FATAL & Friends 2016-19: Bad Rules and Hidden Jewels

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Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Seriously, you want a good time, you drop some Germans and Czechs with magic powers they don't understand into Sigil and watch them bumble about trying to find a way home.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2016 06:35

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# ¿ Apr 19, 2024 21:59

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Clerics are, uh, not tolerated in Sigil.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2016 06:51

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Bieeardo posted:

And there's Chessenta, where wizards were hunted and burned on pyres made of something called 'witchweed', the smoke of which screwed with spellcasting.

Then again, I can't really blame them, being so close to Thay and all.

This is usually a prudent course of action in every single D&D setting, though.

Wizards are just one step behind those drat gods in terms of troublemaking.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2016 08:17

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Doresh posted:

Did they use to live underground before this curse? I'm certainly confused how elves could spend their entire lifes without ever seeing the sun without ending up looking like freaky, near-blind albinos. Then again, magic.

Maybe all the good gods used to be "good" in the same way as Old Testament God? Then again, that would actually imply that the setting (or rather the gods) can change.

The Drow are basically a D&D version of the Curse of Ham, an old (racist as gently caress) idea that slavery was justified because dark-skinned people were the descendants of Ham, who Noah cursed for being nearby when he woke up from a bender naked. He cursed him to always be the servant to his other brothers, though the actual biblical story doesn't mention dark skin at all. The dark skin thing got added on as apocrypha by future generations.

It's really loving shameful, especially with that Epic Destiny of 'be reborn a good white elf' thing they gave drow later.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2016 17:25

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Don't forget the Greyhawk/Generic gods let Asmodeous trick them and create Hell because they couldn't bear to watch the horrible torture they'd ordered carried out in their name, and so said 'Instead of stopping it, go do it somewhere we can't watch.'

Kill all D&D Gods.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2016 00:54

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Robindaybird posted:

Yes, that's exactly the tone darker settings should go for: Yes, the odds are stacked against you, things look grim, but fuckin' hell, you save that one little kid, that village, you put down one monster, break a single curse - there's another star shining in that big black void now, if people keep going someday, that sky's going to be littered with light.

I find relentlessly bleak settings like Necropolis exhausting - where it's "the world's permanently hosed and ain't nothing you can do."

Which always brings across the tone of 'So why are we bothering to play' rather than exhaustion, to me. God, I hate Grimdark. Dark is great! Grimdark, not so much.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2016 01:29

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I'm thinking of abandoning my WHFRP thing since I haven't updated in months and taking a stab at the cursed thing that is Ironclaw (We've had how many attempts at reviewing it now?)

This is inspired by my running 2e for the first time and discovering it is rad as hell. Sanguine really does a good job with crunchy systems.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2016 19:50

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Reading through IC2e carefully in anticipation of reviewing it some time, it strikes me that one of the most consistent errors I keep seeing in RPG organization is that a lot of games put character creation and reams of Gifts and Skills and such before they put an explanation of their basic mechanics.

Sanguine's games are so well designed, but they could use better organization.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2016 07:31

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

It's because it was how it was first done to them and by god the cycle of abuse is going to continue, I find.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2016 06:24

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

gradenko_2000 posted:

Well yeah, that part's a given - if you made a mistake, tell the players that you done goofed and work out an arrangement that you can all live with, rather than playing out an episode of Criminal Minds just to obfuscate your mistake.

That sounds like admitting you were wrong, which is something clever Game Masterminds who are super geniuses like the characters in their favorite dragon novels, would never do.

The whole idea that GMing is a position of power that needs to cow your players needs to die.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2016 01:52

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Mors Rattus posted:

It assumes the goal of the game is to acquire wealth rather than any kind of story, which is a viable playstyle.

If one I don't personally understand.

I've run a game where the story was they were rough and tumble mercenaries trying to survive and get rich enough to retire in Ironclaw 1e, where they certainly would've pillaged anything they could and gone off to have a fun time trying to find a buyer.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2016 02:36

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Random critical effects are the worst, but sometimes I find it works out well to do something like ask a player 'Why did that enemy mook just critically miss you' when a foe rolls the worst possible result and let them pick out something cool to do.

