Zornhau Forums

I need to procrastinate for a bit, so I thought I'd throw out a discussion topic:

We've got a good handful of people now regularly hanging around, so I was curious. How did you find us? I know a couple of you, at least, were old Trosfans forum people.

Basically internet word of mouth.

My first foray into "realistic" or "crunchy" games like RuneQuest 6 and Burning Wheel made me realize how dissatisfied I was with the same old fantasy. I did some web searches and found TROS was consistently recommended, if a bit janky.

Around this time I had become interested in HEMA and started going to Sabre Fencing classes, so I was learning actual combat maneuvers and how it all interrelated in a kind of tactical game. When I read TROS I was equally blown away and disappointed. The combat reflected fighting techniques and character growth and role play reward cycle was a gem in the rough. Something Burning Wheel had refined and was one of the things that attracted me to that game in the first place.

Through more internet searching for similar games I heard tell of the fabled Forge and three TROS successor games. I got a copy of BotIT, only to find it an uninspired revision, so that left me with unreleased Song of Swords and Band of Bastards. I got the beta document of Song of Swords and didn't agree with the direction it took TROS. MORE rules specificity, weapon and armor porn and a weird setting I'm never going to use? No thanks.

I looked into these boards and read every single post in the forums and it looked like exactly what I was looking for. Designers who knew how to take what worked and throw out the rest, had an eye for modern game design and a lot of community interaction. I signed up for the newsletter and lurked a while before making my first post.

Some people on the Burning Wheel forums linked to Matt Easton's YouTube channel. That got me interested in historical weapons, which prompted me to give The Riddle of Steel a look. That lead me to the TROSfans forum, which lead me here.

thirtythr33's story rings similar to mine, the biggest difference is that i never had any practical HEMA experience. Hope to change that someday.

I only have experience playing Pathfinder, D&D and a bit of Dungeon World. Those systems left a lot to be desired when it comes to combat, so I decided to try and make my own system. While doing research on other crunchy/realistic games I discovered TROS, which lead to TROSfans forum and from there I discovered 'Bastards. I promptly decided to give up on my system and wait for beta.

I was on trosfans for a short time, but mainly read without writing much.

Found both on the internet after digging a bit into TRoS.

Old timer from TROSfans here. I participated in some of the original discussions about the successor games. I was on the original, official TROS forums too before we all realized the owner had abandoned the game. I can't even remember how I first found TROS.

Daeruin wrote:Old timer from TROSfans here. I participated in some of the original discussions about the successor games. I was on the original, official TROS forums too before we all realized the owner had abandoned the game. I can't even remember how I first found TROS.

I remember reading your posts when I was a newbie to TROSfans. I remember mining those successor threads for ideas for my home brew long before I even messaged Higgins that first time. Crazy stuff.

Daeruin wrote:I can't even remember how I first found TROS.

I distinctly remember that I stumbled upon TROS while googling around for a "Desperado RPG".

Also an old timer from TROSfans - I recall finding TROS because I was looking for a realistic combat system that didn't slow the game to a crawl. Because I didn't understand the term "renaissance", I thought that it would just include rapiers and small swords and was originally turned off by it - but later on I found a post somewhere talking about how it also included more traditional "medieval" weapons.

It was actually the first system I ever ran (I used the caravan adventure for all three groups I ran it for). As for how I found this place; I think Ian Plumb sent out an email back when this was Song of Steel, and what you were doing with the old formula looked interesting so I stuck around.

I bought TRoS back then but I never had a chance to run it. Later on I stumbled on BotIT and Song of Steel in Rpg.net thread, IIRC. So I started following your page. So it all was just a pretty good luck on my part.

I like to design game system, so I often pick up rulebooks to get different ideas.

I don't know how I stumble upon TROS quite some time ago. Then I looked it up on Wikipedia and I found a reference about two successors game. I didn't like Blade of the Iron Throne, but BoB looks interesting

Now it seems wikipedia only lists BofiT as a successor

After a break of several years from RPGs, I started getting interested in them again ca. 2005. Googled a bit and found some weirdo games that took a fascinating deconstructive look at a lot of the central assumptions about the hobby. They seemed to all be centered around this website called "The Forge." Went to check that out and found TROS, which didn't have its own forum back then, just a subforum on The Forge. Convinced my FLGS to order it for me (which took months of them trying to track it down) and bought into it whole-hog. Ran a campaign. My group at the time still thinks TROS is the best game ever.

I'm still owed a (preordered) copy of Sorcery & The Fey, incidentally. Not holding my breath.

Once Driftwood died, I occasionally peeked in at TROSfans, but mostly lurked and was not terribly active in either the forums nor the various musings around a successor game. Too many other games to play, not enough time! I'm sure we all know that story.

When BOTIT was announced, I was pretty excited. Unlike many here, I actually like it -- I think because I'm a big Sword & Sorcery fan. I wrote a long review of it:

https://www.rpggeek.com/thread/1203290/ ... pretenders

... and since then I've done a little work for the Blade guys, designing the combat card decks and doing editing on their Sword & Planet supplement.

However, the opaque writing in Blade is really a huge detriment to the game. Crunchy games need absolutely crystal-clear rules text -- the game really needs to serve as a technical manual. For a while I was working with another fan on a possible revised edition of the game that would clean up the text, but when it because clear that (a) it would require a huge amount of work, essentially a complete rewrite, and (b) the authors were highly resistant to letting others touch their darling, that fell by the wayside. So here I am.

(Song of Swords, with the million different elf subraces and overall high fantasy feel, doesn't interest me, although I wish them the best.)

So far, the text for Bastards is much clearer and that makes me happy. I hope it continues and I encourage the fans to be ruthless about ambiguities in the text. The designers seem very open to criticism, which is great. My own schedule doesn't allow for as much in-depth feedback as I'd like, but I hope that once the beta releases the wound, weapon, and armor tables, I can start a brief campaign or at least a Fight Club and give some solid critiques.

dysjunct wrote:When BOTIT was announced, I was pretty excited. Unlike many here, I actually like it -- I think because I'm a big Sword & Sorcery fan.

Just like me!
Though I discovered Bastards soon after and so became less interested in Blade.

Well it should be easy enough to hack Bastards into an S&S setting. It's not like there's that much daylight between The First Law and Conan, after all.