@jasonlutes just curious, any plans on additional character playbooks?
Freebooters on the Frontier 2e Discussion
@Haaldaar, one of the planned stretch goals is an “Advanced Freebooters” book that will include more playbooks, themed spell name tables, and the like. Right now I am thinking of adding the earliest OD&D classes: Paladin, Assassin, Monk, Druid, and Ranger. Are there any classes in particular you’d like to see?
It’s a little bit of a challenge, because I designed the basic four in FotF to be flexible enough to cover a range of subtypes within each broad class.
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Hi @jasonlutes and @Haaldaar. This question is tricky to me, but very important! Because in PbtA games playbooks make alot of the game.
The thing I’d ask myself to decide is: are those classes useful for the hardscrabble/funnel adventuring concept of FotF? ES what does it mean to start playing as a Paladin in this kind of game? Or an Assassin? And what kind of adventures would bring to the table the Druid or the Monk?
Also there are some advanced moves that drift basic classes toward similar concepts already, like Templar-Fighter, Crusader-Cleric, Assassinate-Thief.
It would be harder trying to be a ranger or druid, but the question still stand: how those classes add to the game? Personally I feel that Assassin and Paladin as classes aren’t a great fit just because they aren’t a great example of the kind of play the game promise (intrigue or high fantasy epic). Ranger and (maybe) Druid would be more suitable but how could you emphasize the “hardscrabble” side of them? The martial-artist monk always felt totally off-script in D&D to me apart if you’re playing some kind of oriental-connected adventure. But I can see that’s more a matter of taste.
Somehow related to all that: personally I’d have left out the Good and Evil alignments because they tend to add moral topics to a game that (in my mind) should be esthetically gritty but light-hearted (but I’m not sure that is the same idea you have). I played with Good and Evil in my early D&D (BECMI) days, but I recognize that to Moldvay’s B/X as a better take now. Off course it’s a choice and can be totally legit both ways but I mention this here just to offer a conversation topic.
PS Overall I like this game viscerally, so there are maybe critics here but I’m actually super excited for it!
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@il_fabbro, I feel the reason to add additional classes to the game, is purely for player’s imaginations. One of the main reasons OSR games are popular, are because players are recapturing an experience they had ages ago. So, to me, it’s less about what thematically fits a game’s initial vision (which I am not convinced FotF would feel weird with these classes), but more about giving players fuel to their creative fire.
Example: you could very much play the fighter like a barbarian. But, a player selecting a barbarian, even if the playbook was exactly the same as the fighter (note, it shouldn’t), you would have a vastly different play style in a lot of cases.
And to @jasonlutes. My players hunger for barbarians and paladins.
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I think I’d rather see something that talked about how to add Advanced Moves for each playbook, and/or devise your own resource-based Basic Moves (like Mettle, Favor, Cunning), so that play groups would have enhanced ability to design their own stuff.
There’s also the possibility of packages of a simple Basic Move or two to add to a class playbook, alongside a list of new Advanced Moves, to take playbooks into certain areas. So it would be customizing the 4 Classes to allow for specific themes, versus creating a bunch of new playbooks.
FWIW, I was able to use the four basic playbooks to construct Paragon Tier 4e characters: Shaman, Blackguard, Ranger, Invoker. It certainly helps that the characters are higher level, and so can better justify access to more Moves, but it really wasn’t hard to mix and match Basic and Advanced Moves from various playbooks to construct character classes that had the flavor of the 4e character classes.
Like @il_fabbro, I’m uncertain that moving the game’s characters in the direction of Advanced D&D (1e) adds value to the game itself. That said, character options are always very popular, so the value-add might be greater accessibility and interest for the game.
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Yeah, if I do full additional playbooks they will be “extras” intended for people who really hunger for that kind of thing. It’s a good point that just having a playbook titled “Barbarian” or “Paladin” goes a long way toward player engagement with character concept. There’s this funny line the game is walking between evoking the feeling of OD&D play and more modern RPG design which creates some tension.
The design of the current playbooks tried to incorporate a broader range of character types than might be apparent at first, as @il_fabbro suggests. Those advanced moves (Templar, Assassinate, etc.) are in there specifically to give players the option to shape their characters toward those original “second wave” classes, and the Fighter’s “No Guts, No Glory” move is meant to put playing like a Barbarian on the table from the get-go.
