Song of Swords: The Soonening has Sooned

Aww, I like Zell.

Shut up and chop more firewood.

I'm apparently stupid; does someone want to explain to me how the download works?

The fuck didn't put it on a proper filesharing service, and now it's gone. I didn't grab the file so I can't put it on mediafire or Mega myself. Hopefully someone did, or the guy will come back.

So how easy is this system to use? Because I've always been turned off by complex systems due to all the little niggling details you have to memorize and keep track of. A million different rules and eventualities and different rolls and bonuses and such that are easy to forget.

Does this system have stuff like that?

It's pretty simple. Only thing that changes a lot is a number of dice in your comhat pool. Everything else stays the same, armor value, weapon stats, etc. Is it simple enough for you or it's too much bookkeeping?

wut, I swear I set the duration as high as possible, one month. Why is it already gone? Like I said, I don't have a mega or mf account and was/am too lazy to make one. So if anyone could reupload that to theirs that'd be nice.

Well reup: www109.zippyshare.com/v/1SeRW9b5/file.html

I'd say it's rather easy to use, but hard to learn. But maybe that's just because it's not edited yet.

It's fairly complex. I'm going to be honest, if things like that put you off, it may not be for you. At its core, it's a pretty simple roll dice pools and compare successes system. The guy who wins is the guy who hits, and his damage is how much more he won by, plus his weapon and strength and the like. There aren't bonuses to stack or things like that. Everything you need to actually know is recorded very clearly on your character sheet and is hard to forget.

But armor is by piece rather than sets, there's a large number of maneuvers you can choose from that all do different things and have different costs, there's mechanics for bloodloss and stuff. There's a fair bit going on, and the game is definitely not for everyone's tolerance of mechanical crunch.

That being said it's also easy to boil down into something very simple. Don't use fatigue or bloodloss or those optional systems. Just stick to strike, thrust, parry, block, and void, and the other most basic maneuvers.

However, if you are curious, someone can try and walk you through a fight in the Roll20 room. You should see for yourself through play rather than the badly laid out book.

I feel that SoS has quite an intimidating cost to entry but most of the side-work is stuff you pull out to make a surprise win by demonstrating system mastery or make part of your core gimmick, stock manoeuvres can be flashcards . Counting clashes is what I fuck up most often and that might be going but I'm not sure.

It doesn't do the D&D sin of several tiny bonus to fuck you up.

BoB might be more your speed but I wasn't a huge crunch fan before SoS so it changed me.

Might be good. Lots of numbers isn't so bad so long as the numbers remain static. My problem is when the rolls used for things vary all the time and you have to consult various charts to see what it is. Stuff like that.

Right, I'm on it.
mega.nz/#fm/mUA1UJiR
I think this should work.

I don't really wanna bug anyone. Is there an example of play that already exists somewhere?

I like the idea of good fight simulation, because fighting is fun, but I worry about my capacity to run it well.

I simply ignore clash counts, the system works well without them and they are kind of pointless anyways. That being said, yes, this system can be taught relatively easily if you have notecards with manuevers. I most commonly see strike/thrust in beginner play, which works. Just stay away from unarmed right now since it doesn't really do damage and commonly hurts the user more.

You can look at the archives in the roll20 room, but someone is almost always willing to hop in and teach you if you ask here.

There's a number of "fechts" or fights with the system. You could look at those, but most of the best and most demonstrative ones use an older version of the rules. I can dig some up if you'd like.

That would be nice, I'm skimming the d20 logs now.

What exactly is band of bastards? Because google searches of it just lead to porn.

Try Band of Bastards RPG, or Grand Heresy for their website. It's another descendant of Riddle of Steel, like SoS.

Here's a fecht. It's a bit confusing because of the Veeky Forums format, but it works.

archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/40517213/#40517467

Just search for the posts by the guy named John Galt.

What you're looking at (in SoS and Band of Bastards) are The Riddle of Steel spin-offs. If you want something that is out now but fits more Conan-ish heroics, check out Blade of the Iron Throne. Band of Bastards and SoS are still in beta and thus have there own relative short-comings.

