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Hi there! I've been reading through the Quickstart and really enjoying the theme and vibe. My questions are about Movement and Combat:
The different movement speeds and types imply the use of a battle map or grid to run combat. However, this is not stated specifically, nor are alternatives for non-distance-based/grid-based combat suggested. My main concern is with setting up interesting combat arenas on-the-fly with a system where distance and movement speeds matter (rather than pre-planning combats in carefully arranged arenas).
Do you have any recommendations on how to make the use of combat speeds and types in Beetle Knight easy to run and fun to play? Is a battle map or grid the only way to go, or are there alternatives that will work? And will the full game expand on these types of questions with GM Best Practices? Thank you!
These are great questions! Thank you!
I have generally run combat on a grid, but not always. I use words like adjacent, near, far, and very far when I’m not on a grid. I will be sure to include that in the Arbiters principles that we’re working on (I added it to my notes). For speed what I do if, say, someone is slightly slower, I’ll say “you don’t quite reach your destination because your speed is lower”.
All this being said, I feel like the combat can be improvised on the grid without any issues. There’s no need to worry too much about a perfectly balanced encounter.
Hope this helps!
I think having consumables that would permanently change the knights would be nice. It'll be neat to see how the consumables play into the theme of Beetle Knight and how they could be acquired or found. Also I was wondering would the items from the equipment page have descriptions of how and what they can be used for or is that more up to the arbiter's discretion based on how the player is trying to use the item.
For the consumables that permanently change a knight I was thinking some of them could be special items, for example you defeat a junk bug type enemy that is carrying some loot and you may find some old tome with forgotten history or magic that promotes your intellect or gives you +1 emblem and +1 emblem slot. Or you venture into some secluded area and find an NPC that recognizes your strength and gifts you an elixir that promotes your might in return for fulfilling a request to prove your strength by freeing them of some accursed spider that has been preventing them from leaving. Just some ideas for the permanent change items. for some of the other special items maybe some of the descriptions have hidden benefits like a silken may help you hide better from spiders when you are in their lair and surrounded by their webs of silk, or an antenna mask may have actual antennae sticking out of it and hide your appearance better giving you a temporary promotion to presence when talking to other creatures. stuff like that was what I was thinking.
Subject to change but take a look https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GLH0oDVutWUzus_RH6UgC0c8-9ZzRm_GIZUE85s02Rs/edit
It will have replayability! Yes! That is the intention.
Regarding solo tools, these may be of interest to you
Dear most honorable and blessed Jim Hall, I ran a session of Beetle Knight with my friend a short while back, and we have a question about the weapon mechanics. As it stands currently, I scratch my head.
The rulebook reads,
"USING WEAPONS - You can use any weapon. Add your relevant Ability Modifier to attack rolls. When attacking you can only roll up to your relevant Ability. E.g. I attack with my Talon (d12) but only roll a d6, because my Might is d6."
So then, does mean that I always attack using my ability die? Even if I have a massively epic weapon like the d12 Talon, I only use my d6 in Might? If that is indeed the case, why would I bother with using any weapon that's greater than my ability die? We pondered and pondered this for a long time, and no matter how we looked at it, it did not make sense to us. Is this the intended design of the game? Are we missing something?
Dearest Xagu,
You are interpreting the rule correctly. The idea is that a Knight with a low Might cannot properly wield a giant talon. Meanwhile, Knights with high Might have a wider selection to choose from. The exception would be special items which you are able to wield due to the exceptional quality of the weapon.
If your Might is low, you will have a higher Agility, Presence, or Intellect. Therein lies your Knight’s strength!
I highly encourage you to hack the rules to make them most fun for your table.
Sincerely,
Jim Hall
Hey folks, really excited to get started and play with some friends! I backed the Kickstarter but I appreciate having the digital downloads to send to my players for reference!
Question, as someone whos extremely familiar with DnD and this would be my first time leading a non DnD campaign, do you have any tips or things that could help the transition easier? (I'm working through the material and fully understanding mechanics at the moment!)
I’d say, wrap your head around the core mechanics, Contests and Emblems and Resolve, and other wise trust your existing rpg instincts within the new game’s vibes. That’s what I do when starting with a new system.
