Example SA's

[Valamir]

This is incorrect sir.

Luck DOES work like every other SA in that it can be used to add die to a  roll.  It does not allow you to re-roll die (though in all honesty, it'd work about the same either way unless you rolled perfect or close initially).

The difference between Luck and the other SA's is that you can only roll your luck points once per session... that and you can permanently burn luck points for instant successes.

Or at least that's how Jake presented it when I went to a game demo he ran.  :)

Yeah, technically you're correct.  What I meant when I said it never adds dice to the combat pool is that you don't add the dice to the "bowl" of dice the way you do the others.  In every demo I've ever run with Jake he allows the luck to be rolled after the result of the roll is seen, which is, of course, better than adding them before the roll.  Once the roll is made then, we usually just pick up the failed dice on the table and rolled them for the luck.  But you're right, if all the dice are successful, you'd have to add additional dice in.

[bottleneck]

the luck/SA discussion should be moved to a new thread...

Anyway, my SA's:

Our GM has so far given us some 'predetermined' SA's, but let us make the characters more or less how we want to. Works fine.

The last party ('historic' one-shot) was on a ship voyage. PC's were

*a big Maltese knight with SA: faith:protector of christianity, con, drive:fullfill oath, loyalty:knightly order, destiny:die honorably. The oath was linked to his heirloom greatsword; his grandfather had once chopped the head off three infidels in one stroke, and the knight had sworn to do the same. (fired in combat when he declined a terrain check against three opponents...).
*merchant who was oversseing the valuable cargo, as well as his younger sister. SA: loyalty:boss, passion:sister, con, drive:get rich honorably
*bodyguard, former disgraced (for cowardice) soldier. SA: loyalty:merchant, drive:restore selfesteem (never be a coward again), passion:hate:turks...
*junior ship officer, opportunist SA: drive:become captain, loyalty:ship's captain, luck, passion:merchant's sister (at 0), passion:other chick.

swarmed by pirates; the "combat monsters" died honorably - one lost his hand when taking on three at a time, the other actually killed the (turkish) pirate captain before being torn to pieces by the crew. The merchant and the sailor, killed the traitor on their own ship, rescued the damsel and managed to swim ashore with her, wowing to get the ship back from the pirates. (i.e. decided to change their drive and passion).

So next session (if we keep the same characters), the SA's will have changed.

[Krammer]

well. . . .
  I don't really have any good examples of exceptionally good SAs, but I have an example of what you shouldn't do. At one time, there were tow players in my party that had some SA's that didn't work out too well.

For one guy: Drive: protect Magical beings
The other dude: Drive: Kill all magical beings.

Yeah, it didn't work out too well . . .
We try to get our SA's to work together a bit more now. . .

[Edge]

good o this is what i was hoping for... some good SA's here.  It's just good to see what sort of SA's people come up with. and how they play out.

Ben... how does passion: the sea, work in play
plus nsruf wanted to know about faith : things my da tole me

[silburnl]

This is really an excuse to mention the thread over on rpg.net which asks people to talk through how various games might model the fight wherein D'Artagnan introduces himself to the Three Musketeers (you know the one where the Cardinal's Guards interrupt our hero just as he's about to fight the first of his three duels - against Athos).

I mention it because the thread-starter specifically mentioned he'd like to see TRoS write-ups (and Heroquest also) and so far I haven't seen any prominent Forge-ites chipping in.

Anyway here's the thread url:

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=109299

And here are the SAs I gave D'Artagnan for the early chapters of The Three Musketeers:

Destined To Join the King's Musketeers - 2 dice
Driven To Become A Renowned Swordsman By Fighting Many Duels - 1 die
Hate The Scarred Man of Meung - 1 die
Conscience - 1 die
Luck - 2 dice

Regards
Luke
--
Edit: Ignore these // tags. Move along... nothing to see...
--

[Caz]

Definitely.  I'm too lazy to right now, but someone should.  TROS would hands down own on that thread.

[Ben Lehman]

Care to tell us how they affected play? Especially those two look unusual but very interesting:

Faith: Things my Da Tole Me
...
Passion: The Sea

BL> Sure.

Faith: Things My Da' Tole Me kicked in whenver I ran into the sea nymphs, krakens, the world serpent, or other creatures from my fathers tall stories, which actually happened surprisingly often.  Gained points when I believed my father's old stories in spite of glaring evidence to the contrary.