I'm trying to port the CotV initiative system into a SoS game and I had a question. If a lower initiative character declares he will engage a higher initiative character and then the higher init character tries to run beyond the range of the engage, can the lower initiative character retroactively add a move (which is free in CotV) to the engage action to complete his declared intention? If the higher init character negates your action somehow, do you just lose the ability to act in that phase?

I had a situation where two PCs were dealing with a pair of Sipahi, both of whom had lower ADR than the PCs (Sword-o and Arrowfeige). Arrowfeige was mounted and Sword-o was on the ground. Using CotV, all three acted in all three phases (Arrowfeige stole initiative to act in phase 1). Sipahi 1 retreated to warn his war party and Sipahi 2, who was all fucked up on Zoroastrian Fire Islam and a desire to lance charge an infidel, declared he would move to engage Arrowfeige. Arrowfeige then declared that he would use his mount's superior speed to avoid that and, if possible, chase Sipahi 1. Sword-o declared he would engage Sipahi 2 and I learned to always leave 2 CP when making a lance charge no matter how many dice your ride check involves. However, had Sword-o not put Sipahi 2 on the ground to die in a one-legged bloodless stupor, would he have been able to adjust his action to still lance charge Arrowfeige?

I would say that you can modify your action so long as you do so to achieve the same end you declared. So if you said "I'm gonna charge that guy," and he runs away, you can chase him down and charge him, or if you say "I'm gonna shoot that guy" and he rounds a corner, you could follow to the corner and then shoot at him. You couldn't see the gun running away and then shoot him instead of bayonet charging him though, you've already psychologically committed to your action.

>If a lower initiative character declares he will engage
Well, I'd consider by TRoS logic that all fighters automatically move to maintain the current range in a fight. If character wants to flee after fight started, he has to use Full Evasion/Full Void/whatever to disengage and avoid attacks from pursuers. If successful, current fight ends and fighters can engage each other again from the current range.

So, here's another question about CotV initiative in SoS.

Prior to the aforementioned Sipahi mutilation, Sword-o found himself being harassed by a couple of the enemy camp's war dogs. Both dogs declared that they would engage Sword-o on their initiative and Sword-o (who had the higher init) also declared he was engaging them. I had been ruling that if multiple fighters engaged each other that we'd default to orientation (giving the higher init character a bonus to red/red roll-offs). If one fighter engaged another who did not engage him back, I just gave the engager initiative. Since all three were engaging one another, I ran it as a 2v1 during which a red/red(/red) ended with Sword-o violently murdering one dog. The other grabbed onto his armored knee. In the next phase, the dog declared it would engage again, meaning he was holding on to Sword-o's knee. I assume that sword-o couldn't really choose any other action other than to reengage (or try to limp away with a dog on his knee). So when the next bout started, I simply returned them to where the last bout ended-- HA range with the dog grabbing sword-o.

So, for argument's sake, let's replace the dog with a Janissary with a yatagan (practically the same thing, amirite?). If in phase 1 jan and sword-o had a bout that culminated with jan at (S)hort reach of sword-o and in phase 2 jan reengaged, I would probably put them back at (s)hort range where they left off. If Sword-o used his action to retreat instead of reengaging, I'd probably return the bout to sword-o's preferred (L)ong range, but give Jan initiative. Thoughts?

This link just redirects me to my own page. Are you sure you got the correct 'share' link? It seems too short.

If you're already in melee, you don't need to declare intention during the phases. You're already in combat. So you'd start at whatever range the last phase ended at. The only way the sword guy can run is by using one of the maneuvers that allows him to disengage from combat, like flee.

Using CotV init? It just says that you 'engage' and have a 1 round bout. Does that mean the bouts continue each phase of each round until someone disengages or surrenders/dies?

As far as I know yes. I generally resolve melee bouts at the end of initiative once everyone has moved and engaged for this reason, so that people can join into fights already going on.

So CotV Init just breaks SoS style bouts down so that other people don't have to just stand there and watch a 3-5 clash count battle. Fair enough, thanks user

It's actually the smartest thing Jimmy has done since the beginning of development. The Ballad initiative system is so, so, so much more coherent than clash counts and all that shit. I really hope they port it over.

