Song of Swords: Voltaire was an Asshole

Last time on Song of Swords:

Two guns at once
More tournament prep
Some campaign storytimes
The history of matchlocks

Song of Swords is a realistic fantasy tabletop RPG that draws inspiration from historical fechtbuchs, weapons and armor. Its combat system is fast and it can be used for both fantasy and historical/mundane settings.

Call of the Void is a pulpy sci-fi tabletop RPG about fighting space-nazis and hunting giant whales with harpoons made out of the moon. Its combat system is more modern, based in the early 20th century, but can probably handle combat up to the present day.

Here's a .rar archive with the newest version of the rules as well as all related current working documents. At this time the latest version is v1.9.9:
mediafire.com/download/12xqm1p2q69m392/Song_of_Swords.rar

Here's a walkthrough on creating a character
paste2.org/aKfOBmWJ

Here's a walkthrough on weapon schools for SoS 1.9.9 with examples
paste2.org/6OyOsFM3

Here's Ballad of the Laser Whales' latest version: mediafire.com/download/9d7256c33g7wrgv/CoTV Ballad of the Laser Whales Alpha 1.2.pdf

Here's a wiki detailing SoS's fantasy setting, getting filled up bit by bit as Jimmy reveals more details:
tattered-realms.wikia.com/wiki/Tattered_Realms_Wiki

There's also a roll20 room where new players are encouraged to try the rules, test new rules, and find game breaking issues: app.roll20.net/join/346755/hRKd4w
The room might be empty, but the people who teach the game still browse the thread frequently. If you're looking to learn, post here in the thread. We also play Guy Windsor's card game Audatia in the room.

The Legend is doing really well in the nursing home.

Other urls found in this thread:

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GrFDhxzNwr_Y75lOyVUELlX9lUhKjEceHsEECx94nBM/edit?pref=2&pli=1#gid=0
opaque.freeforums.net
paste2.org/NwCxkDdV
paste2.org/CGnV5CfN
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

I come with a question.

Right now, I'm running a 17th century Song of Swords game set in the Deluge. The players are hunting an asshole mercenary who's running amok through Poland and Ukraine. Pure historical, and great fun. We're going to continue at it for weeks to come.

However, I'm also thinking of some ideas for a later game, with a bit more fantasy. The current idea involves an unholy mixture of the Thirty Years War, the American Civil War, and the Meiji Restoration. I'm still working out the details, but I think Ballad would be more appropriate to use than regular Song of Swords.

Ballad works well in representing the differences between modern firearms. But how is it with 19th century arms? Would the difference between, say, an Enfiel, a Springfield, and a Mississippi rifle be able to be represented meaningfully? If not, that's how it is, but I'd like to provide some more options in longarms than smoothbore musket, rifle musket, and various types of repeater.

2nd for ohanedin musclegirl feet

Yeah, it'd be fine.

>that elf

You've crossed a line.

And Algeria is still looking for players, albeit in a ghost town.
And some of those would likely just be genericized into the same rifle.

That's what I was afraid of. At best, I can only change reliability or maybe slight adjustments in damage.

What sort of line, user? Don't you like being kinky?

It's time to stop.

There could be some load stuff, but yeah, a lot of the smoothbore percussion cap guns are going to be the same gun.

Oh no user, we're just starting!

No, really, it's time to stop.

why do you multiple images of this

It starts being degenerate when they stop looking human.

>that gif
What the fuck happened there?

>
>
>

Level 4 Cutting wound to the neck.

Shut up, Voltaire.

I can be a Holy Roman Empire if I want.

YOU AREN'T MY REAL DAD.

Our freakish baboon elves don't need ridiculous hypertrophic musculature to be strong.

Have you guys figured an approximate day/time slot for the Algerian game?

Lots of stuff coming in a new ballad version, and we're close to releasing some prototype rules for magic and air combat.

In the meantime, if anyone has any lore questions, I'm all ears. I think you've earned it lads.

First of all, how's SoS going?

Secondly, was there ever a Marco Polo of Vosca? What, if anything, is known about the east?

-Major Void Power Changes (No More Teleport Nuking)
-Minor Change to Supressive Fire (3m per RoF to 2m per RoF)
-Minor Talent changes, Work the Bolt Added
-Proper Rocket and Flamethrower Profs added
-Duty Bane
-Kuropatkin Shotgun and Pistol added

Big improvements. Even if you're not into Ballad, I'd encourage you to check these out--they're indicative of the changes we intend to make to the core game post-beta.