We do that in 13th Age to make up for the fact that critical rules mostly favor the enemy instead of the players (since the enemies are rolling more dice, usually outnumbering the PCs, they just happen to hit a natural 20 more often by dint of volume) and so we agreed to let the PCs punish enemies who roll a 1.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2016 19:52

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

gradenko_2000 posted:

I've often entertained the idea of giving Gygax's diatribe the bird and just go "ok, PCs get to use this d100 critical results table whenever they roll a nat 20 so you can randomly decapitate an Orc with a spoon, but the monsters get nothing"

This is actually a good idea, because again, the PCs will usually be outnumbered and so rolling fewer dice. A player-favoring critical rule is usually a better idea than the other way around.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2016 01:44

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

gradenko_2000 posted:

I feel like if I ever ran into that kind of situation, it'd either be we'd put Rappan Athuk on the backburner while we played Mithril Gates: The Smeltening Economic Simulator, or I'd just tell the group "okay, presumably you're able to do what you like to the gates. Can we go back to the module I said we'd all be running together?" because otherwise we're all just kidding ourselves if the first instinct is to gently caress off and ignore the book.

(of course, the alternative is to run something that doesn't have such a massive goddamn plot hole, but that's neither here nor there)

There's also the fact that, well, there's the maxim that if this isn't the interesting part of your characters' lives why the hell are you writing about it? Running all the fake adventures and hard-luck missions that have no chance of success only works if that's the theme you and the PCs agreed on. If you sat down and were like 'Yeah, how would you guys like a game about hard-luck mercenaries who are constantly searching for The Big Score while bandits and hucksters target them at every turn and things often end with them poor but still hoping for tomorrow' that'd be a fun game! But it's something you need to make sure your players are into and consciously make the theme. Lying to them or giving them boring runarounds when players really want to play dashing heroes who often succeed at their ambitions is a good way to lose those players.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2016 17:23

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

It is just amazing how often these big GM ADVICE BOOKS carry on and on about problems you could solve by just talking to your players and working out what everyone wants.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2016 21:52

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

A supernatural game that talks up how important humans are and then never has any rules or setting reflect that?

I'm shocked. Shocked!

# ¿ Feb 22, 2016 08:09

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Pathfinder has every flaw from 3.5 but even worse.

Friends don't let friends suffer through Pathfinder.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2016 09:05

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Hostile V posted:

Pathfinder is good on paper but then it quickly becomes a nightmare of giving the Synthesist Summoner magic item creation feats and rolling up an Orc Witch Doctor Witch to cast debuffs off stamina while the Druid buffs themselves out the rear end, the Barbarian gains DR while raging and never stops raging, and the Rogue desperately falls behind everyone except when they need a lock opened.

Until they remember to cast Knock.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2016 09:50

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Also, heavy armor used to be straight up better. Full Plate had no actual penalties, didn't limit Dex Bonus to AC, etc. 'I can wear heavy armor' used to mean something besides 'Dex can be my dump stat'.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2016 10:30

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

To be fair making my dumb dog put on silly hats and taking pictures of him is hilarious.

But yeah, a DM has a position with total control. 'Winning' at that by making the players lose is just stupid. You 'win' by EVERYONE HAVING A GOOD TIME, you included, because you're playing a game! With friends!

# ¿ Feb 26, 2016 02:01

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Mors Rattus posted:

That is *funny*. You think you *see* Orz but Orz are not *light reflections*.
Maybe you think Orz are *many bubbles* too. It is such a joke.
Orz are not *many bubbles* like *campers*. Orz are just Orz.

At least they aren't goddamn Juffo-Wup freaks.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2016 17:35

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

OvermanXAN posted:

One thing I've gotten from reading these threads is that a lot of RPGs seem to have this problem. I mean, on the one hand with Rifts, White Wolf, or [Insert Heartbreaker Here] you can credit it to lack of (good) editing, amateurishness, or what have you, but it seems to just be common in general that people don't consider probabilities, how numbers are going to scale, or how things are going to balance in general. It seems like a systemic thing in the industry.

