Zornhau Forums

It's Thursday™ and you know what that means: more teasers!

We're full steam ahead at GH-HQ, with the beta draft being formatted in InDesign as we speak. It turns out, formatting text isn't quite as much of a pain in the ass as writing it. There's still an editing pass to go to make sure everything lines up and that we don't make ourselves look entirely foolish, but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We are nearing the promised land.

In that spirit, I thought I'd leak a little something here both for feedback and a good tease. I hate writing sales text of any sort, so bizarrely this was one of the hardest sections for me to write in the entire book.

Band of Bastards - Introductory Text

Let us know what you think!

Thank you for the teaser! I liked the introduction, it's brief and straight to the point. The list of books really warms my heart (the Witcher was a pleasant surprise!). I come to think that my previous ranting about your shift from SoS to BoB was unjustified. As it appears, the game doesn't have a real setting, but it has a well defined theme, and the theme is very inspiring.

I can't help to point out that giving us this particular part as a teaser was an ingenious move! Readers tend to skip this introductory pages. And the people here have been waiting for some time (let's call it that) to get their hands on these rules - you couldn't blame them for jumping straight to the combat section or whatever. And now you've made sure that everybody will carefully read your introduction. Well done!

A couple of words on the typos. First page, second paragraph - the string beginning with the word "flattery" has shifted a bit.
Last page: there are two periods after the words "Game Master" (great that you're using this term, by the way!).

In general I liked the section a lot. As I've already said, it's brief, straight and quite intriguing.

One question (I don't remember if we'd talked about it before): are you providing a character sheet with the rules? Hope that you do.

Siggi wrote:Thank you for the teaser! I liked the introduction, it's brief and straight to the point. The list of books really warms my heart (the Witcher was a pleasant surprise!).

I'm a big Witcher fan, myself. We have a fairly diverse reading list here.

Siggi wrote:I come to think that my previous ranting about your shift from SoS to BoB was unjustified. As it appears, the game doesn't have a real setting, but it has a well defined theme, and the theme is very inspiring.

I'm glad we could win you back!

Siggi wrote:I can't help to point out that giving us this particular part as a teaser was an ingenious move! Readers tend to skip this introductory pages. And the people here have been waiting for some time (let's call it that) to get their hands on these rules - you couldn't blame them for jumping straight to the combat section or whatever. And now you've made sure that everybody will carefully read your introduction. Well done!

Ha! Mostly, we wanted to get feedback from the people who are most closely following us (and thus most likely to cut us slack if something is off) so that when we launch the beta for real, we can make the best first impression to anyone who will listen.

Siggi wrote: A couple of words on the typos. First page, second paragraph - the string beginning with the word "flattery" has shifted a bit.
Last page: there are two periods after the words "Game Master" (great that you're using this term, by the way!).

Thanks for pointing them out! Fixed! I'm a terrible editor, it should be said. When we get kickstarted, hiring an editor is definitely on the agenda.

Siggi wrote: In general I liked the section a lot. As I've already said, it's brief, straight and quite intriguing.

Awesome.

Siggi wrote: One question (I don't remember if we'd talked about it before): are you providing a character sheet with the rules? Hope that you do.

Absolutely. I want to have the character sheet and hopefully some play-aids ready to launch at beta. The character sheet will definitely be ready at beta, the play-aids will be either available at or during the beta.

For starters, I really like the new cover even better than the first one shown for us and I liked that one, too.

Introduction was great and I think I have to share it with my potential players.

There was one typo that I noticed. On the last paragraph of 2nd page there is word roll and I think it was meant to be role.

Just out of curiosity, does Book I include some combat rules or are conflicts solved in that level by very abstract rolls?

What really caught my eye was in Book III, warband rules. What kind of rules these are? Anyway, it all looks really promising!

Marras wrote:For starters, I really like the new cover even better than the first one shown for us and I liked that one, too.

Thanks! I tinkered with it quite a bit. I'm still not 100%, but I think it was a great improvement. Bonus points for whomever called us out on not having a period-correct sword. The new one is much better.

Marras wrote:Introduction was great and I think I have to share it with my potential players.

Awesome. Thank you.