Give the player and arbiter principles a read through right before starting your first session. Perhaps point it out to your players.
I find new BK players neglect the benefits of team work. It’s super powerful using assists
I have a question about this part "A tie follows the Tie rules. E.g. The attacker rolls a d6 and gets 5. The defender rolls a d8 and gets 3, so the defender takes 5-3 = 2 damage." Does that mean you just roll the dice again? Or what would this rule be for ties, because there aren't any ties in the example?
If you see my writing weird, it's because I'm not that good with English, and I used a translator to ask this question.
I have a question regarding weapons. You can only use weapons whose value is equal to or less than the skill you're using, and if you use a weapon with a higher value, you only do the damage you cast with the skill. So, why put such a high damage die on some weapons if you can only cast the damage with your skill die? I have that question.
For one, Special Items and species traits aren’t limited by this.
But for other weapons, the limit is meant to balance might and agility against the other stats. As you play you might increase your might or agility through special item upgrades, or through promotion, in that case you can roll higher dice as you progress. Hope this helps!
It’s available now!!!
Crawl on over here for the zines https://brookletgames.bigcartel.com/
Or look on my itch for the PDFs!
I have a couple of question regarding travelling on the Hex Map. Both my wife and I have dove headlong into Beetle Knight, and decided to have sort of our "maiden voyage" of trying to properly play it at a Game Convention last weekend but ended up getting stuck on some of the rules for hex travel and wanted to come in here to get some clarification. So, if any clarification can come for the questions below, we would both be very grateful. We want to start having some bug-sized adventures! :)
- On the layered Hex Map, the example adventure has you starting on the Forest Floor in space #8 and has Cottonnest located there. Rules for travelling to other hexes have you drawing cards from the red suites of your deck of cards to populate the various hexes, with a chance of drawing either both hearts or diamonds so that there's variety in what you can encounter. My question with this, then, is when you travel locally (leaving from Cottonnest through of one its exits to a grid directly adjacent to it for example) what do you do to populate the hex? We couldn't think of what to do except for drawing from the deck until we hit the appropriate card (in this case a King) and then populate it from there and shuffle the rest back in. This doesn't seem like what we're supposed to be doing, though, and I wanted to inquire as to if there's a correct way to populate hexes that you travel to locally as drawing from the deck is random.
- When you travel up or down a layer (such as going from the forest floor to the underground) I assume that you pop out on the same hex that you were in on the other layer, just in whatever zone you've entered now (such as going from the King hex on the Forest Floor to the King hex in the Underground) but I wasn't able to determine that for certain. If you don't pop out in the equivalent place on the other levels, I'm assuming you just draw a card to see where you go? If, as it seems, you pop out in the equivalent location from one layer to the other when travelling up or down, do you populate it with the same card you drew for the other layer (such as, we drew a King of Diamonds for the King hex on the Forest Floor, so we would then populate the King hex in Underground with that biome's entry for that same card) or is there a protocol for populating the other zone's equivalent decks?
- For generating rumors, it specifies that you are supposed to draw from the deck that you last drew from to generate the entries for the various instigators you'll be encountering. Almost exclusively, though, this ended up being the red cards (as we were travelling around the map and that meant drawing lots of red cards for the locations). That ended up with it taking a *lot* of the cards that otherwise would have generated locations and putting them into a discard pile, as well as seeming to only draw elements for the instigator from two out of the four pools of things they can use. When you draw for the instigator/rumor what do you do if that's using up cards that would be used to spawn information for hexes? When you're travelling a lot is it pretty much just guaranteed that you'll be using the red suites to generate your rumor information then, or was I doing something incorrectly?
Thank you very much for any information or insight you can give us on this. I'm super stoked to be not only dipping my toes into an awesome looking TTRPG setting, but getting to adventure in a world of bugs as I'm very much a bug lover. Having a place like this where I can directly ask questions is a massive godsend, so I thank you both for making such an exciting world to dive into and for any and all help you can give us with getting our travelling procedures squared-away.
Many thanks!
August & Mallory