The latest update announced a rather exciting upgrade to the Advanced rules if we get to $600k: build your own Heroes. This is a big expansion and one that I’m really excited about. It’s certainly something I’ve been itching to get included, and I’m very happy to see it on the near horizon, fast approaching.
Obviously this means you can pick from a wide variety of races, professions, stats, feats and so on. That’s not where it stops. It also means being able to choose what kind of Dwarf fighter you have – there’s more than one. The whole process can also be merged nicely into the progression tracks and options for the Heroes so that they advance logically along the path you set out of them at their “birth”.
Naturally, balancing this will be a challenge. However, the wider array of abilities and specialisms I can get into the rules the less it’s about being a direct comparison between one Hero and another, and more about how to assemble a group of Heroes whose unique abilities complement each other best. Adventuring parties won’t want several duplicates, they’ll want a group of highly skilled individuals.
And yes, all these rules apply to both evil Heroes and Monstrous Heroes too. No reason they should miss out on all the fun, and no reason to stick to “good” Heroes and “bad” Monsters 🙂
So what sort of options do you want to see when you generate your Heroes?
Quirkworthy 
Race: Unlocks basic stats, or possibly ability if the stats arent that good
Class: Modifies basic stats, unlocks feats, maybe two or three options per class?
And maybe some sort of non-feat ability for fighter types… just because they need some more options in combat to make it slightly more interesting for them. Mages and ranged types get to shoot (choose targets) or cast (choose spells), fighters just get to move and fight… itd be cool if there was something to decide for pure fighters. 🙂
Very excited too see this, was probably my favorite update of the campaign so far! For some specifics, I hope to see an array of potential differences between each class like you allude to…ie one fighter might be all slashy, another a staunch defender and yet another who likes to beat foes up with his bare hands. I have an urge to make a Dwarven Brawler or a Slamander Grappler of some kind.
Hoping there is enough options race wise that not only can you model anything in the Mantica world, but you could also do some fun counts as options (as a player that is) for a model you might really want to use from another system. I have a WereShark I really want to use for something!
Anyway, looking forward to what you come up with!
I would really like to see additional stats for the characters. I don’t know how it would be best to do this but some kind of generic ‘skill’ stat and an ‘awareness’ stat.
I think these would open up our design possibilities no end, sneaking around a dungeon, spotting those sneaking around (results effect deployment options). I love the idea of scenery effecting a combat directly, for example the necromancer could be physically weak but the soul pillars in his lair give him damage reduction / regeneration whilst they are active. Some of the characters will have to tie up the near indestructible villain until the others can take the soul pillars down.
I’d like to see equipment choices but not too many, I don’t need rules for 6 different polearms perhaps categories could be easier, single handed, single handed light, double handed etc. Same with armour.
I’d love to see the magic system expanded with more spells to buff, de buff, battlefield control, summoning, please summoning!
I’d really love to see personal goals bottomed out perhaps even deadzone like, have the main story line as a core mission along with the characters chief ‘motivation’ killing hoards of critters really should just be tertiary experience, I know it’s a dungeon crawler but please let’s take this chance to make a better quality game than the tired old meat grinder. For inspiration the star wars saga gave characters nebulous destinies like destruction, discovery, saviour etc. Encounters and story points sometimes had these tags added which triggered completion goals once characters achieved certain results (especially fun when multiple outcomes are available for different motivations ie redeem and destroy)
Lastly I am a little concerned about the random dungeon generator. Could you elaborate a little more on what this involves. Is it in any way structured? Tied to or incorporating a plot? it it a room by room affair or does a roll reveal a couple of themed rooms (guard post, barracks and armoury, encounter triggered in guard post, reinforcement encounter triggered from barracks, trap and loot in armoury)?
PleasPlease do elaborate. Man, i’m putting my WHQ on ebay for DS 😉 so fingers crossed and this generator will be so much better
Indeed, this started as a HeroQuest clone, but I hope the advanced rules brings us to Warhammer Quest levels of campaign play. Reasonably long term advancement options for the heroes and a wide enough variety of options for the dungeon/quest generator to keep things interesting.
I do hope the advanced rules are better than WHQ, as there are some issues once characters get to higher levels and some fairly broken items as well.