One of the reasons I will always go to bat for Sanguine (Ironclaw's designers) is that it feels like they're one of the only companies I've played that has a clear idea of how to handle scale in their system. For instance, every PC in Ironclaw will have, at least, two d8 level stats. One of the core conceits of the system is most enemies will only have d6s unless they can finagle situational modifiers. So you always, always have something where you're a cut above and that translates directly into a die with a 25% chance of rolling a number the average mook literally can't beat no matter how well he rolls. It's a good, solid way to get across that the PCs are significant people, but can't totally brush the common soldier aside.

I'll be starting a genuine review soon. IC2e has, over the course of running it a bit, basically taken the prize as my favorite low-fantasy RPG. They fixed most of my complaints from 1e, really got the most out of their system, and even dropped the dumb numerical merits and flaws system!

Plus, I think Mors Rattus called it 'Walt Disney Presents The Borgias' and that is completely accurate.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2016 08:08

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Oh goddamnit. Not more Witch Girls.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2016 22:15

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I mean we already objectively finished Witch Girls when someone made Punch Witch, the Witch who Punches.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2016 22:20

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I think the surest sign a game is going to be mechanically awful is usually if extra Agility (or any stat) gives you extra turns.

I committed this sin when I was younger. It is a terrible one.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2016 02:49

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Kai Tave posted:

Anything that gives you the equivalent of extra actions/turns in any game, in virtually any context, is something that needs to be extra thoroughly scrutinized with an eye towards how hard it can let you break the game, because it almost always allows you to do that.

Not just this, it also gives one player more agency and importance compared to another player. So the guy with a bazillion agility gets to act 6 times while his slow bruiser friend only gets 3, which means he gets to play twice as much. Even beyond balance, this is a recipe for the slow bruiser to get bored.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2016 03:01

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Speaking of reviews, it's time to begin Ironclaw: Squaring the Circle

I'm pretty convinced reviewing this game is cursed. There have been multiple attempts and they've all been abandoned so far. But this game deserves a full review. So join me on a journey of excellent game mechanics, an interesting setting, and some baffling, inexplicably weird poo poo that breaks tone entirely (I.E. the reason I won't be bothering with art. The Species Card art is fantastic, but the weird stylized anime stuff and reused stuff from 1st edition is painful). First, though, I'd like to talk about why I want to review this game.

I reviewed Albedo: Platinum Catalyst because Sanguine Entertainment is one of the best crunchy designers I know of. Ironclaw is no different, but the biggest difference is Ironclaw is Sanguine's own world and setting rather than an adaptation. Ironclaw 1e was their first ever game, and it already showed some inventive and interesting mechanics. In Ironclaw, rather than rolling against a set TN, you rolled a dice pool and compared your highest number against the highest result from an enemy dicepool (either determined by the difficulty of the task or your enemy's skill if you were opposing someone) and it worked quite well as a resolution mechanic. It had some serious flaws, though; a starting PC could have a pretty massive die pool already and it was only going to get bigger, critical successes became vanishingly rare against skilled opposition since they required you to beat an enemy result by 5 (with d12s being the highest die), bonuses and penalties were very clunky and basically required a chart to resolve quickly. I liked Ironclaw 1e, but it was a game too clunky to run with a truly large group. At the same time, the dicepool system and floating modifiers you picked in combat (you could choose to hit first, focus for a later bonus or guaranteed critical, get a bonus to hit, or get a bonus to damage) and the Overwhelm system for criticals, as well as the way it was hard to just outright die and much more likely you'd be 'defeated', made running duels and fights in the original system a lot of fun when it worked. The dicepool system also gave a lot of flexibility in character design and as a concept, worked well out of combat, too. It just needed a few more passes.

Ironclaw 2e is Ironclaw with years of lessons learned (including lessons and refinements tested in Albedo) and it's a much tighter, easier to run game. I want to review this game because 2e is a very real effort to improve the core design and resolution mechanics of 1e, a solid look at what worked and what didn't that resulted in an improved version of an already promising game. I also want to review it because the actual setting is actually really cool; it's a gritty, low-fantasy game about social struggle and the uncomfortable distinctions of class that are being questioned as the influence of the printing press and the gun come into the world. And yet it's one where your PCs absolutely do not start out as shitfarmers or ineffectual. You're still playing relatively grounded people (with a lot of room to advance) but it's both possible and encouraged your hero will begin the game as someone so talented that noble patrons cannot overlook them because of low birth; you are meant to represent the upwardly mobile and the people who don't quite fit into the stratified feudal society of Calabria.

