Song of Swords: Zellish Fisticuffs

Have a pdf or link? I vaguely remember seeing it, but I can't find it in the archive.

You might wanna ask someone on discord since I don't think they want it spread around for whatever reason

"Brothers!"

I had meant to link to

These threads are dead without Jimmy

What's the least technologically advanced region in the Tattered Realms? Where are they at, tech wise?

Not counting the Steppes.

Any Iron Glade, most likely. Or Helion, with their elf powered lasers.

He said least.

Gearloch?

Maybe the Iron Horde or Lost Izagone? Lendia? Zells?

So I have a Lore question,

If I'm a Zell on a Zellislava and the Zell next to me, lets call him Mike, is having a dream about having a fuck with my wife, and I punch him in the face:

Do the other Zells then gather around me in a Circle or in a Wheel?

...

The question is faulty. That punch would never come, as all the Zells communicate their frustrations near-instantly and telepathically.

"Steve, wheel you let me fuck your wife"
"No Mike, I wheel not"

Thank God

That sounds like it would be a huge bitch. It was like that in RoS though, right?

Yes, and in Bovine too. But then they copied Riddle of Steel almost word for word.

So what was wrong with TROS and how did SOS fix it?

Very little was "fixed." The core questions of Strength vs Toughness, lethality, and wound depictions, and what Bonus Successes represent go unanswered. However, SoS improves upon TROS in several ways.

Variable maneuver activation costs depending on your proficiency were terrible. SoS made them all static values regardless of your proficiency.

TROS let you just buy Toughness. SoS does not fix this, but improved on it slightly by making Toughness much harder to buy. The result is the Naked Dwarf problem rarely arises.

TROS thought rapiers and no-dachi were god weapons of murder and carnage. SoS is more sensibly realistic with its portrayal of these and other weapons.

TROS's skills were terrible. Improving on that system was one of Jimmy's stated goals for SoS. But no progress has been made on that front.

TROS had Hef and other symptoms of a bad fictional world. An interesting fictional world is SoS's strong point and Jimmy's specialty.

TROS had a overpowered-by-design magic system. SoS improves on it by throwing it away.

>It was a late night at the Opaque office
>Jimmy Rome sat at his desk, sucking the last drops of whiskey from a bottle with a bendy straw
>He had just finished writing his five hundred page essay on the agricultural practices of Vosca
>As pleased as Jimmy was that he finally got to post the section on legumes for his besties on Veeky Forums, he couldn't wait to tell them all about Gallian wheat processing techniques
>It wasn't all fun and games though
>There were still so many things to add to SoS
>Stances, cap caps, and at least four more kinds of elf
>The playtester cells of the inferior east coast could handle them
>Just then, a crash resounded through the office
>The door laid in splinters on the ground
>In its empty frame stood John Galt
>"Where is my game, Lacombe?!" the Serbian bear bellowed
>Jimmy could only squeak weakly in response
>Galt approached his desk, brandishing a magnificent khopesh, sharper than any katana
>"Say what you will about the fucking Egyptians, they make a nice sword" Galt whispered
>The terrified game developer finally found his voice
>"Kickstarter soon" he squawked

>Galt laid a strong hand on his shoulder and hauled him out of his chair
>"In the home country we have a way of motivating fuccbois like you"
>He lowered the gleaming bronze tip of his khopesh to Jimmy's groin, letting it rest atop his bulge
>"No, not there!" Jimmy begged, "I'm saving it for Gizka!"
>He shivered, not entirely in fear, as the tip made its way lower, between his clenched buttocks
>His ass had not been used since his Dionysian adventures walking the streets of San Francisco as a young man
>It puckered slightly at the intrusion, but in the end resisted the intruder
>Galt placed his hand on the khopesh's hilt and roared, every muscle straining with the effort
>Jimmy whimpered as his tight boipussy was penetrated
>He could feel it tearing up his insides
>As it sunk deeper the pain of near-virginity gave way to intense pleasure
>Jimmy let out a throaty moan
>Working the sword in and out of his body, Galt leaned in and licked the sweat building on Jimmy's neck
>The smaller man shuddered, gasped, and fell still
>Satisfied, Galt withdrew his mighty khopesh and let Jimmy drop
>He left the same way he entered, tearing the frame from the wall as he went
>Jimmy smiled softly
>He felt the warmth dripping from his anus
>The game would never be finished if Galt continued to punish him like this
>Also Bones was there the whole time
>He likes to watch