The intention, naturally, is to avoid such errors. However, the truth of it is that they are emergent synergies which need vast amounts of playtesting to spot, and so they are things to be ironed out in that process, which is some months away yet.
I think that this is one of the easier games to find eager playtesters for though 🙂
So there will be dungeon generator! Hell yeah! Can you tell if in co-op hero vs game mode players will generate dungeon on the go and tremble whenever open new door? 😉 And about heroes advanced rules i think if you can level up why not carry permanent wounds.
I think I’ll discuss a random dungeon generator in another post rather than in the comments where it’ll get lost.
Please do, I find this aspect very interesting and I’ve got some ideas for this…
It certainly appears as if you brief for this project has grown quite a bit as now you are essentially building a rpg into the box.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over these past few Kickstarters it is that you don’t make a “to do” list till they’re all over 🙂
Ballet fighter dwarf.
Better watch out. He will beat you down. You do not know pain until you have been kicked by his toe shoe.
Let me make sure I got this right, I could in theory play as a necromancer, a friend plays an Orc, and another plays maybe an Abyssal dwarf…and we could run a randomly generated dungeon full of say, elves and/or dwarves? Cue the maniacal laughter !
And they already have the well priced (except maybe Ancient Grudge) Dwarf King’s Hold minis available as add ons to provide those dwarves and elves. Just need some human guardsman and town folks now.
Sounds fair to me.
Hallelujah Jake, I’m so glad you get to work on all of this. No pressure, I’m sure you’ll pull it off. 🙂
Regards your comment on duplication of skills.. it just made me think “what happens when a hero dies?” If there’s no duplication that could be an even bigger problem for the party no? Or am I getting ahead of myself?
My first self-gen is going to be a naked bard called Ron
Good luck with the bard.
If a Hero “dies” then they collectively lose the scenario. That element will stay as it is a great way to encourage co-operation between them. So duplication is unnecessary unless you feel a need to do the same thing in two places at once.
Good point.
So is there an explicit side that is the “Hero” side that is subject to this constraint i.e 2 players (1 v 1) 1 side is the Orcs, 1 side is the human/dwarf/cleric party.
In this situation does the party represent the hero side and the Orc player represent the “dungeon”?
I would expect this to show up in the victory conditions for the specific scenarios. You could imagine for one off scenarios suicide missions where death of individual heroes did not end the mission but the campaigns probably want heroes to survive. Plus adding conditions where the villians side does not win by killing one hero but instead has its own specific goal in the dungeon can be fun.
Yup. Scenario defined.
Now for creating heros, a lot of that is going to depend on how that statistics are set up. The alpha has pretty limited numbers, with move, dice, and armor. Everyone also has a health but they were just set the same. Given that there are already 10 heros plus the kickstarter exclusive ones those limited basic stats might not cover enough ground.
I like the combat mechanic as I looked at the numerics of it here:
http://twilight40k.blogspot.com/2014/08/dungeon-saga-dice-mechanics-probability.html
To expand on it I would probably let Heroes and Villians start with different attack dice and defense dice values (The Ranger and Wizard sort of already have this feature). With a distinct Health stat that gets you up to 5 stats to work with which is going to be better than 3.
Then I would look at all the ways to manupulate the dice test results: rerolling, modifing dice values (like add +1 to any die, trading defense dice for attack dice, automatic attack successes or fixed reduction in attack successes. The X-Wing dice attack tests are actually quite similar and they have a whole range of things used to modify them.
Then looking at the tables for various ways then can be changed or set up especially interfacing with any special attack rules. For example a goblin and a zombie could actually be the same table if you have a remove 2 attack successes rule for Zombie on defense. Only the skeletons would really need a different table as they have 3 possible results from attacks. You could also have an overkill type attack which works on heroes and villians that turns X number of success after the first into an extra point of damage.
Those are just combat related stuff everyone also needs a non combat ability to start. These can probably be broken down into movement based, interacting with objects/terrain, and interacting with characters/monsters.
For movement a couple of example which also interact with terrain would be a leaping ability that lets you jump over 1 square chasms for tiles which might be 4 wide and have a bridge that is 1 wide such that some things can go around a different path, similarly flying gets you past a lot of stuff, walking on water (ponds with stepping stones for normal characters), incorporeal so you can just go through people, moving without getting attacks of opertunity, and a bull charge that lets you push opponents back.
