Last time on Song of Swords:

Last time on Song of Swords:
Jimmy provides Mass Combat out of nowhere
Skills are being fixed complete with skill packets
Brian Blessed is always appropriate
The new Time Commanders was kind of garbage.
Praise Kek.

Song of Swords is a a tabletop RPG centered around realistic medieval fightan' with a ludicrous variety of weapons and fighting styles, centered around a dice pool system. It's currently in beta, and can be used for both fantasy and historical games. The Kickstarter was nearly 300% funded, and we're on the fast track to kicking ass baby.

Call of the Void: Ballad of the Laser Whales 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.

MEGA folder containing current version of the game and all supplementary materials.
Note that the latest version of the game is v1.9.9 but with additional supplements.
mega.nz/#F!S89jTT7J!ozFi9GvzaFGHfBa59Ik2-Q

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
If you're looking to learn, post here in the thread.

We also play Guy Windsor's card game Audatia in the room, but now we have a much better way to play Audatia: Tabletop Simulator! The (official!) mod for Audatia is now up and running!
steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=904774480

Newcomers extremely welcome, please come and be friends with us! We love everyone, commies, fascists, sane people, infidels, heretics, schismatics, members of God's holy church in Rome, etc. Come on down and join the Cult of Swords!

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Spain)
youtube.com/watch?v=ltNfIA5kzt0
youtube.com/watch?v=xs-pTGqQPc4
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

Ballad kickstarter in 2018 or 2019?

The latter seems more likely.

How hard is SoS to learn? Is there magic? I've been intrigued by these threads since mid last year, it sounds interesting.

dueling flow is pretty easy to pick up. About the hardest thing is chargen because of how stupid proficiencies are.

Magic is still WIP so at the moment the system works best for low fantasy with out magic or adding the magic from call of the void that is a bit more developed.

Sounds great.
Doesnt sound great. Are there a lot of stabbed monster opponents?

No non-humanoid ones, unfortunately. Basically if you want a decent simulation of a HEMA duel, this is the system to play, but for anything else it's not going to be great

the proficiency are getting fix and monsters are coming in the future, by this time next year everything should be finished.

>Coffee OD'd and died

Anyone here play For Honor? I wanna hit someone in the head with a polearm without dice for once

Anybody got pics of Byzantine soldiers to dump? Preferably focused on the 13th century, both post-Palaiologian restoration and the fractured sub-realms like the Empire of Nicaea and Despotate of Epirus.

A few. There's a basic monster system in Call of the Void, but things are very much based on the regular combat system right now. They want that absolutely down pat before expanding.

He's alive.

>949949
Praise Kek indeed

I want shugoki to sit on my back and smash my head on the floor

Shit taste in executions. Also why do all the samurai use fucking wooden armour. I hope there's costumes released that's fucking no armour. That triggers me less than goddamn wood

Why is leather better than wood as armour, again?

No u

Because leather contains the soul of the slain animal and its spirit will ward attacks and grant you strength to glory its killer thereby glorying itself in heaven.

[Spoiler] desu I prefer the nut slap into gut thrust because shugoki is a fucking meme.

>threads constantly on fucking life support
Fecht when Jimmy

Idea for meme team supreme. Roll a character. 2d4+1 down the line on categories?

Rolled 2, 4, 4, 3, 2, 1, 4, 4, 3, 3, 1, 4, 4, 4 = 43 (14d4)

Uh, sure. You'll have to manually add the ones and separate the pairs mind

7
8
4
9
7
6
-
9

7,8,4,9,7,6,9

That made a significantly better character than I thought it would.

So what now

We try again with 1d4+2. Shitters only.

Rolled 3, 4, 2, 4, 3, 1, 4 = 21 (7d4)

5,6,4,6,5,3,-,6

2d3?

Rolled 2, 3, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 1, 1, 2, 1, 2 = 27 (14d3)

Okay boss

5,3,3,6,4,3,-,3

It's not hard, but there's a lot of stuff to read before you can consider yourself truly proficient.

It's a bit like a martial art in that respect.

It's a bit more realistic.

What is Ballad Spain like? Did they undergo a civil war like Spain did historically?

