Note: I'm responding to three different posts, so the quotes are from different people below.
Drew said:
I see the occassional post about people playing using The Riddle of Steel. I checked their website, and it looks kind of neat. Is this game worth picking up? Is it well done? How does it compare to D&D?
If this has already been discussed, please link me to the relevant thread. Thanks!
It is very well done for a specific kind of game. People always talk about the combat system, but that's not really the heart of the game - the spiritual attributes are. The Riddle of Steel is based around the idea of "what's worth fighting for?" The spiritual attributes are things your character believes in and serve kind of as both action dice (on crack), experience points to improve your character, and a guide to the ways in which the campaign could unfold. Basically, if you as a player don't act according to your spiritual attributes, you won't progress as a character and are quite likely to die. If you stick to things that are important to you, you potentially have tremendous power to shape the destiny of yourself and the world around you.
It's really very clever but requires a different style of play. For the game to work well, campaigns should be essentially player driven rather than the DM driven style most typical (but not exclusive) of a game like D&D.
Something that reinforces this is the magic system. If you try to play thinking of typical D&D
balance mindset, then a sorcerer can easily become quite dominant. If you think of play in terms of spiritual attributes, and achieving what is important to you, the magic system actually becomes a very nice plot facilitator akin to the impact magic has in a lot of literature and myth. It's a bit controversial and may or may not be what you want. Some people love it, some people hate it. It's very easy to modify though, so there's a good chance you can warp it into something you like better with a very minimum of work (a few paragraphs of ideas - a page at most - and the system works completely different and is just as complete as in the book).
I recommend you go to the TROS boards and see what people say there. It's the kind of game that tries to meet specific needs, so it's good to know what you're getting into and whether or not that's what you want.
DocMoriartty said:
Never played it but from what I have been told the combat is modeled to be accurate and quite lethal.
This to me suggests it would be a poor choice for a long campaign. In a campaign where combat is that lethal its hard to have long running characters.
It works great for a long campaign, as long as the characters stick to their spiritual attributes. If they throw their lives at things that don't matter much they will die. If they fight for things they truly believe in then they will do great things. It's also pretty easy as DM to judge challenge in fights, since it mostly boils down to combat pool. Keep enemies a few dice below protagonists and the heroes are unlikely to die.
D&D actually becomes fairly deadly at higher levels. The real difference is that you have K-Mart level access to ressurection at high levels in D&D whereas there is no such thing in Riddle of Steel. You could add it very easily though since the magic system essentially allows you to do almost anything you want.
Aaron2 said:
Riddle of Steel is great (kinda) for one-on-one duels. Its combat system, however, completely breaks down when dealing with multiple opponents or opponents that are not human shaped (the combat results rely on specific damage locations). There are no "monsters" in the rule book.
To say it completely breaks down with multiple opponents is a bit misleading in my opinion. Terrain rolls cover that pretty well although not perfectly. Combat with multiple opponents on each side is cinematic style. In a movie, the camera narrows in on an interchange here, then moves somewhere else. It doesn't work round-robin like in D&D. Non-human shaped opponents are covered in the monster book, Of Beasts and Men.
Aaron2 said:
The guess-the-opponent's-move system doesn't quite work as advertised. One player has to announce how many dice from his pool he is using to attack. The other player doesn't need to guess, he just calculates the odds and allocates the minimum number of dice to stop the attack. Also, some of the rules are silly.
Aaron2 said:
Forex, you get a bonus to attack the opponents hands and a penalty to attack his head. However, a good hit to the hand (cutting it off or otherwise disabling it) will pretty much make your opponent helpless and dead anyway. Stuff like that.
The system is modelled on how combat works instead of trying to make every combat option equally viable. Also, it's hard to specifically target the hand. You do a swing to the arm region and, maybe, you might hit the hand - maybe a 1 in 6 chance unless you have a special accuracy gift. From what I understand, wounds to the hands, arms, and legs, were dominant in medieval and rennaisance melee combat. You're right. Going for the arms can be a good strategy. If you want to counter it you can wear heavier armor on your arms and nice gauntlets to protect them.
On the other hand, I'd rather lose a hand and have at least a slight chance of running for it than have my head cut off right off the bat. So I'd say that getting your hand hit is still better than your head.
Aaron2 said:
The worst thing about the game is that there isn't a single page* that doesn't have a phrase similar to "Unlike every other FRP, Riddle of Steel ...".
Aaron
*ok, not every page but close enough.
I agree. It's pretty unprofessional and even outright tacky. The book comes from a one man startup, so it's not as slick as books from larger companies. That is indeed a shortcoming that manifests in some other minor ways as well.
Don't under- or over-extend yourself or your opponent will have you in a corner.
