Blood and Doom: A WoD version of Conan.

[Davies]

Core rulebook badly needs another editing pass, but it looks quite interesting.

 

[GreyLord]

I always wanted to play Rolemaster, but there's so many different versions and I was never sure which one to commit to.

And what happened with the latest edition? Did they lose the rights to all their old artwork or something?

Merps or Merps 2e. My suggestion, if you can get your hands on it.

 

[Jahydin]

Merps or Merps 2e. My suggestion, if you can get your hands on it.

I actually picked up 1e on Ebay not too long ago. Then saw Against the Darkmaster and thinking maybe grab that?

 

[Fenris-77]

So my guess as to the likelihood that this game contained a mechanic called Doom Points was proved correct.

 

[aramis erak]

Taking a quick skim of mechanics, it's halfway between Storyteller System (aka WoD) and Modiphius 2d20... Caught my interest there...
but with a class, subclass, and level advancement mechanic. Whelp... that just dropped it on the priority list for reading to somewhere in the mid 20's...
And then the various funky names for the cultures that don't strongly clue in the historical inspirations (always leaves me meh...)... into the "probably going to never read it" zone.

What!? How did that go?

The underlying mechanics for SF:TSG are identical to the World of Darkness: Combat, tho' with different powers. (When I asked on the WWG forums, yes, Street Fighters are awakened avatars, and any power fueled by Chi or WP spends does aggravated to supernaturals...) The big difference is that, instead of wound levels, Streetfighters just have HP pools.

It captures much of the tone of the videogames, but it's really more a tie-in to the movies. The mode was "go place A, encounter problem, see how it impacts the night's card, see if there's a post-bout bit of story, repeat." All the classic videogame characters are in it. Sadly, the only way to find it now is either hard to find dead tree, or pirate PDFs.

It was fun, highly tactical and relatively easy to teach to fans of WoD late 1E. (fixed TN era.)

I used to have that as a kid, but never got to actually play it.

Also, any idea if Fight comes close to being the same?

Fight? No clue.

 

[Jahydin]

Thanks for the spiffy writeup @aramis erak!

I did some digging and Fight! is pretty similar it seems, so will probably pick up the new edition.

 

[Ferruccio]

I downloaded it. Feels like a dated design, from the days when it was all about system complexity for dedicated gamers. Here's the summary of the dice mechanic:



(I never actually played a single WoD game, so if this is the core mechanic I don't recognize it.)

20+ years ago I was into fiddly systems like that. (Long live Rolemaster!) I've just come to the conclusion that complexity and detail are not necessary for, and may even impede, the kind of RPGing I like.

But I assume there are people who still enjoy that, and this game is targeted at them.

Just to get any misinterpretations about the complexity out of the way, it’s really a fairly basic and fun d10 dice pool at its core. Playtesters and reviewers have put it somewhere in between narrative-driven games like Powered by the Apocalypse and more crunchy games like D&D 5e in terms of complexity.

The roll mechanic:

• Ability + Skill = how many d10 to roll
• 8 or 9 = 1 success / 10 = 2 successes
• Difficulty ranges from 1 to 5 and is simply the number of successes you need to roll.

- Then, any successes you roll above (lets say you roll 4 when the difficulty is 2) becomes Momentum. For most rolls, that just lets you know how well you succeeded ‘narratively’, while in combat it can be used to trigger weapon attributes and aid your allies (you use it immediately and cannot save it up).

- If you fail a roll, however (and only then), you check your Setback Die (a d10 of a different color). If its result is 1, 2 or 3 you suffer a Setback.

One of the fun things about such a mechanic imo is that you get to physically grab a bunch of d10 (the better you are at something, the more you roll) and then just count how many successes you get. You roll an average of 4 to 8 d10 btw, and never more than 12.

Being able to have degrees of success and ‘doing something’ with the extra successes you roll make it dynamic and modular in a way that’s very hard to achieve with a d20 + modifier system, for example, and that also requires you to do more math.

And Setbacks have proven to be a ton of fun!

 

[Ferruccio]

Taking a quick skim of mechanics, it's halfway between Storyteller System (aka WoD) and Modiphius 2d20... Caught my interest there...
but with a class, subclass, and level advancement mechanic. Whelp... that just dropped it on the priority list for reading to somewhere in the mid 20's...
And then the various funky names for the cultures that don't strongly clue in the historical inspirations (always leaves me meh...)... into the "probably going to never read it" zone.



The underlying mechanics for SF:TSG are identical to the World of Darkness: Combat, tho' with different powers. (When I asked on the WWG forums, yes, Street Fighters are awakened avatars, and any power fueled by Chi or WP spends does aggravated to supernaturals...) The big difference is that, instead of wound levels, Streetfighters just have HP pools.

It captures much of the tone of the videogames, but it's really more a tie-in to the movies. The mode was "go place A, encounter problem, see how it impacts the night's card, see if there's a post-bout bit of story, repeat." All the classic videogame characters are in it. Sadly, the only way to find it now is either hard to find dead tree, or pirate PDFs.

It was fun, highly tactical and relatively easy to teach to fans of WoD late 1E. (fixed TN era.)


Fight? No clue.

To clarify, it’s not a typical class and level advancement system. You can earn experience points in many different ways (exploring a city, finding legendary treasure, solving a quest, etc).

When you gain a level, your max ‘hit points’ don’t increase and you are free to choose several of your skills and increase its rank. (Skills are also freely chosen from a large list during character creation)

You also have traits, powers and magic that you can gain and are completely free to choose which, so they aren’t gained in any set ‘order’. Plus, you can choose which of the traits, powers or magic you already have you’d like to improve.

As you can see there’s a lot of freedom of choice here, and it’s radically different from how level advancement works in 5e (to name an example).

You are however still an ‘Archetype’, one of eightteen available. Like the Barbarian ‘Nomad’, Druid ‘Kindred’ or Guardian ‘Vanguard’. Each Archetype (even those within the same Class) is wholly unique though.

And what about the culture names is so funky according to you? Ethennia, Ishta, Roshan, Evandyr… You’re the first to call them funky so I’m curious what you think is wrong with them. Imo they embody very well the cultures they represent in the setting.

I hope the above at least clarifies a thing or two!

 

[Ferruccio]

So my guess as to the likelihood that this game contained a mechanic called Doom Points was proved correct.

Blood Points ánd Doom Points

 

[Morrus]

I downloaded it. Feels like a dated design, from the days when it was all about system complexity for dedicated gamers. Here's the summary of the dice mechanic:



(I never actually played a single WoD game, so if this is the core mechanic I don't recognize it.)

20+ years ago I was into fiddly systems like that. (Long live Rolemaster!) I've just come to the conclusion that complexity and detail are not necessary for, and may even impede, the kind of RPGing I like.

But I assume there are people who still enjoy that, and this game is targeted at them.

That sounds like a pretty standard dice pool mechanic.