The Riddle of Steel: First impressions of a newcomer.

[ZenDog]

My copy of ‘The Riddle of Steel’ arrived last Monday; I flicked through it with great interest, then started reading it in earnest from start to finish.  I finished it this morning.
I’ve been out of the hobby for a while and after a little research decided that ‘RoS’ would be my first ‘new’ RPG. I wasn’t disappointed.

RPG’s kind of live and die by their chargen, combat, magic and settings.  Of course there are other factors but these are the main ones.
None of these core elements in ‘RoS’ fail to deliver.

Chargen is great it has some really good new ideas, concept and philosophy is a great way to start chargen and the priorities really make your characters fall into place, skill packets are a wonderful idea and all games should have them.
The deal breaker for chargen though has to be the Spiritual Attributes or SA’s.  I can’t wait to see how they work out in actual play.

Combat looks quite daunting initially, but I think once I run a few mock combats it should all click into place.

Sorcery seems daunting and to be honest I didn’t find it too intuitive straight off the bat (I’m going to have to reread that chapter and mess about creating a few sorcerers and spells).

Finally the setting before getting my hands on the book, the‘RoS’ setting was one of my least anticipated aspects of the book.  I had dismissed it as stock fantasy twaddle without reading a word and was all ready gearing up to put ‘RoS’ into another setting.

Having actually read it, I have to say, by design or accident, Weyrth is a stroke of genius.  Everything in Weyrth is in shades of grey, rather than stark black and white and everything is scalable.  You can slide sorcery, magic and monsters up and down the scale until you find the ‘frequency you’re comfortable with.

Evocative is the key word all the time I read I found it sparking off my sword and sorcery obsessed imagination. So much so I’ve all ready planned two pieces of fiction based on ‘RoS’.

It’s made me do a complete U-turn on the whole Earth but not Earth type of setting. Everything is there to enjoy.  If you want Viking raiders they are there. If you want to be a Celtic Bronze Age hero it’s doable. Medieval Knight Yup. Renaissance man, Yes. Tartar horde, Cossack Hetman, Greek hoppolite, Warrior of the Jihad, Egyptian Prince.  Everything is there to play with and if you’re worried by the anachronistic nature of all these warriors living cheek by jowl, there is really no need to worry. Each kingdom is large enough to be self-contained, and its immediate neighbours are of the appropriate milieu so as not to jar your players out of suspension of disbelief. Genius.

Ok, I’m going to Roll up two characters and make them duel to the death.

[Valamir]

Save yourself some paper shuffling and download Brian's combat simulator from the web site.  Handles all of the die rolling, and if you turn the feature on it shows the rolls and where all of the modifiers come from.

Absolutely the best way to start playing with all of the Maneuvers and realizing AHHHH...so THAT'S what a Bind & Strike does...

...after a dozen battles or so you'll even begin to start figuring out when to use one...and more importantly, when not to.

[Brian Leybourne]

Ralph, remind me to hire you if I one day find I need a publicist :-)

ZD, welcome. Jake will be stoked to hear your comments, always good to get amazing feedback.

Brian.

[Valamir]

Shoot, if you 'n Jake would just start charging for the thing you could pay me a commission ;-)

[Brian Leybourne]

Nah.. people have a different expectation for something they buy as opposed to something that's free. If we've charged money for it then I have to support it, put out regular updates, etc.

That's not to say that I don't support it, I always respond when someone emails me about it etc, but it's nice to know that if I come across something that I just can't help someone with, I can always just say "Oh well, it was free anyway..." *grin*

That AI is still bubbling away in the back of my head though. One day...

Brian.

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Folks,

Just chipping in my .02 here. First off you've convinced me to pull down the combat simulator, let's hope my boss doesn't catch me doing combat simulations at work today. Secondly, I got my copy in the mail a couple of days ago and have basically felt out chargen and combat. I have to admit I bought it because I wanted to see what all the hubub was about. I also thought it would serve a niche for one of my players looking for a bit more crunch in our games. I've been very pleasantly surprised with it so far. It's going in the must play category.

