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Hey all! Would anyone be interested in play-testing Freebooters 2e? We played & loved 1e with my regular group, but we’re now deep in a game of Blades and don’t want to take a break.
2e looks awesome and I’m itching for some creative, collaborative world-building! I’m UK-based (GMT) and would be happy to run it over Roll20 or play-by-post somewhere if that’s easier with the time difference.
Anyone keen?
Finally managed to start running Mistmarch, which I’ve posted about here before, for people at work and their…
Finally managed to start running Mistmarch, which I’ve posted about here before, for people at work and their partners. Because 8 people wanted to play, I’m running two groups of 4, and then after the initial sessions people will be able to form ad-hoc parties out of the bigger pool based on who’s available and interested.
Thoughts:
The travel moves provide a great practical introduction to the system – none of the players have played PbtA games before, and I’ve only run a few.
Keep Company is worth its weight in gold. It’s great tool for balancing spotlight time out after the GM’s attention has been on other players. We did a 2-player use of the move and a solo use of it, and both resulted in excellent scenes.
We’re not using alignment, so I let people earn an XP for fulfilling a vice and another for fulfilling a virtue. I don’t think that’s the best way to handle it, though.
Anyway, I really love this game. The more elaborate moves, like Venture Forth, provide good framing and meat for the rest of the session. The simpler, more immediate moves are flexible and resolve quickly. It flowed very smoothly (although I need to think more about possible 6-9 complications before rolling the dice.
Just ran a party of Freebooters (2e) through the Tomb of the Serpent Kings.
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!
The most recent version of rules still doesn’t have a Wilderness section, so I wrote the rules myself.
The most recent version of rules still doesn’t have a Wilderness section, so I wrote the rules myself. The main idea is that region is the same as dungeon. I generate a name for a region (with the random regions table from Perilous Wilds), a prevailing terrain type (terrain table from PW) and a size (using the dungeon size table from Plumb the Depths). Then I take a size-according number of themes from the dungeon themes table and start to fill the areas inside the region by doing a roll on the dungeon exploration table (see a slightly modified (by me) version below).
Roll Area type Contents
1-3 common area nothing unusual
4-6 common area 1 danger
7-8 common area 1 danger, 1 discovery
9-11 common area 1 danger, 2 discoveries
12 common area 1 discovery
13 unique area nothing unusual
14 unique area 1 danger
15 unique area 1 danger, 1 discovery
16 unique area 1 danger, 2 discoveries
17+ unique area 1d4 discoveries
Instead of cumulative exploration chance I add to the roll the number of areas before the nearest civilized settlement and its defense level modifying factor (see the table below).
None: +2
Militia: +1
Watch: 0
Guard: -1
Garrison: -2
Battalion: -3
Legion: -4
If the bonus turns out to be negative, I don’t count it. An area can be a hex as well as a cell in the Voronoi diagram, doesn’t matter. Either way, I count one area as one day of travel. When unique areas drop, I create them using the region’s themes as a starting point (the name can be borrowed from the random area table from PW). Danger and discovery are created using the relevant tables from PW, but with creature stats brought to accordance with FonF. After there are enough unique areas on the map, the region is done, you can start creating the next one. Additionaly, you can create a special region’s random encounters table based on the typical dangers for this region. If this is your first session, you can create all the essential things with the players, and then fill out spaces using this procedure.
As a future thought, one can create separate tables for different region types, as it was done in Plumb the Depths for different dungeon origins.
If the resulting content seems not enough, you can just add 1 danger and 1 discovery to each area.
Funnel World/Freebooters/Wilds with my 3 year-old this morning: Abeodan, a lowly fletcher from Werwúlf dreamt of…
Funnel World/Freebooters/Wilds with my 3 year-old this morning: Abeodan, a lowly fletcher from Werwúlf dreamt of becoming a police officer in the big city of Grassy Bluff. Found a goblin cave on the way and arrested 2 of them, hoping to impress the police chief.
He was accompanied by Leng, a beggar whom he owed a drink, but also had nothing better to do.
Anybody come up with any rules for gunpowder firearms? Was thinking of running Blood in the Chocolate in Freebooters.
Anybody come up with any rules for gunpowder firearms? Was thinking of running Blood in the Chocolate in Freebooters.
Picked up the DW +3 Bundle of Holding this week and couldn’t wait to finally read Perilous Wilds, Freebooters on the…
Picked up the DW +3 Bundle of Holding this week and couldn’t wait to finally read Perilous Wilds, Freebooters on the Frontier but… I really prefer reading my RPG books as uh, books. My solution: I learned how to make saddle-stitch books!
Lots of YouTube videos out there but I’d be happy to share tips if pics aren’t self-explanatory.
Jason, I know you are heavily inspired by DCC.
Jason, I know you are heavily inspired by DCC. Have you considered merging Wisdom and Charisma in FotF2, like they did? It’s called Personality in DCC but I think Presence would be a better name for such a stat.
I’ve been thinking about a simple alternative armor system.
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? 🙂
A question about Follower moves.
A question about Follower moves.
Why do Recruit and Give orders invite to mark XP on a 6- rather than mark an Ability? (that could be resp. CHA and WIS).
These look like easily won XPs to me.