Interactions with objects is going to depend a lot on what is there. Doors and chest obviously plus probably traps. Every type of fixed object/barrier should probably have a couple ways of dealing with it.
Interactions with other characters and players has a great wealth of stuff from stat and combat buffs/nerfs, movement affects (already on spell for this but I was thinking stuff like wards and temporary walls), also abilities that prevent opponents from targeting you like stealth and invisibility.
So many options really.
Oh, loads 🙂
Problem will probably deciding what all you can fit into the game without making it to special rule heavy.but if you keep like 1 test type and only a few stats than special rules is about all you have to work with. I could see lots of sources for inspiration just from the games I own: X-wing has similar dice mechanic, Blood Bowl is essentially a square based combat system with free attacks, D&D 4e and the Coop games have similar At Will and Daily Type abilities, the D&D Chainmail game has tons of special rules to cover its models in a fantasy skirmish setting,
As you can see from your examples, stat-light and special rule focussed is a style that many people are familiar with already. It has the advantage of only needing the rules that apply to those models in that situation, whereas a stat-heavy approach carries the rules about all the time whether they’re needed or not.
The other thing that special rules is good for (and which reduces the number of them) is that they work well in families. Within each faction there are often only a few different (and much repeated) special rules. These give the overall flavour of that group.
Lots of the special rules can be fine if you have a good structure for them built in from the beginning with classes and keywords or just careful inclusive structure.
Blood bowl essentially has like 75 skills that can interact but the rules have been tuned enough that you are actually hard pressed to find a situation that is not clear either from the rules or the 1 page FAQ and most of those situation are from the confusion between Block action, block skill, and the presses of actually making the Block with the dice which could be cleared up with just 2 new names for things.
I compare that to like 40K which has does have more special rules but they were essentially layered on each other edition after edition with very little structure and you end up with 20000 topics on the warseer rules questions forum.
Luckily you are starting from the beginning and getting to create rules for 1 game, 2 expansions, plus advanced rules in one group.
Of course, both of those games have had many editions to get things right. BB has managed it and 40K hasn’t., which is a whole interesting topic in its own right.
For our immediate purposes I’d be looking to build a logical structure for the special rules. It’s all linked with character progression and creation too, so I expect there to be considerable tinkering before it settles.
You probably know more about the reasons for that than I would.
Perhaps.
This game is going thru the sky with the upgraded adv companion. As stated in KS update,there will be a bestiary section so that gamers can use minis from booster packs in DIY scenarios. Will it includes those many monsters from KOW universe such as vampires, twilight kin, etc. ?
Definitely the ones from the races already mentioned (Undead, etc) plus some more. Not sure what the whole list will be yet. Need rules for those dungeon critters from the KS too 🙂
How about rules for this 😉
http://twilight40k.blogspot.com/2013/09/reaper-bones-kaladrax.html
It would fit in a dungeon sure.
Seriously though, I know Mantic is a mini manufacturer but the Reaper Bones lines might not be bad places to look for monsters to have rules for as you already have like 15K+ people in 2 seperate kickstarters who have (or will have) those models but they did not come with a game.
Now you just need to get plastic scenario markers into the basic box, Doors, coffin, chest, floating orb, altar, etc. Some of those are already in the dungeon dressing set but would really help the base box stand out at retail as it does not seem like any new monsters/villians/heroes appear to be going in that box.
That’s an odd looking dragon. It’s not skeletal nor is it properly zombie. Weird.
I can’t see Mantic wanting rules in DS for other folk’s miniature ranges. That would be a bit mad when they’ve got hundreds of their own models to find space for first (and I’m sure they won’t all fit in). If we need a new dragon then I’m sure they can make one.
I don’t think they’ve made a final decision on what the spec for the retail version of the Core box will be. I suspect that’ll happen after the KS ends and the dust settles.
I think that the internals are calcified flesh but that they are really there since the plastic is sort of soft and would probably bend too much without a little extra structure.
