Grim-n-Gritty: Revised and Simplified

[Alanbit]

Questions for Ken Hood (About G&G gaming experience)

Hi ken and you all.

We've addopted your G&G rules in our weekly game and we have some comments, experiences, suggestions and so on we wanted to make you.

First of all, I'd like to sorry for my english, I'll do my best to explain myself with some kinda clarity.

Second of all: Thanks, thanks, and a thousand thanks.

I've seen one of my friends (a ninja) almost cry of emotion when he killed a wizard for THE VERY FIRST time in his PC's life with a deadly and unique shuriken.
Now I can handle a bow and get in the battle (with old rules I stayed behind the warriors just making d8 damage in my turn and wondering what did I wrong to choose an archer, and how was it possible that with normal arrows Legolas could kill as much orcs as Gimli with a broad axe and cleave...). Even I can kill a centinel with ONE ARROW (and some dosis of luck, of course).

Really we've experienced a huge rise of adrenaline in our gaming.
For example. We are 4 players of level 4, and we entered in a small castle and found a Large level 10 humanoid with a Large battle axe. We did what we had to: run. Now we are preparing an ambush to slash the monster. Our DM proposed to play the hypothetical combat, and we did, and we died. Charged 3 of us, 2 of us dead with the oportunity attack. The other was smashed a round after. Obvious when you try to stop a bus at 100km/h with a sword...

We die really fast, but enemies do too. Now we can plot killing the centinel of a castle with a knife, we really get frightened when a Huge Monster roars, and we've found really interesting your system.

I was searching for your email address to send you a pair of suggestions on the rules on points not treated neither by you nor the traditional D&D, but as I could read, maybe you've said 'nuff of getting tons of email, so I'll post them here and you tell me what do you think about.
I'm making this post too long, so I'll just write in short the esence of the stuff.

D&D Rules and G&G Rules let our PC's stay awaken and fighting for a week.
We wanted more realism and created a very very simple system of Fatigue, so now the players have to manage to survive to large deadly creatures...and then take a rest!!
This rule is quite interesting for it's simplicity and we are now in testing time, but results are quite realistics.

The other rule was about real speed of a character. 30 Feet are not a number, 2 humans in a desert (none of them a monk) will always run the same? Of course not. We've created another simple rule for this, but I don't know if it's exportable, because of the metrical system we use.

I'm not gonna define now them with it's examples, I'm getting you bored,
but we wanted to know your opinion on these points.

After years and years playing, we try to avoid complications and non-logical points, and your rules help us to keep it simple (quick), logic (realistic) and funny (really funny).

Oscar Alvarez
Barcelona - Spain - Europe

 

[SSquirrel]

I've seen one of my friends (a ninja) almost cry of emotion when he killed a wizard for THE VERY FIRST time in his PC's life with a deadly and unique shuriken.
Now I can handle a bow and get in the battle (with old rules I stayed behind the warriors just making d8 damage in my turn and wondering what did I wrong to choose an archer, and how was it possible that with normal arrows Legolas could kill as much orcs as Gimli with a broad axe and cleave...). Even I can kill a centinel with ONE ARROW (and some dosis of luck, of course).

Really we've experienced a huge rise of adrenaline in our gaming.
For example. We are 4 players of level 4, and we entered in a small castle and found a Large level 10 humanoid with a Large battle axe. We did what we had to: run. Now we are preparing an ambush to slash the monster. Our DM proposed to play the hypothetical combat, and we did, and we died. Charged 3 of us, 2 of us dead with the oportunity attack. The other was smashed a round after. Obvious when you try to stop a bus at 100km/h with a sword...

We die really fast, but enemies do too. Now we can plot killing the centinel of a castle with a knife, we really get frightened when a Huge Monster roars, and we've found really interesting your system.

Since Ken seems to have gone back into hiding I guess I'll field this one. The above examples are EXACTLY what I imagined when Ken first posted this new revision and I think it's fantastic that you guys are having so much fun with the rules. I'm going to be using them soon myself in an Arcana Unearthed game (delayed 2 weeks again arrgh!) and I'm very excited.

The other rule was about real speed of a character. 30 Feet are not a number, 2 humans in a dessert (none of them a monk) will always run the same? Of course not. We've created another simple rule for this, but I don't know if it's exportable, because of the metrical system we use.

Actually I would be intersted in seeing this. I think we can do the conversion from metric on our own. For those who forget, 1 meter is 40 inches or 3.33 feet. Post away. Just make sure it's grim *grin*

Hagen

 

[Theseus]

We die really fast, but enemies do too.

Remember that next time we play, pal

 

[KenHood]

Second of all: Thanks, thanks, and a thousand thanks.

You're welcome.

D&D Rules and G&G Rules let our PC's stay awaken and fighting for a week.