Ciervosia, often called "Cervantes" by the Albish-speaking world. Yes, it underwent a terrible revolution following the assassination of their King by anarchist radicals. It is now a popular conspiracy theory that the King was actually killed by ultranationalists because he was considering abdicating his position voluntarily.

Regardless the assassination plunged the country into civil war as revolutionary Left-wing elements seized control of large parts of the country, and the military and Nationalist elements fought to bring order back to the nation. The resulting civil war did not last long, by this time the Volgin Socialist Republic was itself collapsing and could not meaningfully fund the rebels, while Chiron was very much able to assist them. The Legionary Party eventually emerged on top, and declared Anarchism and Socialist thought to be a genetic disease. Great camps were established in which many hundreds of thousands of prisoners were experimented on (fatally most of the time) to find a "cure" for the mental illness. Eventually it was decided that there was no cure, and the remaining stock were simply executed.

Today, Ciervosia is one of Chiron's closest allies, and has embraced a eugenics program almost identical to theirs, albeit with different parameters. As one of the few countries with which Chiron has no contested territories or political disputes, they are perhaps the only country that suffered no meaningful losses in CWII.

I don't know dick about Spanish history, did this actually happen?

You see any communists in Spain?

More or less. The bit about the king dying is different though, in our history the Spanish king eventually came back and was reinstated. Here it sounds more like a fascist coup.

Ever see Pan's Labyrinth?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Spain)

>"Reforma agraria", the joking name given to organized peasant hunts on horseback, became popular among the sons of landowners, the name referring to the grave they would ultimately dump their quarry's body into as the piece of dirt the landless peasant had always wanted."

They're going to have to send someone into space if they want to bury my sides.

It's some cartoon villain shit dude, history is weirder than anything a writer could make up.

>A Francoist psychiatrist, Antonio Vallejo-Nájera, carried out medical experiments on prisoners in the Francoist concentration camps in order to "establish the bio-psych roots of Marxism".[166][196][197][198]

Do we have the results of this research anywhere? This sounds like the plot of a Hunger Games ripoff.

I've been thinking about this for a while, Jimmy, but I have finally decided. I believe either Pain is too effective, or Grit is too weak.
We can sit here and handwave about how damage soaked by toughness are effective fleshwounds or about how "pain" and CP are abstractions, but when it comes down it
Pain gimps people way too quickly.

It's intended behavior, I know, for the wounds to add up and lead to a death spiral. That part isn't where I draw contention.
It's with how quickly and readily that spiral can occur.

I've been chewing on historical reports of knights continuing to fight (and kill) while disemboweled, and on how many knife and bullet wounds it sometimes takes to even stop an attacker (let alone kill them), but what really cemented it was all of that coming together while I was watching MMA, and hearing about how the contender had three fingers on his main hand completely broken during round 1, but elected to continue the fight and went on to defeat the then relatively unwounded champion.

Shock does exactly what I want it to although my players complain bitterly about Overshock. But pain just adds up so quickly. A single level 1 wound is all that even a toughened soldier will be able to withstand before losing dice, and with the level of CP every character I have seen played has? The next wound, even another level 1, will decide the fight. 10 v 15 CP can be hard fought, but you're still going to lose.

This part doesnt feel right. I shouldn't be so in-pain from getting my knuckles rapped twice that I begin to completely falter in my competency, and the historical accounts of the *heights* of grit simply don't see any play in SoS as it is right now- although the depths of it are exactly how I'd expect.
Maybe it's because there's nothing like Spiritual Attributes, maybe it's just Grit being relatively ineffective compared to the common wound, maybe I'm just an idiot.
But these are my thoughts.

The funniest thing about Laser Whales is that the game is supposed to be about adventure in space and exploration, but 90% of the lore is about how fucking horrible and dystopian the countries that you won't ever see are.

Sacrifice Arc Points to negate Pain? Maybe at a 2:1 rate?

>that scene with the wine bottle

SoS is an outlier of the Riddle game family because it lets wounds stack without restriction. I recommend reading BoB, Bovine, and Riddle/Flower of Battle to see how they handle things differently. Wound stacking, Pain, and Bleed are the three things you're looking for. Try them out with your players. If you find a good alternative to what we have now, tell us about it.

