With Discord you can control whether you have voice channels or not. (Just recently all voice channels can now do video). In our experience, Discord is pretty good with voice and OK with video. I have only used it with my regular gaming groups. I don’t know of any publisher that I follow that uses voice/video with their fans. I have seen some use Twitch + Chat to livestream stuff.
Freebooters on the Frontier 2e Discussion
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I am 100% okay with this forum being the place for Freebooters updates and discussion, however I would definitely make use of a Discord server. I find Discord can be really difficult to follow due to the lack of threading and the pace things can move at (this is true for Slack as well, although Slack does have threading), but most of the servers I’m on are slow enough that I never get too anxious about being behind. I definitely prefer Discord over Slack, which I am not a fan of at all though I’m not sure I can articulate exactly why.
For @jasonlutes and anyone else who hasn’t used it before, the format is really most similar to irc compared to anything else, with the ability to create separate “channels” for various topics. I’m a message board baby myself, and my ideal form of interacting with other humans on the internet is through forums like this one, however having all of this in one long continuous thread can get difficult to parse if you need to go back and find something. For what it’s worth I find the search tools on this forum to be very good, which helps, but being able to have multiple threads/topics would be useful, and that’s not really an option here–we’re not going to have a Lampblack & Brimstone subforum, for instance. So I would ultimately be for offloading some of that to a Discord server.
And to reiterate–you don’t need to have any voice channels at all, nor participate in them if you do have them.
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The only thing I could possibly see a voice/video channel being good for is actually playing, which we can’t organize here anyway.
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Hi I’m Jan Burger. I was a student of Jason Lutes’ at the Center for Cartoon studies and we did a lot of game playing there on the side as well.
I am going to run a funnel with friends this weekend. Wish me luck! Any advice?
I was wondering what it would be like to invert the dominant culture of the village and make it primarily something besides human.
A question about rolling up a dungeon… Would you treat each creature/ person that the characters meet as potentially friendly or hostile? By that I mean would you roll an alignment when creating them and a reaction roll for each one that is met. I kind of got a feeling for the personalities of some of the creatures I made and rolled NPC traits for the more interesting ones.
I rolled up a “lawful” dungeon with a “safe” danger level. “The Prophet’s Retreat”. I started really wondering, is this more like Moria or Rivendell? By the title “dungeon” I would assume it is at least a bit dangerous. Would you roll alignment for the inhabitants on the Lawful alignment table then?
Because we roll a “cause of ruin” there is an assumption that things have fallen apart from their original purpose. I appreciate how there is advice when making a dungeon to heavily edit things that don’t feel right.
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Normally, I would say to roll up a few, but play them true to their own motives and desires - so sometimes they will align with the party, sometime they will not.
BUT
If you are going all-in on a FUNNEL then I think it is fine to say they are all antagonists and will rarely be friendly – after all, it is not supposed to be a “friendly” environment.
Love the idea of inverted setting. Why not lean into the funnel and make the bad guys humans who are out to steal the land/water/riches from the poor goblins/gnomes/orcs?
Hey @janmartijnburger! Welcome to the Gauntlet. For those of you that don’t know, Jan is playing Paivikki the Great in my current online campaign, and has illustrated a number of L&B things, including the interior of Freebooters 1e.
Jan, the way the game is written, yes, you could roll alignment of each inhabitant based on the “predominant alignment” of the locale, which in this case is lawful. Rolling lawful and safe as random dungeon tags in a sandbox campaign, you have some flexibility when you’re looking to contextualize the place, but it’s a little harder for a funnel, which has the specific dramatic purpose of subjecting villagers to a life-threatening trial.
As far as whether the inhabitants are friendly or hostile, what I like to do is roll up 3-5 of the most important residents as NPCs and think about how their traits might make them behave in context, in relation to their surroundings and the other NPCs. Some sort of story usually emerges from this. Competing goals and motivations can point toward conflict, especially when you fold the dungeon’s themes into the mix.
The big question for a funnel is to ask is what’s at stake for the villagers – there should be some compelling reason for them to visit the Prophet’s Retreat, and some dangerous project or mission that will put them in physical jeopardy. If the inhabitants of the retreat are largely lawful, then perhaps they have ordered – or tradition dictates – the villagers to show up in order to undertake some vital task on their behalf. Perhaps the old prophet is dead or dying, and a new prophet needs to be chosen from among the lowly commoners, who must together undertake some perilous task. Into the depths of the Retreat itself, into the wild, or into some other dungeon?
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Ah, wow that interior art is amazing in FotF 1e! Thanks Jan! Hope to see your art elsewhere soon!
(Do you have a page showcasing your work anywhere?)
