How would you run a blackpowder fantasy game?
I'm thinking of either going with the mid-17th century (tail end of the pike and shot era), french revolution/Napoleonic, or the American Civil War.
Reliance on melee weapons obviously increases the further back you go, as does the availability of armor.
What game system works best?
I think you should use the Warhammer RPG 2nd edition book. Just ignore the setting and use your own.
It's simple and works pretty well.
Problem is I'm an autist when it comes to guns.
The game, if you add the Arms and Armours, has it's fair share of black powder guns.
If you want something more detailed than that, I can't help you, no other game with those guns pop in my mind.
Well. That Game has some rather detailed rules as well a a large amount of stat blocks for historical early firearms.
I'll look into it.
Check out SoS sometime if you have the stomach for a game still in development. It's got some of the best rules for pre-modern firearms I've seen yet.
American civil war is WAY after the black-powder era, Napoleonic wars is still stretching it.
That said, you can always try GURPS
Smokeless powder wasn't adopted until well after the American Civil War. In fact the last great war of the black powder era was the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-71.
It's blackpowder weapons, it's not gonna be very detailled anyways unless you use fancy prototypes.
Shoot, spend 10 rounds reloading or use another weapon/go into melee. You've only got to concern yourself with damage and accuracy IMO.
GURPS had roles for it but I don't know the system, so I can't dai if they're Amy good.
D&D gunslinger rules are interesting and fun, but not realistic of that's your intention.
Honestly, I'd go with a system you know that has guns, and houserule reload time, terrible accuracy, and one shot kills. Pro tip: off you wasn't realism and fun, make sure your game is set after rifling is a thing or the combat will suck.
GURPS + low-tech does BP great. Long reload times but fuck-you damage.
Interesting.
I'm planning to run a renaissance era fantasy game with blackpowder weapons set in the equivalent of the early to mid 1500s. I wanted to use Song of Swords or Riddle of Steel but my players would have to be dragged kicking and screaming through every step of the way or I'd have to literally automate every aspect of the game for them. Many are functionally retarded and have difficulty grasping 4e d&d. In fact, a friend tried to run Mutants and Masterminds 3e for them and he literally made all of their characters and leveled up for them. They're good guys but fuck.
Anyway, I'm digging through Savage World splats to try and find a better weapon/armor list, but once I've done so I'll probably use the system. It's simple enough as a gateway to drag my players away from dnd and seems like it'll work okay. I won't have all the fun autisms I like, but I think I can abstract a little bit of that away with edges, liberal use of the called shot system, etc. Good luck, user.
OSR might not be you thing, but Lamentations of the Flame Princess has an appendix on black powder weapons (the overall default "setting" is somewhere around the 30 Years War).
The artless PDF is free on their website, so you don't have to spend $20 on it to find out if it'll work for you.
Same recommendation, because LotFP is incredibly simple. And if you don't like Race-as-Class, I can recommend you Basic Fantasy RPG (also completely free on the Basic Fantasy RPG website). Plus, it's compatible with LotFP by virtue of being based on older editions of D&D (but with ascending AC and attack bonus).
I forgot to mention that LotFP ALSO has ascending AC and attack bonus.
In the Powder Mage setting.
God I want an RPG for that world.
I've read them. I love the premise, but the physics involved with the BP magic makes zero sense. How would prematurely detonating the powder charge in a loaded pistol from a distance make the whole gun explode? It'd just fire the bullet normally unless the mage can also put some sort of stoppage in the barrel.
How would you do mounted combat in an RPG, anyway? Just give movement and attack bonuses? Maybe the option to run them down?
What sort of damage would running someone down with a horse do?
Like D&D 3.5 with firearm tables.
How to handle hitpoints and armor... Hrm.
Need to do some thinking. Maybe something like a deteriorating damage threshold system, broken up by armor section? Breastplates would stop musket balls from pistols well enough in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Maybe I could modify something like tank armor deflection tables from an autistic WW2 wargame.
Armor is a percentage chance of ignoring damage, and a better chance of reducing it?
What style of hitpoints is the system you're using?
Fuck you
Not really sure yet. Just thinking of concepts and trying to not to get too autistic about for the sake of the player.
What class would he be?
We're doing just that in our current campaign.
Knolls and goblins can use muskets, and fight just like humans, using mass pike units and mass musketeers.
City guards carry 2 pistols and a rapier (because it takes time to reload, you fire both pistols, then draw your sword - and they all have quickdraw)
Apart from that, its a pretty standard fantasy setting. We're playing as vampires so we're somewhat at odds with the civilized world. We tend to hide in crypts and forests. And no we dont have guns. We have to rely on weakening, grappling and life draining to kill things.
