buzz
Adventurer
Anyone have Grim Tales yet? If so, spill!
Grim Tales? Anyone? Bueller?
- Thread starter buzz
- Start date
Karl Green
First Post
just picked it up last night... have not had time to really look at it BUT what I did get to see looked cool. More later... off to play Angel tonight
Here...
This thread has some commentary...
http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=88502
~ Old One
This thread has some commentary...
http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=88502
~ Old One
king_ghidorah
First Post
buzz said:
I picked up my copy yesterday, and am still going through it. It seems to be a nice mix of d20 modern and D&D, with a lot of small refinements. It is very clearly a book of crunch, and lots of good tips. I'm reserving my judgment on whether it is a good pulp game per se, but it seems at first glance a good mix of high-action and low-magic d20 rules, which is good enough to me.
More detail as I pore over the rules....
Psion
Adventurer
Sir Being Discussed in the General Forum...
But whatcha wanna know.
The two biggest wow moments so far are the classes and the magic system.
The classes are, basically, the d20 modern classes expanded out to 20 levels. Talent trees are used, and many class abilities from pre-existing classes are made into talent trees. So fast heroes, for example, can take the flurry of blows talent tree.
If you are the sort who resents being handed a class skill list, Grim Tales will please you. Within certain guidelines, you basically make your own.
The setting is low magic and magic is dangerous to use. Spells cause spell burn, which causes ability damage, to the tune of one dice (varies in size by campaign model) per spell level. Inexperienced casters take the worst of this, but there are talent chains that let some characters cast better and mitigate the ability damage.
The book is written a bit to the tune of UA, in that there are a lot of options you can take. You set things like spell burn, massive damage threshold, action point recovery, and so forth, according to how deadly you want the campaign.
The book has three different campaign styles: archaic, apocalyptic, and modern.
I like what I see so far. I would be tempted to use it in the stead of the system in d20 CoC, or to do something like a Clark Ashton Smith novel.
But whatcha wanna know.
The two biggest wow moments so far are the classes and the magic system.
The classes are, basically, the d20 modern classes expanded out to 20 levels. Talent trees are used, and many class abilities from pre-existing classes are made into talent trees. So fast heroes, for example, can take the flurry of blows talent tree.
If you are the sort who resents being handed a class skill list, Grim Tales will please you. Within certain guidelines, you basically make your own.
The setting is low magic and magic is dangerous to use. Spells cause spell burn, which causes ability damage, to the tune of one dice (varies in size by campaign model) per spell level. Inexperienced casters take the worst of this, but there are talent chains that let some characters cast better and mitigate the ability damage.
The book is written a bit to the tune of UA, in that there are a lot of options you can take. You set things like spell burn, massive damage threshold, action point recovery, and so forth, according to how deadly you want the campaign.
The book has three different campaign styles: archaic, apocalyptic, and modern.
I like what I see so far. I would be tempted to use it in the stead of the system in d20 CoC, or to do something like a Clark Ashton Smith novel.
Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
Sorry I missed this thread! I check this forum everyday for opportunities to pimp Grim Tales. No idea how I missed this! (Maybe cause I always use Stealth mode... Did you use the Grim Tales thread tag?)
I'm going to take this opportunity to just run down all the rules tweaks I can think of off the top of my head:
Chapter One: Characters
Classes are expanded out to 20 levels; bonus feat and talent lists are expanded to accomodate this. (ie, If you take Strong hero through 20th level, you get at least 10 Strong bonus feats, so you need to have a good choice of feats so not all 20th Strong heroes look alike).
Starting class makes a difference-- if you take Strong Hero at 1st level, you get all the Armor proficiencies. If you multi-class into Strong, you don't. Likewise if you take Smart at 1st level, you get 3 more core skills (gotta spend those skill points somewhere); if you multiclass into Smart later, you don't.
Action Points: The possible ways to use Action Points are expanded from d20 Modern, including some Spycraft variants (changing the size of the action die, exploding action dice) and some ways to use Action Points to shore up the lack of magic (healing after combat, improving AC, striking through DR).