trying too hard

didn't even give me much of a boner

>TROS had Hef and other symptoms of a bad fictional world.
Might I ask what you mean by "Hef"? Is that some worldbuilder jargon or something?

Also, what's wrong with TRoS skills? If it's the progression then the companion has an alternative way of doing that. If it's the packages, the game says you are free to make your own, iirc.

>>Stances

Holy fucking shit. It's been so long I forgot about them and assumed melee combat was basically done.

But nope. There's still no stances or esoterica to go with no bestiary for mundane creatures (including generic NPCs and named NPCs), monsters and magic

Rapebeasts or something.

Technically historically accurate, but still worthy of memery.

>Technically historically accurate

What?

In that those kinds of stories existed.

Hence the more sanitised King Kong.

>." The core questions of Strength vs Toughness

I don't really get why toughness at least exists, or how it's realistic as something that soaks damage. Wouldn't a bodybuilder be just as fucked as a skinnyfat guy if he takes a sword to the gut, or chest? Toughness makes sense for unarmed combat, but not so much armed combat.

Couldn't you represent something like a bear with its own form of armor, like how Dark Heresy has "natural armor"?

It was almost certainly designed with armored combat in mind, where most damage would be bludgeoning attacks directly through the armor, or else high-BS piercing attacks through joints.

So why have it so you can increase toughness? It only really makes sense for unarmed combat since a frail girl is going to get hurt more than if I punch a 6'2" guy with 200 pounds of muscle.

Would that kind of same logic really apply to bludgeoning weapons too? I don't see it making sense for cutting or stabbing attacks.

Well there has to be SOME difference, even for cutting or stabbing. Thin and anemic people are definitely easier to kill than large robust people. The question is whether the difference is too great or not. I favor Ballad's system where TOU is variable purely on size instead of a gestalt of stats.

>• The victim suffers 1 point of Cold Damage randomly allocated on the body.

How is this determined? And are they entire limbs or something like Belly?

Speaking of which, hit locations ought to be standardized between Ballad and SoS. Even the names for the same places (Belly and Abdomen) are different.

>“Raiders, pirates, reavers, thieves. These things are not natural. The are the result of inequality.

Should be "They are the result..."

>Zellgirl
>Having ears that small

The pagans

Does SoS stat this thing?

That's the Handgonne in the firearm section, I believe.

Ok, so voting is over.
Comic is going to be an anthology from now on.
Enough people was interested in the current gang for me to make theirs a returning story.
So, best of both worlds, I s'pose.
I hope to maybe get a twitch thing going, where you can call me faggot on air while watching me draw, or otherwise find some way of letting you shame me into actually finishing shit.
I guess I should update myself on the lore and new map...

Is missile defense a RS? I feel like that makes it rather difficult to hit anything

Yay coffee

>Might I ask what you mean by "Hef"? Is that some worldbuilder jargon or something?
You don't know what the Hef are? They're minotaurs that can breed with anything, including wolves, humans, and trees, but only through rape. They're a 100% evil enemy you're not supposed to have any qualms about killing, except they'll rape your women if you fail.

>Speaking of which, hit locations ought to be standardized between Ballad and SoS.
No, they shouldn't be. There's no benefit gained by doing that. Not even Phoenix Command goes that far.

