Tag: John Love

I keep falling back on being a bloodthirsty bastard of a Judge. I still feel like I am being a fan of the characters: I want them to succeed!

But I also want them to suffer quite a bit to get there. It’s my favourite part of being a DM, putting tough challenges all up in their grills.

After two main sessions with 6 players at the table (plus me), two characters have made the Bite the Dust move (still survived with a 7-9 result!). Another was poisoned by a mudsnake, losing literally all of his hair and hallucinating all throughout camp. Does this seem normal in Freebooters, or am I being to tough on them? They’re still getting lots of shinies!

The Tomb of N’Gral. Valovicia the Mage hired two brothers, Radan and Tredan to assist her in finding magical reagents deep within these forgotten halls. This was our “Prequel” locale, where they narrowly avoided death at a cost of their own luck. Perhaps they will bring the full party back to deal with that pesky rat-ogre, and delve deeper to find new treasures!.

When you miss a session or show up late, ask the group to summarize what has been happening in your absence. Tell the Judge what your character has been attempting to do in that time. If the Judge buys it, roll +LUC

On a 10+, you return to the party unharmed, and bring something valuable, such as information or treasure. Ask or convince the judge what it is.

On a 7-9, you make it to the party relatively unharmed, but one of your items is missing or destroyed. Judge’s pick.

On a 6-, DO NOT mark XP, and pick 1 from the list below.

•You are left for dead, probably in a ditch somewhere. Make the Bite the Dust move if an ally rolls you over within a few hours.

•You return the the party, stark naked and bruised. Everything on your person is either stolen or disintegrated. Tell the party the story of how you barely escaped with your life.

•You have brought some inevitable and horrible danger to the party, related to your absence.

Too harsh?

So I ran a prequel session to our main game due to lack of players plus to introduce a new joiner. New player rolled a 12 for class. Magic User, yay! They’re all still level 1, and have low hit point totals.

But… Due to continuity reasons, I subtracted Luck, rather than hit points during this session. I didn’t want these characters to die because they are clearly alive in the current campaign continuum. It made a lot of sense in my head.

Seeing as how it is difficult to recover lost Luck, do you think this was a fair way to go?

Jason Lutes?

Did this today. If anyone would like to use it, please just ask me first

This was the end of our first session. Wish I didn’t use blue. 🙁 It makes it look like they’re under water.

Had a character Bite the Dust from essentially a xenomorph facehugger and survive with the permanent inability to speak in the first session.

Everyone at the table says this first session of freebooters was the best session we have all had in 5 years of gaming together.

This campaign is going to be fucking rad and I am absolutely excited!

How would you handle campaign Fronts in a Freebooters game?

Somehow it strikes me as a very different game as soon as you start to plan out any doom that the adventurers need to deal with. Stashing away coin might become less important if there is a town/country/world to save. It is my gut instinct just to skip campaign Fronts altogether.

Curious what you would all do with Fronts. Skip em, do em differently or do it the standard way?

Edit: unless of course saving that town yields a ton of coin!

Hey all! Great to see a healthy community here! Glad to join it.

I have a pretty open question here, and would appreciate really any discussion on the topic, from anyone.

I started playing RPGs with D&D B/X, and have played tons of different varieties of RPGs since then. I’ve gotten in to very serious, dramatic gaming as of late. However, one thing that will always stick with me is that classic, tropey, hobo-like feel of Moldvay DnD, and I love it like a first-born.

One thing I have noticed, though, with the dozens and dozens of people I have played with is the fact that your first RPG is the one that sticks with you (usually) when you think about what is super fun in this hobby. This isn’t true of everyone, but it’s pretty common.

So, with that in mind, what do you guys consider when pitching this old-school feeling to new-school mindsets? Freebooters doesn’t seem like it would sit well with a lot of people, especially those who are used to that new-school, every-game-feels-like-a-cable-TV-drama.

My gaming group is getting back together, and this old kind of play is what I have been dreaming about for a while. They all like Dungeon World, from what they’ve seen, so selling them on system won’t affect them. But I am worried they won’t love the murder-hobo premise of Freebooters.

Thoughts? How would you pitch it?