The Secret of Weepstone

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• Announcements·5 Dec 2025Official

  In Defense of THAC0

  The year is 1981. Your trusty human fighter swings an axe at the goblin…aaaand it’s time to break out the attack matrix to find out if you hit. A lot of people keep asking why we’re not using something like the combat charts below, or THAC0 in The Secret of Weepstone, and let me tell you exactly why we’re keeping it simple.In reality, after a while of playing any roleplaying system, whatever arcane methodology the designers use to determine something like success in combat usually does become easier to do on the fly. That said, there’s been many, many more ways to calculate combat in Dungeons & Dragons in addition to the charts above, so there’s no one “true” answer or solution to it, or for a game paying homage to it. So… let’s talk about the one that seems to be the most beloved and hated in equal measure, THAC0. If you’re somehow this deep into a blog dedicated to retro RPG combat resolution mechanics and don't know what THAC0 stands for, hats off to you, but it stands for ‘To Hit Armor Class 0’. What’s the deal with THAC0? Like the examples above, many methods over the years were used to figure out how to represent the difficulty of a given monster or character succeeding in an attack against a foe. Different accounts are given of how they landed on THAC0 specifically, who called it that first, and the very first time it was officially used as the method. What’s certain is that the mechanic appeared in an un-named form in AD&D 1st Edition (1977), only to become the official method for AD&D 2nd edition (1989).Another notable place that people became aware of THAC0 was the original Baldur's Gate game series from Black Isle. As it was made in the 90’s, it used the current ruleset, which was 2nd Edition AD&D, in all its THAC0-laden glory. That being said, with a computer doing all the calculations, the player didn't need to follow what was happening under the hood. The differences are more obvious when playing at the table in person. Ascending Armor Class is what mo...
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• Announcements·2 Nov 2025Official

  Behind the Screen

  Hey Delvers, It’s been so amazing to see the support for the game following the Showcase and the Demo launch. We can’t thank you enough for showing love to a project we have both been dreaming about making for over a decade. From the very beginning, the goal was to evoke the vibe of playing those games with your friends, probably in a basement, maybe in Ohio. That’s a tricky thing, of course. It was months of experimentation and iteration until it even started to get there. We wanted to pay tribute to all the things we loved from that era, namely the stark B&W line-art, the rules that are both simple and arcane, and the pulpy stories.The first hurdle was to create visuals that conveyed almost being inside that stark, often somewhat crude, art from the earlier TTRPG books of the day. Sean spent the better part of a year tinkering off and on creating a custom shader that let us dynamically generate cross-hatch shadow and lighting effects to complement the plan to have the 3D environment rendered with black and white line-art textures. There’s so much art in the rulebooks and modules that the player never gets to enjoy, and we wanted to create something that gave a look from both sides of the screen.Once the nuts and bolts of rendering the environment was sorted, the real work began, which of course led to the next thing that makes the game visually what it is… so, so much art. Very much like how the original Dungeons & Dragons books (especially Basic/Expert, but 1st Edition AD&D as well) showcased an assortment of artists in the rulebooks, monster manuals, and other places, we wanted to do the same. The sheer volume of work involved would make it difficult for a single artist to keep up, but also the varied art styles of the old books are part of the charm we wanted to also bring to our game. Uniquely familiar, where it’s cohesive, but yet we still get to enjoy the individual style each artist brings.Our memories are full of imagery from all the greats from classic TT...
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• Patch Notes·28 Oct 2025Official

  Hotfix - Demo v 1.30

  The Ring of Regeneration no longer causes a hard-lock if right-click > examined immediately after being obtained.Fixed Rae's blacksmith hammer to prevent it from magically upgrading to +1 when dropped.
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• Patch Notes·24 Oct 2025Official

  Hotfix - Demo v 1.29

  Fixed an issue where some players could get hard locked after swapping a party member's position with a dead party member.
  Read full article on Community Announcements (Henry Hoare)

• Announcements·23 Oct 2025Official

  The Demo is Live!

  I am so very stoked to finally launch this public demo. At the last Penny Arcade Expo, we watched people stomp through Weepstone Keep for 4 days straight. After a year of work, it was so rewarding to see the smiles and laughs in person. There’s literally no bigger dopamine generator for a game dev. We left that dream weekend hyper motivated and desperate to get back to creating. Armed with a notepad full of great suggestions and tweaks, we got to work making changes and further polishing the demo. Now, here we are, ready to face the final boss of being a creative person online: exposing your creation publicly! I considered coming to each and every house to stand behind you as you play, menacingly, but it falls squarely outside the budget.We still have a ways to go, primarily lots of content for you to delve. More Dungeons, crypts, and abbeys. Lots of weird, desperate, and/or unhinged people. Classic baddies stepping right out of those dungeon crawling ‘80s D&D modules. The town of Weepstone has some issues, and this town ain’t going to save itself. We would really love to hear your post-demo thoughts via the Talesworth Game Studio Discord. Also, follow on Instagram or Twitter for sneak peaks and art bits as we tell our story in the Kingdom of Talesworth.\10/20 Twitter post: It really reinforces our belief that this is a game that so many of us want (have wanted) to exist. Thank you for the kind words, the likes, the shares and the encouragement. We read every comment and they've all made a difference.]- Sean & Hunter
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