Author: Nicolas Francart

A thought about procedures in FotF:

I was recently reading stuff about describing the procedure a GM goes through to run dungeon exploration, and wondering which games best describe this procedure. For instance, things like this: https://necrotic-gnome-productions.blogspot.com/2018/11/bx-essentials-adventuring-mode-control.html?m=1

I’ve been wondering if having such a procedure for FotF could make play smoother by giving the GM a structure to lean on, or if that’s contrary to the game’s design principle. A literal checklist of things to go through. Something like:

– When a player describes looking at a specific place, tell them what they see.

– If they want to look closer, have them roll Perceive.

– If they want to search an entire room, tell them how long it will take. If they spend the time, they find everything that can be found. Then, reduce the duration of spell, use up fuel for torches and rations, tie knots and possibly introduce a Danger.

And similarly for other situations. Your thoughts?

Just ran a party of Freebooters (2e) through the Tomb of the Serpent Kings. It was a really fun session! Here are my impressions about the system:

– Everyone enjoyed it. Overall it ran smoothly and felt satisfying for the players.

– As the GM, the PbtA structure gives me freedom about the consequences of players rolling a failure. Knowing how deadly damage can be, I felt like I hesitated to deal damage, and it was difficult to make the game just dangerous enough. I felt like if I had run it with a DnD retroclone, it would have been less “arbitrary” and probably more challenging for the PCs. Next time, I’ll try to state the consequences before a player rolls: “On a 6-, you’ll take damage”. It might slow down play, but everything would be on the table in advance, so to say. I’ll see how it goes.

– There’s a Dwarf fighter with 18 Str. He is terrifying. The Stone Guardian in the module is mostly meant to be avoided by lvl1 PC or maneuvered around, but he just hacked it to pieces. Maybe this is related to my issue with setting the right difficulty.

– I felt like I was lacking a guideline for when to tick down Durations, so we mostly ignored them.

– I used the “threads” to decide about wandering monsters. The party was ambushed by goblins because they failed an unrelated roll earlier, and I knotted the “Goblins!” thread because I had no other move to make then. It worked well!

– The random spell generator <3

Not sure yet if it clicks for me well enough to become my default dungeon game, but I like it a lot!

I’ve been thinking about a simple alternative armor system. As Acritarche pointed out, a flat damage reduction is really powerful: I’d like players who wear heavy armor to feel like there’s a chance their armor won’t protect them. So here it is:

Armor has a value from 1 (thick clothes) to 5 (heavy full-plate armor). When you take damage, roll 1d6. If you roll equal or under your armor value, reduce damage by the amount you rolled. So if you have armor 3 and you roll a 2, reduce damage by 2. On a 3, reduce damage by 3. On a 4, you take the full blow without damage reduction.

Thoughts? 🙂

I’m having trouble with the multiclassing moves in Freebooters 2e. What does “you may begin multiclassing as a Thief, and add Thief moves to this playbook” mean?

Does it mean that you immediately add all Thief basic moves to your playbook? It seems like a lot compared to other advances. Or dose it mean that you can start selecting Thief moves instead of advanced moves from your class at every odd level? If so, do you immediately gain one Thief move, or do you have to wait until the next odd level to gain a Thief move?