Freebooters on the Frontier 2e Discussion

#463

Questions on Leget Manor.
(note to others: There may be SPOILERS)
p6 - you give a stat block for each of the major NPCs. Most of them have “x”-wise. Now I know what that means in Burning Wheel (roughly). Does it mean similar in FotF? I looked through the rule books, didn’t find anything.

p8 - love the two maps, player facing and GM.

p 10 I like how the town itself isn’t detailed out. Question, is the water coming from the other creek coming from 11 - is that fresh? Also, how about the road that leaves to the West? I’m going to say that’s where the “Frontier” lies.

p12 - Roughneck - his NPC write up is different from the town council folks. Wondering where I can find an understanding of the different NPC templates?

p14 - I think the N arrow on the map is incorrect, based on the descriptions throughout the rest of the module. I think the N should be pointing towards the right, not towards the top of the map. With that understanding, as I go through the adventure, if something seems not right in reference to that, I’ll point it out (like room 3).

That’s enough for today. As I continue to go forward, I’ll throw out more things.

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#464

Oh right and one more thing, in Lintrude’s speech on p4:
First paragraph, the end I wasn’t sure about I think it’s missing a couple of letters.
“…knew me as a child, before I was sent abroa. Two years it took for word of my father’s disappearance to reach me, but I stand before you now a mere en days after hearing the terrible news.”

The boys rolled up 3 villagers each:

  • Kateline the female human Thatcher (Son A)
  • Robinette the female human Farmer (Son A)
  • Hacquin the male human Executioner (Son A)
  • Caize the female human Farmer (Son B)
  • Baulduin the male human Herbalist (Son B)
  • Gamot the male human Dung Carter (Son B)
    They had a lot of fun creating bonds between them, my favorite being that the Executioner spared the Dung Carter’s life, but with the stipulation that he had to take over the dung carting business that no one else in the village wanted…

I also added an age mechanic: 3d20+20 - gives you a range of 23-80, although you’ll probably end up around 50. That’s probably slightly optimistic for a feudal society (median age 43).

On average, son A’s characters’ stats are slightly higher than son B, so I slightly social engineered it so that son B’s characters got the 2 magic items (elven slippers and holy water), while Son A’s executioner got Varael the razor sharp sword. Son B (the younger) is already leaning towards PvP, while Son A is like “Can’t we all just get along…” We’ll see how this goes.

Even though we were all sitting at a table together, I decided to do everything online. So I’m sharing a google Doc with campaign notes and quick screen shots like the name list from the manor and the magic item stats; a Google Draw with the map (so we can draw on it to make notes); and of course the excellent Villager character keeper shared up thread by Motive_Zine. We’re using rollforyour.party for dice rolling, however I created for each of them their own page because we found out that if you select a bunch of dice, and then someone else hits an action, then those dice go away. Better to give each of them their own dice…

We ended with the giving out of the magic items. Next session I expect they will explore the village and end up at the manor. Yay!

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#465

Thanks for the notes, Chris, I appreciate it.

#466

My hope is that the nature of spellcasting will emerge and become defined by each playgroup, as part of the fiction. If your magic-user wants to cast Wondrous Spell, the first question I would ask as Judge is “What makes it wondrous?” – as in, “inspiring a feeling of wonder or delight” – and then we’d have a conversation about what that means. If you want to use Wondrous Spell to immolate your foes with fire from your fingertips, or commit any violence, really, you’d have a lot of convincing to do! Dazzling the villagers with a light show, though, that’s no problem.

Which is not to undercut the issue that the nature of spellcasting is vaguely defined in the rules. That’s by design, with the goal of creating a sense of possibility – maybe you can do anything, but you won’t know until you try, and magic is dangerous stuff. Conversation about the potential meaning of the individual words that comprise a spell name is integral to the sense of power and possibility I want a magic-user player to feel. And ideally, a set of mutually-agreeable “house rules” will gradually emerge from that conversation.

I’m looking forward to seeing what Paivikki tries to do with Weave of Force!

