NarDec Update - February 2025

Happy February from me and the NarDec crew!

It’s Zoran again to update you on everything we’ve been up to.

Rotgrind: A Journey Through Tyne! Coming March 12th (if nothing goes wrong)

Season 4 of Rotgrind, or what we’re now calling, “A Journey Through Tyne” is an attempt to accomplish a few things we wanted to achieve with season 3 but failed to do so.

• We want to create a point where new viewers can hop right in, we tried this with season 3 but realized quickly that it wasn’t a great idea with how the story was going.

• We want to show off more of Tyne! We love our city of Outset, but there is a lot more to be seen, and we want to have a globe trotting adventure to showcase what’s out there.

• Give our players a refresh. We’ve adjusted our character’s builds now that some of them have been remastered. Mainly it’s switching around some feats to better prepare for the new season.

• Adjusting our Stream integration. We’ve done away with our old system and implemented something new! More about that in this post.

• Re-tune ourselves to encourage more laughs in the campaign!

• Give our last campaign a satisfying send off.

That’s right, this is the last season of “Rotgrind.” Meaning this is the last season with this band of chucklefucks. But, this is not the end of Rotgrind as a whole, just these character’s stories.

We will still be developing the world and planning another campaign within it. But with Starfinder 2E on the horizon, along with other gaming opportunities that our players are interested in, we feel that taking this crew on a different adventure would be best. A change of scenery after playing the same characters for 3-4+ years would be lovely!

"How are we gonna torture these guys?"

A New Complication System!

In the past we allowed people to submit “complications” for when we rolled a 1, or when a monster rolled a 1, or when the moons aligned… Basically we found that the concept worked, just the execution was off. As was our submission process. So, what is our new system?

Introducing, the Pity Point system.

Goals of this system:

• Be usable and adjustable for multiple game systems

• Encourage roleplay and comradery with each other

• Eliminate any antagonistic “No, and” role play

• Encourage a more uniform audience participation

For example, while playing Pathfinder Second Edition:

When they roll a Nat 20

• If a player rolls a natural 20, or spends a hero point, they are able to declare a Narrative Declaration! Basically adding something cool to what they’re doing. For Example: If they roll a nat 20 on a survival check, they can say they found a survivalist’s hutt that’s stocked with food, instead of getting double food for camp. Results like this can still be tempered by GM discretion.

When they reroll a dice with a Hero Point or Pity Point

• If a player rerolls a dice with their hero point or pity point, and it’s less than a 10, they add 10 to their roll, making use of that resource feel so much better. (Otherwise known as the Jason Keeley rule, if I explained it right)

When they roll a Natural 1

• A player who rolls a nat 1 can still reroll with a hero or pity point, but, must take a complication.

• Each player will bank 3 complications (or get more if needed) submitted by you guys to pull from. The GM no longer picks the complication, the players choose.

• Even if the player critically succeeds out of a nat 1, they still have to take the complication.

• Monsters, “Bosses,” NPCs, do NOT use these systems.

What is a Pity Point?

• A pity point is a point the Game Master holds in reserve to offer or be asked for.

• A pity point functions similar to a hero point, or in other systems, a simple reroll.

How is a Pity Point used?

• Generally, if a player has no more hero points, or don’t want to use theirs, they can ask for a pity point.

• The player is then able to reroll as if it was a hero point.

• Currently the system is meant for rerolls, but in time we could also allow them to act just like a hero point with all the other mechanics it comes with.

How does the GM get a Pity Point?

• From you! If anyone donates, subscribes, or does anything involving giving us money during a stream, it gets added to the GM’s pity point pool. When the goal is reached, the GM gets a pity point to give out. The GM can only have a total of 3 points banked.

Does this replace Hero Points?

• It does not! We will still start the session with 1 hero point, and be given hero points throughout the session. Mainly for doing something funny or good RP. Just like the default PF2E rules, The pity point system is something extra.

Great! Where can I submit my Complication!

