Freebooters on the Frontier 2e Discussion

#121

Hi @Devin_Pike – happy to hear you and your boys are having a good time!

  1. I’m hoping by the end of the year, but with everything else I have on my plate right now we’ll have to see how that goes month to month.

  2. Standalone.

  3. Components work however you and your group decide they work. All they do mechanically is provide +1 power for a given spell, but beyond that you get to determine what role they play in the magic-user’s art.

  4. That is the plan, yes! I have been testing a revised version of Funnel World designed to feed directly into Freebooters for a while now, and am pretty happy with how it plays. In fact, I should put that up soon for people to check out. If you haven’t seen the 2nd edition FotF rules yet, you can find them here. Some of the Perilous Wilds stuff has already been plugged in there, and there’s a bunch of other tables for town encounters and dungeons.

  5. Have them hire a follower or two! Then Dad can play some NPCs who will give the PCs advice and practical assistance before dying in entertaining ways.

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#122

Huh. That isn’t standard? I’ve been doing that since we started using FotF. Oops.

PbtA games emulate specific genres: post-apocalyptic adventure, fantasy dungeon delving, urban fantasy, teenage romance, etc… The genre that FotF is emulating is ‘oldschool D&D’. It’s ultimately for Jason to determine what exactly that means, as ‘oldschool play’ has a lot of different permutations, but I think he pretty clearly gave that to us with FotF 1e. Though he can, of course, expand upon that with 2e.

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#123

Yes I agree. That said “oldschool D&D” is not just a fictional genre. Some question that comes to mind:

. do you emulate only fiction (Burning Wheel) or also mechanics (DW)?
. do you emulate “feel” mechanically (Torchbearer)?
. do you keep basic mechanics and expand/variate on it (OSR)?
. do you try to apply principles of one rpg line (OSR) to another (PbtA) (Vagabonds of Dyfed)?

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#124

Thanks for the response! I hadn’t touched followers yet but I think some savvy mercenaries would be just the thing for them. Also, I really love the one roll woodland! Will there be one-roll tables for other areas as well?

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#125

That table was meant as an example of how to write your own encounter tables using the generators in The Perilous Wilds. I just rolled up 36 different things and interpreted them. I enjoy doing that kind of thing, and if there’s enough interest I might include a full complement as a stretch goal.

Tell you what though — let me know the terrain type of a particular region in your game along with any rumors or facts you know about that region, and I’d be happy to write you up a custom table.

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#126

If no one else answers, I’ll throw out Swamp/wetlands…

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#127

I’ve been having a lot of fun rolling up random encounter tables when I have time, but if this offer is extended to everyone (Jason you may have bit off more than you can chew if that’s the case!) can I ask for some assistance for some good grasslands (temperate, perilous, chaotic) encounters?

@chrisshorb I have a wetlands one I’d be glad to share! (I think some of those might be adapted from the ones Jason shared on his blog, iirc)

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#128

@jexjthomas, those encounter tables are great!

  1. Tracks showing that a rock troll rested and then ate a large persimmon before defecating nearby.
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#129

Thanks! I think I may have, erm, adapted that one from somewhere (it wasn’t the table you shared on your blog?), so I can’t take all the credit for it. But I really have a lot of fun rolling these up and interpreting the results. Freebooters is a very very fun game to run for many reasons, but this kind of stuff is a big part of what I love about it. Soon one of my players and I are going to get together to work on the Halfling pantheon, and I’m pretty excited about that. We had some fun ideas come up in play, and I love getting to jump on those and expand them into something that feels real and lived-in.

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#130

Yes, the format of the table is from by blog, but the content is all yours!

#131

Okay, I’m tinkering with table formats, because some people (like Aaron Griffin back on G+) found rolling a bunch of d12s and figuring out which order to interpret them in to be a pain. So I am taking a page from Kevin Crawford and experimenting with d8>d10>d12 tables. Let me know what you think. Easier to use? More difficult? Too cutesy?

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#132

@jasonlutes I really like this. I liked those style of charts in The Black Hack.

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#133

Wow, I am surprised by how much I prefer the “old” way over this.

I applaud the amount of work you have put into trying to minimize the cognitive load for this approach, but it’s still a notable net loss with respect to ease of use for me.

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#134

Thanks for the response, @gartsalrisa. Can you identify what you find off-putting? Do you find the icons distracting? Or maybe you prefer d12s all the way?

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#135

I rush to note that the d8>d10>d12 approach is not so much “off-putting” as “much less effective than I expected in concept.”

Clearly and concisely indicating which “d” to use is a challenge, and icons are a natural solution. But in use, my brain is having to hop around between different intelligence areas. There is the identification of the icon. The matching of the icon to the physical die (“that diamond goes to this die, this other diamond goes to this other die”). A superfluous but inevitable re-matching of the die shape to its range (“this one is the d8, that one the d10”–this may just be an idiosyncrasy of how my brain works). Then the matching of the rolled number to the range in the table.

I don’t know that converting the icons to textual treatments of “d8”, “d10”, etc. would be a net improvement, as it would only shift the shape-association burden completely to the user (i.e. make my superfluous step above required.)

My surprise is that I would much rather roll the same die multiple times with the possible burden of having to note an arbitrary order than roll three different die in a precise order.

Caveat: I use d66 and d666 often, so the table reading part is the lesser of the cognitive burdens for me.

Edit: Added “indicating” in paragraph 2.

3 Likes
#136

Thanks for that excellent analysis. You’re describing the same thing I feel when parsing a table like this. I think I could get used to it, but there would definitely be an adjustment period. Mixing icons with text may not be the best solution; I’ll keep tinkering.

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#137

I like this in theory, but would need to take some time to actually roll on it to see how I really feel about it. I’m kind of with @gartsalrisa, though maybe to a lesser degree. Looking at it kind of makes my brain freeze up a little. It might be presentation more than anything–maybe putting the dX over the icon would help? But it feels kind of cluttered, and probably would still that way. It does seem though that this method would be a lot easier and more fun than rolling d12s over and over again, but there’s the visual block for me to get over in the first place.

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#138

Using shading and color (if that’s an option) is often a good option. But, honestly, what’s not working about what’s in ver. 3-6-2019? I’m looking at the Settlement Types in Settlements & Citizens, and it’s crystal clear. Settlement Location (p. 11) takes a second to parse visually, but you’ve also got text there explaining it.

I personally like the large use of d12 tables; it’s a little-used die, and fun to get use from. I also really like those tables that all use the same die. I can roll up a whole bunch of dice on an online dice roller, and then use them as needed. Sometimes that ‘3’ doesn’t quite stimulate a response for me, but the next roll, a ‘10’ does. I realize that’s a personal idiosyncrasy, but I think it can get too complicated to be bouncing between d12, d10, and d8.

It also explodes the copyediting errors. Both tables, you’re supposed to be rolling 1d8 first, and you’re using the correct dice icon, but the numbers are wrong. Unless it was your intent to release the sample chart before it was quite finished, I think it nicely illustrates what a massive pain in the ass this new system will be for you to make, your copyeditors to proof, and for people to use if any errors slip through. I’d avoid it.

2 Likes
#139

I threw it up without taking the time to properly proof it because I was just interested in testing the format, but I see your point. I don’t think “difficulty to copy edit” is much of a drawback, though, if the trade-off is improved speed and usability in the long run. I appreciate your feels for the d12s :slight_smile:

#140

I know this isn’t a democracy, but this gets my vote too.

Also this:

I use different colored d12s (example: red, white, and blue) and try to ise in that order. But like Atlictoatl, I will mix them up if I like another option better.

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