Combat fatigue is something that I tend to handle common sense, but if I were to create a system for it, I would do the following:

Characters can fight a number of rounds equal to their Constitution score without adverse effect. At the end of that time, they are fatigued.

Characters can "catch their breath" as a standard action. This allows them to "recover" 1d6 + Constitution modifier rounds.

Keeps things simple, but allows you to wear out your characters.

As for staying awake, aren't there already rules for sleeping?

 

[FraserRonald]

Hey All

Just wanted to let you know that I've written a review of Grim N Gritty Revised and Simplified in the new issue of Sword's Edge. It's not entirely positive simply because for my game, the GnG V3 worked great, but hopefully it'll get the word out and more people will have a look and make their own decisions.

Thanks for all the work you've done, Ken. Though GnG Revised isn't my cup of tea, you have my eternal gratitude for GnG V3.

Take care all.

 

[Theseus]

GnG character sheet

Alanbit---> Come on man, I know you have redesigned the D&D "Core" sheet adapted to the GnG system, what are you waiting for to release it? : )

 

[Alanbit]

Alanbit---> Come on man, I know you have redesigned the D&D "Core" sheet adapted to the GnG system, what are you waiting for to release it? : )

Maybe tomorrow. I'm having some problems with a damned font that is kinda reluctant to be embeded in a pdf, so I'll have to change it for a more willing one.

 

[Alanbit]

Hi Ken

As for staying awake, aren't there already rules for sleeping?

This rule is commonly "forgotten" when you enter in a whirl of combats and action scenes. I don't blame my DM, first because we, players forget it as well, and second, because he reads this forum

Characters can fight a number of rounds equal to their Constitution score without adverse effect. At the end of that time, they are fatigued.

Our Fatigue rule is very similar to what you explain here, but some kinda more general.
I'm going to resume it in two words.
You have a Fatigue Score that contains ten pips (same as life). Circumstances makes you fill these pips. For each pip you have marked you have a -1 bonus in all your actions (as negative modifiers in life score), but you can "ignore" as many pips as your Con bonus.
For example, a player with 5 pips marked will suffer a -5 penalty if he has a Con bonus of 0, a player with a Con bonus of +3 will suffer a -2 penalty, and a player with a Con bonus of +5 or higher will no suffer any penalty.
As you said:

Keeps things simple, but allows you to wear out your characters.

That's our thought.

How you fill/wipe these pips?
All based in common sense, but I wouldn't like to half-describe this rule (as I've done indeed) without describing some other factors we have considered to make this rule to have a sense.

I'm finishing the movement document and as soon I'm done I'll write the Fatigue one out. I hope I can do it in the next 24 hours, and I'm afraid I'll have to open another discussion for each one, in order to follow the forum policy, but I'll make you know when it's done.

 

[SSquirrel]

Just wanted to let you know that I've written a review of Grim N Gritty Revised and Simplified in the new issue of Sword's Edge. It's not entirely positive simply because for my game, the GnG V3 worked great, but hopefully it'll get the word out and more people will have a look and make their own decisions.

Reading the review now. The size issue is teh creatures in quetsion not weapon sizes. So it's Large creature vs small creature not large weapon vs smal weapon. Altho, I suppose you could add that as an extra layer and show why you're disadvantaged fighting a 2 handed sword wielder with just a dagger heh.

Heh ya shoulda linked to this thread in teh review after mentioning that people should d/l the rules. Questions can be answeed here and all.

Overall a good review tho.

Hagen

 

[Theseus]

One of the things we have noticed while we were playtesting the rules was that we had a slight problem with the defense bonus:

According to GnG rules :Base Defense Bonus = Base Reflex Bonus or BAB.Other bonuses to defense include deflection bonuses, dodge bonuses, and cover.

According to this description you can rougly translate Defense Bonus for "Dodge", right?

One of my players asked me why should he dodge when he was attacked by a guard with a short sword when he was armed with a +4 Long Sword and he had both Weapon Specialization and Great Weapon Specialization with it... Can you see where I´m going?

"Ok" I said. "Parry with your sword and add the bonuses for the magical enhancement and for you specialization"

Voilá! Instant differentiation between "Parry" and "Dodge".
Everyone agreed to this. The archer didn´t complain about not being able to parry with his bow, and neither did the "25 dexterity" Rogue.

The only real problem we had was adding or substracting a couple of bonuses depending on the occasion (for instance, when the mentioned fighter was fighting with another weapon ). But fortunately a smart player changed the character sheet (Alanbit-->btw, you could post it here right now, don´t you think?) and next to the attack bonus on each weapon you have a defense/parry slot.

One thing we have been wondering after the platesting:

Isn´t the Power Attack feat useless in the GnG system? (unless you are wearing a 2h weapon)

To keep the feat , you should consider it as a -1 Attack = +2 Damage ( if not, it doesn´t make any sense at all, don´t you think? )