- Behold the Void
- Feb 16, 2016
-
|
Now I'm imagining an Eldritch abomination sucking feeble mortals into its belly.
I like the sound of that, let me write that one down.
|
#
¿
Apr 8, 2016 21:46
|
|
- Adbot
-
ADBOT LOVES YOU
|
|
|
#
¿
Jan 12, 2025 22:07
|
|
- Behold the Void
- Feb 16, 2016
-
|
Illusions
I'm not too sure why these are optional, but here are a few illusion-related Skills. You can alter your appearance, create illusory barriers or a bunch of fake allies. Other characters can generally only see through an illusion if they have a good reason to believe something fishy is going on, or if they pick another new Skill that lets them attempt to see through illusions form the get-go.
Equipment
(Though not really mentioned anywhere, things like potions and elixirs can probably be handwaved as "Here's a one-use item that gives you an Increment of Health/Stamina")
Illusions are kind of a niche thing in a lot of anime settings and can get a bit finicky rules-wise which is why we made them optional.
Consumables to replace standard recovery from increments at the end of every scene is a great way to run a more classic Dungeon Crawl, which we'll be addressing more in Tools of the Trade when we expand the equipment rules.
Behold the Void fucked around with this message at 03:54 on Apr 19, 2016
|
|
#
¿
Apr 19, 2016 03:42
|
|
- Behold the Void
- Feb 16, 2016
-
|
Valor - The Heroic Roleplay System
Sample Campaign
In case of a zombie apocalypse, stay with the bare-knuckle school girl and the hobby occultist.
You know how some games include an introductory adventure or two in their corebook? Valor takes this a step further and includes an entire sample campaign called... Sample Campaign that takes a party through their first Season (levels 1-5) in 29 scenes and almost 40 pages.
The layout of Combat Scenes is rather D&D4e-ish, with an overview of the battlefield and enemy positions. Enemy statblocks take up very little space, though noticably more space is dedicated to describing their Techniques and summarizing the effects of their defining Skills and Flaws. An example of how this looks can be seen in this free adventure on Valor's homepage here.
Something I don't quite like about the way the enemies are formatted is that their Techniques only describe their effect, not the Cores, Modifiers and Limits that went into making them. Then again this game isn't really HERO System, and passing familiarity with the Technique chapter should make it pretty easy to reverse-engineer these Techniques while reading their description.
Anyhow, onwards with the campaign:
The example setting is Valor City, located somewhere on the east coast of New Jersey. The players take on the role of Sighted, who have the ability to sense the Other Side, a parallel world of myth and legend. It's pretty much Urban Arcana, right down to how ordinary people perceive demi-humans as normal dudes.
To deal with the Other Side, the Sighted have founded five factions, which are best explained rigt along with the example characters aka Valor's iconics, as each of them belongs to one.
So going from left to right on the above picture, we have:
Gun-toting Shuuichi is a member of the Supernatural Suppression Unit, because these types of urban fantasy always need a secret government agency dealing with vampires and evil wizards.
Aside from his guns, he also uses bombs (both of which have a limited supply per battle) and can also use knives for some crazy melee stunts.
Gabrielle is an Otherkin, aka a beautiful unique snowflake terrible WoD splat a Sighted with blood ties to the Other Side. This manifests in her using a oft of lightning-based magic attacks to go along with her spear.
Since they're essentially a bunch of Sorcerers and Tiefling-analogues, the whole faction is a bit chaotic and poorly organized.
Hiiro is a Freelancer, which is really just a general term for a new Sighted who has yet to join a faction, or a Sighted who doesn't care about factions at all.
If his name and weapon of choice wans't any indication, he is the main shounen character type, combining powerful sword strikes with flame attacks.
Muranaka works for the British Order of Magi, a bunch of bookworm wizards with their origins in Great Britain. He's the go-to character for Mind-based AoE attacks and healing spells.
Tora is a member of the Fist of Susano'o, a secret order of monks who make sure that the Other Side doesn't try anything funny and kick rear end for the Lord Susano'o if they do. Aside from roundhouse kicks and suplexes, she can also shout people back to live, making her a Monk/Warlord.
(Each of these iconics no tonly come with a complete character sheets, but also guidelines on how to advanced them during the campaign if you're unsure what to do.)
Now the campaign doesn't waste time to have everyone meet in a bar or something. Instead, they all start with beating up zombies that have appeared in Valor City.
Beating them up reveals that they are no ordinary zombies: Each of them has a strange gemstone implanted that not only radiates with a lot of necromantic energy, but also seems to slowly regenerate the defeated zombies.
To find out who is behind this super zombie incident, the PCs will have to contact various factions and NPCs and deal with more undead, cultists, a biker gang, and more undead. All in all a good mix of combat and investigation, with a healthy variation on undead critters to beat up. I certainly approve of this, but then again I'm a sucker for undead (thanks, Harryhausen).
Meet this campaign's recurring boss.
If I had to critize one thing, I'd say it's that there doesn't seem to be a lot of focus on the actual main bad guys. There are plenty of little tidbits about various NPCs, but the main villains themselves don't really get a backstory, or cheesy one-liners like in Double Cross. Then again they only appear towards the end and I suppose by then the GM will have a clear view on his (and the party's) interpretation of the whole events.
And there you have it. Valor - if you ever wanted D&D 4e to ditch most D&Disms for Final Fantasy and Anime. I don't know about you, but I'll definitely be using it for a Monster Hunter conversion. This game just screams "Action RPG" and "Tactical RPG" to me.
Next Time: I won't spoil anything, but the next one's going to be a lot crunchier. With giant robots.
Thanks for the awesome writeup! And yes, everyone hates Carlo. We live to make him suffer.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2016 00:38
|
|
#
¿
Apr 8, 2016 21:46
