Freebooters on the Frontier 2e Discussion

#81

Hello all. My 2nd session went MUCH better than the first (though the first was ok too). Thanks for all the help from my last post about adjusting my mind-set.

Had a question crop up from my Magic User, now that he hit level two. He is eying the enchanter move next level and wants to start making permanent enchantments. However, looking at the Cast a Spell Move, it says

“When you successfully cast a spell of duration greater than your INT, you suffer -1 ongoing to all rolls until you choose to end the spell, are forced to do so, or its duration runs out.”

Does this mean you are at a permanent disability if you make a permanent enchantment? Else you end the permanent spells effect?

Thanks!

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#82

@Haaldaar, nope, that’s an error. Thank you for bringing it to my attention! The Enchanter should not suffer any such penalty after enchanting an item (permanently or not), and I’ll change the wording of that move to reflect that. I may add some other restriction, but for now let’s just leave it at that. I would love to hear how enchantment goes if your player gets that far.

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#83

Had a player roll snake eyes on the spell Expanding Cube! It started expanding alright! Now there’s a cube shaped crater a half mile wide.

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#84

Ha! Nice. Any casualties?

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#85

Well, it’s not a failure if they wanted to create a quarry, right @Tacoforce?

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#86

No casualties, just substantial sanity loss and alerted the Council of Magerly Containment. The Wizard will be getting a stern talking to.

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#87

I loved the first edition, and I am excited to use what is available for 2e for my upcoming campaign start in a few weeks.

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#88

Happy to hear it! I will try to get out the next little update before then.

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#89

Another great session! Our heroes raised up a vessel crashed on the shore and with the help of an undead crew got it sea worthy again to reach their next source of booty.

There’s still one mechanic that I keep rubbing against like some burr in my boot, and that’s the Incident table.Particularly when I roll a mishap in the night, I just have a hard time being inspired by the table. How much table time should these Mishaps take? How do you make the Obstacles mesh with your current environment?

I having a hard time quantifying where exactly I’m tripping up with this table in particular, anybody else having problems with coming up with good incidents? Is it flowing well at your tables when they come up?

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#90

Any chance we can get a hint of what kinds of changes we’ll be seeing? :stuck_out_tongue:

#91

@Tacoforce, I hear you. I liked the mishaps table in theory, but in practice in my current campaign it is not working as I would like. I may shift it away from specific prompts to more general prompts. When they’re too specific it can be harder to find the connections and contextual them sensibly. I’m open to suggestions…

Obstacles and hazards I have a much easier time with, but they sometimes don’t jibe well either. If a given result is not an easy fit, I just scan the list for something that would work better. I think with general-use tables like these (as opposed to something terrain- or region-specific), the Judge/GM needs to feel free to veer away from the specific roll, and I will be more explicit about this in the final rules.

Can you give me an example of a roll result that was hard to jibe with the situation?

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#92

@jexjthomas, nothing too exciting yet, just an accumulation of class tweaks and clarifying language. There are three clerics in my current game, and a lot of praying and invoking going on, so based on our experiences I’ll be making some small changes to the cleric playbook. Also rewriting the class-specific XP triggers in the Wrap Up move, and changing Craft to correct the egregious math that @Haaldaar pointed out.

The next significant change will probably be a rewrite of the booty rules, which are not yet working the way I want them to, and a more detailed explanation of followers and NPCs. I’m open to suggestions for areas that you’d like to see improved or expanded!

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#93

@Tacoforce, for obstacles, hazards, and discoveries, I’ve been prepping little d6 tables for each region between sessions. I start by rolling on the random tables provided, and then tweak the results to suit the locale. You can see what I’m talking about on pages 8-11 of this (very messy) pdf.

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#94

Hi @jasonlutes, My group was using the Forage move and tripped the Incident table a several times. It doesn’t say which Incident table to use, so at first we rolled to see if it was a Mishap/Obstacle/Hazard and then rolled for the result. Some of the results, while appropriate for the Set Out Move, didn’t really jive with foraging. For example, one of them rolled the Deep water obstacle, That didn’t mesh with the environment I had them in. Another was the Transportation Mishap. Didn’t work because they didn’t have any.

But in the end, it wasn’t a big deal. Did exactly like you suggested and picked something more pertinent. Though, if I am giving any suggestion, I actually like using the Mishap table for foraging. All of those work in almost all circumstances (minus my party current lack of beasts of burden).

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#95

Couple ideas to kick around. First, going back to our earlier topic of Enchanters. My soon-to-be enchanter is very excited about casting spells with permanence. He now has all these plans on item after item to enchant. Do you think the Cast a Spell move will provide enough counter-balance to keep him from enchanting everything under the sun? Or does there need to be something more? I was thinking that there should be some sort of Intelligence burn to do anything permanent. Thoughts?

Also the Aquire move, one small tidbit I don’t like is “on a 10+, they know where you can find it, and it can be had for a fair trade” As a GM, I would like a little more control on the whole “It can be had for a fair trade” part. But my thought was that instead of rolling +CHA for that role, you would role +size and use the same table as Find a Buyer.

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#96

Since the repercussions of a failed spell should scale with the ambition of the caster, Cast a Spell will provide some balance, but perhaps not enough. Call for an ability burn makes sense. I would also consider the drawbacks of permanent enchantments. What sort of material can actually hold an enchantment effectively? What are the repercussions of the enchantment in question?

Out of curiosity, what spells does the magic-user in question have at their disposal?

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#97

Uhmm… Casting my mind back awhile ago… Would be difficult. Especially since I know there will be some armchair GM advice that I’d even give myself in those cases. I like the idea of region specific tables. But yeah if something just doesn’t work I follow your advice in PW, trust your gut!

I have a crazy idea a mishap/hazard/obstacle table that focuses on group collaboration.
“Player, how did 1d6 rations go missing?”
“Player, something vital to journeying in comfort has broken or worn out, what is it and what are going to do about it?”
“The way is blocked, what has fallen over the path?”
ect…

Collaboration I find is a dial in my games, it starts out all the way to the left with loads of player input, then tracks right as the players move into the world. Where’s your dial set? Do you intend to have Freebooters to be as collaborative as DW?

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#98

I have a great cleric player in my group. They are going for more of a Necromancy feel to them and it works wonderfully, they are having a blast. I am probably giving a bit too much power towards their invoke but we have worked out the limitations and drawbacks of the character and their Patron’s power.
Basically I assign the hubris for the situation depending on the scope of the body she wants to raise and overall intent and roll. So far they have raised a small group of skeletons for 4 hubris and 4 hubris to raise a lieutenant beast as a permanent follower that she burned stats for. But the kick is when the rolls fail! The magic still happens but the dead are not under her control, they become npcs in their own right, which they have to deal with accordingly.
The lasted botched roll reanimated the crew of a sunken vessel, ghoul pirates, a zombie captain with a vulture bird and they all formed a dodgy alliance and it’s off to the high seas!

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#99

Point taken! That’s s great catch, I will rewrite the move.

#100

I think close to the same level of collaboration, with the caveat that the Judge has the right to edit/adjust things in order to maintain setting coherence. By the same token, the rules will encourage the Judge to keep an open mind and alter prep on the fly to accommodate player contributions. I play the same way you describe, with the dial all the way over on the player side at the start of a campaign, then ticking toward the middle session by session. Ideally for me it’ll end up hovering somewhere near the middle. There will be advice about how to accomplish this in the rules.

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