Marras wrote:There was one typo that I noticed. On the last paragraph of 2nd page there is word roll and I think it was meant to be role.

So there was! Higgins is uploading a fixed copy as we speak.

Marras wrote:Just out of curiosity, does Book I include some combat rules or are conflicts solved in that level by very abstract rolls?

We do have a way to run "simple combat" as it were. In practice, it's actually a nice way to resolve low-stakes (read: theoretically nonlethal) fights you don't want to go through a whole combat scene for. It's very useful for pacing.

Marras wrote:What really caught my eye was in Book III, warband rules. What kind of rules these are? Anyway, it all looks really promising!

Warband rules are a system of running "mass combat" in the background while letting the camera remain on your characters in the foreground. I put quotations on "mass combat" because that could mean anything from 10,000 man armies on either side to a dozen NPCs on each side skirmishing around the central conflict you're playing out.

I heartily approve of the new logo/cover.

I like the style and content of the writing.

So I am rather loathe to point out that the closest metric unit to 1 yard is 1 metre. ( not meter ).

Arrow Odd wrote:/--/ the closest metric unit to 1 yard is 1 metre. ( not meter ).

Majority of the GH team being Americans, we default to the U.S. spelling for everything. Having learned British English from the fourth grade and using it all my life, I can't really say that the transition to American English hasn't been rough on me.

As for the other comments, Agamemnon has answered them so thoroughly that I can't think of anything else to add. Except perhaps that Warband section combined with Wealth section will allow the players to actually run a warband, economics wise. As in, knowing how much coin one would need to recruit and maintain a sizable group of fighting men.

Right you are.
I generally only see units in their abbreviated form.

[ Odd that you'd want to respell a unit which you still won't do your engineering in... but that all belongs in another thread].

Thanks for the answers!

What I have heard (read) about warband rules sound awesome! Many rule systems have some sort of mass combat rules but they often lack in how much it costs to recruit and maintain the army. It's great to see this aspect taken care of.

Arrow Odd wrote:Right you are.
I generally only see units in their abbreviated form.

[ Odd that you'd want to respell a unit which you still won't do your engineering in... but that all belongs in another thread].

I won't attempt to defend our measurements, but as a freelance writer I can attempt to explain the spelling. It isn't that metre was intentionally respelled, because 'merica. A lot of European re's became er's. Sabre = Saber, calibre = caliber, etc. The reason for this is actually not all that surprising, as most US/UK spelling differences come down to US spelling leaning towards the way the word is pronounced. Honour and armour come to mind.

Agamemnon wrote:It isn't that metre was intentionally respelled, because 'merica.

It wasn't?

Very nice introduction. It hasn't come to mind before, but after reading also the comments on the warband rules, I think that I have to try to convince my group to play a mercenary unit style game... Never tried this before

Now I'm even more looking forward to the release!

EinBein wrote:I think that I have to try to convince my group to play a mercenary unit style game... Never tried this before

Good idea. You just have to make sure that they run the company. Military structure combined with the personal agenda of the SAs can be quite challenging to mesh if the PCs can't decide their own direction.

higgins wrote:

EinBein wrote:I think that I have to try to convince my group to play a mercenary unit style game... Never tried this before

Good idea. You just have to make sure that they run the company. Military structure combined with the personal agenda of the SAs can be quite challenging to mesh if the PCs can't decide their own direction.

This is a problem that Higgins ran into with one of his playtests - he made the mistake of letting the players lean too heavily on a command structure. His group was a unit with someone who gave the missions, and then they would go do the missions and come back for more. This actually works fine for most games, but isn't as good for 'Bastards because you want the players to be choosing their own goals and the like.

The two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive: you can have the players be given orders and still be confronting their own SAs.. particularly (deliciously) when the orders given conflict with their own goals and motivations, the group has to be autonomous for long periods of time , or that the order itself becomes a side plot to the character's primary motivations.

The problem is that it's all too easy to fall into a trap there. Players have to really push to fight the urge not to just fall into the habit of accepting quests and then using their SAs as "quest markers."

Instead, it's usually better to engineer it so that the players have to be the ones calling the shots from the beginning, or ensure they quickly rise to a position where they will do so as part of the story.