The hope is that, because of the randomness of character generation, character types will emerge organically from the combination of ability scores, class moves, and player choice. For instance, there’s a Fighter in our home campaign who has a high DEX and low STR, chose a bow as his favored weapon, and was a hunter before he became a freebooter – he’s essentially a Ranger. In our first campaign, we had a Cleric whose deity was the goddess of nature, and she did a lot of Invoking aid from plants and wild animals; we decided that she was in fact a druid, just not with a capital “D.”
That being said, even though designing the basic 4 to accommodate a wide range of character “subtypes,” was the original plan, I understand why some people want more options, and for those options to be clearly codified in the form of playbooks. I’ll be tinkering to see if it’s doable.
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@jasonlutes For me, the request seems like a fundamental disconnect with OD&D. A Fighting-Man or Man-at-Arms could be whatever style of Fighter the player wanted, from a brigand to a knight, with gladiators, barbarians, corsairs, etc. all in the mix and defined by the character’s name, selected weapons and armor, and how the player played the character.
An OD&D player didn’t look to permission from the rulebook to play the character how they wanted. When 1e codified Barbarian and Ranger separate from the Fighter, and Druids separate from Clerics of nature gods, and Illusionists separate from Magic-Users, it set up this weird dependent relationship where players needed to turn to rulebooks for the permission to play what they wanted. The ultimate expression of that seemed to be 3.5e, with its many splatbooks for specific builds (though 2e’s Kit books weren’t far behind in establishing permissions).
Maybe some additional Advanced Moves that are flavorful for specific ‘builds’ would do the trick. There are a number of Fighter moves, specifically, that feel like must-haves for almost every Fighter build (Master Weapon and Second Skin), so I could see how Fighters feel constrained before L5 (though there’s still distinctions in weapon + armor, and how you play the character, on top of Attributes).
I’m not playing strictly by the rules: I give more Advanced Moves, so my players are better able to blend Fighter + Thief, etc. So my playtests don’t give me good data for what the players feel like they are missing.
Anyway, I’d be sad to see FotF drift away from OD&D emulation into emulating 1e. That feels a bit lot a loss of player imagination in favor of permission from the designer. I can, though, see how a ‘modern player’ might need a creativity prompt in the text to let their imagination run wild with what they’ve been given.
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I agree. I think that one of the charms of the old-school paradigm was how much it left undefined. One of the reasons I don’t play, for example, D&D5e (and Dungeon World) is because of how little room there is to make the character your own.
This isn’t just a taste and presentation issue, either; it often turns into a practical problem at the table.
For example, I’m playing an old-school D&D campaign, and the party goes into a dungeon, sets loose a powerful demon, and then are all killed by it. What do we do next?
Well, it so happens that there is a manor house right on the dungeon grounds (perhaps the dungeon is in the crypt of the manor, or something like that). The (rest in peace) former party visited the manor, and we have a pretty good idea of what it’s like and how lives and works there. We decide it would be a fantastic idea for us to play the servants of the household, to see how they will deal with the demon that’s been set loose.
Sounds like fun, right?
It’s not hard at all to “create” a house servant as a first-level Fighting Man or a first-level Thief: quite believable, and those characters aren’t that mechanically distinct, anyway.
However, if we were playing D&D5e or Dungeon World, we would have a lot of trouble. What are my options for a first-level character? A Dragonborn Paladin, or a Tiefling Wild Sorcerer? That doesn’t work at all. Why is a Dragonborn Paladin working in the kitchens? Why didn’t we notice them before? And so on.
The character creation rules force so much colour and flavour and fictional detail about these characters on us that a lot of flexibility is lost.
I’d also argue for a “very few basic classes + options and advanced moves for characterization” approach, since I think it allows the best of both worlds.
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That’s a really good conversation indeed.
Basically I agree with @Atlictoatl but,
I don’t think we’re getting the point about PbtA games. We have to look back at Apocalypse World rather then Dungeon World since Jason is making FotF as something different from DW.
As everyone knows there’s no background in AW apart from a very few core points: the apocalypse happened enough time ago that the few survivors still around were children and nobody is really sure what happened; there are plenty of bullets and fuel; something called the psychic maelstrom exists, and it’s “at the limits of perception, something howling,
everpresent, full of hate and terror”. And that’s it.
