Tag: Jason Lutes

First draft of “threads” for Freebooters 2e

My attempt at a simplified version of Fronts.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rc35kq0n5vtrq30/FotF2e_threads.pdf?dl=0

Manage Provisions

Does FotF need this move? Is it time to give it the axe?

I like resource management in a survival-oriented game, but I’m not sure it adds enough to the proceedings to keep it around.

I want tension around the need for sufficient supplies to complete a foray into the wild, but that might just be accomplished by the Judge making the “use up their resources” move to destroy rations when the fiction suggests.

Any thoughts one way or the other? Positive and/or negative examples of how you’ve seen Manage Provisions work in play?

Freebooters 2e: Moves, Settlement Events, and NPCs

I had to get this out of my system since I became kind of obsessed with settlement event generation. The linked PDF includes all of the projected moves for the game, some slightly tweaked and some new. Also included are the NPC and settlement event tables. The event tables are not quite done — I still need to add the task/job tables, which should add another page spread.

Heads up to John Marron, J. Walton, and other people out there currently running games.

This has been distracting me from Stonetop layout duties, so now it’s time to get back to that!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/slen9gri5s31ch7/FotF2e_playtest_draft1.pdf?dl=0

Rob Brennan (and everyone else), how’s this for a “gather info” downtime move?

Research

When you spend one week of downtime gathering information, say what you’re looking for and roll…

…+INT to pore over written materials

…+WIS to keep an ear to the ground

…+CHA to ask people directly

On a 10+, the Judge will tell you whatever you want to know, within the limitations of your approach and local resources; on a 7-9, the Judge will tell you something useful, and you choose 1 from the list below.

> Your queries draw unwanted attention

> Whatever you learn is accompanied by an unwelcome truth

> What you find is only the first crumb in a longer trail—ask the Judge where you might need to go next

FotF2e Typetest Round 2: Oldstyle v Caslon v Garamond v Bodoni

Ignore this if you don’t care about type minutiae. As per Jesse Rothacher’s suggestion to experiment with full-featured fonts, here’s a pdf of 4 different treatments: https://www.dropbox.com/s/01wx64isxnv3vko/FotF2e_typetest3.pdf?dl=0

In that PDf the order of appearance is: HPLHS Oldstyle (current L&B font), Caslon Pro, Garamond, and Bodoni.

I’m pretty sure I’ll be maintaining the house style for header type regardless.

Settlement Events second draft

Here’s my first complete pass at a nested d12 version of the basic Settlement Event table, along with a new Basic Move (“Pass Time”) that triggers rolling on it, and 3 moves in a new “Downtime Moves” category. The idea is that events are triggered by freebooters making the Pass Time move, instead of the traditional way of rolling once per day/week/etc.

The Downtime moves — “Craft,” “Recover,” and “Train,” are gated by the Pass Time move, and give freebooters things to do in between expeditions. None of them have been tested, so I’m open to suggestions (especially with Train — is this approach wrongheaded?)

It’s interesting how switching from d100 to d12 and compact nesting changes the way I approach the content of the tables. For the better, I think, as it forces my word choice to be more suggestive and less prescriptive.

John Marron, J. Walton, Maezar, and anyone else who wants to playtest this, please do. Just note that “Pass Time” should be added to the existing Basic Moves, and the old moves “Poisoner” (Thief), “Proselytize” (Cleric) and “Arcane Research” (Magic-User) will need to be rejiggered as Downtime moves in their respective playbooks.

Note that none of the supplemental tables are done yet, so if you do throw this into play you’ll need to wing that part. I think there’s enough here to work with, though. Plus, less time spent rolling dice!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zahe2u9ryc8oyln/FotF2e_playtest_downtime.pdf?dl=0

Type treatment for FotF2e: Freebooters Futura or Lampblack & Brimstone house style?

I’m trying to decide between the original Freebooters treatment, which is vaguely evocative of OD&D, and the “house style” I used in all the other L&B books (like The Perilous Wilds). Which do you prefer?

