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Torchbearer 2e - actual play of this AWESOME system! (+)
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<blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8781869" data-attributes="member: 6696971"><p>Ha!</p><p></p><p>So I’ve run TB1 with various set-ups, but, when it comes to the layfolks and setting premise that the players overwhelmingly, interact with, I think the Remote Village does the best job at conveying the upshot of the experience for the players as they interact with the setting in its various phases:</p><p></p><p><strong>Remote Village</strong></p><p>The backbone of society, remote villages dot the hinterlands. Their residents till the soil for its meager gifts, herd the cattle for their stringy</p><p>meats and plumb the sea for its turbid fruits—all in the service of some petty noble lord who wants only their table full and their taxes paid.</p><p></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Harvests yield meager gifts.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Animal husbandry yields stringy meats.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Fisheries yield mixed signals.</li> </ul><p></p><p>Beyond that, the land is savage and its reach is vast. The ruins are hungry and seductive and unforgiving. The climate is actively hostile, volatile, harsh. The laws are brutal. The piper paid at the gates (both coming and going) is intense and ever-looming. The gods and their ciphers can be quite distant or in your face (and in your face is often not a great omen for the layfolk). Your rival is but a Twist away to make your life difficult. The costs for getting anything done are significant and the toll for trying to change your plight seems so steep.</p><p></p><p>Town Event Tables have a normal distribution where calamity and significant boon are rare but can materialize (with the scale and potency of the calamity being significantly more gamestate-impactful than the boon) while results of "hardship" or "interesting and potentially benign or hostile" or "minor boon" dominate the scene.</p><p></p><p>Camp Event Tables lean toward negative results without intentful and focused (costly...possibly quite costly) intervention on the PCs behalf due to baked in negative modifiers and the table's minorly tilted distribution. You've got a lot of things that are against you in the wild that you need to push back against in order to establish a safe camp with amenities that will give you some reprieve against the cold and dark and savage out there.</p><p></p><p></p><p>But you have your Hometown. You may have Friends or Parents or Mentor to call upon. You may gain some in the course of adventuring. You also have your wits, your guile, your resilience, your courage, your will, and your Order of Might.</p><p></p><p></p><p>The thing is is that any given game of Torchbearer's setting that emerges in the course of play will vary because it depends very much on:</p><p></p><p>(a) Twists (thematically what do these look like...and that question can't be answered in a vacuum because it is reliant upon PC build, staple towns used as "base", the fallout from Events tables, the Adventures undertaken and the spoils and rotted fruit of those Adventures).</p><p></p><p>(b) Staple Towns for Town phase (if you're in Bustling Crossroads or Remote Village overwhelmingly, the locals and customs and reality on the ground will feel different than Bustling Metropolis and Religious Bastion).</p><p></p><p>(c) Adventures undertaken and their results on setting and subsequent framing.</p><p></p><p></p><p>So I've run 5 Torchbearer games (all but this last one with TB1) and they've been rather diverse, but there is absolutely a pressing weight upon the layfolk and a stranglehold on everyday experience by bill collectors and the hierarchy of Order of Presence that routinely finds its way as both color and gamestate-impactors. </p><p></p><p>But as far as your game [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER] , I think I may look at you guys' successes a bit differently than you do. I wonder if that is typically the case for GMs vs players in Torchbearer games. My perception of a harsh and ruined situation is probably different than yours. I look at the festival at the gates of Strond and you guys' Convince Crowd conflict as a nice dose of merriment and spread goodwill. You guys gained a friend in an Enemy's Porter/Sentry and you even softened that Enemy's orientation to you. You were on your way to fully resolving the ruins of your Elfhome. You rescued a matriarch of a well-to-do Strond family and befriended them. You recovered your sister's remains and sent her to her rest. You set right the wrongs of a little girl and her murdered mother (who is now a spirit). </p><p></p><p>The changed facts on the ground for the layfolk and how that interacts with you guys' characters had its share of rays of sunshine to break the constantly rumbling stormclouds.</p><p></p><p>So yeah...definite inherent lean toward harship and savagery and weighty toll...but many factors can confound that orientation including the significant role of downstream play. I just think, player-outlook-side, basic things (like constantly failing your Resource Test at the gates!) do a lot of work to create a feel of a miserly, stingy, GIT GUD SCRUB world.