• We will be making a separate post with all of the details soon!

This system is subject to change throughout the campaign. Testing this with several offline sessions, we're confident this'll be the system we'll stick with.

We’re excited to bring back Rotgrind on March 12th! We will have a future post with more details about the campaign very soon. We might be busy with Monster Hunter Wilds so excuse us.

Wrath & Glory is now on break!

But don’t fret! It’s not the end of our Wrath & Glory/Warhammer adventures. It sadly has to make way for future projects. That, and due to OnCallGM and Hulky Krow being out for a whole week in an unfortunate bit of scheduling mish mash, we had to rush some recordings of Wrath & Glory so we could finish the current adventure we were on. So that’s why you’d probably found us streaming randomly on Monday.

We still have 1 more adventure in the Litanies of the Lost collection of adventures. And we will return to that when we have time. Rotgrind is coming on the horizon, so we sadly have to crunch to get it ready for all of you!

Twitch Changes, and how it affects us.

For those of you who haven’t heard yet, Twitch has implemented a 100-hour storage limit for Highlights and Uploads starting April 19, 2025. This is how this will affect us here at Narrative Declaration.

Link explaining what's going on: https://help.twitch.tv/s/article/video-on-demand?language=en_US#storage

Even though this goes in affect in a few months, it changes our mentality now.

First, let me explain what this means.

Whenever we were done with a livestream, we would have the YouTube side have a membership exclusive VOD for those who support us, and we would upload manually Patreon’s version as soon as we could. Twitch, same as YouTube, would get a VOD of our stream that you can view after the stream if you’re subbed. But, after 60 days, that VOD gets auto deleted by Twitch. To circumvent this deletion, so you can have the chat data with it, we would “highlight” the entire stream, meaning you can view the VOD and chat whenever you want.

Now, with this change, we can have only so many streams highlighted before we hit the storage limit. Effectively making it more work on us to maintain a rotating section of highlights. So, we’ve elected to no longer highlight the Twitch VODs, as we just don’t see the reason to maintain it with the recent changes.

We don’t like this, as it affects those who sub on Twitch to have that exclusive feature. You can still sub to see the past broadcasts, but anything older than 60 days will now be auto deleted. So we recommend those who sub to us on Twitch, to instead be a Patreon member or a YouTube Member, where the VODs won’t disappear after those 60 days.

This is a bit awkward for us, as Twitch sub revenue, although not the main source of revenue, is still enough income that we put in the extra care to still have a Twitch presence on the platform, and to maintain the VODs there for those who prefer it.

The livestreams, especially the revenue generated by people subbing to ZoranTheWizard’s Twitch channel & NarDec’s channel really help balance things out internally for us, as it all goes to the same place. That consistent income helps us pay for everything, and predict what we might have coming in. Now with this new change, we see no reason to “maintain” the Twitch side of things any longer.

We will still be streaming on Twitch, whilst still multi-streaming to YouTube. In which you and others are still welcome to sub, donate bits, etc to engage with the stream integrations we have, but VOD storage will be primarily a YouTube & Patreon thing now.

So if you know which best helps us, Patreon gives us the best cut in revenue. YouTube & Twitch are 70/30 split our way, but if enough unsub from our Twitch, then it’d become 50/50 between the account and Twitch.

So if you wish to support us, Patreon is the best bang for the buck. If you want, being a benefactor on YouTube is another alternative if you want to view past VODs as soon as the stream is done.

How do you feel about Wargames?

One of the things we also love, on top of TTRPGs, are Wargames! We love our WH40K, Star Wars Legion, Bolt & Action, Battletech, Battlefleet Gothic, and more. And we’ve been toying with the idea of doing narrative campaigns, or more relaxed casual battle reports.

Let us know in the comments if you’d support and watch something like that from us!

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These are the major items coming from us. We’re prepping for our trip to GenCon 2025, Zoran might actually take a real vacation, and we’re hard at work getting Rotgrind ready.

Thank you for your ongoing support!