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.
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.
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.
Jason Martinez
2nd for ohanedin musclegirl feet
Brody Gray
Yeah, it'd be fine.
Joshua Collins
>that elf
You've crossed a line.
Jose Hernandez
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.
Jaxson Taylor
That's what I was afraid of. At best, I can only change reliability or maybe slight adjustments in damage.
Jordan Morgan
What sort of line, user? Don't you like being kinky?
Asher Collins
It's time to stop.
Andrew Edwards
There could be some load stuff, but yeah, a lot of the smoothbore percussion cap guns are going to be the same gun.
Lucas Martin
Oh no user, we're just starting!
Brayden James
No, really, it's time to stop.
Ayden Murphy
why do you multiple images of this
Aiden Rogers
It starts being degenerate when they stop looking human.
Gabriel Flores
>that gif What the fuck happened there?
Austin Bell
> > >
Elijah Wilson
Level 4 Cutting wound to the neck.
Jace Jenkins
Shut up, Voltaire.
I can be a Holy Roman Empire if I want.
YOU AREN'T MY REAL DAD.
Henry Young
Our freakish baboon elves don't need ridiculous hypertrophic musculature to be strong.
Alexander Rodriguez
Have you guys figured an approximate day/time slot for the Algerian game?
Landon Davis
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.
Liam Rodriguez
First of all, how's SoS going?
Secondly, was there ever a Marco Polo of Vosca? What, if anything, is known about the east?
Isaiah Sanders
-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.
Joshua Parker
>we're sort of asking folks to work on the promise of future payout. Jimmy.
Christian Brooks
>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.
Samuel Baker
Give us some lores on Lusitan or Ezpanna, Jimmy.
Jose Stewart
Pretty sure this was what Jimmy Rome was thinking of when he wrote up Eskarne.
I just wrote elf musclegirl on Google.
Justin Morris
Jimmy pls
Lucas Myers
There is no viable way to escape from what we have become.
Cameron Bell
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.
Matthew Cruz
Did the Aztecs ever have any sort of naval power?
Tyler Johnson
>not Berkukha
Juan Collins
Not historically. At least, not outside the lake they were built on.
Luke Diaz
>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.
Jayden Carter
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.
Tyler Green
What's SoS' trivert-fleche?
Christian Rogers
>magic rules >completed editing >Kickstarter soon
Luis Cox
What's with all this here frenchie speak?
Josiah James
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.
Colton Gutierrez
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.
Jordan Foster
>"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?
Cameron Ramirez
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.
Dylan Young
Riddle had narrativistic mass combat system which utilizied small duels and leading armies. It wasn't Total War on a grid like ASOIAF.
Easton Moore
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
Samuel Barnes
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?
Luke Barnes
One of their editors lives in Australia and apparently has been sitting on their update for a really long time.
Brandon Bailey
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.
Gabriel Lee
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.
Ryan Allen
>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.
Chase Young
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.
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
Logan Scott
A drunken joke at that.
Together, properly edited, they could rule the world.
Mason Collins
why is ballad better? im new here
Josiah James
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.
Carter James
Honestly, I'm not quite sure myself.
Jace Hill
Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday after 6:00 PM EST.
Xavier Williams
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.
Evan Flores
>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.
Dominic Hill
>The fact that Ballad was literally made as a joke What fact? That's not a fact.
Sebastian Fisher
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.
Luke Howard
Well, it was a pretty good joke, then, wasn't it?
James Clark
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.
Jayden Butler
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.
Lucas Wright
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.
Robert Brown
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?
Jason Clark
That's a lot of wounds. How much luck did he burn?
Aaron Anderson
"Joke" plays a lot better than "spiteful revenge on a dead guy".
Kayden Clark
He wasn't dead at the time!
On an unrelated note does anyone have a link to or cap of the exchange.
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.
Jose Green
Pretty good posts, at that.
Juan Moore
Damn there are like no characters
Lincoln Cruz
The dream is dead and Jimmy killed it.
Benjamin Campbell
Well, then make one. I already have one
Andrew Stewart
I made one a weak ago but lost interest in it so i'll probably just rework it
Jason King
I've still got to make mine.
Elijah Evans
Yeah, we regularly have ~50 posters in the threads, and 4 fighters.
Nolan Russell
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.
Matthew Gutierrez
You mean if you take 1PCP in boons you can only ever get five points of boons?
Xavier Taylor
I believe so
Jose Reyes
Yes.
Logan Brooks
That's a bit disappointing.
Luke Howard
Deal with it, nerd
Ian Stewart
Well, time to make the character then.
Isaiah Gomez
What is known about UC culture? Names, how they fight, things like that.
I'm throwing out a Chironite Templar to see if Half-pike can break the Ballad too
Levi Turner
Most people lurk.
Jonathan Martinez
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
Daniel Thomas
>Voltaire was an Asshole Is...is this board still safe from Voltaire posting?
Landon Peterson
I barely visit any other boards as of late, what's up with Voltaire posting?
Benjamin Cook
Pretty sure it was a /gsg/ meme that got transplanted into Veeky Forums and blown out of control.
Benjamin Green
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?
Kayden Stewart
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.
Jacob Anderson
In tournament? Better be murderhobo or optimized murdered like that jaguar warrior.
In campaign you should be fine. Rich skillmonkeys are always useful.
Cooper Perez
>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.