third, we’re looking forward to the conclusion of Season 1 of Valor Live! The current Valor Live will continue later this year – we want to give Zack a chance to develop the next arc, but in the interim we’ll probably have some other streams with different casts running. More details to come on that!

Fourth, we’ve made a quick update to our Patreon. We recently put out the first call for series submissions to do a stream on how to run various Anime and video games in Valor. Based on the response, we’re going to make this a regular fixture, going forward Patrons can submit potential series for us to cover and we’ll put it to a vote on Twitter as to what to cover. Topic submissions start at the $5 Patreon tier, so if you’re interested in making submissions our Patreon can be found here! If we receive enough submissions, we’ll let the Patrons narrow down the topics to about 5 before putting it up on Twitter, and any Patron, no matter the contribution tier is eligible to vote on the narrowed down topic list.

Finally, conventions. We’d love to do them, but we’re not going to start until we have vaccines ourselves and the vaccine situation in the country has dramatically improved. Unfortunately, there’s no saying when that’s actually going to be, but we are guardedly hopeful we may be able to do some conventions during the latter part of the year. More to come on that as we know more.

Valor Live Coming Soon!

/0 Comments/in /by

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 Sample Chapter

/0 Comments/in /by

The Valor Sample Chapter can be found here

How to Use the Roll20 Character Sheet

/0 Comments/in /by

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!