Spellsword RPG Development Update #9—June 30, 2026

Hello Reader, here are the latest Spellsword updates!

Snapshot / TL;DR

Starting spells are now drafted through Ranger, Spellsword, and Thief.
Companion App: new build is live. UI overhaul and experimental features are in.
Culture system overhaul is underway. Culture Types and Stations now let you build flexible character origins without locking you into fixed lore.
Human and Ork lore entries are internally drafted as separate ancestry-focused pieces.
Foundry VTT build-out started. Character sheets and actors come first.
Mass Combat rebuild started. We’re scaling the existing combat rules instead of duct-taping on a separate subsystem.
Faction gameplay concept work is back, now under the working title Convergence Campaigns.
Alpha Tester scheduling conflicts slowed down testing and Quickstart character creation this cycle.

Major Progress This Cycle

Starting Spells: Ranger, Spellsword, and Thief

Spell assembly moved forward for Ranger, Spellsword, and Thief. That makes six classes drafted: Martial Artist, Paladin, Priest, and now these three. Only Warrior and Wizard are left.

We’re holding the full starting spell set for a single, simultaneous release once every class is drafted and reviewed.

Companion App: New Build Live

New Companion App build is live. UI overhaul and a batch of experimental features are in.

Spell Creator and Character Creator both finished their UI pass and rebuild. Interactive Character Sheet is next.

The goal is simple. Make the heavy parts of Spellsword easier to use at the table. The app is not just a reference tool. It’s how we keep a crunchy game playable without turning every player into a spreadsheet goblin.

Culture System Overhaul

Culture system got restructured. Now it’s built around broad Culture Types and Stations, not fixed lore anchors.

This is part of the ongoing lore revision. A homebrew table should not have to retrofit Spellsword’s politics, nations, or history just to make a character work. Culture should give players a useful starting point without hijacking the GM’s setting.

Stations got updated for the new culture framework. A Station is not a job. It’s a starting place in society, shaped by the player and GM to fit the actual community the character comes from. Station also sets starting wealth, paid out in Claws, Scales, and Drakes to keep starting equipment simple.

Ancestry Lore: Human and Ork Entries

Human and Ork lore entries are now internally drafted under a separate ancestry-focused structure.

These are not Culture Type entries. They don’t define a nation, government, or specific society. They’re broader lore pieces about how these peoples see themselves, their instincts, their pressures, and their place in the world.

Culture answers the question of where and how a character was shaped.

Ancestry answers what kind of being they are, and what comes with that.

Keeping these two separate is crucial. A Human from a frontier fortress, a Human from a civilized imperial city, and a Human from a dungeonborn sealing order should not all feel like they came from the same cultural mold. The same goes for Orks. Ancestry gives identity pressure. Culture gives social origin. There’s overlap, but they are not the same.

Foundry VTT Build-Out Begins

Foundry VTT system build-out is underway.

Character sheets and actors come first. That’s the load-bearing piece. Automation, macros, abilities, and smoother table procedures all build on top of it.

Current priority is not fancy effects. It’s making sure Spellsword has a usable foundation for real virtual table play while the Companion App keeps moving.

Mass Combat Rebuild Begins

Mass Combat concept rules are getting rebuilt this cycle.

Our primary goal is to achieve natural scaling: the same basic rules should hold whether it’s two characters, twenty warriors, or two armies. Mass Combat should not feel like a separate board game duct-taped onto Spellsword when the body count goes up. That sudden jerk from one mode to another is bad design. We’re not doing it.

The current direction compares offensive and defensive pressure using the existing combat logic, then resolves how many characters take wounds from that exchange.

Area effects are getting the same treatment. If an effect can hit a big chunk of a unit, the rules should show that without making us track every soldier like a separate player character.

Our current target: complete a full rules draft and be ready for internal testing before the next update.

Convergence Campaigns: Faction Gameplay Returns

Faction-level gameplay concept work is back, now under the working title Convergence Campaigns. Name is not final. I’m not sold on it yet.

This brings back an old design goal: let players actually affect the world without needing GM permission for every consequence, and without trapping each table or player in a private sandbox nobody else can interact with. That last part matters. Without a way for other players to respond, faction gameplay turns into solitaire. It may create activity, but it does not create real consequences, pressure, or emergent gameplay.

This will support player choices at every level, from the starting party to faction-level and kingdom-scale play, even across clubs and tables.

When we get this right, the world comes alive. Everything that happens has weight and meaning. It’s not crafted or forced. It becomes real. It’s earned, and it’s engaging.

Rules and procedures are being worked out for internal testing first. This stays behind the curtain until it’s tough enough to survive real use.

Testing and Bottlenecks

Alpha Tester scheduling conflicts hit our main group hard this cycle. Both general testing and Quickstart Challenge character work slowed down.

It’s a frustrating bottleneck.

Progress continues, just slower. We’re working around the delay instead of waiting for the stars to align.

Design Insight

Every culture entry we write is also a constraint.

The old way to write one was to nail down a specific people: a government, a set of customs, a history, a list of conflicts. It reads rich on the page. It also only fits the one place it was written for.

And nowhere else.

The next nation may borrow some from it.

The next homebrew kingdom gets even less from it.

The next club’s setting may get nothing from it at all, leaving them to pick up all the pieces themselves.

So we stopped writing nations first and started writing broader cultural patterns instead.

Culture is now built around six broad types.

Civilized cultures are held together by law, infrastructure, and institutions.

Frontier cultures rely on practical authority because the “proper” authority cannot reach them in time.

Barbarian cultures place greater emphasis on oaths, kinship, honor, and reputation than on office or paperwork.

Nomadic cultures survive through movement and strict adherence to protective laws born from nearly forgotten lessons.

Wildbound cultures are shaped by land that moves and shifts of its own accord. The environment has a will, and the people have to live with and around it.

Dungeonborn cultures exist to manage, harvest, or guard against whatever lies within the zone they call home.

You’ll note that none of these are a specific people.

Each one is a chassis, a format to build from.

A character picks a Culture Type, then rolls Station against that type’s table. Station gives them a starting place in society, but the player and GM shape what that means within the actual setting they will play in. It could be one of our settings or theirs. Either way, the mechanics should support the table’s setting instead of pushing everyone into ours.

A station in a civilized city does not mean the same thing as a station in a dungeonborn fortress-monastery. A frontier outcast is not the same as a nomadic outcast. A barbarian noble is not the same creature as a civilized noble with a better coat.

That’s the point. It gives a sense of richness and variety.

Every specific nation we build for Spellsword going forward can sit on top of this structure instead of replacing it. A homebrew table gets the same chassis for whatever nation, people, or local culture they already imagined.

Nobody has to retrofit a framework that was never built for their table.

—Christian

What Members Should Test

Try the new Companion App build—the UI overhaul and experimental features are live.
Review the Culture Type and Station framework and tell us whether it gives enough structure without locking down your setting.
Share feedback in our Discord.

What’s Next: 2-Week Objective

Continue building starting spells, with only Warrior and Wizard left.
Move the Companion App forward so the Interactive Character Sheet is ready for table use.
Continue Foundry VTT actor and sheet build-out.
Develop Mass Combat rules into a draft ready for internal testing.
Develop Convergence Campaigns rules for internal testing.
Continue the culture and ancestry lore overhaul with additional entries.