You can get a better look at the draft here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rb10d8r2gcho0tj/FotF2e_typetest.pdf?dl=0

Note that I haven’t settled on either d12 or d100 tables, d100 is just what I’m using on this draft.

Encounter tables for Freebooters on the Frontier 2e: nested d12 a la The Perilous Wilds or classic d100?

There will be lots of tables. I’m working on some comprehensive settlement encounter tables right now. I find d12 tables easier to reference quickly, but d100 tables are obviously more flexible in terms of how much you can pack in. Plus I’m already using d100 tables in Freebooters, and consistency is important to me…

Hm. I may have just answered my own question, but feel free to vote and let me know why you think one or the other is superior!

Freebooters on the Frontier, 2nd edition

Okay, thanks to everyone taking the time to answer that poll, it looks like Freebooters 2e will be the next project toward which I will focus my game-brain. I am excited about that, and eager to make the game better in every way possible. To that end I would love to hear from anyone who has played FotF and has an opinion about how to make it better. Specifically, what problems have you encountered in your own games, and what suggestions do you have for addressing these problems?

FotF 2e will be self-contained (i.e., you won’t need Dungeon World to play it). Right now my plan is for a 5-booklet set. Each booklet would be comparable to the original FotF in length (24 pages). Yes, I want to evoke the old D&D white box vibe.

My current plan for the set is:

Freebooters on the Frontier (the basic rules, revised and improved)

Advanced Freebooters (additional classes and other optional rules)

Civilization & Savagery (tables and moves for cultures, settlements, and NPCs)

Overland & Underworld (tables and moves for wilderness and dungeons)

Beasts & Booty (tables and moves for monsters and treasure)

My goal in revising Freebooters on the Frontier is to create a fantasy role-playing game that successfully fuses the improvisational survivalist adventure of early D&D with the improvisational fiction made possible by the Apocalypse Engine. The PCs should feel motivated primarily to accumulate loot, and fight monsters mostly out of necessity. I believe that by making PC death a real possibility (by starting with relatively weak PCs, not fudging rolls, and relying heavily on sensibly-interpreted randomized content), the drama and satisfaction of watching PCs survive and grow over time is heightened.

It’s also important to note that I want to avoid feature-creep on the basic rules and keep them as slim as possible. The Advanced Freebooters book will have room for additional classes and all the cool house rules people have concocted.

Here are some issues of which I’m currently aware and intending to address:

PC hit points

Does the cumulative HP rule make PCs too powerful relative to the monsters they face, given that monsters follow the basic Dungeon World rules? Has PC HP been a problem at your table? My current plan is to write new monster rules for FotF that expands their HP range. The intention would not be to have encounters that scale to the party, but to allow for bigger, older, scarier monsters to have more HP. Alternatively, I could scale down the roll-for-HP move.

Exploration moves

As +David Perry has pointed out, the interaction between Scout Ahead and Navigate can be confusing, and I’d like to improve the overall procedure for travel both aboveground and below. Ideally, the same set of moves could be used in dungeons and wilderness, but I tried various versions of that when I was writing/playtesting The Perilous Wilds, and none of them were satisfying. The two modes of exploration are so fundamentally different that they call for different sets of moves. If that’s the case, I want to come up with a tight set of moves for each of these types of exploration.

The Cleric

Some folks have said that clerics are the least interesting class to play. Why is that, and how could the cleric be made for interesting? I like Maezar’s idea of rewriting the Divine Disapproval table to a 2d6 roll instead of 1d12 roll, in order to reduce the swingy nature of that table (and I think I would keep 1d12 for the Arcane Accident table because it underlines the chaotic nature of sorcery).

The Magic-User

Rob Brennan has that noted that the “Cast a Spell” move may have some issues, in terms of not leaving enough room for making a GM move on a 6-.

Any opinions on the above stuff? What other potential problems have you encountered in play? What new things would you like to see folded into the mix?