>How is this determined? And are they entire limbs or something like Belly?
It's the author's fault. Randomly allocating it across the body means rolling for a random location, including differentiating between left and right limbs. It's terrible. Mechanically this means you'll virtually never get more than one point of cold damage on an area. This was probably written by the same guy who wrote Explosion rules, since they work the same way.

Unforunately, don't expect anything to change. Jimmy gave up on updating the rules since it's supposedly being edited by an Australian editor. They've been this way for like a year and a half now.

Missilemind. I came to this thread intending to post that. I was running some numbers while I was stuck in the car. In ballad, with a pistol, shooting at some jackass just standing in the open, you need 8 dice to be mostly sure you'll succeed. If you have ADR 7+ then you can drop all the way to 4 and aim for two phases then shoot in the final phase. That seems like a very difficult shot. With automatics at least you can spray bullets, but single shooting seems very difficult with a RS of 4.

With the new rules for SoS? Yes, missile defense is an RS. Combined with the removal of Power Draw, bows are incredibly weak now. They're only useful against unarmored enemies now.

He's said they're going to start updating again after they release the sample copy, so that's good. It makes sense since it'd be insane to release a final game as SoS is now.

>No, they shouldn't be. There's no benefit gained by doing that.

What the hell do you mean they shouldn't? There's no good reason a Belly in SoS should be an Abdomen in Ballad.

>Not even Phoenix Command goes that far.

Standardization makes things less autistic and convoluted, not more.

>Jimmy gave up on updating the rules since it's supposedly being edited by an Australian editor.

What is the ozfag even DOING? It didn't take a year and a half for someone to make LaTex SoS.

I hope Jimmy has a document of all the shit they need to update.

My players are responding pretty well to my half-assed attempts to portray the fantasy setting in this game, but they keep slipping into le Veeky Forums elf hatred meme, and it's hard to convince them that these are NOT those kinds of elves.

How do I convey this properly? Ohanedin really trigger this reaction because they don't like metal.

Let them get their asses get kicked by the Orredin master race. If they put up a good enough fight, maybe an Orredin will consider one of them for a sex slave.

oh wait. :^)

Have you tried talking to your group?

>What the hell do you mean they shouldn't?
What the hell do you mean they should?

>There's no good reason a Belly in SoS should be an Abdomen in Ballad.
If that's all you wanted that'd be fine, but you're asking for Ballad to get a large number of new hit location zones just to match what SoS has, for what? Aesthetics? It's certainly not going to make the game better. You'd be making Ballad more convoluted for no reason.

Here's what I've done:

Burdinadin - umbrella corporation. Ran a campaign where they were abducting locals and experimenting on them. Glade went dark, so PCs were sent in to investigate by local lord. Turns out it was zombies that they made.

Ohanadin- one player got a gang of them to swear an oath of fealty. Everyone in the group loved having riddick butlers chase people down for them.

Orredin- assholes that other elves talk shit about.

Zells- less on the elves more on Rade being Zell Hitler. You gotta respect that.

We were talking about a Sominions splat over in /domg/ a couple days ago.

Problem is, I'm not sure SoS is really designed to work well with giants everywhere.

Cheap broo knockoff.

I feel like I've read this before.

Should probably also be "These things are natural" since it's not like there's ever not been inequality.

She's young.

Giants were one of the few monsters statted out.

Has anyone statted this thing yet?

>monsters
See, that's the problem.
For Dominions you'd want them to be player characters. You might be able to say "No, you can't be Nephilim" but it would be better if you didn't, and ruling out Rephaites (or Jötunn or Pale Ones or Fomorians or Atlantians or loads of other things) would make it near pointless to play the setting altogether.

As god intended

You would need to make a Giant custom race. Something where they start with Tall 2 (which is "dwarfing your peers and having trouble fitting through doorways") and let them take additional levels of Tall. Tall 2 is probably like the height of a basketballer at minimum.

