Nice. Always interesting those insights.
Andrea "Lord Lance" P.
Recent community posts
I use this post too. Graphic and music are really nice; even the mmm-mmmm of the queen is adorable.
The game is pretty relaxed, from what I see it's really difficult to NOT procede on, there are very few difficult decisions. I'd love more interaction between the various parts (for example, the botanist offering to dismiss the scientist, or the witch doing some nasty summon that you later on have to fix with the knight, and so on).
Nice 💜. If you accept feedback and suggestions, this is for you:
Not sure if I like the different result table for magic (dunno, I find it not very elegant). Maybe there's a way to get that result in a different way? For example, keeping the original table but explaining that, with magic, you suffer 1 additional Risk, no matter what the result is. So the GM could give more collateral effects every time that magic is used.
Also, you could suggest some systems that negate the additional Risk, for example using lot of time (emulating Rituals), or sacrificing HPs before the roll, or expending useful stuff (ingredients, treasures, breaking the staff etc.), or accepting the energy shortage that force you to NOT use the magic again in the scene.
Finally, I strongly suggest you to add, sooner or later, one or two pages with the iconic suggestions for quests/NPCs/places etc., 'cause they are both useful to spark immagination and to indirectly do some kind of world building, a subtle way to suggest what you think is cool, what you hope the players will explore and confront in your game.
Niiiice. If you like some feedback, while this updated file it's surely better in my opinion, I'm not a fan of those serif fonts used in examples and tables. Sure, you can make a differentiation, ie. the italics for the examples, but I'd keep the same font family.
And / or you could choose a condensed, high visible font for the tables, 'cause you also need to fit lot of info in limited space cells. For example the famous Roboto Condensed font.
It''s common to do the switch from a sans to a serif (if you used the sans as standard font) in titles, however you already did nice variations for the various paragraphs / chapters.
Intanto bravi, bel lavoro.
Vi ho setacciato gratiZ un po' di typo:
pag. 8 gratuire
pag.18 punteggioPF
pag.42 Ingombante
pag.47 allla
pag.89 Giardininere
pag.91 antiproettile
pag.91 basebal
pag.92 kaki (ok, non è sbagliato, ma tanto vale usare "cachi")
pag.92 Lunchi
pag.95 Independente
pag.103 Kamikadze
Aggiungo:
pag.56 Infosphere (gli altri sono stati tradotti)
pag.85 C'è tutto un paragrafo in inglese "It is possible to attack the hacker’s mind in a similar way to the..." ecc.ecc. (ma sotto è tradotto, quindi immagino sia solo da togliere - controllate che magari non manchi un altro paragrafo)
Hi. I suggest you to re-design the tables (in particular, look for the ones at page 40+ and 60+). The missing last down border seems to suggest the table is continuing in the next page on into the next title; also, probably light grey horizontal lines could be useful to better identify the rows, in particular where you have multiple line of text per single row. 💜
Also, I'm not sold on the sub-rolls on the Initial Encounter Reactions at page 47 - "forcing" the NPC to act in that way instead of suggesting a mood for an active scene with the PCs. Probably, simply suggesting the initial stance (suspcious, wrangling, ready to trade, indifferent, helpful etc.) could be more useful.
Also, if you find it interesting, because the enemies are really simple in their "statblock", you could add a micro-table near each enemy, in which you suggest some "What is this NPC doing?", helping to build interesting encounters if combined with the initial reaction rolled before. Maybe the Bandit entry could have - Menacing other NPCs - Hiding a small treasure - confabulating with another gang - Stealthly moving on a mission.
Things like that.
Anyway, I liked the general layout and picture style. A nice addition to the lightweight Sword&Sorcery style RpGs.
EDIT: about the Initial Encounter Reactions: now I'm also reading your Shadows of a Dying Sun, and I see that table is there too. I see that the additional roll can be useful when playing Coop or Solo, with no GM. Still, I feel that a more complex table, with more, and more nuanced, entries can be cool and useful.
Pag. 39 ARCHIVISTA caccogliere -> raccogliere (immagino)
Pag.48 è Jason Tocci
Pag.10, pag.22 ecc. Aggiustare leggermente le tabelle in modo da non avere parole interrotte per l'ultima lettera. Eventualmente rimpicciolire leggermente il font usato.