Vidal is a Ballad-tier character.

>tfw I learn more history in SoS threads than I did in college

Because as an adventurous space pirate, those shitholes are both your backgrounds and your principle antagonists.

Wait a second, so it's modern Spain if Juan Carlos was killed and ushered in a redux of the civil war, or is this the first civil war in the timeline with a quite different origin?

>Ciervosia
Should probably just be "Ciervo", shouldn't it? Like how it's "León" and not "Leonía"?

>often called "Cervantes" by the Albish-speaking world
Nigga why?
Your naming sense for Spanish countries is so fucking weird.

Literally none of that is accurate to real-world history.
The only part that's close is the part after the war is done where they persecute anarchists and socialists, and make friends with the nazis, but even there, there's details to quibble over.

I don't speak Spanish--my strategy for years now has been to use my name idea, and then wait for someone (like you) to correct me, at which point I change the name to fit the suggestions. That's how we went from Nisperoa to Nisperada.

Always make use of your foreign fans, lads. They'll give you good linguistic advice.

Why not just straight up ask: "Hey, does this make sense guys?"

Would you trust a drunk Californian to ask properly?

Well, if it is his job, then yes.

Alright lads, the last thread iconic poll yielded pretty close love between the squire and Dwarven explorer. Have we any other ideas? If not we ought to start thinking of fleshing out the two favorites in terms of gear, style, and skills.

And then fecht them

If this is for an Iconic Visionary slot, I'd recommend that we push a character who embodies our group well, but who also isn't so weird that they push people away. Premade characters are supposed to be easy to get into.

Personally, I'm surprised we didn't just default to Ohanedin Kenshiro. Possibly female. Aryan Elf musclegirl who does Wing Chun would be fucking based.

Dion please, I know you have a build for this you love to trot out, but vomiting blood from every orifice doesn't make for a good campaign character.

The squire is attempting to be the chivalric ideal, so he'd be in heavier armor with a sword and lance as a minimum. The question that becomes from that is: how has that ideal been corrupted in his time away from home? What lands has he traveled to and absorbed lessons and acquired gear from during his exodus?

I like Jimmy's idea of incorporating a clover into his heraldry in some way; maybe he patrons ranchers?

Dion advocated the dumb alligator man because he's from Florida. He's also so ideologically extreme that Jimmy only occasionally chastises him for being too lenient.

>because he's from Florida
That explains a lot

I always imagine Jimmy as the Cuban bad guy from Black Ops 2 for some reason, so it's natural he has genetic authority over Floridans.

Is Jimmy a spic? I thought he was white.

I think he's like 1/8th of a spic.

Sounds interesting, but I want to run a low magic fantasy rpg, not The Great Joust: The Tabletop Game. Although that too sounds great in its own way.
Nice. Is the combat rules hard to learn, is there more a basic fighter guy can do than "I hit it"?
Understandable. Guess I'll have a look myself on my next free weekend.
Sorry for the stupid questions, folks, but I'm in the army and dont really have time for hobbies outside of vacations.

He's an octaroon on his mom's side (1/8th black) but his dad's a spic. He's actually a total mutt which makes his fascist as fuck opinions really funny. On the Disco he once said "If they put every Californian in a gas chamber I'd run to the door and hold it closed to make sure none of us escaped."

>If they put every Californian in a gas chamber I'd run to the door and hold it closed to make sure none of us escaped

Had a feeling Jimmy was our guy.

What the fuck are you talking about, Jimmy's a leopard seal. 100%.

>expecting Jimmy to do his job

I'm a Californian too, mate. If you're a Californian, you should speak Spanish fluently. Otherwise, you're just some spic who speaks Spanish poorly, and thus little more than a Mexican.

youtube.com/watch?v=ltNfIA5kzt0

>Queen Dahaka the Black

I really hope we get official art of her.

Jimmy isn't nearly that cute.

Elephant seal, maybe.

Huge, brutal, ignorant slav women is the motif of SoS.

I always picture her as thinner, she's a Zell so she has dumb baboon strength regardless of her build.

>dumb baboon strength
That's Ohanedin, friend

Hot.
youtube.com/watch?v=xs-pTGqQPc4

>Ivan and Kane
Laser Whales is by FAR the better game, and history will remember it this way.

