Hi there,

April was a busy month – two playtest weekends, a map reveal, and a full run of Monday Inspo.

We're Going to UK Games Expo

At the end of May, we'll be at UK Games Expo at the NEC in Birmingham – Friday 29th through Sunday 31st May. If you're going, come find us!

Friday the 29th is our busiest day. Yehuda is running a playtest of Trashonauts in The Playtest Zone (2-108) from 10am to 1pm, and we all will be taking part in the Publisher-Designer Networking event. If you're a designer or publisher who'll be there, we'd love to cross paths.

Godflesh: Explore the Cinderglow Basin

We have a map!

The world of Thaal started from a Microscope session – a collaborative world building game the team played to build the setting's history from scratch. From there, a procedurally generated map gave the original playtest group a geography to explore together. After two years of sessions, that exploration fed directly into the game: Locations, histories, and problems that wouldn't exist without the group finding them on that map.

Marc Moureau (marcmoureau.com) did an incredible job turning our playtest insights and rough materials into a tangible world map you can actually navigate. It's the highest production value I've put into any of my games ever. Together with the key art, the map is how Godflesh presents itself to the world.

Development Updates

Two sessions, two very different tables

I ran two Godflesh sessions in the same weekend – my regular online Friday group and a face-to-face session with the original playtest crew. As it turns out, they were testing different things. With the online group, walking through options and talking through the mechanics surfaces something specific: whether the rules are clear and doing what they should. The face-to-face group tells me something different – they play at full speed, they've been there from day one, and even after significant rewrites they just pick it up. "OK Aviv, doing this move, here's my roll." That tells me the game has momentum.

Colossal Combat

The standout from the face-to-face session was a fight against a dragon – part of the ongoing God Broker Cycle campaign. I decided this one was an insectoid rather than reptilian – so dragon-dragonfly.

I've adapted Colossal Combat from Break!! – instead of one HP pool to chip down, you split a massive creature into body parts and attack each for different effects. The party focused on the wings as the weak point, got onto the creature's back, and hacked the wing joints until they grounded it. Best line: "the bravest way to enter a dragon is through its armpit." It slots well into Godflesh. We also posted a God Broker Cycle catch-up thread – three adventures in, things have got properly complicated.

Recovery mechanics

The online sessions produced some meaningful insights. One breaks down Godflesh's two recovery tiers: Catch Your Breath (quick – clear one mark on all tracks) and Gather Strength (a full day per track or burned mark cleared, though paying a bounty lets you combine both). In the session one player paid a bounty and walked away fully restored; another barely needed recovery at all – one pressure mark. Everyone else was far more beaten up. That spread is the system doing its job. Recovery is a pacing decision.

New player, first combat

The second thread came from a new player who wanted to summon roots to pin enemies in place. The question I always start with isn't "what move?" – it's "What imaginary outcome are you hoping to achieve? " That opens up additional, interesting options. Figure out the story first, and the move usually follows.

Monday Inspo

​Claymore was one of the first manga series I read through properly. The body horror, the transformations, and the layered plotting all shaped how I approach monstrosity in Godflesh.

​Monster Hunter World hooked me with creature design and the loop of harvesting parts to craft gear. It fed directly into how Godflesh handles monster materials.

​The Witcher 3 – a theme we're building into Godflesh is that knowing your enemy matters. The bestiary lists vulnerabilities alongside lore, so research has game value. Grim World, a Dungeon World supplement, does the same and is worth a look.

​Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred launched just last week. The environment design exemplifies how the mythical leaves a physical mark on everything. The new Skovos region draws from classical antiquity, which isn't far from Godflesh's own territory.

That's April. See some of you in Birmingham at the end of May.

– The Zero Prep Games Team