More Freebooters Questions!
I still haven’t played 🙁
But has anyone had a Freebooters game get to higher levels (7+), or do people tend to retire before then, if they survive?
Mostly I am wondering about how the game scales, especially in terms of HP and stuff. Do fights ever become annoying slug fests, or do the PC’s tend to always need to watch their backs? I enjoy the flat power curve of vanilla DW, and I tend to like low-level play in general.
Hey Chris Wolf — in one of our campaigns I started everyone off at level 6, and we had a Fighter who had something like 30 hp with his CON bonus. He threw himself into being the tank, and did a great job of it until the party got in over its head and trapped by a cave-in. In the process of bravely trying to dig them out he got crushed.
Since you get a max of 1xp per session — 2xp if you’re the fighter — for defeating enemies, everyone stayed focused on booty. We did not experience any slugfests, but there was one toe-to-toe between the Fighter and a cyclops with 16 hp that was thrilling precisely because the Fighter had the capacity to withstand a couple of 1d10+2 hits.
That being said, ymmv, and I expect the degree to which it varies will have a lot to do with the GM/Judge style. I emphasize environmental and tactical hazards in our games, to which *World mechanics are richly accommodating. The 30hp Fighter can take a beating in a straightforward fight, but he can drown in his armor, die from falling off a cliff, or get crushed by several tons of rock (don’t worry, I told him the consequences and asked before he made that roll).
In writing FotF, I kludged D&D and DW together in order to get closer to my own fondest memories of playing D&D. The HP system is the kludgiest part, and I am working on making it mesh better in the second edition. I’m writing new monster creation rules and revisiting PC hp in order to hopefully bring those things into better concert.
Let me begin by echoing something that Jason Lutes said. I GM (and play) Freebooters as “the perfect incarnation of my fondest memories” of playing D&D and AD&D. I think you’re going to love it too!
Since the summer of 2015, I’ve played regularly with at least four groups and have shown the game to almost 30 different players. The longest-living character across all of these sessions is currently a level 5 Mage (and the campaign is still going.) At the same time, I’ve had multiple TPKs, and LOTS of deaths during 1st and 2nd level.
PS: I am in fact currently working on ways to predict the lethality of creature encounters.There have been lots of interesting findings.
Also, if you haven’t read it, do go back and review this classic post about why fights shouldn’t become “slugfests” at higher levels. Just rip off an arm or two if things drag on too long 😉
apocalypse-world.com – Monsters – I am confused
Thanks for all the great info and advice! Playing with some folks on Thursday. I pre-rolled a few items of lethal weirdness today to supplement what they come up with.
Hoping the guys coming from 5E will appreciate the highly random and fragile 1st level characters.
Let us know how it goes!