Well there'd be several custom races. Pale ones are naked people with only one eye and gills, for example, and Fomorians are also amphbious but have bullshit magic to go with it. And that's before getting into things like xibalbans, who can fly, or the assorted elves, who have inherent glamour. And that's just races, then there's also eight or nine different kinds of magic, each of which works different and two of which work very different.

I ain't making it myself, is what I'm getting at.

desuarchive.org/tg/thread/29261537/#29262159

>If I recall, Muskets were just big arquebuses initially. The only difference was their size and caliber. Eventually, people realized that the big ones were just better than the little ones, and technology allowed them to be made lighter so that everyone could use them without sacrificing their power.
>So for a while, all of the new style guns were muskets and all of the old ones were arquebuses, because nobody was making the old ones anymore. This led to an association of Musket with new and Arquebus with old, and eventually the term Arquebus fell away entirely.

Will we eventually get a "Late" Musket to represent the ones from the 17-18th century, versus the ones that required a fork rest? Just take a Musket and give it the weight of an Arquebus, make it a bit more expensive to account for it.

Speaking of which, I may as well repost this: desuarchive.org/tg/thread/49067557/#49105132

I know Jimmy can't touch anything but I hope he's keeping a list of changes to make.

>Will we eventually get a "Late" Musket to represent the ones from the 17-18th century, versus the ones that required a fork rest?
I hope not since the Vosca isn't that advanced and you just homebrewed it anyway.

As far as I know, their firearms ARE that advanced. Besides, SoS isn't just about Vosca or there wouldn't be all the options to let you make something equivalent to a 17th, 18th or even late 19th century firearm.

>As far as I know, their firearms ARE that advanced.
No, they're in the 16th century. If they were that advanced they'd be in the book already. Jimmy loves sticking guns in things.

>Jimmy loves sticking guns in things.
Oh my!

>If they were that advanced they'd be in the book already.

Read the second sentence.

>Besides, SoS isn't just about Vosca or there wouldn't be all the options to let you make something equivalent to a 17th, 18th or even late 19th century firearm.

I mainly want to know how the fuck reloading is supposed to work now. Do you roll for it each phase? Isn't that lightning fast?

It does need ot be fixed definitely.

It doesn't help we don't know how long a turn/round/phase is. Or how much a unit of range is.

Just blame the Burds and get over it.

Is Sark actually supposed to be Zell Hitler, or is that just a meme because of the fashy looking haircut? The only thing we've really seen about him in fechts and stuff is that he's a good ruler who cares about the Zells, there isn't a whole lot there about stuffing humans into gas chambers.
Also he's in love with a human.

From the Wiki:
"Sark is a Zell-Supremacist. He believes that it is his peoples' destiny to rule the world--or at least the part of it that Zells care about – and that the other races have been deliberately denying them their birthright through treachery. He is not at all subtle about the fact that he desires the end of all non-Zellish presence on the sea. Those who have seen his flagship, the Krutost, might be tempted to believe that it is within his power to accomplish such and end. "

"[He] believes that the Zellish race is destined to conquer all others, and that all of humanity, and even the other Dinnic races, are merely a minor disturbance in the grand "History of Zell."

"he keeps [his sword] around to remind him of how much he hates humans"

What's up with the sword? I wonder what kind it is.

Heavy Backsword.

"The sword is a memoir from his days with the Queen's Zellish Legion. The Commissiarat never paid much attention to the Zellish auxiliaries, and their requisitions almost never reached the office of anyone interested in supplying them.

The result was that while they requested shorter curved swords that were to their liking, they were issued a huge surplus of backswords that had been stocked with the intention of raising an Albish cavalry regiment, before the Gusars sabotaged the effort to keep the filthy cider drinkers from muddying up honest cavalry.

The Zells hated them, and most just used clubs, knives and utility axes instead. Sark kept his because he had a background in swordsmanship, and because at the time, he was a very obedient soldier and wouldn't dream of neglecting his equipment. Now he keeps it around to remind him of how much he hates humans."

