Not DnD | Against the Odds

This is not another fantasy game about “killing monsters”. This is a game about heroes and villains, it's true, but these heroes don't kill. Or at least they don't if they want to remain heroes.

Against the Odds is Powered by the Apocalypse and uses only four stats for simplicity. The game does not use hit points, but instead characters absorb harm via fatigue and emotional conditions. Players journey through the game, making tough choices, whilst trying to avoid their corruption triggers. And deciding if now is the time to make a heroic sacrifice to end their story in an epic fashion.


Not DnD is a weekly show discussing tabletop roleplaying games. Each week EN Publishing’s @tabletopjess interviews the creators behind different tabletop roleplaying games that aren’t D&D!

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[GMMichael]

Would someone provide timestamps for those of us who have short attention spans are really important and busy? I'm interested to find out about this not-killing-things.

 

[Breaking Star Games]

Ever since playing in one of Helena's Avatar Legends games, my first time with a professional GM, it made me really appreciate learning more from varying styles of GMing and helped solidify my understanding of running narrative games.

I got to play in a playtest of Against the Odds as The Rogue. I would highly recommend it for anyone that enjoys narrative TTRPGs and its my preferred way to run heroic high fantasy. Many Powered by the Apocalypse games tend to be highly focused on specific gameplay loops, but there is a nice room for flexibility. Our own game ended up being sky pirate adventures with plenty of swashbuckling. But its still focused on themes discussed in the quickstart, which is really the priority to make a focused game work. My favorite is that each class has a core drama tied in with the corruption mechanic. Its really about being challenged to be heroes.

Added some timestamps in a comment on the video and here:

5:41 First Tabletop RPG Helena's played
7:12 How did you move to professional writing and Game Mastering (GMing)
11:11 How Professional GMing is different from personal
12:16 Advice for anyone looking to get into Professional GMing
14:02 Against the Odds' Pitch
16:00 What distinguishes this fantasy RPG from D&D
19:35 Overview of Against the Odds - Stats, Playbooks (Callings), fast character creation
24:39 Story first and the table working together on making the campaign premise
25:49 How does the Corruption Track work?
27:28 Heroic Sacrifice mechanic
30:56 Against the Odds' approach to magic - Druids, Mystics, Sorcerer, Witch, Mage
36:48 Why Against the Odds didn't use Hit Points and instead uses Conditions
40:28 What is the complexity of this game
42:58 Anything else: Took 2 years; Against the Odd is Pay What You Want; It's the game I wanted to play
44:42 Recommendations for other TTRPGs