Next Time: Basic Mechanics and how to make a PC!

# ¿ Mar 4, 2016 18:52

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

It's time for more Ironclaw: Squaring the Circle!

One of the cardinal sins most RPGs commit is that they describe PC creation and what a roleplaying game is before they actually describe the dice/resolution system. Ironclaw commits this sin and also makes a pretty bad first impression by putting stuff like this front and center in the intro:

Doesn't that just grab you and say 'Man, this looks like an interesting, gritty low-fantasy game of kingmakers and social mobility'? It doesn't? It looks like the kind of poo poo you'd see in that dumb furry Libertopia game. This isn't a good way to sell the game, and it's especially painful because once you get to the species section you get amazing stuff like this:

Oh, right, pi-rat. I get it.

(https://www.flickr.com/photos/eselkunst/sets/72157623388958572/ This link contains basically all the good art from IC and is worth checking out. I won't be posting any of the other stuff except to occasionally make fun of Bishonen Foxboy)

Not sure why that isn't the headliner, but anyway. The game has a particularly good 'what is a roleplaying game' section where they talk about three different kinds: One for people who have never played a TTRPG before, explaining some of the conventions of the genre, one for people who have played TTRPGs but never played Ironclaw, and then a short section for people who played 1e about the major changes in the system. This is a good idea and they get their point across pretty well, but god help me if we haven't all read a million 'what is an RPG' sections as is.

Now, they then get into 'how to build your PC' but they do it before describing the actual resolution system. Games have got to stop doing this, so I'm going to get into the basic resolution system before I describe PC creation, myself.

IC's system is a dicepool system. You put together a pool of all your applicable dice (bonus dice from special abilities called Gifts, bonus dice from situational modifiers, base stat dice, base skill dice, additional base stat dice if your Career or Species boosts the skill) and then roll against a target number. The target number is either 3 (for simple tasks or tasks where how many successes you get matter more than anything else, like Soaking damage) or an opposing dicepool. Usually, the opposing dicepool is the dicepool of the other character you're trying to hit, trick, sneak past, etc. If there's no other person involved, it'll just be determined by how hard the task is. You do not add the dice together; you compare your dice to their single highest showing number and however many exceed it is how many degrees of success you make. If all of your dice show a 1, you botch; botching is (usually) very rare providing you have any kind of training at a task but it's always really, really bad.

Now we can make sense of PC creation. You have 6 stats: Mind, Body, Will, Speed, Species, and Career. Species and Career are sort of extra dice that get included with the things you're particularly well trained with or represent natural extra aptitude from your race. For instance, foxes are really good at sneaking and lions are really good at showing off, so a Fox would add his species die to any Stealth tests and a Lion would add it to Presence (the skill for making a big impression). Career is something you choose, and like Species, it has about 3 skills it gets added to (so say, a Soldier would buff his ranged, melee, and tactics skills with his Career die) and represents what your primary job has trained you to do. Mind is for persuasive argument, perception, and mental acuity, Speed is grace and agility, Body is endurance and strength, and Will is your mental endurance and willpower. You assign 2 d8 sized dice, 3 d6s, and 1 d4 to these stats to begin with; d6 is the 'average' for a competent person. Most of the foes you'll face in game who aren't of much note will top out at d6 dice, and running the math means no matter how many of those they have a d8 has a 25% chance to just beat them outright. PCs are meant to be special people of great talent and ability; even if you don't spend anything on being better at your base stats you'll still be above average for the most part.

