It's been awhile since we've had a development update for Street Wolves: Zero Hour. I’ve been too busy making stuff, but that changes now. More blogging, less making.

To get you up to speed, I'm working on a version of Street Wolves that stands on its own, unlike Street Wolves: Turbo Edition which requires Savage Worlds and the Savage Worlds license does not allow you to publish all the rules in your book, so you also have to buy Savage Worlds.

Zero Hour is using the Year Zero Engine under the hood, which is made by Free League. The Year Zero Engine has an open SRD, meaning you can use their rules in your works in addition to your own..

I'm currently working on the quick start version. This quick start will be both a taste test of the game as well as a prototype that will be updated as I test.

Okay, now that we're all caught up, in this dev log I want to briefly hit on a topic that is driving the development of Street Wolves: Zero Hour, Thematic Design.

Thematic Design

Street Wolves: Zero Hour is going to be a more gritty and dangerous Street Wolves experience. If someone wants more over the top, neon blasting excitement, I can point them to the Savage Worlds version.

Savage Worlds lends itself to heroic, over the top exploits. After years of running Street Wolves in Savage Worlds and trying to make it a bit more gritty, I had mixed results. The game system just lends itself to action. And that’s fine! Rather than continue fighting it, I’m moving to embrace it a bit more.

But that leaves me wanting the original driving force of Street Wolves, a more down to earth and neo-noir type setting. Yes, it can have gun battles and that, but I want it to feel more dangerous. That's where we're at now as I develop Zero Hour. I'm working to make that type of game.

Thematic Changes

There are a number of variations of the Year Zero Engine mechanics. It’s sort of not just one system. I need to pick and choose what aspects work best for the thematic experience I'm going for.

Mechanically, my goal is to take some of the more tense stuff they’ve done, like Alien, and add a bit less freaky horror to it, to better capture the neo-noir, street level investigation and battles I’m looking for, but we'll talk more about mechanics in a future update. This time we're focusing on theme.

Lone Wolves

The first thing that really got me thinking about what I’d do to ramp up the tension in Street Wolves is to change the setting default as to how the Street Wolves operate. There are a few options in Turbo Edition from working with Wolfpack, having a corporate sponsor, or the players being on their own as “lone wolves”.

The default for Turbo Edition is working with Wolfpack. Despite being an illegal operation, Wolfpack is a pretty powerful sponsor with access to weapons, equipment, intel, and seemingly a lot of other agents.

To scale things back In this version of Street Wolves, the Wolves get their mission and can rely on advice and feedback from their handler (watcher in Street Wolves). Overall, players are part of a larger organization that can help them out. It feels more safe.

So in this version of Street Wolves, the setting default is that the Wolves are a group of  independent operators.

The term "Street Wolves" is in-universe slang for people who live outside the law that live by their own code. They aren't quiet criminals, but they don't let the law get in the way of meeting their goals.

In Zero Hour Wolfpack is a faction that the Players work with, but not necessarily the only one.

Wolfpack is a lot weaker than in Turbo Edition. They can help, but they mostly provide jobs and cash to pay the wolves. When the Players are given a mission, they must work out how to implement it without much hand holding.

However, I know there are groups that love hand holding, so I will probably add some advice in the book that it’s okay to give a bit more guidance for those groups. I may introduce more of a “guy in a van” type of thing where their watcher has the ability to help provide guidance and oversight, but doesn’t have a lot of resources to draw on other than that.

In a way, this lone wolves default is closer to a show like Burn Notice, where the characters are their own group who work with various “bosses.”

In any case, having the Street Wolves be more independent allows for the opportunity for them to work for multiple factions, and that's something I'm excited about.

Moral Dilemmas

I'm aiming for Zero Hour to be a bit more morally grey. My most favorite moments as a GM running games like Street Wolves and Delta Green is when players struggle while making  the right choice or the best choice out of bad options. I love when it’s not as clear cut decision.

Having the Wolves “work” for several factions can increase the odds of this happening. One faction may ask them to do something pretty terrible. Or they can get competing requests from factions. Heck, they may even get requests from enemy factions for help. Or they can be forced to work for an enemy faction in some way.

This isn’t something that is necessarily backed up or enforced through game mechanics, but I am keeping my eye open on opportunites for this. Mostly it’s in the lore/adventure writing that this is likely to come out more.

Speaking of Factions…

At this point I’m likely to leave out a few factions from the Zero Hour core book to help reinforce the vibes. The most likely one on the chopping block is the ninja. I love ninja. I include them in my Turbo Edition games. The problem with ninja is that as soon as you introduce them, the game goes from semi realistic to over the top instantly. It's hard to say something is gritty when there's ninja in it.

Another faction I may leave out is the Back Alley Brawlers, who are muscle-head street fighters. I haven't gotten to use them in adventures yet, so you might not be that familar with them. They're basically doofy street fighter types and as such they're a bit comical, so they might be on the chopping block.

While both of these factions are fairly small in the scope of things, I think removing them (at least in the core book) can go a long way towards enforcing the vibes.

I’ve thought about adding Stormfront (introduced in the Heart of Glass campaign) to Zero Hour, but they may not make the cut. I might just introduce them in the YZE version of Heart of Glass like I did for the Savage Worlds version. We'll see.

Wrapping Up

Okay, maybe this post was a little bit rambling, but I hope I've been able to enlighten you a little bit more on the behind the scenes goings on while I develop Street Wolves: Zero Hour.