I looked through Mantic’s line currently and while they have several races in the KOW their fantasy monster range is not very deep. I am sure that in the next few days we will see some stuff as add on but most of the lower volume add ons are going to be resin which they are pricing at about 8 dollars for a human scale figure (which is not unreasonable) but might start to scale poorly for large or huge models. That skeleton dragon only cost 10 dollars in that kickstarter and lots of other large monsters came in about about the cost of a resin hero or less.
True enough. I don’t know what Mantic have up their sleeves on this one, and I expect it depends largely on how many people want to jump on board. Still, it’ll be fun to watch 🙂
They do have a metal dragon with rider. Not sure how the rider is attached to see what it take to make it a solo dragon but not a lot of other stuff currently. Obviously space will go first to existing mantic models but a couple of monsters in some different classes which could be future models would probably be helpful as basis for homebrew.
Well they have thrown in an not yet determined large zombie dragon/demoniod but I doubt it is on the scale of that one probably more along the lines in size or slightly bigger than the dracolich in castle ravenloft (far left)
I did not know I could post pictures in the comments by giving their link location that its pretty handy.
I am not fully familiar with Kings of War but does it include rules for Zombie Dragon type monsters? Wyvern’s for Orcs etc as if so rules for some varieties of these huge beasties have already been kickstarted its just a case of seeing what else gets in as the project goes though its likely hectic conclusion. (I still believe my early guess of 1-1.5 million is going to be correct, as I think it will beat Deadzone but not by a huge amount).
Will you be limiting the critters to spiders and rats or will you have a slightly larger range of such creatures. I realise it has not been funded as such but I don’t imagine expanding out to cover 10 or so basic dungeon monsters will be a huge amount of extra work.
I’d like to include a small range of generic beasties. That said, there aren’t a lot which are really generic. Most actually form part of a specific game IP (or are just giant XYZ).
Minotaurs, Cyclops, Centaurs, Gorgons, Chimera, Harpies, Manticore, Satyrs, Griffin, Cockatrice, Ogre, Barghest, Hydra, Crone, Giant, Basilik, gargoyle, Golem, etc.
Definitely want to see the higher “level” of Adventurer get access to more than the one single-use Feat. I suspect that as Mortibris advances he might get more of the options that were under the Baleful Eye rules back in Dwarf King’s Hold Dead Rising, like the Kill them All! option and so on. Maybe they get access to all of the feats they “unlock” but can only use so many of them at a given level. Like Legendary Barbarian might have unlocked three more Feats but may only use two different ones during a game, something like that.
Feats were never intended to be limited to one per Hero. Just one use per feat. An individual could have more than one.
Still interested to see how you will handle damage to living creature enemies without slapping Injury markers on them. Other than 1st Hit being No Effect or Dodge in the case of things like Elves that is.
Really big enemies will colt as Monstrous Heroes, which are the same as Heroes – just on the other side. So they do have wounds.
In regards to options during the creation of your hero, which is what you’ve asked for.
Certainly, I’d like to see a player being able to choose from a selection of races, with each race having some slight advantage and/or disadvantage when compared to others to help add flavour and character. Each of these races being able to choose whatever “Profession” they like, as long as it remains within the bounds of the Mantica fluff (I don’t think Mantica has Dwarf Wizards for example). I’d like to see each of these have set race specific basic stats (for instance, Dwarves move a little slower than Elves however have a little more wounds than Elves). Also, these stats could be slightly amended due to the chosen profession. For example, a human who had spent his youth studying academia and moving into a magic college to then study magic, would be less likely to be as robust or agile as a human who spent their youth doing hard farm work and training in a regional militia.
I’d prefer to see this game take the route of an RPG lite, rather than a explicitly detailed RPG, however I do think that even in an RPG lite, there would be scope for some very basic skills. For instance, skills to climb ropes, or jump chasms etc…things to help the heroes succeed in a dangerous and hazardous dungeon environment. These skills might also have beneficial effects when resolving overland travel events when moving between dungeon locations and towns (similar to WHQ Hazardous Events Tables). With this in mind, I would probably like to see some small list of skills that heroes could start with (and increase or gain new during advancement) that may be advantageous to them during their adventures. These would be different to feats and the like…it would be some permanent stat or skill that could be used for opposed rolls when attempting certain tasks (like descending a rope into a darkened shaft leading to a lower room, crypt or level) or dealing with and calming angry villagers (if confronted by an angry mob during overland travel).
