Freebooters on the Frontier 2e Discussion

#423

Thanks for the reply @jasonlutes, I’m glad my notes were of some use!

We also used a second page of paper to write down notes about the map or fiction that we established. Probably not unusual for sessions like this either in the form of GM notes or index cards.

My favorite chain of collaboration was when my 8 year-old liked my name Crystal Pool, added the Ruby River and said the water was reddish. We didn’t have a reason why, but later he mentioned off-hand that there’s a lot of iron nearby. I said hey maybe the river looks red because of all the iron in the soil. Later we rolled anachronistic mounts and (after I explained what an anachronism was) he said ok they have motorcycles-no-wait-bicycles, so we decided they are made from the local iron and he added they have a special button to boost and go fast. It’s called Rainbow Junction because the mist hanging in the jungle creates near-constant rainbows. The default move in the 8 year-old playbook is definitely Spout Lore!

Also he rolled “notable gait and voice” for his carpenter and demonstrated a goofy walk and voice that had us both cracking up. These were such fun and memorable moments. :smile: Thanks!

image
image4032×3024 1.89 MB

4 Likes
#424

Love the updated Villager creation @jasonlutes! The page layouts look nice with the tables sharing a page with their associated step, and coming out of the “mathy” steps with a series of rolls as you prepare to launch this hapless villager into a funnel. The “Burn an Ability” move is a helpful reference; it was something I think could be inferred, but it’s nice to have an explicit description to point to, especially for situations where players and GMs might read things differently.

2 Likes
#425

Noticed a few typos: _ _

P. 4 “…Many of you knew me as a child, before I was sent abroa_d_. Two years it took for word of my father’s disappearance to reach me, but I stand before you now a mere _t_en days after hearing the terrible news…”

1 Like
#426

@jasonlutes Is there a changelog for these new updates somewhere? Curious what’s updated in the rules themselves, besides the funnel stuff discussed above.

ETA: Sorry if the details are somewhere obvious and I’m missing it.

3 Likes
#427

I think I’m subscribed to the Dropbox where the files lay. But it would be nice to get a sense of what has changed, as I actually printed some version of these rules back in 2019 for a con; and I bet they have changed somewhat since then…

Even a “going forward” change log would be cool. That said, it’s a nice to have, and I’m just happy you are a) continuing to work on this and showing some excellent progress and b) engaging with us fans/players as you go forward.

2 Likes
#428

@SamR and @chrisshorb, I am terrible at tracking changes, for which I apologize. I’ll try to be better about that!

The recent Funnel stuff was reordering a bit of the character creation procedure and adding a move that spells out how burning an ability works. The bigger changes to the main rules in the past few months have included upping the amount of food gathered from Forage, simplifying Set Out and Pass the Night, rewriting the Craft and Research downtime moves into one move (“Work on a Project”), and changing Level Up to restore Luck equal to your new level instead of just 1. Most of these changes are the direct result of the current campaign I’m running.

3 Likes
#429

No worries @jasonlutes! Just a quick question - is everything in the Dropbox here?

And also, I wonder if maybe when we get to post 500 in this thread, potentially spawning a new thread (linked from this one); and asking the mods to close this one down to future posts? Scrolling back to your first post that links to the Dropbox took a bit - closing in on a big milestone!

#430

Yes, that’s the right link. Good idea about starting a new thread…

#431

I think a discord server for Freebooters would have some interesting benefits. You could break up various topics or books on their own separate threads. You can also pin posts and make them easier for us to find, etc.

4 Likes
#432

Question about Revel in Battle. Are all the effects always in addition to your normal weapon damage?

#433

Sorry for so many posts in a row. I just ran No Small Crimes in Lankhmar for my FotF2e playtest. It was a hoot!

1 Like
#434

Or a slack. It’s free! Downside is you start to lose posts after the 10,000th one. So you would want to post stuff off-site that you want to keep.

Benefit of Slack is that you can thread conversations within the same channel. For me it’s more manageable since I may not be on the discord/slack all the time every day. I can just focus on the threads of interest.

