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Hey guys!

It's really cool to hear a lot of people have tried out the super early RPG rules. I hope your games have been going well and everything is running relatively smoothly!


I wanted to make a general all-purpose post here: if you've played the RPG with the current rule set, please let me know if any questions/comments/concerns you have with the rules.


I'm looking to refine the rules a little bit, as I'd ideally like to focus on working at the lore/illustration part of the RPG.


The things I'm most concerned about (and would like feedback on:)


1. Do the enemy balance, the damage, and the combat feel good? I'm still not sure I really like rolling dice for damage (like Dungeon World) as opposed to doing a more simplified harm system (like Apocalypse world). I want the combat to be fast and interesting, and fairly granular (which is why I didn't go with the harm system to start with).


2. Does the stamina/wounds system feel ok? I'm trying to make sure that damage matters with wounds, while not trying to slow down the game by giving you stamina to burn. One thing I noticed was that armor doesn't function with wounds at all, which makes certain classes (the Law for example) seem a little weaker.


3. I'm looking at the Law, the Fury, and the Beggar as classes that may need refining. Beggar will definitely get some more interesting moves - right now they seem to compound on each other a lot rather than introduce anything new. The Law should feel hard to kill but doesn't get a lot of ways to deflect damage other than armor. And the Fury should feel very risky to play but shouldn't feel invincible.


Let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions below!


Thanks,


Abbadon

Files

Comments

Anonymous

This looks so awesome. I really want to dive in and take this for a spin.

Anonymous

Very cool! I'm too cheap to go in at the early RPG peek, but I'm pleased to see you're using the Apocalypse World engine. It seems like the best fit of all the existing systems.

Tony Dowler

Wow, somehow I missed that you were making an RPG as well. Love your work, and am so totally looking forward to the RPG.

Chilroy

The Beggar feels more like a supportive/utility class; which I find super desirable - perhaps more environmental or conditional combat skills?

Roland Kerr

Only ran the first session of what is now looking like a 2 or 3 session short campaign. The combats the players had were relatively low intensity, which means this all pertains to what happens in a fight that isn't going to result in any PCs getting slain. I had a Fated, a Law, a Master and a Boss. - The Law actually felt plenty strong in a fight, I appreciate that the whole AP/Wounds issue they have relates entirely to extremely difficult fights so I'm only seeing one side of the coin, but every fight basically boiled down to the Fated staying out of the way, and the Boss running support for the Law to kill absolutely everyone. Also the Master not really accomplishing anything apart from taking a beating well. - The Guild Blades enemy is not well designed I think. It was meant to be a super simple enemy I know but... Mainly it's super weak, which is sort of intended but honestly could be handled better. The damage is alright, its health means its 1 to 2 attacks for an average PC to take out the whole horde, which again is probably intended, although kind of awkward when you're left with 1 or 2 remaining. Mostly that its one listed move is 'cut off retreat' or 'surround' or whatever. This combined with its poor stats means it can't be threatening. Being surrounded by these dudes is not threatening. In fact it is wasting a turn of the one thing they can do even slightly well which is deal damage. I would suggest that their special moves relate to digging in somehow or deploying equipment that will still be around after they kark it, unless these dudes are meant to be extras to artificially inflate the size of a fight. I modified it into a gang of Pipemakers who exhaled a poisonous fog around themselves for instance, which was VASTLY more effective at cutting off retreat than a meatwall. And yes I realise that both mean there is an Avoid Disaster roll to escape, but it was so much more effective at MAKING SENSE as an obstacle the players needed to be wary of. There's also not really much in the way of rules for using poison on PCs so... - The Demon Guard is okay. The Threat 3 statblock for it at least makes the players stop and think and plan around it, but it isn't really going to go head to head with a party as recommended. Its going to tie up an entire party for 1 to 2 turns where a Threat 1 enemy ties up a player for 1 to 2 turns. I'll post again once I've run some more and seen how more of my own enemies have fared. I had an Angel with a net (Also want to point out its very in theme for a kung fu movie feel) already but I think I grossly understatted it since it was based on the Demon Guard stats. The last session ended on a cliffhanger with them about to go head to head with an attack angel, angel assassin ala Liminal Blossom and some more pipemakers on the attack angel. That should be a proper fight I think.

Filipe Muniz

Hey Thomas, I have sent you an email. If you're interested I can send you the PDF of the game I've mentioned. Maybe you'll find it useful. Best wishes.

