Wow, thanks for the link, @nekroz!
Freebooters on the Frontier 2e Discussion
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Just reporting back that Cross Town works great in play. So did Find Answers, which we incorporated for the first time. Establish was a little tougher–I often ask my players what their characters know of the world etc but usually just use the answers. We found that Establish encouraged a playstyle that wasn’t completely congruent with how our group has been playing. We made a conscious decision that next time we’ll try to angle things a little bit to try it out.
One thing about Find Answers that I was surprised about – I never really liked having straight Perception style checks, and felt that Perceive was kind prone to be used that way. Then when that option was gone, I sort of missed it. I vastly prefer it being a “putting the pieces together” type move, but there are times when it makes more sense to call for more or less a straight ahead Perception check. I guess that could be a Saving Throw +WIS?
(My table also got into a debate about the differences between Intelligence and Wisdom and I was just like y’all this debate is probably 45 years old at this point …)
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Just finished our session zero (?) after our funnel. Here is a link to our campaign map:
Here is a copy of the original:
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Nice! Would love to hear how things develop if you are inclined.
We played through Sailors on the Starless Sea as our session zero. It went pretty well.
I don’t think that my players were that enamored of the funnel environment. Had one player quit – not completely due to that, but it was a factor. The other three were troopers and enjoyed the crazy finale of the adventure and definitely employed as much creative play as one would expect. There are purposefully not a lot of systems in the funnel version of FB2, but they really enjoyed the backgrounds, looks and professions. I had one player loose just one PC, two others lost 3. They all enjoyed the systems for moving from 0 to first. Rules-wise, I think I have said already, that the “7-9 result = damage” actually makes PbtA-style funnels more deadly than DCC’s d20. I would suggest making some kind of acknowledgement of this in this chapter, perhaps offering suggestions to tone this down a bit. I have some if your are interested.
The Players envisioned the three surviving PCs going off to expore and leaving their village, so since I had skipped the village creation (because SotSS has an implicit setting) I never went back to this and just pushed on to the setting creation in chapter 1. We took two nights going through the setting creation sections. Below is a link to the google doc, that we used for notes (this is just viewing rights). While some of the folks really wanted to get back to play, I think they bought in pretty hard. They LOOOOOOVED the tables. Everyone when for those, but I was generous in letting them re-roll if the result was not satisfying. Re-rolls were VERY uncommon - maybe 2-3 over the whole process. I think this is a success.
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Thanks for the summary, and suggestions are always welcome.
The wording of Fight on a 7-9 is, “you deal damage but suffer the enemy’s attack as well,” which is intended to leave room for things other than the enemy inflicting damage, but I will certainly emphasize this in the section of the rules that explains each move in more depth.
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@jasonlutes I am a few days away from the PCs embarking on their first adventure. I am going to write down my prep, so that you can comment as you will. I am trying to stay true to the FotF2e rules - but in their current state I feel that I’m making some guesses here.
The party has decided to explore a site about 50 miles from their home base: the Ghostly City. More on this later.
I am dividing this first wilderness travel into 3 legs. Using roughly on day per leg. Two days of travel and the final day when they get to the ruined city. NOTE: As they gain more experience, I think I will just group the legs into multiple days, but as this is their first foray, I think this makes more sense.
The first leg I am deeming as safe since about half of it is in “civilized lands” the second, as they get further away, I am deeming unsafe. The final leg, I am guessing about 4 hours and their entry into the city as dangerous.
My plan is to just have them roll SET OUT for each leg and then see where the tables lead us!
Q: I assume a Creature result should be resolved using Chapter 4, but where is the ODDITY subtable?
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As far as what to do for a 7-9 (suffer the enemy’s attack) result in a funnel, I suggest you add some explicit examples like these, which can be combined or followed up upon with regular damage.
- Disarmed, weapon damaged (head came off the pitchfork)
- Ability damage as per p.55 (excellent btw)
- Loss of an item (broken, dropped)
- Tripped, slammed to ground
- remind them of weapon tags like messy - blood spray in the eyes, or forceful - knocked back/off
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I suppose Freebooters is the same as Dungeon World, where you already have your list of 7-9 options in the GM moves.
What do you mean p. 55?
Page 55 of the basic rules, chapter 1.
@il_fabbro My suggestion is that (1) if the default assumption is that most FotF GMs are coming from DW, and (2) they are playing through a funnel, that (3) they would be expressly warned about using the DW default for a 7-9 “hack and slash” move (deal damage) – it will be very deadly. Nothing is broken in FotF, but it shouldn’t be subtle or implied.
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Are you referring to FotF 1st edition? Cause I don’t have page 55 on FotF 2e basic rules.
I agree that moves should be as self explanatory as possible. Totally.
As far as I understand DW, deal damage is not the default enemy’s attack. The GM should choose any of the GM moves as the enemy’s attack. That means that more often then not PCs will not suffer any hit point loss but rather they will have a fictional down-beat. That should modify drasticly the deadliness. Does it make sense to you?
