Is this system any good?

I did pretty much the same. I'm going to use the fluff (I like not-europe) and maps, and find some other rules (I would say "better", but...) to use with it

>Not a single person in this thread has played it

Ignore the asshurt and delicious fuckboy tears.

So far my group have put in a good 40 hours and after getting to grips with the duelling systme it's been great fun.

The way dramatic scenes work (rolls realted skills and use successes to do things in dramatic scenes) means our group is now flying through the stpory and every decision is actually constructive.

Essentially it's a nice fast lite system that a good DM can do amazing things with.

It suffers from skill bloat and a few baffling design choices, but it's fun, zany and characterful. You have to find your own way of handling drama dice though, I'm not a fan of metarules like that
Not talking about 2e, anyway.

My biggest problem with the drama dice is that you seem to lose Exp for using them, right? Doesn't that just discourage their use and make people hoard them?

The skill purchase price is totally wonky. It's much better to just buy a ton of different "Skills" - that is, backgrounds - as opposed to Knacks - that is, individual skills.

It does, and so there's a common house rule that you get XP for earned or used dice rather than unused.

It's kind of a combination of a few things for me personally. I actually like the character generation with the backgrounds and whatnot, but once you get into regular play, its seemed to boil down to 'take half your dice and that's how many raises you get' for most of the risks. It also suffers a little bit from the 'you can do any risk however you want' open-ended suggestions for what skills go with what things, so you've got people trying to justify using their biggest dice pool for everything.

Now I never got into 1e much, but I'm also put off how you have to have access to the swords schools in order to use any part of the combat system other than 'raises = 1 wound'. And the weird counter-balance that appears to be "if you're not a swordsman, carry loaded pistols on you at all times'.

I'm also continually baffled by Wicks' insistence that any killing is automatically a corruption. I get that he's leaning away from murderhobos, and I get that stuff like Porte and the devil-bargain sorcery can cause corruption if you're just running amok doing whatever you please with it, but it seems like a stick waiting to beat the players with.

And on the personal level, I don't like that there's no difference between villains physical and social abilities, so the scrawny schemer can still stab you to death if you don't spend several sessions whittling down his allowed die pool

>And on the personal level, I don't like that there's no difference between villains physical and social abilities, so the scrawny schemer can still stab you to death if you don't spend several sessions whittling down his allowed die pool
I think it fits the genre, though. What fun would it be if confronting the villain didn't end in a climactic sword fight?

well, when you use them, they go into a pool for the DM to use against you

Isn't that just more of a reason to hoard them and never use them?

sure, but there are two problems:

the mechanic is meant to impart a certain feel, but won't be used

a bunch of magic abilities require the expenditure of drama dice

John Wick the boogeyman?

It's actually very fitting with the magic abilities. Power comes at a price, and that price might be steep indeed. You might be helping yourself out now, but in the end, it's going to cost you.

Weirdly everyone in my gaming group kickstarted it, but none of us have even played it yet.

I've enjoyed the game but it takes a certain mindset to actually play the game "correctly" or at least the way that i found to be the most fun.

Find a gimmick: Basically find something that you do that makes the character you're playing fun for both the GM and yourself. My character's gimmick was doing action movie level stunts during combat: i.e jumping off of ledges to do attacks, using NPCs as weapons, ect.

Use drama dice whenever possible: Ignore the fact that hoarding drama dice gives you exp. because to do anything fun and remotely cool you need to use drama dice and if your character is revolves around doing cool things then you will constantly need to use it.

Be dramatic: This isn't a game that's meant to be taken seriously and you shouldn't treat it like it is. Be dramatic, be epic, but for the love of God do not be a rules lawyer you will drag everyone else down with you if you do so.

I can understand that, thematically, but consider that magic requires a huge investment on the part of the player, (generally like 40 build points out of 100 from memory). That's a lot to spend to be told by the system that your powers are ultimately zero sum.

And the effects that require drama dice can easily be less game breaking than the ones that don't.
Eg. Porte requires a resolve check, various glamours require drama dice. One glamour ability is a 30 ft blink (between objects), which is cool because it's instant (one of my players used to in a handy ship-to-ship jump). Porte may not be instant, and may require two marked objects, but if your resolve is decent you'll be making much more use of it than the blink for much less 'cost'.

Actually John Wick makes pretty solid games, you just have to know that he deliberately builds in player weakness and GM strength.

1e is a fun game provided you underuse the GM drama die pool, and the LOLWTF NPC's,, starting characters get 150 hero points instead of 100, and you get XP on drama die awarding instead of cashing them in at the end of a session.

Can't speak for 2e though.

>Actually John Wick makes pretty solid games
Sort of but not really.

All his games where he doesn't have someone overseeing him are steaming piles of shit, but when he has someone around to tell him "no" he can actually produce something worthwhile.

It has good ideas but they were implemented horribly by attention whores and manchildren. You can try, but you'lo probably have to houserule half the system.

Truth.

Witnessed.