SoS is in a bit of an editing hell, but we are making progress. A lot of people are sort of struggling just to live right now. You know what the job market is like, and we're sort of asking folks to work on the promise of future payout.

And, no. There have been explorers to the West, but they have not returned with news of land. Many have returned with word of great fleets that turned them away--some violently.

Zells have had more luck. The Branded Zells often speak of humans they fought in the West, though the accounts of their victory seem fantastical to most listeners. Battles with thousands of ships. One battle, which is spelled with too many Xs and is best pronounced "Hatzekotazzan" supposedly involved over a million combatants, and despite ending in a crushing Zellish victory, resulted in their expulsion from the warm Western sea.

>we're sort of asking folks to work on the promise of future payout.
Jimmy.

>There have been explorers to the West
Marco Polo went East. To the orient.

Though it's interesting to hear just how heug the !Aztecs have grown.

Give us some lores on Lusitan or Ezpanna, Jimmy.

Pretty sure this was what Jimmy Rome was thinking of when he wrote up Eskarne.

I just wrote elf musclegirl on Google.

Jimmy pls

There is no viable way to escape from what we have become.

I think they hold the record for least fleshed out of the Voscan countries. We still don't even know how the Karthackis took control of part of the Peninsula.

Did the Aztecs ever have any sort of naval power?

>not Berkukha

Not historically. At least, not outside the lake they were built on.

>Voltaire was an Asshole

Man, I want to shitpost the truth so successfully people still get mad about it 238 years after I'm dead.

We know they once held Not Carthage on their land which was later seized by crusaders as Jenoesa, that they have ancient ruins very similar to the Egyptians, that they were at some point ruled by ethnic Kurts, and that they currently are ruled by former slaves called Mamlukes. We know they're a mixture of the Levant, Egypt, and the Holy Land, basically making them a mix of the northern middle east and some North Africa. They were also an enemy of the Helians due to competing naval fleets.

When it comes to Not Spain, we know they are multiple kingdoms, they used to be ruled by Karthackis, their men smear coffee grounds on their swords, and one of their kings has a sick Harley.

What's SoS' trivert-fleche?

>magic rules
>completed editing
>Kickstarter soon

What's with all this here frenchie speak?

Oh, yeah waht I forgot to ask the last few times I was here:
What about rules for mass battles? Are there any plans for that?
Like, leading an army against a castle, or against another army.
I heard that AsoIaFrp did that pretty much best so far.

Probably not since the Riddle system is designed for small duels and not leading armies. No one would be satisfied with any mass combat system.

>"Hey, Song of Swords seemed like a cool ruleset a year ago, must be finished by now. Might be fun for a campaign"
>still unchanged v1.9.9
Now I don't mean to sound like an ingrate, I'm just genuinely confused how it seems the unfinished sections haven't been touched up.
Am I missing something?

Stuck in editing hell because of
>perfidious Australians
>incompetent intra-company communications
>absent funding
Jimmy keeps making progress on Ballad of the Laser Whales, which for a game borne out of a drunken stupor actually managed to fix SoS' obnoxious initiative system, but SoS itself has been stalled because of the above.

Riddle had narrativistic mass combat system which utilizied small duels and leading armies. It wasn't Total War on a grid like ASOIAF.

I haven't read the ASOIAF rules, I only skimmed over them. And I really liked, that they presented maneuvers you could do with the battalions and stuff. Seems really cool

I actually had no idea SoS wasn't a fan-made game. Making something as niche as SoS as anything other than a hobby homebrew seems suicidally courageous. Props for having enormous balls, at least, if a lack of self-preservation.

What's this about conniving kiwis though, if you don't mind me asking?

One of their editors lives in Australia and apparently has been sitting on their update for a really long time.

Don't worry, a lot of people are annoyed.

The basic jist of it is that it's hard to get a game edited when your editor is unpaid, Australian, and the victim of a couple major errors of communication.

The good news is that despite the game not being updated, things have actually improved. The initiative system created for a drunken joke was good enough that it fixed most of the large scale problems with the game, and make ranged characters actually interesting to play. That system is working and usable in SoS, so the game actually has advanced beyond 1.9.9 considerably. It just hasn't been compiled yet.