Passion: The Sea.  This defined my love-hate relationship with the ocean, and essentially kicked in whenever something went terribly wrong on the sea.  Gained points when I gave something up in order to go out on the sea.

yrs--
--Ben

[Malechi]

some cool examples...

I was wondering a little about Seneschals opinions on "legit" SAs.  Some background: I've been putting the nix on certain SA headers with descriptions I didn't think fell within the boundaries of the definition in the book.  But the more I read here it seems people are a lot more lax with them.  A lot of the time I'm seeing players create passions that really are more closely aligned with Drives.  People seem to confuse Passion the most in the games i'm running.  I'll have to dig up some examples but I've always assumed Passions were "Love, loyalty, hatred of a single person or entity"... now the person bit I can get,  but entity? I noticed Jake mention Passion: Swordsmanship as his own personal "SA".  Funnily enough, I would have knocked it on the head if he (well... probably not Jake personally) was playing in my game and had put that down on paper.  Straight away I would have told them it'd be a closer fit as a Drive.  

Any comments? Am I being too strict? Should I take a more liberal line on it? Or does it really matter that much whether its a Drive or a Passion?

let me know :)

cheers

Jason K.

[Ingenious]

First let me say the thoughts contained here-in are made from the viewpoint of a player.

I think limiting SA's is a bad idea.. or making them specifically fit one type or another. Aside from passions, drives, destinies, luck, conscience etc.. there are also many other forms of SA's. Though I am too lazy to explain this in any detail..

I like to roleplay my flaws, and link them to SA's as well.. which is an immensely satisfying incentive for roleplaying IMO. Again, I think that the additional scrutiny you are placing on your players Mal.. is not a good thing. That's just the way I see it.. instead of being so concerned about how your characters write their SA's or what they are.. look at how they want them to impact the storyline and how they would be used in the first place.. instead of saying 'is this a passion or a drive?' It doesnt matter.
And if you go solely with what the book says, you can only have one drive at a time.. but you can have 3 passions. In the real world it isnt completely uncommon for one to be associated with several 'drives' at once.. so why limit that eh? If a character comes up with an SA that is more like a drive than a passion, and they already have a drive.. whooooooo cares? Let them have it.

Example: Me.(not to be egotistical or anything...)
At one point in time during my life I was busy occupied with volunteering at a homeless shelter.. several youth groups.. a church group.. some mentoring.. an explorer scout group.. etc etc. These were all 'drives' that involved working in the community for a higher purpose than myself..
and some of them could be considered passions as well. Why tie your players down with your limited view of the way SA's are 'supposed' to work, or how they're 'supposed' to be defined?


YMMV. And if none of this is coherent... blame it on the beer.
-Ingenious

[Ben Lehman]

some cool examples...

I was wondering a little about Seneschals opinions on "legit" SAs.  Some background: I've been putting the nix on certain SA headers with descriptions I didn't think fell within the boundaries of the definition in the book.

BL>  In my group, we don't pay a lot of attention to the SA categories so much as "when does this fire, and when does it gain points?"  as long as everyone is interested in those situations, it's all good.

yrs--
--Ben

[silburnl]

Example: Me.(not to be egotistical or anything...)
At one point in time during my life I was busy occupied with volunteering at a homeless shelter.. several youth groups.. a church group.. some mentoring.. an explorer scout group.. etc etc. These were all 'drives' that involved working in the community for a higher purpose than myself..
and some of them could be considered passions as well.

Yeah well, if it was me playing you (!) I'd have grouped all those activities under something like:

Drive to work in the community for a higher purpose

and been pushing the GM for die in it everytime I put your interests on hold in order to do a soup run, reach out to a troubled youth or whatever.

Sounds like Faith and Conscience would be in the mix as well but Luck, Passions and Destinies aren't obvious from the outline you give.

IMO and all that of course.

Regards
Luke

[bottleneck]

And here are the SAs I gave D'Artagnan for the early chapters of The Three Musketeers:

Destined To Join the King's Musketeers - 2 dice
Driven To Become A Renowned Swordsman By Fighting Many Duels - 1 die
Hate The Scarred Man of Meung - 1 die
Conscience - 1 die
Luck - 2 dice
--

hmm... I was thinking of this just the other day!
My suggestion:

Drive: join the musketeers (to be changed when he completes this)
Passion: loyalty: the king (later: the queen)
Passion: Hate: the scarred man
Luck:
Conscience: (Honour)

no scores, as they don't "mean" anything.

