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Looking for playtesters

Started by Fylond, August 12, 2022, 04:18:39 PM

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Fylond

I am looking for anyone who would be interested in participating in an online playtest and/or would be interested in giving my system some scrutiny at their own table.

The system is called Guild Lords. The niche is that the game is played in two phases, as Guild Lords who manage an Adventuring Guild and RP with the Narrator to find Quests and the like, then as Adventurers who embark on the Quests accepted by the Guild. While acting as Guild Lords the Players have a lot of economic freedom to buy, sell, and commission equipment, hire and fire Adventurers, and invest in businesses to help the Guild grow. When they accept a Quest each Player will choose 1 or 2 Adventurer(s) from the "roster" currently employed by the Guild, who they will play as until the party returns (or dies horribly). The game is dense, with rules to support hexcrawling, dungeoneering, Loot generation, managing a Guild, and of course combat.

I would call it OSR, but it is not directly inspired by any specific system.

I have it completely written as a proof of concept, but it needs the kinks workes out.
I am human

Cerberus

Sounds like a lot of fun. Unfortunately I can't guarantee that I would be able to play online due to my chaotic schedule that likely won't be resolved til the end of the year. I would still love to help out if I can.

How does the recruiting of adventurers work though? Do the players have their own pool of created characters or does everyone have access to the same list? Also, what types of dice are used to play this? I think it would help me get a clearer picture of what I'm dealing with here if I could have the answers to these questions.

Fylond

Not a problem. I'd be willing to share the PDF for later reference if you are interested.

Recruitment has two methods, attracting Errants and Hirelings. Errants have a chance to be "attracted" to the Guild based on how much "Prestige" the Guild is earning (which is a progression system for the Guild). When an Errant is attracted the Players get to make a new character and the chance to attract another one resets.
Hirelings can be freely recruited during downtime. So if the Players feel like they need two more Adventurers, they can just go ahead and make two new Hirelings.
The difference between the two is that Errants don't get paid, they recieve a portion of the Loot after a Quest is completed. Hirelings demand money and if the Players stop paying them the Hirelings are supposed to leave the Guild, which makes them much less reliable than Errants.
The character generation process has the Players roll for Attributes, pick a race, pick 4 skills, and purchase Racial Abilities with a randomized pool of EXP (any EXP not spent on racial abilities can be spent on extra levels) Then they pick a suit of armor and a weapon for the Adventurer to start with (each worth 400 Coin or less).

There isn't an explicit rule on sharing characters. I personally don't care whether characters are shared or kept in player specific pools as the system isn't affected either way, so I plan to leave that decision up to each group. Some groups seem to able to swap without breaking immersion/party dynamics, others can't or don't like it.

The core dice system uses 1d12 + dice ranging between d2s to d10s. The base die used in all rolls is a d12, and the other dice come from Attributes, Skills, and abilities. When rolling between characters victory goes to the highest total. When rolling against the "Situation" the GM rolls 1d12 + a modifier based on the risk associated with the situation.
I am human

Cerberus

Sure, if you already have a PDF put together then I would be happy to look it over.

The difference between Errants and Hirelings makes me think of Retainers and Hirelings from older editions of dnd, which might have been your inspiration. Speaking of which, would you consider Guild Lords to be an OSR game? It's not a big deal to me either way, it would just let me know what other sorts of things I could mod it with.

Also, how many players would you recommend for playing this?