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I am running 2e. On that page it has a “55” in the bottom…
You are correct. R.A.W., in DW it means the monster lands “an attack.” Maybe you have played with a better calibre of folks than I, but the most common result for 7-9 on Hack and Slash in the all the DW games I have played has been the monster does its damage. It is not the only result, just the most common. That is what I mean by default, as in what is commonly assumed and adjudicated. I thought that a note to that effect was in order due to the nature of funnels as a handy tip for the GMs.
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Tonight’s session–our 18th!!–was kind of a mixed bag but ended on a high note. I’ve been feeling kind of burned out with this campaign, in part because I’ve actually felt really lost and not sure where things should be going. I really wanted to work to help the players play out their characters’ individual stories, even when that meant the group not really being a cohesive group any longer, and when it meant moving away from the game’s fundamental play loop. I worried that moving into the city was part of the problem, and I started trying to think of quests to give the characters and how I can try to push the characters back together.
Of course, the answer was to not do that. The answer was to stop trying to push things in any particular direction and to let the dice do their thing. After saving the city’s guildmaster from an anti-(proto)capitalist uprising and delivering him to the grand mage at the academy, they spent a week of downtime. Lindy, our halfling thief, rolled a 5 on Pass Time with a settlement event occurring in 3 days. In the background, I rolled up Unnatural -> Planar/Infernal -> Planar Rift. I centered it on Lindy, like the move states, but made it clear this wasn’t something that only Lindy was seeing. And we ended the session on a scene of the citizens reacting to a giant hole in the sky with impenetrable darkness on the other side.
And the players loved it, and are excited to see what happens next. And are going to have to come together to deal with whatever that’s going to be.
We also had three (!) PCs change alignment: one from chaotic to good (that was a long time coming), one from lawful to evil, and another from neutral to chaotic. It all felt pretty natural and appropriate. And our evil dwarf thief/magic-user remained evil, and probably always will.
Rules clarification: when leveling up while multi-classing, my assumption is that you keep gaining experience on the original track but when you level, you decide where the level goes, same as D&D etc. My player just wanted me to make sure that was the case, because I think she’d like to be able to level up the magic-user part faster, as if she were actually level 1. I tried explaining that she’s basically level 7, and has to keep leveling with that being the case, but she asked me to clarify just in case there’s any chance she can level in magic-user separately. (Choosing which xp track to mark when she gets xp, I guess?)
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I am dividing this first wilderness travel into 3 legs. Using roughly on day per leg. Two days of travel and the final day when they get to the ruined city. NOTE: As they gain more experience, I think I will just group the legs into multiple days, but as this is their first foray, I think this makes more sense.
Seems like that should work fine. What I do is reduce the number of legs (and/or reduce the safety tag) if they follow the same route repeatedly – so it’s not based on the general experience of the PCs, but on their familiarity with the region or route.
Q: I assume a Creature result should be resolved using Chapter 4, but where is the ODDITY subtable?
In the current version of the playtest docs, it’s on page 66 of the Basic Rules.
This is one of the drawbacks of an “open world”-style game, and a challenge at any table where the PCs have divergent agendas. I feel your struggle! And nice recovery.
Rules clarification: when leveling up while multi-classing, my assumption is that you keep gaining experience on the original track but when you level, you decide where the level goes, same as D&D etc. My player just wanted me to make sure that was the case, because I think she’d like to be able to level up the magic-user part faster, as if she were actually level 1. I tried explaining that she’s basically level 7, and has to keep leveling with that being the case, but she asked me to clarify just in case there’s any chance she can level in magic-user separately. (Choosing which xp track to mark when she gets xp, I guess?)
Yes, you have it right. I need to write up a clear summary of multiclassing for the playtest docs because there’s too much room for confusion at present.
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Yeah I forgot that version I have printed out is outdated, now I can see that on the latest pdf, sorry.
Well, frankly I also used to default on damage and only sparsely pick other moves. After years of mastering PbtAs, but mainly after playing and reading other story-games, I have to say I radically changed my habits.
I agree that in the context of a funnel that’s a very relevant factor. We need to feel the grind 
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I just downloaded this file {FotF2e - 01 Basic Rules (3-1-2020)} and it goes to page 63…
The last page (63) has Marking a Thread as the last heading.
@jexjthomas Just wanted to give you some fellow GM encouragement too keep moving forward and to let you know I have enjoyed your posts.
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Ahh got it! I wonder if there is a way to let folks know when they should be looking for a subtable of x. I know I looked on that page half a dozen times, and I only saw “DETAILS.” That is not the only time that has happened btw. I LOVE the tables, but finding them is a challenge.
What if you used added roman numbers or letters to the reference ? Say DETAILS was table #4, “DETAILS (IV)” the reference would be ODDITY (D) or ODDITY (IV) or whatever… So, when I saw a table reference I would know that it refers to that table or a subtable with the same number # or letter. May mess with your layout, I get it.
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