@chrisshorb and @Motive_Zine, I’ve changed all of the directionals to match the compass rose on the maps and uploaded the revised PDF. Apologies for any confusion caused during play – that must have been a PITA!
Freebooters on the Frontier 2e Discussion
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Thank you! Fortunately we hadn’t gotten to the point where it mattered yet. Appreciate the immediate fix in the doc.
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Oh gosh this is looking great so far. This is my favorite kind of stuff. Now hopefully my group starts playing regularly again! We haven’t played since the first week or so of the pandemic. The transition to online didn’t work well for us.
Anyway, hopefully I can make some time to roll up some regions!
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Hello!
First just want to say I’m loving this game and can’t wait to get it on the (remote) table.
I have some suggestions for small changes to character building:
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I don’t see why chaotic characters should be less virtuous than lawful ones. I would give characters two traits each, 2 virtues for good characters, 2 vices for evil characters, and 1 of each for everyone else. Or maybe 1 free choice for everyone if you prefer to stick to 3 total.
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I suggest dropping the dark skin/discoloured skin/pale skin options from the appearance table. I’m not sure what they bring to the game and given they might be misconstrued they don’t seem worth including.
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Hi @OzBlake, thanks for the suggestions.
The idea of a lawful society or individual being slightly more “good” than a chaotic one is of course a ridiculous notion and points up the reductive silliness of alignment systems in general. Especially in our current moment, when I personally am 100% on the side of chaos, in the sense of a force that opposes the current power paradigm in my country. And it’s a taxonomy that breaks down utterly when you start to look at who’s actually behaving lawfully, who’s actually creating the most chaos, and the fact that everyone thinks of themselves as “good” regardless of what side they’re on. Sorry to bring in politics, but it’s impossible for me to avoid when thinking about these questions, given the state of the real world. Long story short: the alignment system is not intended in any way reflect reality, but I have found it entertaining in play and a useful tool for organizing a fantasy world and cosmology. The current mix of traits is one I’m not likely to change because of the way they’re counter-balanced, but your suggestion is easy enough to house-rule if you find it objectionable. I am, however, still open to having my mind changed.
My original idea for the incorporation of skin color was to make it clear in the text that paler/darker results were supposed to be relative to the “average” of whatever culture the PC or NPC belonged, and that they could be used as visual descriptors like everything else on the tables. For instance, we played a campaign where the dominant culture was based on ancient Ethiopia, so our baseline notion of what people looked like was different than if we had modeled our setting after a northern European culture. Regardless of intention, I can see that including the idea of different skin colors is rife with potential problems, and – more importantly – that my thinking came out of my position as a privileged white person. I agree that it’s a good idea to remove those references.
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Thanks for the complete response Jason! No need to apologise for bringing politics into it, it’s definitely political!
I completely see where you’re coming from on the vices/virtues.
I was thinking about this some more today and started to think that the number of vices and virtues For a character should be rolled randomly independent of alignment.
I quite like the idea of figuring out how a ‘good’ character with three vices would play, and there are plenty of good people with vices after all, and evil people who (at least pretend to be) virtuous.
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Is using “complexion” instead of “skin” less problematic? I personally really like that these are options, and I don’t think it’s racist to recognize that there is a spectrum of complexions in humans. I think it’s far more problematic to pretend that such diversity doesn’t exist or isn’t important. TTRPGs to this day still struggle with representation, with folks of color having difficulty seeing characters that look like them represented without it being a racist caricature. I don’t know, maybe this ultimately isn’t the place to have this discussion, and I’m myself a white person so it’s ultimately not my opinion that matters the most. But it feels important enough that there is at least some objection to it just being excised.
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Thanks for the fix to the cardinal directions. (FYI, the typos are still there.)
I have another issue that I wanted to bring to your attention. It seems strange to me that so much of the house is just open to the elements. There are no doors between The Cloisters (2) which is open via the archways, and the rest of the house. That just seems strange for a rich family to live so ill-secured and exposed to the elements. Would there not be doors at the top of each flight stairs out of cloisters and into the rest of the house?
I think problems arise when you start to mechanize things by creating tables specifically for skin color/complexion. Even if players are encouraged to create a non-Eurocentric setting together, where the default complexion is not pasty white, the whole “lighter/darker than average” idea embeds potential issues of colorism from the get-go – stuff that is perhaps not off-limits from a gaming perspective, but might be off-putting for some folks during character creation. I guess the goal would be to remove as much of the idea of a “default” setting as possible, so that players of any background can more easily imagine people like them in whatever world they create together.
Toward that end I hope to do the opposite of “pretending that diversity doesn’t exist” by including lots of artwork and example text that show as wide a cultural and representational range as possible. I’m also looking for collaborators to create stretch-goal campaign settings and adventures outside of the traditional Eurocentric scope.
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Ha ha, I love it when my dungeon architecture design choices are called into question. That’s a great point, and I will address it on the next pass.
Don’t go poking too far, though @Motive_Zine – you’ll soon discover there is a ridiculous shortage of privies, given how many people must’ve lived in that old manor house 
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RE: Privies, maybe that is why there are no doors – when in need just hang your butt out the cloisters?