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Jan’s art page is here, @chrisshorb – be sure to check out the puppet work! Jan is multitalented, to say the least.
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Hey folks,
Curious what your prep looks like for adventure locations. I’ve started building out some regional tables a la the Sodden Reach material, but I’m struck by how much the framing of the results (obstacles/mishaps/hazards/etc.) lock into set out, and the idea of traveling through a location, rather than exploring it. What’re you doing for locations where you expect the heroes to spend time?
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Hey @SamR, good question. The Overland & Underworld book will tackle the generation and handling of regions and points of interest more directly, but that draft has not yet come together. I would love to hear what other people do in the situation you describe, but here’s the way I handle it.
Let’s say the the party sets up camp in a particular region and use it as a base from which to make forays into the surrounding area, in search of ancient ruins they’ve heard about. Depending on our discussion at the table and my sense as a Judge, I might rule that we’ll handle each day’s foray individually, or that we’ll tackle a week’s worth of exploring at a time, if that scope seems more appropriate. If the region is dangerous or perilous I might lean toward the former, and if it’s unsafe or safe I might lean toward the latter. Either way is fine, it’s just a question of choosing which suits the flow and pace of your game at that point. A third way would be to set the stage by running the first foray as it’s own thing, and then shift over to resolving a week’s worth of exploration at a time.
If we decide we’re going to resolve each foray, I would ask them to Set Out, with the destination of “finding ancient ruins,” and give them some choices of directions to go (“You could head upriver toward the mountains, or into the rolling grasslands that stretch out to west, or cross the river and checkout the floodplain”), or just have them point at the map. Since each foray is just a day trip, each one might have one or two “legs,” depending own how granular you want to get. In any case, once they get out there, I’d ask them to Find Answers to see if they find any ruins. If I as Judge have predetermined the locations of the ruins, the answers will be clear; if I haven’t pre-determined the locations of the ruins, before they make the roll I would commit in my head one way or the other – yes, there are ruins where they’re looking, or no, there aren’t – and then answer after they make the roll. Alternatively, I could ask the expedition member with the lowest Luck to Get Lucky to see if they find what they’re looking for.
To resolve the forays a week at a time, you could run it as the downtime move Work on a Project, with the project being “find the ancient ruins,” or call for a single Find Answers roll that sums up their explorations for the week.
If they’re just searching for anything of interest, without any rumors or knowledge of specific objectives, I would lean toward running one foray at a time, and just generate a random discovery from scratch or roll one off a pre-generated list.
Wildcard move: someone with knowledge of the area could Establish that they know where the ruins are.
Does that address your question at all?
I guess the hope is that, once you get used to them, the moves feel more like a toolkit to pull from than things that have very prescribed usage. I mean, yeah, the triggers are specific, but ideally they’re flexible enough to allow for a variety of applications without losing integrity.
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I’m not sure it addresses my question exactly, but it is VERY helpful so I’ll let it slide! 
I love the idea of using Work on a Project that way, and using Set Out to handle smaller forays as opposed to longer journeys.
The thing I’m thinking about is more a matter of prep, though. I looked at your Sodden Reach samples and was like “ah, yes. I can make one of these sheets with Hazards, Obstacles, Creatures, etc. and then I will be suitably prepared to run this area!” Then, as I started to fill that chart in, I realized that it actually left out almost all of the important things. Like your example above assumes that there are (at least hypothetical) ruins the PCs are actively seeking. Running a game with just that material would be like running a dungeon with just a random encounters table. (This is not a knock at all on the game at all, just my assumptions about what I needed to prep!)
So like, when you (the general “you,” not just @jasonlutes sit down for a session of FotF 2e where the PCs are headed to, say, a specific village with some wilderness nearby, what are you bringing to the table to feel adequately prepared. (Obviously this is a subjective question, and I’m excited to hear your subjective answers!)
For the game I’m going to run for my sons, I plan to go through Leget Manor as a funnel.
Then we’ll move the L1 players about 25-50 miles away to the TRUE edge of the Frontier. We’ll do the See the Frontier process then. That will be collaborative. I’d like to somehow get them eventually to Deep Carbon Observatory, but that’s got a pretty specific setup, so that may have to wait for another time/campaign.
Regardless, the “See the Frontier” process will create a bunch of stuff for me to create. Which I will using the tables and procedures in books 2, 3, and 4. I may also create some “secret” stuff. All that said, to answer your question directly @SamR, my plan is to at least have a list of 5 new Discoveries, 5 new Dangers, 10 NPCs, and at least one not-yet-explored dungeon prepped for every session after See the Frontier. As the discover the above, I’ll cross them off and create new.
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Is there a Google Sheets character keeper for Freebooters on the Frontier? I looked through the Gauntlet Resources page, but didn’t find one.