Next, you choose a species and career. The species are very, very numerous, but they all function the same, mechanically. You get 3 skills that get to use your Species die, some natural weapons (which also get to add Species die to their attacks), some stuff about preferred diet and time of day, and then 3 Gifts. Gifts are one of the building blocks of character advancement; they represent special abilities (like being able to sprint hard to an enemy and then make an attack for Charging Strike), passive buffs (like getting to add a d8 to all melee/throwing attacks for having the Gift of Strength), magic spells, or social and skill edges. They can also outright increase a stat; a fair number of Species have Increased Trait (Speed/Body) as a Gift. Similarly, your career gives you 3 more set gifts and 3 Career skills. After that, you may pick 3 Gifts of your own from the giant, kinda poorly organized list later on in the book. After that, you get 13 Skill Marks. Each point put in a Skill increases its die size by 1 (From 0, to d4, to d6, to d8, to d10, to d12, and then to d12+d4, etc) and you may put up to a d8 in an individual skill during creation. Note there are no non-proficient penalties; skills represent additional learning on top of natural aptitude, species edges, and career training. Someone with a d12 Body but no points in melee might be totally untrained but still strong enough to fake it in a fight, BUT the Botch rule is designed to make it so that their lack of training means they risk serious failure. As the game points out, someone rolling d12 has a 1-12 chance of Botching, but someone with d4+d12 has a 1-48; even the slightest basic training could make that hulking guy way less likely to screw up catastrophically.

I like the character creation system a lot, especially as you may take a Gift to let you use any stat for hand to hand combat (Will, Speed, or Mind) instead of Body. It's been very easy to make a wide variety of characters who arrive at being exceptional or badass from a lot of different routes. It also avoids making Speed the god-stat, which was a serious problem in IC1e (IC1e used Speed for all to-hit rolls and all defense rolls, with Body only contributing to Soak and Damage, which means speed was just more important). We'll get into how they solved that problem when we get to combat. Would people like more detail on the Gifts, Species, and Skills, or to see an example PC?

# ¿ Mar 7, 2016 21:39

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

At least there's a specific Punch action for Punch Witch.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2016 21:56

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Kai Tave posted:

From what I've heard, Abby Soto literally doesn't grasp the concept of consistency. Apparently she would do disruptive poo poo in her weird MUD/Mush/whatever games to other characters but then act completely baffled when they held a grudge about it afterwards, as though every scene was supposed to be a fresh start and nothing really counted. I mean, of all the bad poo poo to be found in WGA this is kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel, but there you go.

She might actually just have a legit mental problem, it sounds like.

Doesn't make WGA any better.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2016 22:15

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

For the Ironclaw review, I had a question: Would people prefer if I went into the nitty gritty of what each Gift and Skill does, full, gameplay wise? It's going to make the Gifts section quite long if I do, but I'm torn because showing off the system and the variety of characters it can build is one of the goals of my review. Would it be better if I just wrote up a couple sample characters or asked for concepts then showed how they could be made in system?

# ¿ Mar 8, 2016 19:55

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

It's sad, too, because earnestness has reached a point where it's rare enough in nerd fiction that it's actually the surprising, refreshing exception.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2016 23:05

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Doresh posted:

Does ""magical girls team up with tokusatsu heroes (because what else are magical boys gonna look like) to fight a bastardized Cthulhu mythos" sound earnest enough? I'm still working on it.

Are they legitimate heroes who are actually trying to face a dark universe to make things better? If so, yes.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2016 23:07

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

LeSquide posted:

Asking for concepts usually gets some good stuff.

It'd also let me demonstrate that the creation system supports a ton of variety. So, give me a few swashbuckling or scheming or heroic early modern/renaissance ideas and I'll show how they can be made with IC2e.

Night10194 fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Mar 9, 2016

# ¿ Mar 9, 2016 01:36

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Lynx Winters posted:

A stress meter is a sanity system. Don't.

Put in a stress meter but when it fills up you're gripped with heroic virtue and resolve because of the terrible evil in front of you and may now use your superest attack. No downsides, only 'This is how close I am to snapping and going EVEN MORE HEROIC.'

# ¿ Mar 9, 2016 01:45

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Evil Mastermind posted:

See, poo poo like this is why I love you guys/gals.

Don't call it a stress meter. Call it the Outrage Meter. When the forces of Darkness have pushed you too far and expect you to break, they are now going to have a Bad Time.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2016 02:37

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

It's time for more Ironclaw: Squaring the Circle

Alright, so thread ideas were for a constable, a charlatan, and a harpoon throwing Otter sea captain. Let's show off character creation and see how they end up looking, plus cover a few things I missed.