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#467

@jasonlutes Just noticed that many of the prices in FotF2e are very different than in DW. Is that because you just disagreed with the costs or is there something else going on?

#468

I think the prices for DW work fine for DW, but in Freebooters, where 100sp = 1XP, treasure has a different significance, and “hardscrabble adventure” is the name of the game, I had to (and continue to) tweak prices into some semblance of a working fantasy economy. I started with the price list from The Streets of Marienburg and then have iterated based on how things feel in play and feedback from folks on G+.

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#469

Thanks Jason. I love your answer about magic. Fewer rules as an incentive to have a conversation. I like how you stick to your guns with my suggestions of more simulation.I am excited to see what Paivikki will do as well. Jon actually passed me a note when Topias was dangling from the rope that said , " Weave of Force?" on it. I think I am partly hesitating because of all the possibilities and it seems like once she casts something it will set a precedent for what her future magic will look like.

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#470

Yeah, I go hot and cold on “medieval fantasy economics.” It makes me crazy sometimes to see something I feel is grossly out of step with “real” middle ages – like when leather armor and chainmail cost the same (looking at you Dungeon World). OTOH, there are times when I just want a “wealth” stat and hand wave the cost of ale vs. fine wine…

I understand how important those choices have to be for FotF. My crew finally got a big haul back to town, and really had to think about how much they were going to store, how much they needed to re-arm. etc.

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#471

here is a write up of the first session of our funnel - The Stone Warrior - if anyone wants to read it. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lNxV9CD8SNUGgkrB2Ei1rBdvulpZv2V4/view?ths=true

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#472

Hey, all, I’m Jason. Just discovered these forums and happy to see there’s a substantial community for Freebooters. I’m a huge fan of Perilous Wilds - backed the Kickstarter way back and I’ve been using it ever since. Used it a ton playing Torchbearer and a little bit with DCC RPG. It’s a book that’s always in my gaming bag. Nowadays, I’m mainly an OSR guy - currently running a Stonehell Dungeon campaign using Ben Milton’s Knave.

I discovered the Freebooters 2e playtest materials sometime last year and love the new dungeon generation materials. I’ve actually added an entire dungeon section to Sailors on the Starless Sea using those tables (when my players wandered down some section of the dungeon that wasn’t detailed. @jasonlutes I love the idea to detail different hex regions the same as you did dungeons. That would really up my hexcrawling game.

Anyways, I try to recommend Perilous Wilds and Freebooters anytime I can over on the osr reddit. Really looking forward to playing with some of the new materials. I just started a nursing program though, so I won’t be able to give as much feedback as I’d like. Either way, though, I’ll be a backer whenever that kickstarter hits. Thanks to everyone else for your playtesting and editing to make this an awesome product and THE rpg product I keep in my game bag regardless of game.

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#473

Welcome, @jasonabdin! And thanks for the kind words. I appreciate you taking the time to post, and I’m happy to hear that the dungeon tables have been useful to you.

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#474

@jasonlutes, I have just a few quick editing things to mention if you haven’t already caught them:

Volume 0
• p2, 2nd paragraph: “Roll d100 for each villager… to determine what they did…”
• p12, step 8: “If so, decide to what what spirit…” remove one of the what’s.
• p13, step 13: “until each player has added a home…”

Been watching your actual play and loving it. I might suggest, however, doing away with a couple items during 0-level character creation.

The first is Step 4, swapping ability scores. It adds too much indecision while making a character that has a high chance of not dying. Also, it will push players to look ahead at classes and see what they would want for a particular character in order to be best. I think, rather, you should push folks to just roll their stuff up and play the characters a bit to get a feel for them.

For pretty much the same reason, I think you should remove Step 5, applying the heritage bonus. However, I think you could add this back in when players decide to level the character up to lvl 1. This will end up making 0-level even more deadly, which I think is fine, so long as it’s fast. And it’ll add a bit more hardiness to leveled characters. You could potentially do the score swapping from Step 4, but I’m a fan of just rolling up some dude and then getting to know him as he is.

I think you should also remove the offer to burn 1 luck to add to hp in Step 7 in the name of moving things along. It’s pretty uncommon that would make a difference anyhow.