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Takes me back to my AD&D days, when we had an evil party trying to raid a dwarven stronghold. We needed a safe place to hole up and lick our wounds. We kept looking for bathrooms AND WE NEVER FOUND ONE. I wish I was still in touch with that DM so I could ask him where those dwarves took care of their business…
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You just think that’s coal in them there mines…
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I know some parts of the OSR crowd are moving this way pretty heavily in terms of inclusivity and a more accepting and progressive view. More than anywhere else, I see this happening on Twitter (of all places), and if you would consider it, I would highly recommend getting in touch with some of the following folks:
Dungeons and Possums
- Super supportive to everyone and can probably get you some contact info on the types of folks you’re looking for. I always see his alias thrown around in these progressive circles - super friendly based on my interactions.
- https://twitter.com/DungeonsPossums
- https:// ko-fi. com/dungeonspossums
- https:// dungeonspossums.blogspot. com/?amp=1
Diogo Nogueira
- A prolific RPG designer and artist from Brazil, known for his game Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells, among others.
- https:// twitter. com/diogo_oldskull
- http:// oldskulling.blogspot. com/p/buy-this.html
Dai Shugars/GMDecay
- An RPG publisher who focuses on creating and promoting work from marginalized artists. I backed his zine last year called The Demon Collective Vol. 1.
- https:// twitter. com/dm_shugars
- https://gmdk.org/
Emmy “Cavegirl” Allen
- Outspoken and defender of marginalized folks, and also the author of Gardens of Ynn.
- https:// twitter. com/DyingStylishly
- https:// cavegirlgames.blogspot. com/
Exalted Funeral
- A publisher and distributor of RPG stuff, often working with many of the kinds of people you’re looking for.
- https:// twitter. com/ExaltedFuneral
- https:// www.exaltedfuneral. com/
Dissident Whispers
- A recent publication dedicated to the Black Lives Matter movement and includes many great folks that are part of marginalized groups. You seriously can’t go wrong working with any of the folks involved here. Not sure who leads the project, but I know Sean McCoy and his company Tuesday Knight Games (who made Mothership) is the one selling the publication in physical form.
- https:// twitter . com/dissidentrpg
- whispercollective . org
- Check out Dissident Whispers on drivethrurpg (the list of creators in the product description here would be exactly what you’re looking for)
Anyways, I hope that helps a little bit. These are the people I would turn to if I were to get into the RPG book-making business right now. If you’re not on Twitter, it’s pretty easy to miss a lot of this activity. I would guess that getting in touch with any of the ones I mentioned would bring you a flood of creators of the kind you’re looking for.
(I apologise for the weird spaces in the various links - new users are only limited to 2 links in a post. Just erase the spaces when you throw them into your search bar. I kept the 2 links of the folks I think might be most helpful.)
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Thanks @jasonabdin for catching that line, I missed it the first read through. @jasonlutes that’s exciting! Non Euro settings will be awesome, especially if created by BIPOC folk.
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Just to throw it out there, because I’ve recently had my eyes opened to the work of SEA writers. Zedeck Siew’s adventure “The Lorn Song of the Bachelor” (can be found on Exalted Funeral) is a fantastic adventure with a flavorful setting that pulls from Southeast Asian lore and legends. He has a zine called a Thousand Thousand Islands and a book called Creatures of the Near Kingdoms that I’m hoping to pick up to add flavor to my own Freebooter’s campaign. I also played an adventure called “Cockamania!” from BJ Games (on itch.io) that similarly draws from SEA culture and lore to weave a tale of marital fighting between gods and cock-fighting. I plan on delving in to more work by SEA creators in the future as a result.
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New to this discussion, and forum but I just wanted to say thank you for those Twitter links. This is great.
A tangent on something being discussed above here: dnd alignment has always been problematic. I think a big part of this has to do with gygax following poul Anderson’s conception of law and chaos and how that intersects with colonialism that is baked into the game in other ways.
I’m wondering if this can be addressed in part by following a more explicitly moorcockian definition of law/chaos? Eg law/chaos have zero to do with human institutions and are instead cosmic principles which make reality possible?
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RE: Leget Manor Playtest
First, I love the listing of monsters at the end, including the checkboxes for marking off dead monsters; it is a great touch. Bravo!
The Shadow monster stats are different between the main text and in the wandering monster listing at the end:
- Page 7 “Damage draining touch 1d3 Strength damage (touch, ignores armor)”
- Page 47 “Damage draining touch (touch, burns 1d4 Strength and 1d4 Dexterity)”
Second, to give a GM a better handle on the text of the encounters, I would like a brief statement about the current “politics/factions” of the setting. A GM has to read to page 39 to realize that Scidevang and the demon are not best buds.
Trying to put together the other bits of story about what happened from the note and diary are neat for the players, but I, personally, as a GM have enough to keep track of, I’m still not sure I understand what happened in the house. I would love a short, pithy recount of what happened. It would help me personalize some of the hauntings
Maybe something expressed in your thread structure…
Past
25+ yrs Sciedevang discovers stone idol and begins falling under its sway
…
3+ Sciedevang’s suicide heralds his return as a lich
3+ Baron is beheaded
3+ House is closed
3+ Villagers sent to house disappear
3+ Council is formed
…
3 weeks Lady Leget hears of the disaster and heads home
Third, My group is really enjoying the adventure, though they have gotten beaten badly by encountering 4 shadows in short order, and only having one weapon that could effect them (that is due to something they got in another adventure). The two fighters were so strength drained that after another room search they beat feet to the village to try and recover STR loss away from the building.
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Thanks for the notes! It’s been my intention for a while to go back in and add enough background info in the beginning to give the Judge some context, so I’ll get on that.
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