All the rest is found in the Playbooks, moves and gears. So that’s why playbooks and moves are so important. You could theoretically build an entirly different AW game choosing different playbooks and moves.
And I don’t know about D&D 3.5 or later, but in AW all the colour on your playbook must change every campaign you play, toghether with the rest of the background, and the players get to decide how. So PbtA aren’t games for lazy players, for sure. Flexibility conversely is intrinsic to the system: character moves are like special stunts, but you aren’t limited to your moves in any way. You can always try to do everything you’re able to think. Literally.
Flexibility is also in the advancements you can take. AW has a list of advancements (leveling up) different from DW, where you can take (a limited number of) moves from all the other playbooks. And that’s where you can really build your specifics. You can even gain moves when just doing something for some times without the need for advancements. And then there are custom moves (make the game), so you can reaaaaally go crazy with your skills, but strictly for relevant fictional stuff that emerge from play.
That’s another reason playbooks in PbtA games must be 100% exemplifying of the playstyle the game will deliver. I agree it’s a matter of fueling imagination, but it’s also something that is going to change the game, because “it is the game”. You put a move in a playbook, people are gonna use it for stuff. We’re going to see that stuff in play, and it’s going to “define” what your game is. You don’t put that move or you don’t publish that playbook, the game is going to change. People will always hack your game, but the core design is not talking about that stuff.
That is important because in AW (or DW) PCs are not meant to be a bunch of “hardscrabble” adventurers. DW specifically is more similar to AD&D epic fantasy and moves reflect that. So that’s where lies my concern about modelling AD&D stuff in FotF. I fear it could be “blurred” as a design brand.
PS Barbarian was not a native 1e class. I don’t know 3.5 or later editions but I know it’s a Dungeon World playbook
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This is a very interesting point, and I am glad we are having this conversation. However, I can’t subscribe to FotF being an “emulation” of OD&D. As FotF is (as @il_fabbro also points out) a PbtA game, that feels like an OD&D game (and this is why our group loves it).
Your point is well received about how OD&D was wide open for the creative minds, and future editions stole a bit of that by codifying everything they could. However, this is still a PbtA system, with a playbook. We can say we don’t want to limit a player to a certain set of choices, but this is a game with playbooks and it already limits you with what is in your chosen playbook. Advanced moves to add add flavor for specific builds will have the same guardrails as a new playbook, but will limit even farther, as the player has to level up to become the character they want to be.
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It wouldn’t be too hard to refit them as “compondium classes” if you wanted to only play with the original four, I’d imagine. But I second the interest in some guidlines on creating new moves. I think it’s always nice when there is more support for GM-homebrewery 
For what it’s worth I’m also leaning towards the stay basic and expand when necessary/wanted mentality.
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@Haaldaar I couldn’t agree more with you.
But, but maybe there’s still something to think about the differencies and similarities of OSR and PbtA. Personally I talk more about PbtA because I know that side better. I also want to point out that I’m also here for the same exact goal as Jason: have a game that can revive my early play memories but not just indulge on them with nostalgia. I want to strenghten those little glorious black and white images, take what it’s objectively good from them, through a system that I recognize to be the nicest compromise between “old-school” and “story-games” (that would be Apocalypse World). And sorry if I’m going to say obvious things again, but I use them to lead my thinking to… something 
How to make it PbtA not limiting/railroading? Here’s where the way Vincent spelled out the moves comes in: moves are written in a clever way that is enough specific to work and enough vague to be applied in infinetly different ways (sometimes this is done at the expense of clarity, and that’s why alot of people say AW is “bad written”). Say the Hocus move Fortunes, one of the most cryptic moves of the game initially :_)
Fortunes: fortune, surplus and want all depend on your followers. At the beginning of the
session, roll+fortune. On a 10+, your followers have surplus. On a 7–9, they have surplus,
but choose 1 want. On a miss, they are in want. If their surplus lists barter, like 1-barter
or 2-barter, that’s your personal share, to spend for your lifestyle or for what you will.