I honestly think that a mass combat system would be best served by something similar to Pendragon. A very simple collection of rules for determining the overall outcome of the battle, but the main focus being how each person individually performs and profits. The game is so focused on interpersonal combat and drama, going larger scale seems like it wouldn't fit. Rather than rolling to see if your left flank is collapsing under the French attack, you should be rolling to see if you can encounter your great rival noble on the field, whether or not you're able to take prisoners of a noble rank, whether or not that motherfucker Hakeswill is going to shoot you in the back, or whether or not you have a chance to go after the enemy standard, or whatever Cornwell-like plot your players are currently embroiled in.

Additionally, serious player death or injury should only happen if the player is specially engaging in something particularly risky. Yes, gritty realism, all that, but it really sucks to have your character die or be removed from play because of a bad single roll devoid of personal context or meaning. Nobody wants to go to a stray musket ball in a game.

>something similar to Pendragon
I'm not familiar with this system. In TRoS both armies make 2 rolls each hour to see how well they fight and move on the battlefield then compare their rolls and remove casualties based on it. Each hour character can perform heroic actions like leading troops, hunting enemy leaders, etc. It's fairly risky but normally Spiritual Attributes would protect them.

The fact that Ballad was literally made as a joke and is a better game than SoS is an endless source of mirth for me.

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GrFDhxzNwr_Y75lOyVUELlX9lUhKjEceHsEECx94nBM/edit?pref=2&pli=1#gid=0
GDoc for the tournament. I think I have not seen it postet here yet.

It's even more abstracted in Pendragon. I believe the overall battle is resolved in one roll, while the fate of a division in the army is decided over multiple rolls. There's a nice table for determining what sort of troops you encounter in each fight, though, depending on the enemy you're fighting

A drunken joke at that.

Together, properly edited, they could rule the world.

why is ballad better? im new here

Better initiative system for large groups, and simpler to grasp.

I like SoS better myself, since I like the setting and I'm a massive medieval history nerd.

Honestly, I'm not quite sure myself.

Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday after 6:00 PM EST.

The core conceit of SoS was that it represented medieval style sword-fightan' really well, which it does when zoomed in. However, the game's sophisticated system for personal combat has made the larger system of initiative painfully complicated and slow moving.

Ballad, which was made as a joke with only the residual realism of SoS clinging to it like cheeto dust, doesn't suffer from the initiative problem at all. It's sufficiently simple and functional that they're now trying to rehack SoS to run the same way.

>Ballad was made as a joke

This myth needs to stop. It is not nearly as serious as SoS proper, but the thing sprang out of an old, old, old post on Opaque's forums, by Ian Plumb, and the discussion that resulting discussion. Jimmy took the idea and ran with it.

Stop bullying Ballad, it is my precious baby.

>The fact that Ballad was literally made as a joke
What fact? That's not a fact.

I think the whole thing started with a joke about whales shooting lasers, which was meant to be demeaning to SoS. Jimmy then went and made a serious game around that exact premise.

Well, it was a pretty good joke, then, wasn't it?

There's definitely a superpower there. When Jimmy doesn't take things seriously and doesn't work with slow ass Australians things are amazing, it isn't until things get bogged down that we end up in development hell.

I just ran an awesome Fecht for three of my friends in Laser Whales. They were super hyped to play a campaign afterwards and I felt the need to tell my story. The premise wasn't meant to be a full campaign, but a semi-competitive one off with two of the players playing members of a crime syndicate and one playing a bounty hunter bent on taking down the syndicate's leader.

It was inspired by the ending to Cowboy Bebop, as you might imagine.

Our three protagonists:

Vince Butcher, the vengeful outlaw. He carried a pair of Liberator 1991s and a hidden Defender 1991, and eight spare magazines. He wore a snapcoat vest, and also carried four Type 42 grenades.

Clay Bernard, Mob Enforcer. He carried a Rahoo M2 Glue Gun, and wore a heavy snapcoat vest. He had effectively unlimited ammunition from a huge backpack that he wore full of munitions.

Savage Redman, Mob Boss. He carried a Templar Sword and several throwing knives. He was a low-level Way of 5 user.

Butcher had to fight six goons between each "boss" fight with a PC, the thugs mostly carried Blish SMGs and M2s like Bernard, but most were unarmored and did not have their weapons at the ready when engaged. Bernard had a bodyguard of 2 men, while Redman was alone for the final fight.

So Butcher comes into the building, and gets a free phase because nobody expected him to shoot up the building. He threw a grenade into a cluster of three guards, and ran to cover near a desk. The guards were killed in the explosion, and he then had a brief shootout with the three remaining goons, suffering a very minor wound to the left leg in the process. During this time he dual wielded his pistols, before realizing that shooting one at a time was actually a safer bet.