I’m not a huge fan of randomly generating abilities, stats or feats, it detracts from the enjoyment of creation and can lessen the enjoyment of the players experience if they get stuck with a feat or skill that they really dislike…something that is not in their vision for their hero (for example, I’m sure Ronnie would be displeased with a Dwarven Fighter who was skilled at Bardic Performance an Poetry Recital). Not such a big deal for one-off games, but certainly a big deal when playing a lengthy campaign or series of linked adventures and when you are investing a large amount of time in that and the development of your hero. So I’d prefer to see a list of starting feats/abilities etc that players can choose from…aimed at enhancing the character of their hero and their profession. The trick here of course, is making that list a wholly attractive list of options, not a list of 2 or 3 awesome feats and 10 not so good ones that will never get chosen…not an easy task!!!
Also, diversity within professions. Its hard to really give you solid feedback without knowing exactly what we are dealing with. However, what I mean is, if a player wants to be a fighter, but has a vision for his fighter to be more of an aggressor, then it would be cool to be able to choose abilities/skills/feats/stats that reflect that, and likewise, if a player wants to delve into a particular form of magic, he could have access to certain spells that other magic using heroes may not…for example, a fire wizard as opposed to a wizard who can heal the body and mind of damage or psychological effects.
…and just to make things really difficult, all this needs to be easily understood and implemented, and well presented on a hero card 🙂
That’s just hero creation though, something as equally (perhaps more) important is hero development/advancement. I think its deeply ingrained in the human psych to always want to advance yourself in some way or another. For thousands of years humans have desperately tried to advance themselves in so many ways, education, technology, war and conquest, its an instinctive urge we have. Probably the most major hook of an RPG game is for a player to watch his hero develop, advance and slowly grow through the collection and/or increase in stats, abilities, skills, power, effectiveness, usefulness etc. It is a highly addictive element in RPG-like games, classic pen and paper RPG’s, PC RPG’s, Board Game lite RPG’s…character development is a very strong theme in all these.
Will you be doing a blog entry on Hero advancement Jake, so we can share in your thoughts and perhaps make comments in regards to this element of the game as well?
Thanks Danny, some good points there. Charafter building and advancement is likely to be all choice, not random. That’s my current thinking.
Now you mention it, I must remember to add bardic poetry to every Dwarf as a starting skill. It’s kind of essential ;P
I agree that character development is important and will indeed be writing something on that as part of the article I’ve got on Downtime between adventures (as the two are very much linked).
Excellent…looking forward to further reading…I’m like a kid in a lolly shop 🙂
Oh dear, so exciting…we are less than $400 off the $600K stretch goal 🙂
Will more be added to the Adventuring Companion with further stretch goals, Jake? I did a very quick off-the-top-of-my-head list over in the latest update comments section on KS. It’s certainly not exhaustive, just a quick spray of thoughts…are we likely to see some or all of this stuff?
@Mantic – Some suggested additions to the Advanced Rules;
1) Out of Dungeon Administration – so in town heroes can sell items and buy items and services. Visit Inns and Markets etc.
2) Overland travel – A quick system (roll on a table) to determine any hazardous events that happen to the adventurers as they travel from the completed dungeon back to the closest village, town or city…or events that may befall them whilst travelling from one completed dungeon to the next in the Mantica wilderness.
3) Hiring of Henchmen/War Dogs/Battle Cats to assist the adventuring party on particularly hazardous adventures.
4) Really enjoyable rules for dealing with the opening of doors. Perhaps a Door Card Deck which is drawn each time a hero opens a doors to determine if the door is a normally opened door, a jammed/stuck door or a door that is trapped by either mechanical and magical means…and then resolve whatever actions needed.
5) Same as above but for traps.
6) A way for heroes to resolve other dungeon hazards. Things like jumping across crevices and climbing ropes as a couple of quick examples.
7) We already have coming up rules for creating heroes. Could we also have guidelines for creating monsters, traps and hazards.
8) Blank sheets/cards for the creation of heroes, villains, monster, traps, equipment and treasure item cards. Something that can be scanned/photocopied for personal use. Or perhaps even separate pads/blank card decks for these things.
Off the top of my head…
1) Part of character advancement.
