Zornhau Forums

I ran the session. The players were almost completely new. They had never played TROS before, and their only exposure to 'Bastards was a few fights we ran the saturday previous when we were short a couple people. The missing parties got to run a fight or two before we started this time.

The players took on the role of musketeers (three of them, no less. If we'd had four players show up, we'd have run the original demo instead). The game took an interesting turn when an early encounter (the second scene of the night) involved a scuffle with some back-alley types armed with daggers and hatchets. This lead to one of the players taking a level 3 hatchet-wound to the crown, nearly scalping him from his left temple to right ear.

Between the player sort of reeling from "I just took an axe to the face" and the TN going up for the wound, it really influenced the way the player decided to run that character.

Watching the difference in approach from these players between how they interacted with combat/damage in this game vs our normal OSR/D&D fair was magical.

Agamemnon wrote:As it turns out, taking an axe to face in the first scene really flavors how you play your character for the remainder of the session.

I'm sure Jake would agree.

I am sure they had a new approach to combat after that encounter We haven't played D&D type games for ages so lethal damage system won't be too much of a surprise for my players (hopefully).

The whole forum is silent in anticipation...

We're definitely scheduled for Thursday™

Nearly 4am, EST. Revised wound tables have been audited, formatted, and shoved in the appropriate appendix. Cutting, Piercing, and Blunt damage types have been balanced against each other in context.

Whiskey bottle empty. Coffee pot dry.

It is time for bed.

Sweet dreams

Streamlining the wounds also meant that a bunch of very specific mechanics got rolled into the new and optional "So, you really want to know which fingers you lost?" table.

For some reason, I have a feeling that gauntles and complex guards are going to be realllllly popular.

Agamemnon wrote:We're definitely scheduled for Thursday™

Was that sarcasm? I'm getting kinda queasy alreay...

higgins wrote:For some reason, I have a feeling that gauntles and complex guards are going to be realllllly popular.

I alwas found it odd that it took people until the 14th or so century to come up with complex hilts. Particularly sidering or at least a nagel as seen on Messer is something without which i would not even want to wield a longsword.


Btw, other question: is there going to be any kind of critical hit mechanic? Asking because out of all the nonsensical RPG staples, this is the one that i always felt was the most fun (and actually not even that nonsensical, really). Seriously, Crits are fun. I was surprised when i realized that about myself.

nemedeus wrote:

Agamemnon wrote:We're definitely scheduled for Thursday™

Was that sarcasm? I'm getting kinda queasy alreay...

Less sarcasm, more running gag. It's been our default response to questions about when we would be releasing. Hence the ™.

nemedeus wrote:

higgins wrote:For some reason, I have a feeling that gauntles and complex guards are going to be realllllly popular.

I alwas found it odd that it took people until the 14th or so century to come up with complex hilts. Particularly sidering or at least a nagel as seen on Messer is something without which i would not even want to wield a longsword.

That one's easy, actually. Shields.

When maille is the dominant armor of the day, everyone carries a shield when they can. Because you're primarily defending with a shield, you aren't typically parrying with the blade if you can help it and you're probably wearing some kind of armor on the hand - maille mittens (mufflers,) or at least thick leather gloves.

As plate armor becomes more complete and prominent, shields all but disappear from the battlefield. You'll see people in heavier armor with two-handed weapons, for the most part. Their hands are protected by gauntlets. Then you'll see archers and everyone else start to carry a sword and buckler. That started developing into more complex hilts to protect the (now far more exposed) hand. By the time armor starts to decline, complex hilts, knuckle-bows or basket hilts are the standard.

nemedeus wrote: Btw, other question: is there going to be any kind of critical hit mechanic? Asking because out of all the nonsensical RPG staples, this is the one that i always felt was the most fun (and actually not even that nonsensical, really). Seriously, Crits are fun. I was surprised when i realized that about myself.

Yes and no, really. At least in the context of D&D, rolls effectively have four results: Critical failure, failure, success, and critical success.

Our core mechanic is situated on a d10 die pool, with difficulty being the number of individual successes you need to roll vs the number required. If you are rolling against an Ob2 task and get 2 successes, you win. The higher you go over said successes, the better off you are. This is your Margin of Success. If it's Ob2 and you roll 4 successes, you've got an MoS of 2. On a lot of rolls, MoS3+ and 5+ are significant, increasing your effect. Likewise, you can also have a Margin of Failure, so failing by 3 or more dice is worse than failing by 1.

So we already have a range of results to play with.

As of the current draft, we also have exploding dice. If you roll a 10 on a d10, then you count it as a success and can roll that die again, adding any further successes to your total (including more 10s). This both adds a random element, and makes it possible to achieve Obs that are greater than your current die pool.

nemedeus wrote:Btw, other question: is there going to be any kind of critical hit mechanic?

Rest assured, most of our level 4 wounds are far more cruel than virtually any critical hit system that I've seen. Only a select few get close or match it. And then there's the level 5 wounds, of course.

You can blame me for the Thursday thing.

hector wrote:You can blame me for the Thursday thing.

You bastard!

Second session of Musketeer beta played.

This was originally meant to be a relatively quick scenario, but my players have gone so off the rails with it that I couldn't bring myself to reign them in.

That sort of organic growth of the original story idea is the main reason I like to be a GM so it sounds like fun!