Chapter Two: Skills
Sub Skill Synergy: I think most folks haven't noticed this because they already think they know what they're going to see in this chapter! All of the skills that have sub-skills (Craft, Drive, Knowledge, Perform, Ride) have sub-skill synergy. If you have 5 ranks in Skill: (anything) you get a +1 bonus to Skill: (anything else). There is a feasible reward to having multiple Perform skills, rather than pouring all your skill points into a single specialty.
Skill Critical Successes and Critical Failures: A concept proudly borrowed from Spycraft, with a GT twist: You have to spend an Action Point to activate a critical success; the GM has to award you an AP to activate a critical fumble.
The skill list has also been condensed and "scoured" so that there is no skill on the list that is genre-specific. (For example, there is no Computer Science skill; GT would recommend Knowledge: computers.) This allows easy porting of GT characters from genre to genre.
Chapter Three: Feats
Nothing outrageous here. Most feats were upgraded to their 3.5 versions; with some Modern feats added from various sources (some Game Mechanics stuff, I would bet). There was an effort here to make sure there were no FTS (feats that suck) such as many of the "crippled" d20 Modern versions pertaining to Firearms. Almost all of the firearms feats are from Spycraft (or variants thereof).
Feats pertaining to "FX" are moved into their own sections: Spellcasting, Firearms, and Vehicles. If you're not using these additional chapters, you won't be using these feats.
The Spellcasting feats are pretty extensively overhauled-- they're worth looking at vis-a-vis the new spellcasting system. Scrolls, potions, and wands are changed in major ways in order to work with spell burn. Item Creation follows the standard set in Monte's AU. There's still a lot of room for me to expand the magic system (I'm thinking I have enough good stuff for another book).
Firearms feats are overhauled so that they don't suck. I paid a lot of attention to the usual complaints with d20 Modern, but still with an eye to what a game has to deliver. I accept up front that there's no pleasing the gun purist. But I am still pretty proud of the Action Shootist feat.
Vehicle feats written or redesigned to work with the new rules in the Vehicles chapter (see below).
By the way, moving the FX feats to their own sections is the reason that Extra Turning doesn't appear in the feats. Minor oops! The good news is you can pretty much add any feats you like, so long as they don't interfere with rules sections that have been rewritten (like Spellcasting). But if you wanted to add "Extra Raging" for example, it's simple enough. Though in GT, Rage is a talent requiring the use of an action point, Extra Raging would just let you rage 3 more times (without spending an AP).
Chapter Four: Talents
I added the concept of "Advanced Talents" that require you to be at least 3rd level in a class before you can take them. A lot of the talent trees that were "stackable" (Melee Smash, Damage Reduction) were just condensed into a single talent.
New talent trees culled from the core D&D classes-- provided they were sufficiently low-magic. You will see sneak attack and favored enemy. You won't see most of the funky monk juju. I did my best to put the class abilities into the proper d20M class counterparts, though I am sure there is room for dissent, here. For example, some folks would rather have seen Sneak Attack in the Fast trees, rather than the Smart trees.
I don't think you could "rebuild" a D&D core class using talents alone. If you tried to rebuild the 8th level barbarian, you probably couldn't do it by 8th level in GT-- but this is not to say that an 8th level Grim Tales character is weaker than an 8th level barbarian. Basically, if you wanted to min/max it, your 8th level GT character could probably whip the barbarian. The advantage of the GT character is in flexibility and customization.
Chapter Five: Equipment
I deconstructed the weapons and armor in D&D to allow GM's to rebuild them by tweaking a set of templates.
I also added an excellent "shopping around" Purchase DC model from XRPs Magical Medieval Society.
Chapter Six: Combat
It's almost guaranteed I'll forget something here...The combat chapter is mostly 3.5 D&D with d20 Modern where necessary.
Several options for Massive Damage Threshold.
Armor as Damage Conversion from UA.
Some notes on "mooks."
Variant death's door/disabled/dying/dead rules based on Con (seen in various places on the net and in Monte's AU).
Chapter Seven: Hazardous Environments
This just seemed like an indispensible GM tool that had to be picked up and carried over from the DMG sections of the SRD. I couldn't grab all of the DMG sections I wanted (trap building was bitterly mourned) but I think this chapter offers enough of the environmental hazard stuff you need to... uhh, go hunt down the Yeti lair in the Himalayas-- how long it takes to get there, dangers of wind, snow/visibility, ice, cold, steam vents, altitude, etc.