The thing that struck me most was that combat's not nearly as complex as I had expected it to be. It's got great depth, but I had been expecting Rolemaster to some extent. It's definitely not. It's really elegant. I'm impressed. On top of that, it got me psyched up about a relatively crunchy game, and I'm usually a rules lite sort of guy.

-Tim

[joshua neff]

I'd also like to add that after playing a demo at GenCon two years ago, I finally got around to getting my copy of TROS. Really, really good. I've, of course, kept up with posts about it, but it's good to actually have the rules in my hand. The book is crisply written, & I very much like the Weyrth setting. The game is begging me to play it (but sadly, I'm entrenched in HeroQuest for the moment). Like HeroQuest, TROS pushes my fantasy "gee whiz" buttons in a way I haven't felt since junior high when I first got into gaming with D&D, Runequest, & Tunnels & Trolls.

Good work, guys.

[Brian Leybourne]

The thing that struck me most was that combat's not nearly as complex as I had expected it to be. It's got great depth, but I had been expecting Rolemaster to some extent. It's definitely not. It's really elegant. I'm impressed.

I think a lot of people read "realistic combat", or "crunchy combat", and especially "15 pages of hit location tables" and immediately leap to the assumption that it's Rolemasterish in its detail (exactly as you said, Tim).

But really, other than an initial What do I do and how, which you get with all RPG's really, most people I have introduced TROS combat to pick it up very quickly and then marvel at how easy and fast it is. Hell, even something like D&D3e combat is a lot more complicated with a lot more rules, and manages to come out the other end less fun, less realistic, and taking a lot longer to resolve. As do many many other RPG's.

And yeah, not to blow my own trumpet, but I think the combat sim really helps introduce folk to combat and clear up the few how does this bit work questions.

Brian.

[Thanaeon]

Okay, I've ordered my copy of RoS through mail. Really looking forward to receiving it. I just downloaded and tried the combat simulator from the website... Damn! This combat is deep!

For pretty obvious reasons, I haven't played it yet, but I'm really looking forward to it. I'd heard about the game over years, but once I read the quickstart rules was when I really got interested. Less than a week later, the order was in. (And ordered Blue Planet while at it, too.)

Good job with the game!

[Anthony I]

I'm a big fan of TROS- it's a damn fine, and elegant game.  Big suprise for me was that my current game group didn't like it- matter of fact, they hated it.  

But I can't keep myself from reading the main rule book or OBAM- I really, really like this game.  Therefore, I'm going to run TROS with another group- there is way to much crunchy goodness in this game to NOT play again.  

In my "Actual Play" post, I mentioned maybe trying to drift TROS into something that my current group would like better- but I've decided no on that route.  TROS works just fine as-is, I just need to play it with a group that wants to play that STYLE of game.

One thing I noticed that I'm sure affected the way my group reacted to TROS was by using the "doomed caravan" one shot and pregen characters.  One of the strongest parts of TROS is the chargen- especially the spiritual attributes.  The players just didn't have any ownership of the characters and didn't really care about the SAs...I think this more than anything hurt their intial impressions regarding TROS.

edited for typo

[Tywin Lannister]

Unlucky you :(
My group has taken to the game in a really positive way, exploring and using their Spiritual Attributes whenever it fits the story.

For example, in this weekend's game, one of the characters went into a fit and began accusing the other characters, using their Spiritual Attributes as a guideline for how to yell at them

("And you! You always talk about protecting the lord, but when it comes to me, the lord's own son, you just stand there!")

[Jake Norwood]

Hey all. I've been, uh, gone a while.

I, too, am starting up a new TROS game. We've got a Fahalan exile, a Ixliaphite Gifted street urchin, and a sailor. I'm basing the initial scenarios off of the Ixliaph adventure seed in the core rulebook. Some interesting SA twists have come up, such as one of the characters possibly being the parent of another, and of SAs fighting against each other. There's a lot of real conflict going on, and the adventure seed is proving to be little more than a backdrop for our soap (er, blood) opera.

For all those that have come on in the last 3 months, WELCOME ABOARD!!!

Jake