Even, I think, Step 15, forge a bond, could be moved to the game itself, and outside character creation. Perhaps the first time someone tries to help another, ask them to forge a bond. This will allow them to come up with something on the spot, perhaps related to the action they’re performing and give them a little more context on which to consider.

Basically, I would remove anything that can’t just be done by a random generator when it comes to 0-level character creation, and instead move the decision-making aspects to regular gameplay, or when the players decide to level up their character to 1. This way, I can hopefully rely on someone to make a random generator, and just print up dozens of 0-level characters and pass them out at the beginning of a game or when someone dies or a new person joins in. This leaves the player to just pick a name, gender, and alignment (basically same as in DCC RPG, which I think is part of the beauty of their 0-level character game). I think getting to the game more quickly is better.

Anyways, just some thoughts after reading and watching your first actual play session.

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#475

I’m not sure I agree @jasonabdin.

The ability scores my sons swapped out was they took their highest # and applied it to whatever highlighted score for the profession. They didn’t look ahead at all to the class they might play. They were very in the moment doing their chargen.

We’ll see how the heritage move works in play. They rolled only humans though…

(I may in the future strip out heritage from the occupation table and make a separate d12 table based on the FotF Heritage tables - one that’s not class related. Depends on how I want my world to be; and I want to try to play as close to RAW this first run-through.)

I like coming up with the Bonds immediately after characters are all done; and right before play starts. I think it’s important that these folks who probably already know each other as co-villagers would definitely have bonds. It helps do a bunch of world building. Even during our bond writing, we learned that there’s an Empire far away (of which the village is part) that executes people for tax evasion. (The Executioner spared the tax dodger but forced him to become a Dung-hauler).

I don’t share your concern that characters won’t die. Because I’m using Legat Manor, I think maybe 1 of the 6 PCs will make it to the end; however I guess we’ll see once we start to play…

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#476

Late to the party, but here is a google sheet I made up for my FotF 2E game. I think there are some errors I corrected on “my campaign” sheet, but it should be pretty okay. Let me know if something is broken.

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#477

I don’t believe I said characters won’t die. I very much believe many characters will and should die. My goal would be, however, to generate new characters with greater speed than what the rules currently allow. Some seem to prefer the session 0 stuff, which Dungeon World and other games are pretty good at, but for Freebooters, if what I have is 3-4 hours and a funnel adventure ready to go, then we’d just be wasting time with the ability score swaps, burning lucks, heritage bonuses, and forming bonds. Bonds and histories, especially, can just form during play.

#478

I think this might be the line to which @chrisshorb was referring, which I think was just a typo?

Fair points, @jasonabdin. I will think on them. At the very least I could include an “official” streamlined version of the villager creation rules that eliminates decision-making on the players’ part.

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#479

Yes, that was the line.

Interesting, hadn’t considered the two different cases - the one where the funnel is a jumping off point for a possible future campaign; and the other where the funnel is a one-shot for 3-4 hours.

For the latter case, I agree - no need to spend 10-15 minutes of valuable adventuring time figuring out Bonds for a group. They can be created on the fly.

And agree with removing the Luck part; or having that as an optional rule for longer term play.

Last point - I think you can very easily create a generator that is smart enough to do a swap of the highest rolled ability into the occupation’s “strong” ability automatically. The only edge case would be if you have 2 highest abilities that aren’t the occupations strong ability. Then the algorithm would have to make a choice. I’d go with random there I guess.

I wish I had the Python or C++ or Java skills to create this and load it to Github. Maybe I’ll ask my computer science major son to create this. Once his exams are done… :smiley: Although I thought someone had already created one, I just couldn’t find it.

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#480

Ah, Jason has posted a link to one in the past. https://instant-adventures.net/funnel

#481

Oh, gotcha, that’s a typo. My bad, @chrisshorb. I meant characters with a high chance of dying.

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#482

and the other where the funnel is a one-shot for 3-4 hours.

I only meant 3-4 hours for a first session, not necessarily a one-shot, but with the desire to get right to the adventure.

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