And if the Yeti turns out to be a radiation-spawned mutant, I got that covered in this chapter, too.
Chapter Eight: Spellcasting
Major changes. Too many to detail, really, but spells are meant to be unpleasant to both caster and target. One might note that a 20th level GT hero maxxes out his best base saves at +9, not +12.
I will note an important piece of errata I prefer to mention here, in the Improved Caster Level talent. This talent should increase caster level, but it should NOT increase Spell Burn Resistance. I don't recall which utterly whiny playtester forced me to add that, but I meant to take it back out. A 9th level Smart arcane adept with a 16 Int (which may be high for GT but not unreasonable) starts with Spell Burn Resistance of 3 (for his Int mod) and with just 3 levels of Improved Caster would have 6 Spell Burn Resistance-- and that's too much resistance for Spell Burn to remain an effective deterrent to spellcasting.
Chapter Nine: Firearms
This chapter serves two purposes. First, firearms design (adding real world weapons to your game in a consistent manner). Second, new firearms rules that don't suck. I did my best to take the best of d20 Modern and Spycraft into account. It won't please everyone. Burst fire is one of those things that is still "best not to think about too hard." Playability trumped reality. Autofire, strafe, and shotguns are, I think, vastly improved.
Chapter Ten: Horror
One of my favorite chapters. GMs will love it, players will hate it. Probably my favorite line from the whole book is here, and I paraphrase: "Some players would rather their character die, than play an insane character. The GM is encouraged to humor such requests."
The "wow" moment for this chapter is that the Horror rules don't require a new ability score or stat ( no Sanity to track) and the monsters don't require any new stats either. Their "horrificness" is based on EL and Charisma, with some modifiers for type (Undead, Outsiders, and Dragons are always more scary).
I was disappointed that UA did not have more in the way of actual game mechanics for their Insanities; in the end, as this chapter was already written when UA came out, I was glad my research did not go to waste.
Chapter Eleven: Vehicles
The design focus here was to make the d20 Modern rules more abstract in places, and the Spycraft chase rules more concrete in places. I hope everyone is pleased. My biggest disappointment with this chapter was that I did not have room to add any vehicle stats or vehicle creation rules (though there is a minimum of material there to port over your favorite real world vehicles). My thought was that folks' complaints with the available vehicle rules wasn't in the vehicle stats, it was in the actual gamemastering of vehicles. I expect folks will use stats from other sources and hope I don't get too much flak for not including a short sampling.
Chapter Twelve: Fantastic Technology
Really, just a quick chapter on using Cyberware to shore up the loss of magic items. Short and to the point. The tail end of this chapter includes a pretty good timeline of real world inventions, so you can cross reference your desired setting with, for example, the invention of dynamite.
Chapter Thirteen: Creature Creation
This chapter is simply too long and detailed to go into here. I expect folks will take a while to really review this. This is ENworld's Upper_Krust's work, with a few last minute changes by me. I direct all challenges to this work in his direction.
Chapter Fourteen: Gamemastering
Or as I like to call it, the EL section. Again, based on UK's work, the new EL system scales much better with level; and because it follows a more mathematical path, EL has a lot more meaning and you can do a lot more with it (like create new races using Chapter 13, and not have to do wonky things like Level Adjustment). As a true measure of relative power, this very solid EL system opens up lots of new possibilities for using EL (you should see what I am doing with Mass Combat, for example...)
Any other questions...?
Psion said:
I'm going to take this opportunity to just run down all the rules tweaks I can think of off the top of my head:
Chapter One: Characters
Classes are expanded out to 20 levels; bonus feat and talent lists are expanded to accomodate this. (ie, If you take Strong hero through 20th level, you get at least 10 Strong bonus feats, so you need to have a good choice of feats so not all 20th Strong heroes look alike).
Starting class makes a difference-- if you take Strong Hero at 1st level, you get all the Armor proficiencies. If you multi-class into Strong, you don't. Likewise if you take Smart at 1st level, you get 3 more core skills (gotta spend those skill points somewhere); if you multiclass into Smart later, you don't.
Action Points: The possible ways to use Action Points are expanded from d20 Modern, including some Spycraft variants (changing the size of the action die, exploding action dice) and some ways to use Action Points to shore up the lack of magic (healing after combat, improving AC, striking through DR).