I don't care about formatting at all. All is want is for the Ballad initiative to get put in the core book.

Yes. Valak is located on the northern side of the Osterbijan crater, in a very mountainous region. There are several small entrances to the Osterbijan heartlands through Valak, but penetrating the forts built over them would be just as difficult as attacking Tenja--possbily moreso, since at least the Tenjan Gate doesn't totally freeze over ever winter.

There are lots of smaller kingdoms and principalities that exist within the borders of the named powers of Tattered Realms, as suggests. We didn't want to carve the map up into too many tiny countries because that would be redundant, so we blobbed things up into the de jure empires that may not hold up in fact. Galli may legally hold all of its border principalities, but in practice many are functionally autonomous, though less so after the War of the 99 Kings.

Thanks Jimmy

Hey Jimmy, who or what are the Commercial League? From their description they seem like people who worship capitalism and that's about it what with their strange belief that trade and business are the anti-war drug for the world?

"muh libertarians" strawman, to complement the "muh Nazism", "muh singularity" and "muh Sweden" strawmen

mega.nz/#F!eZYHmCKA
Try this.

No, wait, I screwed that up. Try this instead.
mega.nz/#F!eZYHmCKA!CWh4kuZzOTNkD8j8sC1TiA

Look Goyim, you don't want to be a NAZI now do you? So don't side with Chiron.
Oy vey! The Albish are such Imperialists, so exploitative. You'd better not side with them goy.
The UC can't be trusted, they're a bunch of socialists! Put your faith in us, your greatest allies, the Commercial League! We'll protect you from the evil statists, little goy.

We'll protect commerce and freed trade, oh yes, and a free exchange of ideas, goyim! As long as they're our ideas. Wouldn't want any NAZI or COMMIE ideas intruding in, oh no.

Does that guy still need to be taught SoS?
I'm bored and totally game right now

>Osterbijan Crater

Wait a minute, I've never noticed this before. Is Osterbija set in some ancient crater, not just some shithole mountains? If this is the case, are there any records / legends of why the crater is there?

That's a good point. I hope it is super evil

Palinka effect. The Serbs hit the planet like a meteor.

Sounds about right, Mr Merchant

The Palinka effect is when you add Serbs to a world where they didn't exist. The Tattered Realms is a world where God is a Serb.

So therws early modern/medieval analgous fantasy and mid 20th century analogous dieselpunk settings, is there any chance our Dark Lord Jimmy will bless us with a futuritic/cyberpunk setting?

It will be called Ghost of the Serb.

I've been dreaming in my sickness deliriums about mASS effect homebrew.

>Fucking Gundam SoS
I would cream my pants faster than Rohm at a Chippendales.

stat me

Kurwa Husaria wannabe/10
Poor quality swordstaff (+ 1 TN to all stats)
Looks like crazy rider obsessed with horses, doesn't have groin protection to sit better in a saddle. Despite that doesn't have full leg protection, doesn't wear cuisses and exposes lower thighs.

The horse thing is just that particular armor set.

Did you see/pass on my feedback on the new page formatting from the last thread, Jimmy?

>G Gundam SoS
>With Space Zells and Neo Serbia
>Beam saber dickstabs

King turns into domo and channels his former obsession of hunting gizka into an obsession with having his gundam tuned just right.

How long did it take to get this far, I'm ok with the formatting as long as the thing gets fucking done.

> tempsend.com/CE7AAED497/677A/Song_of_Swords.zip
Link morale broken

Right now it looks like it's made by amateurs. If this is going to get a kickstarter with physical copies, it needs to succeed on a level that I could find games in physical space. And that means it doesn't just have to be good, it also has to look good.

Besides, a lot of my suggestions were pretty simple changes. I could do them in a couple hours, or do all of them for the book in a week, and people who have been doing this for a while and are used to their workflow could do it in half the time, assuming basic competence.

Thank you.

I don't think basic competence is assured, considering how long this has taken.

I've played around with the idea before. and it wouldn't be too hard to make early UC gendum with SoS or Ballad, I don't think. G Gundam minus super crazy super robot stuff wouldn't be too bad either.