And then you have a bunch of tags that define “surplus” and “want” of your followers. But it is really just mechanical stuff! The “real game” for the players is to describe how surplus or want tags transfer in the play session. Tags can be stuff like
Your followers are eager, enthusiastic, and successful recruiters. Surplus: +growth
Your followers disdain law, peace, reason and society. Surplus: +violence
Both the Hocus player and the MC have the duty to translate these tags into shared fiction. Basically they’re writing “the adventure”.
The description of Fortune tags is basically a list. AW is full of lists for both players and MC to use, packaged inside moves. This must relate in some way to the classic OSR lists. Both are mechanical tools that help inspiring and coming up with ideas. But there are 2 fundamental differences:
- In OSR lists are mainly for the GM, PbtA games use them for players too, because players get to play the “master” role a bit, detailing parts of the world setting related to their characters
- In OSR lists are longer and used most often on detailing (as far as I can tell from my limited OSR knowledge), when PbtA use shorter lists that are used as broader crossroads to be interpreted
The game throws at you a list to choose from, but it’s really just there as a skeleton for inspiration (and to push forward the game, but that’s MC concern).
I think those lists are made with the idea that limitation can sparkle creativity
That said, if you write moves too much detailed and closed, you start the real railroading.
So my point here is probably that in writing moves and lists, if the game is enough loose but also enough specific, it will lead the game in certain directions without limiting our creativity.
Wow, I wasn’t sure where I was going. I hope all this ramble makes some sense for you guys! 
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+1 on this! I think this is the most crucial part to satiate the OD&D/OSR bunch of their customization needs. The PbtA guys are also eager to it so I really hope that is finding its way in the final game.
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Agreed, and succinctly put.
Just as an aside, one of the planned stretch goals is to integrate Funnel World into Freebooters, so PCs can start as level-0 villagers, and another stretch goal is a level-0 adventure set in “Leget Manor,” a haunted estate. I’ve playtested these a fair amount, and I am addicted to watching detailed and interesting Villager PCs emerges from ability scores + character traits + player choice. Everyone starts with the same “Villager” playbook, and at the end of the adventure they decide which of the 4 basic classes they will adopt (a la DCC RPG).
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Sign me up! Btw, how will the finnel world start intersect with the “frontier” creation rules, if at all?
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As a kind of “prologue” to a Freebooters campaign, since the villagers don’t know much about the wider world, the collaborative world-building for the Funnel will focus on the site of the first adventure and its immediate locale. After they emerge from the Funnel, there’ll be some slightly different frontier creation rules for the segue.
The basic Funnel rules will include a generic set of leading questions for the players to answer at the end of their first adventure, while Leget Manor (which has a pseudo-French medieval setting) will have its own specific questions. In both cases the questions are designed to broaden the villagers’ conception of the world without going into any big picture stuff.
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Personally, I appreciate the focus on the four archetypes. Compendium classes might make sense as an optional hack at some point, but the simplicity of having a broad category of “things you’re good at” and letting the players determine what that means in the world fits well with PbtA. That is, a Magic-User could be (in 5e terms) a Wizard, a Sorcerer, or a Warlock, because the game doesn’t really say anything about the source of the character’s magic. Ask questions of the player, use the answers, and you have something much richer because it came from collaboration.
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Maybe a good middle ground would be to have players pick an advanced move at character creation? Then they would have a character forming thing without having to wait for level-up.
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Nice… just one Advanced move that hints at what you want to be. Except if you’re going the Funnel World way of course.
Hi! I am a huge fan of Freebooters 1E! I am GM-ing for my two sons (ages 5 and 8) and we are having a blast! My boys love the game (although they haven’t quite figured out that working together as a team greatly increases their chances of survival). I read through most of this thread and did not see these questions already so here goes!
1.) Is there an approximate date of when this will go to kickstarter?
2.) Will this become a standalone PbtA game or will it continue to be a DW supplement?
3.) How do spell components work in the game? I see that they have a limited number of uses. Does every spell require componants? Do you reduce them as a GM move like ammo?
4.) Will the awesome funnel world and perilous wilds content be integrated into the main freebooters book?
5.) Do you have any specific advice for playing with a party of 2? I feel like their survivability would increase greatly with one more player but alas, little sister just wants to eat the grid paper and mom just likes to listen and roll her eyes (lovingly) at our antics.
Thanks!
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