VS BERNARD

Bernard had a powerful SMG and some strong armor, but the fight didn't last for long. Bernard fired a long burst at Butcher, and Butcher fired a single Aim+Shoot shot at Bernard. Butcher was hit in the right arm and the chest, Bernard was hit in the head. Bernard's two henchmen actually did more than Bernard did, scoring six hits to Butcher's legs and arms, as well as one double-hit to the torso that inflicted minmal but noticable damage.

Butcher's second run against six goons went less smoothly. He ended up pinned down for several rounds, taking cover against repeated Full Auto fires and occasionally returning fire himself to little effect. He broke the stalemale with grenades, and by exposing himself and using Luck to reduce a shot to the head down to something manageable.

VS REDMAN
Butcher emerged to fight Redman, who had no bodyguards. He exchanged fire with the swordsman, but was unable to overcome his defense bonus. He suffered significant wounds from throwing daggers and eventually suffered a level 4 wound to the leg from a sword. He countered by pulling the pins on his remaining grenade, and blew himself and Redman up.

Redman actually survived, but lost an arm and a leg.

This was a great fecht, and we all had a lot of fun. I strongly encourage you to run a game or two for your players, it's crazy, brutal shit with a very organic potential for stories.

I would watch this scene in an action movie. Good job, and sounds like you and your players had a lot of fun.

What was their experience level in tabletop RPGs? How hard did you find it to teach them?

That's a lot of wounds. How much luck did he burn?

"Joke" plays a lot better than "spiteful revenge on a dead guy".

He wasn't dead at the time!

On an unrelated note does anyone have a link to or cap of the exchange.

opaque.freeforums.net

The forum is still up.

Holy shit, who was posting in March 2016?

It was some guy named Phil, looking at the actual post now.

God struck down Ian for making a joke about the name, it seems, not for the Laser Whales.

Pretty good posts, at that.

Damn there are like no characters

The dream is dead and Jimmy killed it.

Well, then make one. I already have one

I made one a weak ago but lost interest in it so i'll probably just rework it

I've still got to make mine.

Yeah, we regularly have ~50 posters in the threads, and 4 fighters.

Note for the tournament characters, all of them needed to be updated (except Enzo, because I just updated him). Ballad now only allows you to benefit from -20 Bane Points, so putting 1 PCP in Boons and Banes and getting more than +5 worth of boons.

You mean if you take 1PCP in boons you can only ever get five points of boons?

I believe so

Yes.

That's a bit disappointing.

Deal with it, nerd

Well, time to make the character then.

What is known about UC culture? Names, how they fight, things like that.

Whatever it is,

paste2.org/NwCxkDdV

Bob Akavian, CUUC SUCC soldier.

That's Avakian, not Akavian. Chironite agents sabotaged my post.

Also, let me know if I fucked anything up. It's super late here, and I am quite tired. I'll correct things and officially add him in the morning.

paste2.org/CGnV5CfN

I'm throwing out a Chironite Templar to see if Half-pike can break the Ballad too

Most people lurk.

Damn. What's the malus for using a weapon in your off-hand? -2 to the dice pool?
Might need to make more changes that just throw out a few points of B&B

>Voltaire was an Asshole
Is...is this board still safe from Voltaire posting?

I barely visit any other boards as of late, what's up with Voltaire posting?

Pretty sure it was a /gsg/ meme that got transplanted into Veeky Forums and blown out of control.

So what's the viability of characters that weren't created to be complete murder hobos? Both settings/systems.

I mean, I still want me characters to be able to participate in combat but is it okay if they're not master swordsman/gunslingers?

I guess what I'm asking is if it's okay to be Felix or do I have to be Gotrek in order to stand a chance in combat?

So I'm curious, what's the actual difference in design philosophy between SoS and Laser whales?

SoS is pretty easy to grokk, it's fantasy not!europe with more realistic assumptions and a sort of post-ASOIAF attitude towards fantasy, where unironic high fantasy elements are casually thrown in for the keks.

But I don't get Laser Whales. I cannot understand what the idea behind this was, it's so arcane I feel like I just missed an entire subgenre of fantasy required to understand what's going on.

In tournament? Better be murderhobo or optimized murdered like that jaguar warrior.

In campaign you should be fine. Rich skillmonkeys are always useful.

>2016
>Still delusional

The best part is that when SoS will finally be published at certain point of the future, it will be forgotten within few months, as those threads will simply disappear.

Nazi-Fetishism+Airships+Space Western+Jimmy Rome.

Witcher kurwa, is it you?