Have most of the Physical Stats for a mecha replace the pilots or just have them use different, analogous stat blocks.
Could do something like successive damage to a target area would stack eventually outright destroying a part with successive smaller wounds, because you can't exactly bleed (most) robots to death, and simplify things a bit to make that not a book keeping nightmare, or reduce the number of wound tiers, with wounds to specific areas reducing a stat directly for calculations involving that part.

Change Stun into how much a pilot is getting rattled around as well as how much G-Force they're experiencing with penalties or something, versus Pilot Endurance or Toughness. Pain would still be in effect for a G Gendum type game.

Losing head would mean losing main sensors and large CP penalties or needing to make PER checks every round to not take said penalties, rather than death, unless cockpit was located there.
Maybe import luck from Ballad to help pull off some of those bullshit survivals after having your cockpit exploded and reduce lethality a bit. Special rules like Beam Melee weapons not being affected by robo-strength but having a shitload of base damage or something. Things like Anti-Beam Coatings reducing Beam damage by a flat amount a limited number of times.
New maneuvers to represent having things like boosters.

Doable, but a lot of work.
And I'm a lazy bastard so don't expect anything out of me.

Yeah, but it's already a given that fuck all gets done because of massive incompetence and/or need to pay the bills, we might as well make sure that the shit that isn't getting done is at least some good shit.

I'd rather they get an amateurish beta out for kickstarter soon so that they can have a professional final product than go back into the formatting and take another six months.

Formatting will take the time it takes whether it's before or after kickstarter. Personally, I'd rather they have something impressive to show at kickstarter, netting maximum funds, and then have a minimum amount of requisite work left to do so the turnaround at that point is as fast as possible, netting maximum widespread adoption.

Yeah, I sent a copy of it to Bones. I don't know how far he is into the process at this point, but this isn't going to be the last formatting we do, obviously. It'll probably be done in waves as changes are implemented, and of course for the final product.

Cool, thanks. Bones is more of an art direction guy than a graphic design guy, right? Some of it kind of shows, his art is great but some of his color and font choices are somewhat odd and are overly complex, even for gamebooks (which are usually downright baroque by modern design sensibilities). I understand it's limited by what fonts are available, but still. It might be worth it to take some graphic design at a local community college at the rate you're going, waiting a semester won't hinder development much or at least make a /gd/ thread. Some of the details in play are specific to TTRPGs, but that stuff is mostly being handled pretty well, it's the stuff that's usually considered basic which needs the most work. And god knows, it'd be just about the best thread on that shitty board.

then post zell

speaking of which

what the hell does your average Zellislava look like?

I mean, I know any ship can become one, but do the zell have common vessels?

I'm guessing a lot of Carracks and Caravels being that this is roughly 15th-16th century.

...

The Big Nave of Scotland, the largest ship in the world when she was launched.

Or maybe even some Galleys, though as Zellislava they might be able to row themselves.

Even cute little guys like this.

A Baltic example.

One of Magellan's ships.

...

Or if there are more advanced 17th century Galleons around.

Holy shit, is it finally finished? Is this Soon™?

>he fell for it

Well, Sooner.

With the soldier school, it says that tier 1 and 2 maneuvers cost 1 less and master maneuvers cost 1 more. Does this mean that you pay 1 fewer arc/PCP to level your school to the level that grants tier 1 and 2 maneuvers or that activating tier 1 and 2 maneuvers costs 1 less CP?

Also, mastery maneuvers when?

It costs less/more to purchase.

Also never.

Soon.

S O O N
O
O
N

How did I miss it?

i don't know bro

Help what is this in SoS? Or is it just some fantasy bullshit sword

Messer, m'sir.

It's not long enough to be a Swiss Saber is it?

Too thick, I thought, though we've only got one image to go on.

Two words:

Venetian Galeasses...

If I'm buying a Silversteel Rodela, do I use the price and stats for armor or weapons?

God that's sexy.

Armor i'd say my man

Following up with more Silversteel questions, I think someone's said that weapon attachments get figured into the cost and gain the benefit, does the same apply to Helmets and attached Visors?