</p><p></p><p>And honestly...I'm a dark person. My Twists and Adventures and conflict framing is much likely darker than your own [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] ! I'm a big fan of a backdrop of brutality and harshness giving crisp, clear lines to acts of heroism and resiliency! That comes out in a lot of my GMing I'm sure!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Manbearcat, post: 8781869, member: 6696971"] Ha! So I’ve run TB1 with various set-ups, but, when it comes to the layfolks and setting premise that the players overwhelmingly, interact with, I think the Remote Village does the best job at conveying the upshot of the experience for the players as they interact with the setting in its various phases: [B]Remote Village[/B] The backbone of society, remote villages dot the hinterlands. Their residents till the soil for its meager gifts, herd the cattle for their stringy meats and plumb the sea for its turbid fruits—all in the service of some petty noble lord who wants only their table full and their taxes paid. [LIST] [*]Harvests yield meager gifts. [*]Animal husbandry yields stringy meats. [*]Fisheries yield mixed signals. [/LIST] Beyond that, the land is savage and its reach is vast. The ruins are hungry and seductive and unforgiving. The climate is actively hostile, volatile, harsh. The laws are brutal. The piper paid at the gates (both coming and going) is intense and ever-looming. The gods and their ciphers can be quite distant or in your face (and in your face is often not a great omen for the layfolk). Your rival is but a Twist away to make your life difficult. The costs for getting anything done are significant and the toll for trying to change your plight seems so steep. Town Event Tables have a normal distribution where calamity and significant boon are rare but can materialize (with the scale and potency of the calamity being significantly more gamestate-impactful than the boon) while results of "hardship" or "interesting and potentially benign or hostile" or "minor boon" dominate the scene. Camp Event Tables lean toward negative results without intentful and focused (costly...possibly quite costly) intervention on the PCs behalf due to baked in negative modifiers and the table's minorly tilted distribution. You've got a lot of things that are against you in the wild that you need to push back against in order to establish a safe camp with amenities that will give you some reprieve against the cold and dark and savage out there. But you have your Hometown. You may have Friends or Parents or Mentor to call upon. You may gain some in the course of adventuring. You also have your wits, your guile, your resilience, your courage, your will, and your Order of Might. The thing is is that any given game of Torchbearer's setting that emerges in the course of play will vary because it depends very much on: (a) Twists (thematically what do these look like...and that question can't be answered in a vacuum because it is reliant upon PC build, staple towns used as "base", the fallout from Events tables, the Adventures undertaken and the spoils and rotted fruit of those Adventures). (b) Staple Towns for Town phase (if you're in Bustling Crossroads or Remote Village overwhelmingly, the locals and customs and reality on the ground will feel different than Bustling Metropolis and Religious Bastion). (c) Adventures undertaken and their results on setting and subsequent framing. So I've run 5 Torchbearer games (all but this last one with TB1) and they've been rather diverse, but there is absolutely a pressing weight upon the layfolk and a stranglehold on everyday experience by bill collectors and the hierarchy of Order of Presence that routinely finds its way as both color and gamestate-impactors. But as far as your game [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER] , I think I may look at you guys' successes a bit differently than you do. I wonder if that is typically the case for GMs vs players in Torchbearer games. My perception of a harsh and ruined situation is probably different than yours. I look at the festival at the gates of Strond and you guys' Convince Crowd conflict as a nice dose of merriment and spread goodwill. You guys gained a friend in an Enemy's Porter/Sentry and you even softened that Enemy's orientation to you. You were on your way to fully resolving the ruins of your Elfhome. You rescued a matriarch of a well-to-do Strond family and befriended them. You recovered your sister's remains and sent her to her rest. You set right the wrongs of a little girl and her murdered mother (who is now a spirit). The changed facts on the ground for the layfolk and how that interacts with you guys' characters had its share of rays of sunshine to break the constantly rumbling stormclouds. So yeah...definite inherent lean toward harship and savagery and weighty toll...but many factors can confound that orientation including the significant role of downstream play. I just think, player-outlook-side, basic things (like constantly failing your Resource Test at the gates!) do a lot of work to create a feel of a miserly, stingy, GIT GUD SCRUB world. And honestly...I'm a dark person. My Twists and Adventures and conflict framing is much likely darker than your own [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] ! I'm a big fan of a backdrop of brutality and harshness giving crisp, clear lines to acts of heroism and resiliency! That comes out in a lot of my GMing I'm sure! [/QUOTE]
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