2) Possibly. Hard to do so that it’s not just random “take that”, which I don’t much like. Better to keep the major challenges to the dungeon. You shouldn’t want the Heroes to get crippled on the way there, which means that you stick to relatively inconsequential things. So why bother?
3) Definitely on my list of things to look at.
4/5) Doors (and other furniture/traps) will have variable types. This will be decided by the Necro when he builds a dungeon, defined by scenario or determined at random in random dungeons.
6) Any hazards that are present will need a way to overcome them.
7) There will be rules for creating Monstrous Heroes. More likely to list low level monsters than include rules for making them up. There are already loads of low level beasties to pick from. Traps and hazards are more likely, though this raises the issue of how you sort the card/counters that go with them.
8) Already in IIRC.
Thanks for those answers, Jake.
In regards to item 2. Yes, you’re right, these sorts of things are rather like a “Take that” (although the “Take that” can also take the form of “Take that reward” or “Take that treasure you found”) and I can see why you and others might find that anything from frustrating to boring, and/or anything in between. However for each person who finds this not-so-much fun and an unnecessary mechanic, there will be a person who enjoys it. The easy way to get around this of course is to quite simply make the mechanic an optional one. It has no bearing on other mechanics in the game so could be used or not used with equal success…bolt on, bolt off.
In way of explanation, what I find enjoyable and worthwhile about an overland travel mechanic, is that it adds to the narrative as well as providing some excitement whilst returning to a town after having braved (successfully or not) the dangers of a dungeon or lair. There would be no requirement to endure the hazard en route TO the dungeon location, we can assume the hero party was lucky enough to make an uneventful journey there (or you could optionally add overland hazards en route if you wished). If heroes are injured during an overland travel event (for instance, the wizard drinks from a creek and suffers an ongoing bout of dysentery after having ingested microscopic parasites), it also provides a further use for that cleric in town who’s God requires ridiculously sized donations before his healing powers are invoked. If heroes can’t afford healing in town at the time, I really don’t see a problem with having a hero suffer a **small** penalty in their following adventure (for instance, the Elf is at -1 movement due to an injured knee – effect lasts for the following adventure only). I guess it introduces a small amount of record keeping, which is a negative.
Being a mechanic more of narrative than anything else, its really not worthwhile for one-off games, its more appropriate for on-going campaigns or a linked series of scenarios.
These things are easy, quick to use and resolve yet add no small amount of fun and flavour (for some people). The main problem with them though, is that you need a rather large list of random events otherwise they become repetitive after a few dozen games (how many times will a wizard drink from a creek without first boiling the water after suffering a near death event from his last creek episode). WHQ has 36 events in its Hazard Table – nowhere near enough for long term gaming – too repetitive. 100 events would be better, using a percentile dice to ascertain an event (good, bad and neutral events).
This then presents another problem…its an **enormous** amount of work and a very tedious task for one person (yourself) to sit down and create a table with enough events on it to prevent the table from becoming too repetitive. Is that workload worth the pay off so that **some** people will get fun from its use…especially when you have so much other more important rules to design and test? No, probably not…
However I do have a fun suggestion if you’d like to hear it?
“Sure Danny, hit me with it”
Ok Jake, sometime after the Kickstarter finishes. Mantic could create a contest and everyone would be notified of this contest during one of the updates that Mantic will send out by way of Kickstarter…so what, maybe 5000 backers will have access to the contest by the end of the Kickstarter. To encourage, there may be a small prize to the top three entries (maybe a small KoW Orc boxed set or the like).
The contest is for backers to submit entries for an overland events table for an **optional** game mechanic to be included in the Journal section of the Adventurers Companion. Essentially a fan made table presided over by you.
There would be strict guidelines for the content and formatting of the submissions (title for the event, one or two sentence flavour text, an event to be resolved, must be in keeping with Mantica setting, must be generic enough to cater to any hero). Backers can submit multiple entries. Out of the maybe 5000 backers a couple of hundred will submit entries, many of them will submit multiple entries…some people thrive on this stuff! I know I’d sit down and put a lot of effort into creating and submitting several entries.
It could even be arranged that the submissions were made online, on Mantic website, through a simple template designed by the IT people Mantic use, thus forcing formatting and easily collating submissions.