>Heavy backsword
So Sharpe's sword? He sounds like the bad guy of a Sharpe episode actually.

>Evil Naval commander keeps a beautiful young woman locked in his flagship
>Sharpe's company have to break her out

It's got everything. Then you'd get the Irish guy and the leopard seal knife fighting in the hold of the ship.

Zells are objectively better than humans so this is an alright position to take

DATS WACIST
Humans have contributed so much to Voscan culture. Ploughs, cow-tongue sandwiches, meatballs, peanut butter, double-entry accounting

None of which are needed on the open seas.

That's an interesting picture of Matoi Ryuuko you've got there. Seems to be wearing even less clothing than usual.

please address the stuff people brought up and asked in the thread.

Fug

Not nearly enough of my reaction images are from KlK.

Sorry m8 my internet went down. It's raining cats and dogs out here. Felton actually flooded. This is California nobody even remembered what rain looks like now people are dying and shit. Some retard crushed a car with a bulldozer because he couldn't see shit on Highway 17, killed at least one person.

Anyway let me get on it.

>nobody even remembered what rain looks like
It's only been what, like three or four years? This isn't that weird for California historically speaking.

Each phase is two seconds, so a round is six seconds. All range units in Ballad are meters, and all range units in SoS are yards.

>All range units in Ballad are meters, and all range units in SoS are yards.

They should stick to one IMO.

Probably. They're close enough to one another that you can just switch them without a huge problem, but if the goal is to have the combat system be unified then having them be the same is probably for the best.

I prefer yards because I'm an Amerifat and because I play mostly SoS and the archaic units just sort of fit with the setting, but honestly it doesn't fucking matter to me.

This. And maybe print the conversion to the other system in an info box. I have googled that shit so often that I have memorized at least how to make inches to cm and feet to cm/m. But I think many others don't.
Hell, if the software they are making the pdf with supports calculating some fields when generating/exporting/compiling the pdf it should be hella easy to just make two different pdfs.

>Well there has to be SOME difference, even for cutting or stabbing. Thin and anemic people are definitely easier to kill than large robust people. The question is whether the difference is too great or not. I favor Ballad's system where TOU is variable purely on size instead of a gestalt of stats.

I agree with this. You can have toughness increase/decrease based on your size and whether you're skinny or not.

I think all humans would fall between 2-6 TOU when you don't take height into account. 2 or 3 would be someone very sickly and anorexic. 6 would be from having a bodybuilder. I don't think the most buff person would be able to soak twice as much damage as a normal person (TOU 4).

>If that's all you wanted that'd be fine, but you're asking for Ballad to get a large number of new hit location zones just to match what SoS has, for what? Aesthetics? It's certainly not going to make the game better. You'd be making Ballad more convoluted for no reason.

Yes. I can see why Ballad would have less hit locations since melee combat isn't as prominent, but they shouldn't have things be named differently when there's no reason for them to. Either have them be Belly in both systems, or Abdomen in both systems.

(cont)

Like range. Both are still in development so it wouldn't be very difficult to make both systems more compatible with each other. Especially when Ballad is more open to editing since it's not the game being kickstarter'd.

The same should apply to weapons and armor (not saying Ballad should have 3 types of AV, mind you). It was pretty dumb that the COTV steel plate in 1.6 was so much more inferior to 16th century munitions plate in every regard.

Speaking of which, the cutlass in SoS costs 1sp. In COTV it costs 1gp, making it twenty times more expensive despite the fact steel manufacturing should be better than 16th century steel in price, if not weight and quality. I would at least make the COTV cutlass cost the same as the SOS cutlass since they're identical otherwise.

There's more oddities like that when you compare SoS and COTV equipment.It shouldn't be hard to fix.

I agree with this. You can have toughness increase/decrease based on your size and whether you're skinny or not.

This is how it basically is in Ballad. You could also go the route of something like Runequest and Pendragon and have Toughness also represent your physical size.