Chapter Two: Skills
Sub Skill Synergy: I think most folks haven't noticed this because they already think they know what they're going to see in this chapter! All of the skills that have sub-skills (Craft, Drive, Knowledge, Perform, Ride) have sub-skill synergy. If you have 5 ranks in Skill: (anything) you get a +1 bonus to Skill: (anything else). There is a feasible reward to having multiple Perform skills, rather than pouring all your skill points into a single specialty.
Skill Critical Successes and Critical Failures: A concept proudly borrowed from Spycraft, with a GT twist: You have to spend an Action Point to activate a critical success; the GM has to award you an AP to activate a critical fumble.
The skill list has also been condensed and "scoured" so that there is no skill on the list that is genre-specific. (For example, there is no Computer Science skill; GT would recommend Knowledge: computers.) This allows easy porting of GT characters from genre to genre.
Chapter Three: Feats
Nothing outrageous here. Most feats were upgraded to their 3.5 versions; with some Modern feats added from various sources (some Game Mechanics stuff, I would bet). There was an effort here to make sure there were no FTS (feats that suck) such as many of the "crippled" d20 Modern versions pertaining to Firearms. Almost all of the firearms feats are from Spycraft (or variants thereof).
Feats pertaining to "FX" are moved into their own sections: Spellcasting, Firearms, and Vehicles. If you're not using these additional chapters, you won't be using these feats.
The Spellcasting feats are pretty extensively overhauled-- they're worth looking at vis-a-vis the new spellcasting system. Scrolls, potions, and wands are changed in major ways in order to work with spell burn. Item Creation follows the standard set in Monte's AU. There's still a lot of room for me to expand the magic system (I'm thinking I have enough good stuff for another book).
Firearms feats are overhauled so that they don't suck. I paid a lot of attention to the usual complaints with d20 Modern, but still with an eye to what a game has to deliver. I accept up front that there's no pleasing the gun purist. But I am still pretty proud of the Action Shootist feat.
Vehicle feats written or redesigned to work with the new rules in the Vehicles chapter (see below).
By the way, moving the FX feats to their own sections is the reason that Extra Turning doesn't appear in the feats. Minor oops! The good news is you can pretty much add any feats you like, so long as they don't interfere with rules sections that have been rewritten (like Spellcasting). But if you wanted to add "Extra Raging" for example, it's simple enough. Though in GT, Rage is a talent requiring the use of an action point, Extra Raging would just let you rage 3 more times (without spending an AP).
Chapter Four: Talents
I added the concept of "Advanced Talents" that require you to be at least 3rd level in a class before you can take them. A lot of the talent trees that were "stackable" (Melee Smash, Damage Reduction) were just condensed into a single talent.
New talent trees culled from the core D&D classes-- provided they were sufficiently low-magic. You will see sneak attack and favored enemy. You won't see most of the funky monk juju. I did my best to put the class abilities into the proper d20M class counterparts, though I am sure there is room for dissent, here. For example, some folks would rather have seen Sneak Attack in the Fast trees, rather than the Smart trees.
I don't think you could "rebuild" a D&D core class using talents alone. If you tried to rebuild the 8th level barbarian, you probably couldn't do it by 8th level in GT-- but this is not to say that an 8th level Grim Tales character is weaker than an 8th level barbarian. Basically, if you wanted to min/max it, your 8th level GT character could probably whip the barbarian. The advantage of the GT character is in flexibility and customization.
Chapter Five: Equipment
I deconstructed the weapons and armor in D&D to allow GM's to rebuild them by tweaking a set of templates.
I also added an excellent "shopping around" Purchase DC model from XRPs Magical Medieval Society.
Chapter Six: Combat
It's almost guaranteed I'll forget something here...The combat chapter is mostly 3.5 D&D with d20 Modern where necessary.
Several options for Massive Damage Threshold.
Armor as Damage Conversion from UA.
Some notes on "mooks."
Variant death's door/disabled/dying/dead rules based on Con (seen in various places on the net and in Monte's AU).
