Category: Lampblack & Brimstone: Freebooters on the Frontier

Ug.

Ug.

Ug. All members of my group of Freebooters were slain tonight while making their way through The Perilous Wilds of Quarun. In our setting, seven terrors have been released into the world after the invading hordes of Ha’ak desecrated the temple of Ashala and broke the sacred seal which had for centuries bound the seven within. In our previous session, the first terror was reverted to ash through the brave sacrifices of the priests of Hatenaten, This week, the second terror proved overwhelming after a series of devastatingly bad dice rolls. One comedic moment will remain in memory: a night’s “danger” in camp turned out to be a “chicken/duck/goose”. Ha! It was eaten for breakfast with wild garlic and a sauce seasoned with the oil of spring writhe-weeds. In better news, the newly randomly generated group of freebooters FINALLY includes at least one fighter… Three in fact!

We re-started our Far Isles Freebooters campaign last night as a regular weekly game (as opposed to a “West Marches”…

We re-started our Far Isles Freebooters campaign last night as a regular weekly game (as opposed to a “West Marches”…

We re-started our Far Isles Freebooters campaign last night as a regular weekly game (as opposed to a “West Marches” style campaign).  I used Joe Banner ‘s “Uncertain Reflections” from Perilous Deeps as the dungeon they explored.  It was a lot of fun, very surreal and evocative, but I think I didn’t challenge them enough.  I put some spells inscribed on heavy glass slabs in the dungeon, hoping our wimpy (and very lazy) dwarf magic user would agonize over how to get them out, but he outsmarted me and did rubbings of the spell texts using his map making supplies 🙂  They gained a new hireling (an emaciated fellow with a glass sphere containing a bleached skull for a head that they named “Twenty Questions”, or TQ for short) and some cool magic items, but not a lot of hard cash.  Through quick thinking and creative spell use, they managed to destroy the citadel in the end, but the Magus may have lived to plot his revenge…  all in all a great session and a nice reboot of the campaign.

Backgrounds as ‘racial moves’

Backgrounds as ‘racial moves’

Backgrounds as ‘racial moves’

My usual group doesn’t meet very often. As such I tend to over think things, so instead of rolling up 101 discoveries,  I felt like trying to add a little more to the base character moves, based around our current game. Some of it’s pinched from the compendium classes in The Perilous Wilds as they looked too cool to not incorporate.

Their setting went pretty grimdark quite quickly. Humanity is dominated by a theocracy with a pseudo-angel figurehead. Other races have been ostracised/banished (if any still exist. I think the word genocide was bandied about at one point). These lands offer little opportunity for adventure. True freedom can only be found on the borderlands.

With that in mind I started playing about. So instead of Elves, Dwarves & Halflings, all adventurers are probably human, their ‘racial’ moves based around their background. Elves and Dwarves may exist still but they’ve probably retreated to lands that are alien to man but not to themselves i.e. The Wilds.

I eventually ended up with five distinct backgrounds for man:

City Dweller – a person from a dense metropolitan area

Frontiersman – a person living on the hard edge of civilisation

Indigenous – one of the many people’s who live their lives in the Wilds

Journeyman – a junior member/indentured servant of a powerful individual/organisation

Wyrd – Either a fresh faced adventurer or a person blessed/cursed by a mysterious entity (bear with me on this one)

I’ve linked the Google doc where I’ve scrawled some of my thoughts/moves. Let me know what you think.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J90gPmyTzPstqo6wFX_o4pJ0LoPuz-cXBCzJPbWkcpQ/edit?usp=sharing

Looking at the Cleric moves here and having trouble getting my head around Bless/Curse.

Looking at the Cleric moves here and having trouble getting my head around Bless/Curse.

Looking at the Cleric moves here and having trouble getting my head around Bless/Curse. What is the scope of these effects? What can a blessing do?

Say you’ve got a nature god… can you curse an enemy by turning them to stone, for example?

Here’s a quick Freebooters rules question.  I was rolling up a random character and ended up with a Thief with a 4…

Here’s a quick Freebooters rules question.  I was rolling up a random character and ended up with a Thief with a 4…

Here’s a quick Freebooters rules question.  I was rolling up a random character and ended up with a Thief with a 4 Intelligence (-2 INT).  Cunning is equal to INT+LVL.  I see two options here.  Make Cunning (and similarly the Cleric’s Favor and the MU’s Power) a minimum of 1, or use the actual value and make the Thief I rolled up wait until he is level  3 to get 1 Cunning.  The latter seems a bit harsh.  What was the intention Jason Lutes ?

We had our third session of Freebooters on the Frontier yesterday, and the PCs had a TPK within the first hour.

We had our third session of Freebooters on the Frontier yesterday, and the PCs had a TPK within the first hour.

We had our third session of Freebooters on the Frontier yesterday, and the PCs had a TPK within the first hour. Everybody rolled up new characters, same world but a different region, and the players spent the last half of the session running away from fights rather then charging into them.