So a couple weeks ago I posted a homebrew for playing Dark Souls games called Fires Far Away. It seemed pretty well received, and I promised to give an expanded version of it with some gaps filled in that people asked for.
So this is that, then. I have written up a bunch of new enemies and bosses, corrected some mistakes, and have rules for both Invasions and Covenants.
This made the book sort of long and poorly laid out, so I broke it up into four books. This way the common rules are all in one place, Enemies and Bosses are in their own book you can easily have open in another tab as needed, and Covenants and Invasions are in separate PDFs so you don't have to scroll past them when you don't need them.
Enemies and Bosses. Includes a lot more stuff since last time, but by no means its it comprehensive. I don't have time for that shit. If you want more monsters for your campaign, convert your own or make some up.
Rules for Covenants. Includes the Greatest Hits from all three games (the ones that work in a PnP game, anyway) and a couple of others to fill in the gaps.
Rules for Invasions. They exist somewhere between Boss rules and player combat rules, and carry all sorts of goodies if you can beat them.
Some faces you'll recognize, like Kirk the Knight of Thorns. Others fill more of a role specific to Covenants, like Dragonfang Villard and Dragon Sage, which provide examples of how Dragon Scales might come looking for the players of that Covenant.
Or hey, maybe you want to do Darkwraith things. Thats fine. But the Abyss Watchers might not like it. Blades of the Darkmoon too.
> play as a deprived > start off with shit gear, no humanity, and no estus flask
Thats going to be a rough ride.
Bentley Nelson
Aw shit, an update!
If I can get ahold of some Dark Souls miniatures from the mediocre board game, I might use them for this game as player and NPC pieces.
Is combat restricted to a grid or playing field, or is it a little more abstracted?
Alexander Perez
You'll want a grid. I standardized some terms and provided visual examples of area attacks and what they mean.
That said, one of the changes this time was getting rid of mentions to distance in feet and instead making it generic spaces, abstracting how much distance a given space is. I don't see any reason you couldn't play this on basically any kind of battlemap.
I think though that you could probably run it theater of the mind style if you wanted, the combat just become less tactical as a result. The crux of the combat is resource management and risk vs reward anyway, the positioning is just to make it easier for bosses and shit to threaten a bunch of players at once.