Pag.32 sotto la SECONDA SCINTILLA fissura -> fessura
PS: bravissimi, bel lavoro. Un abbraccione.
Every news about aFoD is welcome.
PS unrelated: I'm wondering about this thing: (probably) the game was somewhat limited in its spreading because it was released as an add-on to BitD. Of course, it's already a big book, however is painful to not having a complete game, a complete book to skim thru. I saw lot of BitD based games pop-out in those years, so it could be a nice gift to have a "redux" version incorporating the missing rules.
Do you think there's still interest into this game to justify this dream?
Love the attention you put to the feedback. Have a 💜 day!
PS: I did proofreading and counseling for mechanics and layout for lot of (small) authors and translators, here in Italy.
I just want to tell you that you can find awesome suggestions about font choice and page composition, and you can learn a lot, really quickly.
This is just an example or two:
https://www.canva.com/learn/the-ultimate-guide-to-font-pairing/
https://practicaltypography.com/page-layout.html
For what it worths, I really appreciated the power effects table. Sure, it seems "crunchy" at first, but in the end it's a really good way to create on the fly lot of cool mechanical effects in game. Aaaand, it's super easy to remember, because it's very uniform way (it's just counting "1, 2, 3..." for every aspect you want to gain).
Probably there was no other way to obtain all those effects in an easier way.
I suggest to change the 3d6 table at pag.17. If you know enough about probabilities, it's clear how, for every 27 surgeons in that world there's just a single Youth or Blacksmith... 😕
Probably the best way to fix that is turn the table into "roll a d6 for the 1st "band", then roll another d6 for the exact choice". Something like:
1-2 | 1 Blacksmith
1-2 | 2 Tailor
1-2 | 3 Scout
1-2 | 4 Farmer
1-2 | 5 ...
1-2 | 6
3-4 | 1
3-4 | 2
3-4 | 3
... etc.
I usually don't rely on very low chances to get a value (ok, good luck sometime helps, but a mercenary relying on luck is a dead mercenary).
Said so, as you can see the value you get a lot with the standard roll is 11 (pretty simple to get it), and you have very low chance to get a 4- or a 18+.
- If you have Bonus, you usually get at least a ~13, and it's pretty easy to get a 19 too, while it's very rare to get 7- (in short, it's somewhat similar to get a "+3" to a standard roll, even better).
- If you have Double Bonus, your average result is 15, and you'll score 19+ with about 14% chances (critical, baby!). Conversely, the chances for a result of 9- are very rare (and you can forget to suffer a fumble).
- If you have Penalty, the numbers are inverted, so your average result is ~9, it's easy to get a fumble of 3-, and it's very rare to hit a 15+.
- If you have Double Penalty, pray. Your average result is 7, you'll get a 3- fumble with 14% chances, and you can't hope to get the values of 13+.
Nice work. As I wrote in my "review" here on the rating, the rules are clean and cool, while maybe the second page is a little bit wasted, bringing only slightly more detail to the primary table in the previous page.
I'd surely prefer more mechanics (advancements, equip...), or more inspirations (maybe tables with NPCs, monsters etc.).
Anyway, great work Zadmar. I didn't know you had a page here on itch.io. A big hug from Italy (LordLance here, from the times on Savage Worlds community forum).
Hi Colin! I know this is a pretty little and condensed game. However, I'm curious about "Beyond Two Players" part. I read it on the summary, then I went to pag. 48. That page seemed a sort of introductory page, to me; I was hoping for a bigger, extended explanation in the following pages.
Indeed, then the book starts to describing the Advanced Classes (pag.50), but the it describes Solo Play (pag.52). I was baffled about the "missing" Beyond Two Players chapter/paragraph.
Is that part actually missing? Should we have a page with suggestions, balancing hints, additional rules etc.?
Thanks in advance for the attention.
Thank you for this title. It's a simple system, indeed they are simple questions driven by card draws; however they can be inspiring, and surely useful to those mainly accustomed just to "traditional" systems that put very low effort on suggesting to the players how to build a round, tridimensional character.
The clean layout is nice too.
In the end, maybe it's slightly overpriced, however it's a nice title.