>tfw this system sounds right up my allew but I got nobody to play this with

Play with yourself like you always do at night

>tfw you're posting in a thread full of people who also love the game
>tfw you're not in the roll20 right now

Alright gents I need some help cause I'm almost out of time. I'm a visionary noble backer for the KS and need to write up a character for the Lore bit that I get. Problem is I'm having a bit of difficulty writing something satisfactory and wrapping my head around the setting, and so I've come to you guys for help. As far as I've researched I know my idea is probably hard to pull off/write in a lore friendly way, which is part of the reason I'm asking for assistance. Continued in second post.

Who and who?

My basic idea is a possibly Karthak(i?) Zoph mage, who despite knowing it's wrong and incredibly dangerous, who is using necromancy and the undead to fight against some far greater threat (or using them to power a large portion of land... idk it was mentioned as an idea to me). But the basic idea is that he knows he's fighting a pyrrhic battle, and he knows that things are bad, and what he's doing is wrong, but that in his mind, the use of the undead abominations is the only way to stop this threat. Now the KS asks for all sorts of things like origin story, hopes/dreams, fears, habits, friends/allies, enemies, family, occupation, etc. and that's what I'm having trouble with. I also don't really know what threat in setting would constitute such dire measures. So I am here, asking humbly for help Veeky Forums. I look forward to working with you gents.

>Nice. Is the combat rules hard to learn,
With one of us teaching you, no.
On your own, yes.
The system is set up so that it's easy enough to understand that you could pick it up while watching a fecht play out on Veeky Forums. That's how most of us got into it, watching John Galt's fechts and eventually realizing what was going on. Now with someone teaching you in the roll20 you can learn how it works real quick.
However, Opaque are terrible at writing books, so if you try to learn how the game works only from reading the PDF, you'll be entirely confused. Why it's laid out so you have a maneuver list before learning how maneuvers work is beyond me.

I'll save us both many hours of second-hand autism by reading your idea directly. Bones and Claymore handle the art side, but I can pressure them into pretty much anything.

Uhm. Thanks? What does this mean for my KS input? Because I still need to put something in for my backer tier and there's another step after this one.... Sorry to bother you?

Relax mate, he's just saying he'll read it and you don't have to worry.

What I mean is, do not worry about expressing yourself, we will absolutely take as much time is necessary to talk everything out. A fear many of you guys have expressed is that we might move too fast and not listen to you fully, and end up getting the wrong impression.

I promise, that will not be the case. Art takes fucking forever, that means we have tons of time to discuss details with our clientele.

If I wanted to run a high lethality one-shot for a group of PC's taking part in a castle siege would this be a good system to do so?
Would I be better off running something like riddle of steel or GURPS?
Does SoS support monstrous creatures?

Yes
No to Riddle of Steel (SoS is basically the same game) but GURPS is usually a good option too
Not yet, but the stretch goal for it was funded

>is there more a basic fighter guy can do than "I hit it"
How do you want to hit it? Is the key question, as you have to pick where and how hard you're hitting things, whether to stab or thrust, feint to different attacks, chop shields, knock blades out of the way, push cut, half-sword, murderstrike, hook people or their equipment etc.

Which side is from Curacao?

Mom's Dutch West Indian, dad's Puerto Rican of French-Haitian descent.
I know, I know, but not everyone can be born of pure Bavarian phenotype.

>Mom's Dutch West Indian, dad's Puerto Rican of French-Haitian descent.
...and you write Nazi propaganda. How did that happen?

I consider myself very good at what I do. If I were a Nazi I'd have a Nazi army by now. It would be large, and very well dressed. Very, very well dressed.

For the record, I don't consider the Nazis to be any more or less evil than the other major powers of that era. Communism, Crony Capitalism and Fascism are all equally guilty. The specifics may vary but I really don't care what excuse a country gives for its mass executions. A dead man is a dead man is a dead man. It doesn't matter if he died of Typhus retconned to choking on Xyklon B or died crying for his mommy in the basement of the Lubyanka building. Murder is murder.

>Caim got his prequel canned because he wanted to fug his sister