If not, then I think I might take a stab at creating one. I’ll probably use this as a starting point. I don’t know where the original is.
I made a Freebooters sheet back in the day. My spreadsheet-fu is weak though and I haven’t updated it in a long time but maybe you find some inspiration for a proper sheet.
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Ah, apologies for not understanding you properly!
That stuff will be directly addressed in Overland & Underworld. My basic thinking at this point is:
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In addition to the usual tags (safety, terrain type, etc.), assign each region a size tag (small, medium, expansive, vast) with some guideline to define each – probably # of days it takes to cross the widest point on foot. So maybe small 1 day/medium 2-3 days/expansive 4-6 days/vast 7+ days.
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Each size tag will have an associated “feature die” roll to determine the number of indigenous creatures, hazards, and discoveries, the same way that dungeon size determines # of areas. Let’s say the rolls are small 1d4+1/medium 1d6+2/expansive 1d8+3/vast 1d10+4.
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To prep a region, you first roll the feature die for each category of creature, hazard, and discovery to determine how many of each type are present.
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For each category, you roll up each of the different things on the existing tables. Given how I’m approaching dungeons, it makes sense to write up a set of tables based on specific terrain types, but for now you could just use the current general ones.
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For each immobile hazard and discovery, you decide where it is on the map, or you leave it for the PCs to find wherever they happen to explore.
What do you think? See any problems with this idea? If you prep this way before you create incident tables, your prep could inform what you put on those tables.
This is great incentive for me to draft some guidelines and incorporate them into my current campaign. I’ll take a stab early next week and post here when I have something more formal to share.
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Here is my freebooters funnel Google Sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RryowKijAxLqJOyXyRIopTHwbFx_5tgvQQ-OEZmeTEo/edit?usp=sharing
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Thanks @HorstWurst and @Motive_Zine for sharing those keepers.
I’m def going to use those as starting points.
It would be cool to have a Charkeeper that can convert a funnel character into a “real” character just by hitting a button; but I’ll have to noodle on how possible that actually is.
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Don’t apologize! I’m just appreciative you’re fielding these questions and offering so much helpful insight.
I really like the structure you’ve laid out. As with the rest of what you’ve designed I think it finds a nice balance between all of your design goals. You can use it on the fly or to aid session prep, and even if you don’t want to randomize content, it gives the Judge a strong sense of what kind of material they’ll want to have on hand (or be prepared to generate on the fly) to run a region successfully.
I’m excited to see the formal guidelines you come up with, but in the meantime this actually goes a long way toward helping me wrap my head around how much prep I’m going to want before the first session of my West Marches campaign (which is hopefully soon)!
So, basically, thanks!
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I have a question about magic.
the Magic User playbook says :
When you cast a memorized spell, say what you want to create within the scope of the spell’s name, spend power to describe it, and roll +INT, +1 per point of unspent power: on a 10+, it does what you want; on a 9-, you suffer an arcane accident according to your roll:
In an email Jason Lutes wrote on the topic he said:
“The way the rules are written, you describe the desired effect of the spell each time you cast it, and the effect can change from casting to casting; the only requirement is that the effect falls under the umbrella of the spell’s name. Some people like to have predefined effects for their spells, or they develop a repertoire of go-to effects after some experimentation. But you can just make up a desired effect on the spot. The limitations of the effects are determined by the amount of power you are able to put into the spell. So “Bright Fog,” for instance, could be used to create a hand-held ball of mist that illuminates an area for 3 power ( parlor trick , touch , small area , duration 1) or a glowing blanket of fog that obscures vision for 5 power ( minor , touch , medium area , duration 1), or any other effect you can imagine and have the power to generate. As a 1st level magic-user with +2 INT, Paivikki will start out with 3 power to play with.”
Which I am starting to get my mind around. It is a very flexible system and works your brain to imagine magic and how it would work. Which is a lot of fun.
In our game Paivikki has this other spell: “Weave of force” which I have been mulling over wondering what it might do or what it might not do. I realize that the wording could be interpreted to be almost anything since “weave” and “force” are kind of general terms.
“Weave a spell” and " Natural forces" for example. I was wondering then if it could be a kind of anything spell. Which seems a bit much. If you look at the spell randomizer table you see it is possible to roll spells like “Wonderous Spell” which is even more general. So if the scope of the spell is just about anything then you don’t really need anything else (unless you suffer vacuity!)
I wonder if it might make sense to say that you have to define your parameters somewhat especially for spells that seem like they could do anything. Only manipulating elements or energies not creating them and not perceiving could be parameters for “Weave of Force” for instance. The “Wonderous Spell” could only be illusions or could not be harmful as another example.
What do you think?
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