Submission are then giving to a freelance editor to vet. Removing duplicates and any crazy stuff. Reformatting and rewording flavour text. This is then a short list presented to you for final decisions on what to include and what not to include.
I think you may end up with a very large set of high quality events, maybe enough for a table of 100 or more.
Workload for Jake – minimal
Cost to Mantic – minimal
Pay off for **some** backers – medium to high, depending
Backer community feeling included – yes
Just a suggestion 🙂
An interesting idea. I think you greatly underestimate how much time this will take, whether the community makes suggestions or not.
Personally, I’d rather try for something a bit more ambitious than simply rolling on a table. Not sure exactly what that would be yet, but I’m thinking. We shall see where we get to. AS you say, it’s nice to have that narrative to bracket a dungeon romp during a campaign, and it can link in with the downtime between adventures. I’ll see what I can think of.
So long as I can build a Half Orc Cheiftan called Tey’Lore for my 6 (will be nearly 8 when game is out) year old son to play as, I will be very happy.
I don’t know if it’s doable, but a beastmaster-like class would be cool. Instead of having magic or being a powerhouse in combat, the character controls a number of critters that do the work for them. Opens the door to all sorts of funky stuff.
It’s an interesting idea. Sort of ties in with the notion of henchmen…
Hey Jake! Big fan of your work. I’ve got Deadzone and Mars Attacks will be on the way soon!
I’m sure this must have been asked and answered already, but i can’t find it anywhere…
Will the campaign be linear, with one scenario leading to the next in the same way every time, or will it provide different paths based on the results of the previous scenarios, similar to Descent 2nd ed.
While i see the value it being able to create your own scenarios and campaigns, i’m personally not very interested in that, so i would like to know how much variety i can ecpect from the base campaign.
Take care!
The Core version of the campaign will be linear. I’m not sure how many scenarios there will be in it (are we up to 8 so far?), but I would expect it to take several gaming sessions to get through it all. Of course, if you have different numbers of players, want to use the AI so you can all be Heroes, fancy swapping who’s playing the Necromancer, etc then you’ve got a lot more replay value in there before you even touch the Advanced rules. Each of thee variations makes the experience of playing DS different without having to fiddle with the way each scenario is set up.
The Core set is designed around the principle of everything being predetermined for you so that it is easy to pick up and play. This means that the Heroes have got specific improvements, experience and items for each scenario, as well as it defining the tile layout and where all the monsters start. This approach doesn’t really work neatly with a branching tree campaign. At least, in order to make it work and balance it you’d have to separately balance every possible permutation of scenario route, which would be a complex and very time consuming job. Given all the existing variability and replay value I’m not convinced it’s worth it.
The Advanced rules offer a more free-form approach, and this is really the difference between the two main forms of play.
If you’re only going to play the Core game, then you’ll be pleased to know that all the quest packs are Core level campaigns.
Sorry…forgot to check the “notify me” options…
This is such excellent news! I’m so happy that you get to do this… that we are able to go so far. 🙂
I guess you have to start counting on your toes, after all! 😉
And then probably borrow someone else’s toes too.
HMmmm, interesting. I see the hero cards on the KS home page have now picked up a fourth stat, Ranged. So we now have Move, Combat, Ranged and Armour…I wonder if this is just a generic graphic that has been added or if it is indeed a true reflection of what we now have…
The Monster cards seem to have retained the three stats, though…
First I’ve heard of it.
Ok, well, in the graphic on the home page that shows the Dungeon Master Pledge, the base four heroes are shown with 4 stats and in the Advanced Rules area of that same graphic, the Character Mat Pad also shows four stats, being Move, Combat, Ranged and Armour.
Fair enough. A minority of Heroes need to track a ranged skill and it has to go somewhere. My preference would be for it to be listed as a skill (to keep the majority of stat sheets simpler), but we’re hardly in final layout yet 🙂
Yeah, I thought the way you had ranged presented in the Alpha Heroes you provided was perfectly fine.
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I was wondering whether we get printable (or a few with the game) character layout sheets for our custom heroes. Then instead of tons of tokens, we could just do all the bookkeeping with pen and paper. At the beginning there are probably a x number of stat points to be divided between move, combat and armor.
IIRC there is a Hero roster sheet/pad in the Advanced rules for doing exactly this.