Fria Ligans forum

pg. 32, "The death save is not an action in itself." Does this mean, the death save can not be pushed?

What is the meaning of "in itself"? How does it change the interpretation of that sentence? What is the difference between "The death save is not an action." and "The death save is not an action in itself."? I don't get it...

pg. 35, "All conflicts are not combat." This is not correct, there are conflicts that are combat. I guess, "Not all conflicts are combat." was intended. Or I am to dull to get the Shakespearean drift.

pg. 15, attributes and derived scores. Sorry, my mind boggles that attribute #1 and #2 lead to one score, #3 and #6 result in the second, and #4 and #5 result in the third derived score. Can the attributes please be listed - in the rules and on the character sheets - in a sequence that ties #1 and #2, #3 and #4, and #5 and #6. Str, Agi, Log, Emp, Per, Ins would be a consistent sequence.

Also, the sequence of attributes in the paragraph explaining Blight is not the same as in the previous list. Please stick to the same sequence.

Sorry for my nitpicking.

- the delve felt quite board gamey and took a lot of rolls before reaching a meaningful interlude. Might be down to me making more of each event as a GM, of course.

My group hated this aspect of the quickstart and after playing the Delve, 3 members of the group cancelled their pledges. It was far too board-gamey to me, and turned into: roll some dice, subtract some resources, repeat. There were few, if any choices, to made and if the Delver rolls had few success then there were constant blight armour rolls, which quickly became tedious. The events had the chance to make the delve interesting, but again often turned into roll a dice, subtract a resource. The narrative events (the lights above and the radio chatter) were good, but the events needed more meat to them to make them interesting.

I haven't played it, but I had the same feeling listening to the Red Moon Roleplaying actual play. The delve part was just a string of linear dice rolls and skill checks without much purpose or meaningful decisions.

AIMED FIRE (p. 28)
The rules require a full round action of aiming to gain a +2 modifier to range attack.
However, you can also freely move to a neighboring zone, into or out of engaged range during your action.
Does this mean you can move while aiming?
If so, that means you can move and aim in one round, then move and fire in the next round with a +2 modifier, correct?

I had great fun running the game at a local convention — and creating some extra tabletop bling to excite the players.

As it was a 3.5-hour convention slow, I started in medias res with the characters en route to the fissure and threw in flashbacks to introduce sub-plots, background, clues, etc.

There are small errors on the pre-gens, like Messima has Burglar in the list of Talents but Driver in explanation of Talents. This in particular became obvious right away as when I asked who was driving, no one knew... as the player with Messima was looking at the list of Talents!

The Bird is listed as having four energy on the sheet but three energy ("at the start of the campaign") in the text (page 48).

There are an array of small errors that will undoubtedly be fixed with another edit or three (e.g., "Permission to use lethal force" on the mission briefing, which my players took as a loophole to allow them to shoot to kill).

Delving and the role of the Delver and the interaction between delving, blight, events and supply needs a lot more explanation. It has been touched on in earlier comments regarding the benefits from a good Delver roll - so they dodge blight, reduce supply expended, or just move further and, therefore, decrease the number of potential events encountered.

For example, I ruled that they didn't reduce Blight exposure along the route but that Supplies were only consumed per Delve move rather than Delve Marker. A good Delver can use minimal supplies and increase the chances of getting to the end of the delve and back without running out.

I would love Rope removed from sheets/equipment, as it messes with my head when thinking about Supply. If you use up one Supply doing strenuous activity, like climbing, for some reason, I thought this might include rope. But I guess it's for consumables like water and food to compensate for the strain. If Players need to track Ammo, Rope, Supply, and Blight, this is turning into a resource management board game, and that might be a step too far.

But, overall, I and the players thoroughly enjoyed the session - and here are a couple of pictures, one from the session and one of my Supplies all prepped!

http://www.justcrunch.com/wp-content/up ... 590421.jpg
http://www.justcrunch.com/wp-content/up ... scaled.jpg

I ran a session of the Sky Machine at UKGE on Sunday. It was very enjoyable and the players really got into the intrigue and backstory of the opening act.
But I have to say the current Delving mechanic just doest fit. It has a completely different feel, more like a board-game than an RPG and it was huge buzz kill. The game went from a dark and gritty sci-fi to math-rocks 101.
The main complaints were that it focused too much on the Delver, yet the dice rolls didn’t really seem to matter. Supply consumption was simply mathematical and too predicable, with no player agency. The same was felt with Blight, it was too abstract for the players to engage with, it is essentially ‘every few markers you make an amour roll and take x damage’ regardless of any decisions taken by the players.
Given that both FbL and Alien have far better resource/supply mechanics pulling one of these into the game would make far more sense. If this doesn’t change I think this will be one change I’ll be making.
In the finale the PC’s opted to shoot it out (I think driven by the near boredom by the constant and pointless feeling dice rolling of the delve) with the antagonists. The combat system is really sharp, the one action economy works really well with the hard core sci-fi.
Feel League, please re-think the Delve mechanic or it risks becoming the Ship City’s interstellar iceberg!

Hm. I think part of the issue is that they've adapted the One Ring journey rules, but in that you're passing through a varied landscape and the events are opportunities for Middle-earth to show up in the story, which if you're playing TOR is something you want. Whereas down a hole is always down a hole.

It'd be worth refocusing on what story elements and tone they want the delve to evoke. Presumably suspense and danger are among the biggest.

So some combination with the stress system from Alien, for instance. Or they could use supply dice for resources. Or spend supply points as a way to fend off other bad things. (It's a while since I read it, so that might be in there.)

And I remember from reading the QS that characters other than the delver seemed to have little to do. Again, the roles worked better in the wilderness in TOR. They could be replaced by some sort of group travel roll, with opportunities for results to indicate things happening to individuals.