Constable Judy will be a Constable of Triskellian, the Constantinople/Rome hybrid ruled by Italian foxes that forms one of the centers of the setting. This means she'll be an urban fox of lower class background: That makes her a red fox (grey foxes are inbred Machiavellian nobles) which gives Keen Ears, Danger Sense, and Night Vision and gets added to Stealth, Digging, and Jumping. Danger Sense lets us demonstrate how good situational Gifts are: She gets a +d12 to all dice pools for avoiding surprise and the like, as well as a +d12 to Initiative checks because she's always ready to go. Keen Ears is a little odder, letting her negate the first highest showing die an enemy gets when they try to sneak quietly past her. Night Vision lets her see in dim light just fine. All good things for a constable. Being an urban fox from a well-to-do place, she'll put her d4 stat in Fox; the leaping about and scrabbling isn't really for her. She'll take a d8 in her Body and Mind; she's strong and very perceptive/clever, necessary to be an imposing soldier and to be handy with a sword or club if trouble gets out of hand. That leaves her with a d6 in Will, Speed, and Career; she's an average soldier, not especially experienced, but still competent on her feet and no pushover. On that note, she'll take the Career of Soldier. This gives her her Career die with Ranged Combat (any non-thrown ranged weapon), Melee Combat (any melee attack that isn't unarmed) and Tactics (a skill that gets included whenever you team up with an ally against the same foe, good for fighting in rank). She also gets the Gift of Resolve (Letting her use her Will to avoid damage as well as her Body and armor), Veteran (Lets her get better bonuses for spending an action to aim or guard), and Hiking (+d12 to all matters of long distance travel). She then gets 13 skill marks, and puts 3 in Observation for a d8 Skill, 3 in Melee for a d8, 2 in Presence to be able to scare the piss out of perpetrators without killing them or show off, then puts 1 in Brawling for insurance, 1 in Dodge to avoid ranged attacks, 1 in Negotiation for dealing with tough problems or angry superior officers, and 1 in Searching for sweeping scenes. Her 3 free Gifts will go into raising her Will so her presence and defense is better, gaining Local Knowledge (Triskellian) (+1d12 to checks about knowing her city), and Legal Authority (Triskellian) to represent she can arrest people and throw her badge around, also giving her another d12 with other Constables. Judy is a persuasive woman and talented fighter who has a lot of social standing and local cachet on her beat. She also gets a longbow, a sword, a shield, and some light armor for being a Soldier.

Mercurio the Rat will be one of Judy's persistent problems, an inveterate scofflaw who works the docks and shadier side of Triskellian. As a rat, he's a born survivor; he gets the Gift of Survival (+d12 to forage and survive in rough conditions), Contortionist (He can Retreat without actually giving up position, something that'll become important when we explain combat), and he shares Judy's Keen Ears. His Rat die also gets added to Digging, Stealth, and Swimming. Being a stealthy sort used to surviving on the streets, he has a d8 Career and Speed, a d6 Species, Will, and Mind, and a d4 Body. Mercurio is an actual Charlatan, this being a Career option, giving him his Career die with Presence, Negotiation, and Deceit. He also gets the gift of Streetwise (+d12 to matters of the criminal underworld), Forgery (+d12 when trying to make imitations or forge documents), and Disguise (+d12 to blend in a crowd or impersonate others). The little bastard could be pretty much anywhere at any time. He'll take 3 ranks in Deceit, 3 in Presence to make up for his low Will, and 3 in Negotiation to mark he's a genuine master of his chosen craft, then fill out with 2 in Melee combat (never know when you'll need your knife), and 2 in Stealth. He'll also take the gift of Sneaky Fighter (+2d8 to attack with knives and other concealable, small weapons), Bribery (+d12 to bribe officials), and Combat Grace (Can use Speed instead of Body to fight). Mercurio is able with a dagger in the dark but he primarily relies on his social skills and abilities as a career criminal and liar to get what he wants. What he wants is money and personal security. Maybe power, but that comes after survival. He also gets a dagger, shortsword, some light armor, and plenty of makeup and disguise clothes as trappings for his career. Notice how many situational d12s he gets when plying his trade, as well as his very strong base abilities with social and persuasive skills.