As for 'renowned swordsman' and all the duels: major flaw: OVERCONFIDENT. No sane man would duel the three musketeers, but the conscience/honor SA together with the flaw 'forces' him to accept.
(Later in the books, he 'buys off' the flaw and changes his SA's)

Anyway, the drive and the loyalty to the king makes him change his mind and abort the duels to fight the cardinal's men.

[silburnl]

As for 'renowned swordsman' and all the duels: major flaw: OVERCONFIDENT.

I think I gave him that as a minor flaw (does it have a minor version?), along with the good healing major gift to represent his mother's remarkable salve.

BTW in the example I did for the rpg.net thread, I built D'Artagnan on a higher insight set of priorities (ABBCDE) to account for the fact that he's the hero of a significant work of literature.

From memory his priorities were:

A - Stats
B - Proficiencies
B - Gifts/Flaws
C - Skills (double swordsman package)
D - Social Status
E - Race

As a Gascon I gave him -1 in SOC (Gascons are somewhat unsophisticated and bull-in-a-chinashop) but +1s in ST and EN (however they're tough fighters) and a free skill in something like Intimidation to represent the reputation they have in Dumas' books.

De Jussac was a standard starting character - with the 'Hot Tempered' major flaw, no SAs applicable to the fight at the convent and a high priority in social status.

Even so the two characters are evenly matched in their combat pools and the Rapier duels I've done between them on Brian's simulator are pretty much thrust/parry-go-rounds until someone gets a lucky hit or decides to take a chance and can capitalise on a temporary superiority in dice. The exception to this is if the aggressor succeeds with a Beat on the initial pass, in which case they are usually well placed to get a free (or nearly so) shot on the second exchange if they succeed and have enough dice to Full Evade away if they lose the initiative.

D'Artagnan's stat superiority comes into play once a hit has landed. He is pretty much guaranteed a one-hit win due to his superior ST and De Jussac's average TO (and has the option of doing cuts that actually hurt his opponent) whereas De Jussac 'only' does level 2-3 wounds on the thrust and barely marks D'Artagnan on the cut.

I've also experimented a bit with giving De Jussac a Poignard and having him fight Cut and Thrust against D'Artagnan's Rapier, but so far haven't found that it does him any good. The extra options are generally DTN 7 which means that against a Rapier's Thrust/Parry DTNs of 5 they require a significant superiority in dice to pull off reliably. Possibly they give him the ability to extend and/or deepen a superiority in dice across more than one round but I haven't played through enough combats to get a feel for it yet.

Regards
Luke

[Malechi]

hey guys, can we try to keep the thread on topic a bit more eh? ;)

D'Artagwhatever is cool ..yes... example SAs are cooler though ;)

jk..

[ZenDog]

As I mentioned in my thread about first game I'm starting a game for a friend we will be playing online and one on one. Neither of us has played TRoS before I just got the rules a few months back and he'd never heard of it until I asked him if he wanted a game (he hasn't played any game in decades).

He took to the game pretty much straight away. We decide we wanted a campaign with a darkage feel so he is a Savaxen and the game will be centred around Savaxen, Picti and Angharad, with only the appropriate tech and weapons available.

For his philosophy he decided on 'It is Kill or be killed, and that's the way Woden One eye likes it.'

His personality was decided on as sarcastic and aggressive, but basically reliable and trustworthy.

He next decided that his father died in a raid, his sister was not yet of marriageable age and lives with him and their mother in what was his fathers but is now his Longhouse.

I asked him which of the neighbouring nations (or rival Savaxen clans) killed his father in the raid and he picked The Cymri.

Before he picked them, I explained what all the different SA's meant after consideration these are the SA's He came up with.

Destiny     (1)  Destroy the Cymri
Drive        (1)  Protect his family
Passion     (2)  Hate the Cymri
Luck         (2) Woden will love him for the blood and mayhem he will bring to the world
Conscience (1) He will always try and do what is right for his clan and family.

His destiny took me by surprise, I was expecting avenge farther, but that it seems is not enough for Varghoss Redbeard. He won't be happy until he is wading in Cymri dead.

It sounds hackfestish but it won't be I'm hoping his conscience and destiny will conflict for some interesting role-playing. There will be lots of inter-clan manoeuvrings and I may even have his Clan leader make peace with the Cymri just to make things more complicated for him.

I love this game, and so does my player he's just ordered The Rules and OBaM on the strength of one go at chargen and a few mins on the combat simulator software. (When I signed off, he was thrilled to have got a strike on a giant's knee after endless turns of full evaded avoiding being squashed).