Roland Kerr

So, I finally got everyone together for another session, shorter than the first, to try and round things out. I'll try and include a little more fluff since I was fairly happy with my little slice of Throne. Chief takeaways from this: - PCs are extremely strong. Which is to say they are as strong as I was getting the impression they were. While the other PCs probably couldn't have done this, the Law (44 Devouring Sunlight on a Field of Bones) for instance took a nearly perfect hit from an Attack Angel (Which I figured 2d10 was appropriate for) after an extended fight with his own kind and still was on 1HP with no wounds marked. The Boss (Vertisee, Tesseract Ascendant, Cubefather of the Riveters Guild) continued to use massed volleys of Flying Claws to disable any significant enemy, although by the end I realised that the solution to the problem was massed riflemen (Who were in turn easy prey for pretty much anyone else). For clarification I ran them as level 2s so they could have some choice in chargen. - My takeaways are that you need enemies who are at least theoretically capable of dealing 12 damage or more in a hit to constitute a credible or urgent threat damage wise, anything less is more a nuisance than a danger. With respect to their HP, an average hit from a PC is about 7 damage, and accordingly a party can chew apart an armoured, 15 stamina enemy before it really does anything much IF it is their centre of attention. The most defensively weak enemy I deployed that still took an entertainingly long time to get taken out (unlike Guild Blades and similar where they just die in two attacks from anyone pretty much regardless of the roll) was a horde with AP 3, Stamina 10. Basically uparmoured nightguard elites. They were pretty fun, as a 1 horde vs. 1 PC (The Master, Jaoldebaoth) fight (That did not wound the PC). - The Reload action. It might be more obvious if we had more in depth experience with *Worlds, but it was nearly impossible to figure out what you actually DO if you need to reload, how many times you pay for ammo, etc. - I remember this being raised on /tg/ as well when 1.1 came out, but The Boss' abilities that relate to having someone in the gang pay the price are pretty confusing. Like what is the meaning of an ability where you sacrifice a minion to save you when the minion is effectively a part of your own body? It's just weird. - I don't know if any of the *Worlds games have developed something for this, but there may need to be some variant of initiative system implemented. People were very split in opinion over this, and in turn it was very hit and miss as to whether the focus of action that results from the current state of affairs was cinematic or just keeping some people out of the fun. - Ironically for all we lacked one, I really got an appreciation for the Hunter class. The scarce few situations I was able to catch the PCs in that they had no trivially easy avenue to deal with were ones that only The Hunter (And to a lesser extent the Hunger) have ways of dealing with. Being knocked a few dozen storeys into open air by sufficiently large enemies and trying to figure out how to stop themselves from taking the falling damage before they hit anything was a common concern of the PCs. - The Fated (Mr. Orange) very much ran themselves as a social character, though that was very much their choice I guess. One thing I would say is if you want to have stuff like Destiny milestones triggering wound regen you should probably be abundantly clear how BIG a destiny needs to be, and how much progress constitutes a milestone. Because I didn't think I was being lenient (Fate was to misappropriate the power of a Demiurge, they managed to convince Incubus' soldiers that arrievd as reinforcements that they were in charge there and direct them to fight the people actually working for Incubus) and yet it still seemed pretty extreme. - We haven't seen a lot of the general tech level in Throne circa the current comic. I kind of ran with the short forum adventure where it seems concievable that there are some trains that aren't just "trains", and there might be say, elevators, but they aren't frequent. Probably my favourite NPC I implemented in the adventure was a man who, as the PCs were looking for public transport, pulled into the train station and introduced himself as "Lakuman the Untruthful". Upon asking whether the train was his, he replied "Yes.". To evade the increasing glare of scrutiny from 44 Devouring Sunlight, he said that Lawmen were welcome on his train any time for no price. This turned out to be very untrue. - As far as the narrative aspects of each class' ability set, I had a relatively easy time with the Fated because it's all centred around their Destiny and they just have a couple things that trigger if their Destiny is relevant. The Law was easy enough since the whole class is working to a theme, I occasionally needed to remind myself the exact extent to which they were capable of auto-detecting crimes etc. though. The Master I found much harder. Fluffwise, sure, its all about them being an experienced sensei who has been on the block a while, but it was all over the place in practice, I needed constant reminders. They just have so many really specific narrative capabilities that didn't logically follow to me. If they'd had more broad, sweeping abilities, like say, the following bonuses with anyone who does stuff similar to their school or something, I'd have felt more comfortable. - Incidentally, the notion that to live is the ultimate insult to YISUN and therefore we should preserve as many lives as possible to drown YISUN in the spit poured into their eye has to be the one player character motivation I saw that just could not exist outside this setting. - One liner of the session “I knew it! You can pick up chicks in an attack angel!” in response to being informed that I wouldn't require a move to physically lift a tied up hostage on the back of a slowly failing attack angel.

killsixbilliondemons

Thanks a ton Roland, this is exactly the kind of feedback I'm looking for. Thanks a ton for running a couple of games!