Captain Otto Brandt has a problem and that problem is that there are whales that haven't been harpooned. As an otter, Otto is a master of the seas and rivers; he gets his Otter die to Dodge, Swimming, and Stealth. He also gets the Gift of Fast Swimming (he can move through wet terrain quickly and easily, in and out of combat, and when he tries to swim in combat it's a normal movement action instead of requiring anything special), Deep Diving (He can use his entire Swimming skill instead of just his Body die to avoid drowning, and holds his breath 10x as long as a normal character), and Contortionist (Same as Mercurio). Being a badass who throws giant spikes at whales, he will take d8 in Body and Speed both (Throwing weapons use both stats!), d6 in Career, Species, and Will, and a d4 in Mind. He does not need fancy theories about how to harpoon a loving whale. He'll have the Career of Sailer, giving him Carousing (+d12 to hold liquor or handle poison), Sailing (+d12 to anything involving botes), and Team Player (When he Assists someone, they get +d12 instead of +d8). He'll also get to include Sailor with Vehicles (Botes, and really anything else, so he's actually set up for swashbuckling coach chases or barrel rides), Swimming, and Weather Sense. He'll put 3 for d8 in Vehicles to be a master of boats, 2 for d8 in Throwing to toss his deadly harpoon with great skill, 2 for d6 in Dodging, 3 for d8 in Leadership to inspire his men, and 2 in Brawling to punch people in the face during shore brawls. He'll take the Gift of Strength (+d8 to melee and throwing attacks, but not defenses, can carry more stuff) to be lean and strong, Improves Strength (Improves the base bonus to +d12), and Brawling Fighter (can parry and generally use fists or claws with no penalty relative to melee weapons). Otto is set up entirely to be a badass and a master of sailing, and he's able to hold his own in a brawl as one of the strongest men on his crew. For comparison's sake for how good he is at harpooning a fool: The average enemy will have 2d6 defense, 2d6+d8 if Guarding, 2d6+d12 if Guarding and a Veteran. Otto's punch is already d12+d8+d6 (or d12+d8+2d6 for his actual claws, since he includes Species with those) and his throw is d12+3d8. The average soldier ain't got nothing on a drunken, angry otter whaler.

Next Time: More on how Gifts and Skills work!

Night10194 fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Mar 9, 2016

# ¿ Mar 9, 2016 06:05

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Dangit, something I forgot for the example PCs: Each character gets 2 free Gifts. Personality (You decide on something like Wrathful, Adventurous, etc, and you get a d12 once per session to an action that that personality would feed into) and Combat Save (You can negate the first hit that would kill you each combat, since you're a hero). You also get a Motto. Motto is your standard hook/character blurb mechanic, though they have a silly bit in the book about declaring your motto aloud at the beginning of a session to get in character (I imagine everyone ignores this).

For Judy, Mercurio, and Otto, they'd be 'Protect and Serve', 'Mine, all Mine', and 'gently caress Whales', respectively, with personalities of Friendly, Conniving, and Aggressive.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2016 06:23

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

No reason we'd be any more comprehensible to the abominations from beyond than they'd be to us.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2016 07:50

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# ¿ Apr 19, 2024 21:59

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Covok posted:

I remember the system feeling very lethal and combat felt like a really dangerous gambit. Specific encounter/GM ruling or how the system is overall?

On one hand it is, on the other there are a ton of different 'negate a deathblow' Gifts you can pick up, the average hero is way more skilled than their opposition, and the game mentions lowballing opposition because a single bad hit can put things in the danger zone really quickly. It is basically impossible for an actual PC to get killed in a single blow due to Combat Save, though, so you should generally get a chance to run for it if things are going bad.

Also, yes, the game would work for Redwall if you wanted to do that. Honestly, the system would be fine for conversion to a lot of 'low fantasy' settings. Especially as the game has firm guidelines of what a 'species' and 'class' should be mechanically and it's not hard to build your own.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2016 14:32

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