Chapter Seven: Hazardous Environments
This just seemed like an indispensible GM tool that had to be picked up and carried over from the DMG sections of the SRD. I couldn't grab all of the DMG sections I wanted (trap building was bitterly mourned) but I think this chapter offers enough of the environmental hazard stuff you need to... uhh, go hunt down the Yeti lair in the Himalayas-- how long it takes to get there, dangers of wind, snow/visibility, ice, cold, steam vents, altitude, etc.
And if the Yeti turns out to be a radiation-spawned mutant, I got that covered in this chapter, too.
Chapter Eight: Spellcasting
Major changes. Too many to detail, really, but spells are meant to be unpleasant to both caster and target. One might note that a 20th level GT hero maxxes out his best base saves at +9, not +12.
I will note an important piece of errata I prefer to mention here, in the Improved Caster Level talent. This talent should increase caster level, but it should NOT increase Spell Burn Resistance. I don't recall which utterly whiny playtester forced me to add that, but I meant to take it back out. A 9th level Smart arcane adept with a 16 Int (which may be high for GT but not unreasonable) starts with Spell Burn Resistance of 3 (for his Int mod) and with just 3 levels of Improved Caster would have 6 Spell Burn Resistance-- and that's too much resistance for Spell Burn to remain an effective deterrent to spellcasting.
Chapter Nine: Firearms
This chapter serves two purposes. First, firearms design (adding real world weapons to your game in a consistent manner). Second, new firearms rules that don't suck. I did my best to take the best of d20 Modern and Spycraft into account. It won't please everyone. Burst fire is one of those things that is still "best not to think about too hard." Playability trumped reality. Autofire, strafe, and shotguns are, I think, vastly improved.
Chapter Ten: Horror
One of my favorite chapters. GMs will love it, players will hate it. Probably my favorite line from the whole book is here, and I paraphrase: "Some players would rather their character die, than play an insane character. The GM is encouraged to humor such requests."
The "wow" moment for this chapter is that the Horror rules don't require a new ability score or stat ( no Sanity to track) and the monsters don't require any new stats either. Their "horrificness" is based on EL and Charisma, with some modifiers for type (Undead, Outsiders, and Dragons are always more scary).
I was disappointed that UA did not have more in the way of actual game mechanics for their Insanities; in the end, as this chapter was already written when UA came out, I was glad my research did not go to waste.
Chapter Eleven: Vehicles
The design focus here was to make the d20 Modern rules more abstract in places, and the Spycraft chase rules more concrete in places. I hope everyone is pleased. My biggest disappointment with this chapter was that I did not have room to add any vehicle stats or vehicle creation rules (though there is a minimum of material there to port over your favorite real world vehicles). My thought was that folks' complaints with the available vehicle rules wasn't in the vehicle stats, it was in the actual gamemastering of vehicles. I expect folks will use stats from other sources and hope I don't get too much flak for not including a short sampling.
Chapter Twelve: Fantastic Technology
Really, just a quick chapter on using Cyberware to shore up the loss of magic items. Short and to the point. The tail end of this chapter includes a pretty good timeline of real world inventions, so you can cross reference your desired setting with, for example, the invention of dynamite.
Chapter Thirteen: Creature Creation
This chapter is simply too long and detailed to go into here. I expect folks will take a while to really review this. This is ENworld's Upper_Krust's work, with a few last minute changes by me. I direct all challenges to this work in his direction.
Chapter Fourteen: Gamemastering
Or as I like to call it, the EL section. Again, based on UK's work, the new EL system scales much better with level; and because it follows a more mathematical path, EL has a lot more meaning and you can do a lot more with it (like create new races using Chapter 13, and not have to do wonky things like Level Adjustment). As a true measure of relative power, this very solid EL system opens up lots of new possibilities for using EL (you should see what I am doing with Mass Combat, for example...)
Any other questions...?
Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
buzz said:
I think there's a sort of subtle implication that some sort of FX will be involved-- but that's really more a matter of campaign style. I don't think you can have really good pulpy action stories without some element of the fantastic.
But that's just my own personal bias; in the ruleset itself, you can play it "straight up" without any FX. How you, as a GM, impart a sort of "larger than life" aspect to the campaign and to the heroes without the use of FX is the trick.
I mean, even without any FX trappings, you have a certain sort of inherent FX to a 20th level hero, as compared to the rest of the Ordinaries in the world.
Does that make any kind of sense at all?
Wulf
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