#435

I meant to reply to your post about Leget Manor. Reading it now. My two college age sons, trapped in my home with me, have agreed to play some FotF! I am definitely going to run them through Leget as a funnel. I think I’ll give them both 4 0-level villagers. Hopefully there are spots along the way in Leget that they can find some other villagers in the event they “run out” of their original alotment.

Whomsoever survives will be their freebooter crew for further adventures. Those further adventures will be in a town some 25-50 miles away from Leget, that’s at the border of the serious frontier. That way we’ll get a chance to do the whole See the Frontier section which I think is such a key part of FotF.

2 Likes
#436

Yes — the part of the move that reads, “you may spend mettle to add 1 or more of the following effects to the move result…” is meant to communicate that. Not clear enough?

#437

There are no explicit spots where villagers can be found in the Manor, but I should amend that in the next draft. It should be easy enough to plug them in as haplessly trapped or confined in various areas as needed. Also, with 8 villagers, I bet some will survive…

I would love to hear how this goes, Chris!

2 Likes
#438

@chrisshorb and @Motive_Zine, how do you guys use Slack and/or Discord? I’ve not used either, and I am leery of another time suck in my life. I’m not sure how the text/voice aspects of these services shake out in practice… do some people just hang out and voice chat live? I can picture managing a text-based community, but for some reason the voice thing is off-putting for me, so I’m curious how you (and others) utilize these things.

1 Like
#439

Longtime lurker on this thread - just weighing in to say I think the current forum updates are great for me. These index to Google (that’s how I found it) and keep the conversation focused in a way that otherwise seems to drift almost immediately with more general chat-based tools like Slack and Discord. I agree with your assessment that they end up being time sucks - to get value out of it, you need to groom and moderate it like you do a forum.

I’ll follow this discussion wherever it leads though.

4 Likes
#440

I don’t use Slack. I have in the past, and it is a cool work tool, so no hate. Discord is my main conduit for ttRPG info nowadays. I use it to organize my online gaming groups, and in a pinch to play games with them via video and voice. I use it with my 'zine to talk to (in my case) a small community of fans and contributors. I follow some creatives: Goodman Games, Plundergrounds, Dungeon World, Stonetop playtesting, DriveThu (for creator/publishers), there is also a general RPG server with channels for OSR and Powered by the Apocalypse.

For the games I run, I try to keep the channel count low - one channel for announcements and scheduling, One channel for the current game and one channel for off-topic BS. But each group is a little different. There is some management (turning off notifications, etc.), mostly during your setup. There is no msg threading within a channel, but creating topic channels helps keep things organized - for example, creating a channel for each book in Freebooters.

Being able to pin messages in a channel is really nice – just takes a second to find posts with download links etc.

3 Likes
#441

Afaik Slack doesn’t do voice chat out of the box, although I think you can add a plug in if you want. Discord does do voice - that was it’s unique selling proposition from the getgo I think.

I’m on both Discord and Slack. The sheer quantity of posts in the Dungeon World Discord is overwhelming. And they are not threaded. What does this mean? If I post “Hey, I like the Volley move”, and then you show up tomorrow - unless you are willing to read every post between then and now, you won’t see it. However with threaded conversations (and note, not every Slack enforces threaded conversations - that has to be part of the culture), you can post, and then everyone interested in discussing Volley can respond in the thread.

There are other differences, as well as a lot of similarities. If the volume is low, Discord as a text medium is fine for my level of engagement. If the volume is high, I think Slack is better for most levels of engagement, while Discord tends to serve only those who are very dedicated and spend a lot of time in the server. (note Slack “workspace” =~ Discord “server”)

#442

These index to Google (that’s how I found it) and keep the conversation focused

Yeah, I don’t disagree. Especially the Google part - that’s pretty key to allow new people to find your discussions.

I would really prefer the conversation stayed here in this forum, just a new thread. But if Discord is considered, would also like Slack to be considered, so I pitched it :slight_smile: As someone said, I’ll go where ever the conversation goes. I’m like a tick that way…

2 Likes