Our last campaign was renaissance period too, but in a custom arabic/ottoman world. So we fought with muskets and scimitars and camels etc. But the muskets were more shitty Jezails and would blow up in your face. In our current campaign muskets are much more finely crafted, and can pack silver balls which is rather damaging to us vampires.
Oh yeah my character is also half spider, so yeah. LVL 2 vampire -spider wizard thats ECL 5 and trying to take down 5th level fighters and clerics... life aint easy. Thankfully its pretty hard to kill vampires, even lesser ones such as ourselves.
What ruleset?
D&D3.5 Our DM loves to customize things so just makes up his own firearms. Not hard to do.
I'm assuming you're meaning a RPG with 3 or 4 players an a DM? It might be worth looking at a ruleset like sharp practice or othersuch napoleonic skirmish set, anything with some nice tables of the various firearms available.
Surely someone has done a bit table of all the different muskets one could take in D&D?
and here it is:
dandwiki.com
hope that helps.
Thanks.
You could look at Colonial Gothic, it's like black powder/fantasy in the American Revolution
Sweet. One more to cannibalize.
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Ranger. Duh.
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>How would you run a blackpowder fantasy game?
>a game where hexes that offer perfect protection against the main long-range weapon is both cheap and easily available
I see a problem with that. I mean unless your players are into trying to figure out what hexes their opponents use and questing for the workarounds required to shoot them dead.
This could be used as an interesting thing, though: magic doesn't work against bullets, because of reasons (the projectiles are too fast, they're made of something that ignores magic etc. I dunno). This would bring a gigantic change to a setting where military magic is a fairly common thing, both military, socially and politically.
There's also Flintloque, pretty obscure wargame from the 90's that's Napoleonic war with fantasy races. The British are orcs, the French are high elves, the Russians are undead, the Prussians are dwarves and so on.
Sharpe is a half-orc, half-elf. Humans are basically extinct.
10/10
>This could be used as an interesting thing, though: magic doesn't work against bullets
Nig nog, we're talking about a period fantasy setting. Magic is real, everybody's using it and you can buy a spell that shields you from bullets for a dollar.
Then why would arrows and swords be any more useful?
Fantasy set in the American West.
What do you turn the Injuns into?
Counter-hex costs for a sword would be a lot cheaper than for each bullet or arrow in the long run, I'd assume.
You could also BS your way around by claiming that people's subtle fluids are touching each other much stronger when you fence with somebody, so even a chump has a good chance to break through another chump's hex in that case.
This is actually something I'm working on, but I've just kept the Indians human. The inclusion of magic and spirit animals, and beastman style shapeshifting is enough.
I'd start by playing Mount and Blade: With Fire and Sword (multiplayer, single player campaign is shit). It is by far the best vidya dealing with 17th century warfare.
>WFaS
People still play that? I thought all the players moved to Napoleonics. How populated is the multiplayer?
There's also Blood & Gold Caribbean, by the same studio. But it's (obviously) pirate themed, and (not so obviously) has some pretty broken gameplay mechanics (there's no economic challenge, because all cities are Rich, so if you take one, you can just build whatever you want). There's some combat imbalance too, like the fact that only the player can upgrade ships from their standard layout, and the AI isn't particularly bright.
Take a hard look at something like LotFP and see if it isn't "good enough".
There's a lot of schemes involving damage reduction, hit locations, and so forth that don't offer much despite the added complexity.
The nice thing about the old armor class system is that it breaks combat down into a really fast, simple algorithm.
>am I harmed by this attack
>by how much
Fair enough. Just thinking that, in the case of the hit penetrating said armor, shouldn't it offer less protection afterwards in the same section because it's been compromised?
For ease and speed of play, I'd say don't worry about granularity like that.
LotFP doesn't have hit location damage by default, and adding it would be something of a chore (and also render "normal" non-target specific attacks seem really silly).
Furthermore, having locational armor degradation adds another layer of book keeping, slowing down play.
But, if the granularity is what you'd prefer, hopefully some other user has a recommendation, since the games I know about that feature stuff like that are completely in the wrong direction from what you want (SF games, mostly).
I know it might seem cheap, but you can replicate that gritty feeling with some random operation behind the screen.
Say, keep a tally of how many times someone is hit for damage, and every tenth time make a roll to see if their armor is damaged. I don't like games that make players juggle a lot of numbers.
I've thought about using a house rule like that when players are knocked to 0hp or less.
Hit locations and armor wear don't really matter in LotFP since most characters have 4hp standard.
Interesting idea.Might roll with it.
>Players coming into contact with actual skinwalkers
2SPOOKY