I see Sine Nomine's latest RPG, Scarlet Heroes, has gone up for KS. This one is interesting as its designed to be run by itself (a B/X D&D clone) or as an overlay for any OSR RPG. Interested to know people's thoughts.
As with SWN and SD, the book looks good. The crux of it is that it's designed so you can run a single PC through existing OSR modules and use OSR material without need for any conversion.
The three main changes are:
1. Damage - PCs do damage in HD and take damage in HP. Damage dice are read so as to do 1-4 HD/HP. This turns the PC into a party in terms of damage output and damage capacity.
2. Fray Dice - each class has a Fray Dice. This is rolled in addition to any attack and the PC does that much HD damage to any opponents that are of a lower HD than the PC (the MU gets a d4 but can use this on any opponent). This allows the PC to deal with large groups like a party.
3. Defy Death - if the PC ends up a situation of certain death, such a a trap or spell, the PC can roll Defy Death and take damage instead, before assuming to survive. This damage increases per time that Defy Death is used in an adventure making it a finite resource. This provides a way to turn PC killers into something scary but not be TPKs that they become with one PC.
There are a few other things too, such as being able to multiclass in a more free 3e style (again allowing greater breadth for just one PC) and a very simple free form proficiency system, but the three above of the main ones.
It's an interesting idea. As said, you can run it straight from the book, or use the ideas with any pre-3e D&D, OSRIC, C&C, ACKS, Basic Fantasy etc. I am tempted to run my wife through Village of Hommlet 'Paksenarrion' style :) with a single PC.
Link?
What if you have 2 players?
It works fine with two players 'Fafhrd and Gray Mouse' style, but after that I think the PCs would power through most OSR modules of comparable levels with ease.
Link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1637945166/scarlet-heroes-rpg. Pledging at $10 gets you the low art Beta, which is beta than most OSR offerings as is :)
Early last year, he released sort of a mini-version of this, Black Streams: Solo Heroes for free
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/114895/Black-Streams-Solo-Heroes
Sounds like this takes the idea and fleshes it out fully.
Quote from: Skywalker;728775It works with two players 'Fafhrd and Gray Mouse' style, but after that I think the PCs would power through most OSR modules of comparable levels.
I'd agree- two hero PCs work fine, but beyond that it gets a little steamroller-ish for the typical module of a given level. It mostly has to do with the dynamics of damage given and damage taken.
Damage dice in SH are rolled exactly as they are in standard B/X- but they're
read very differently. A roll of 1 is no damage, 2-5 is 1 point, 6-9 is 2 points, and 10+ is 4 points. Thus, a 1d6 spear ends up doing anywhere from 0-2 points, and a 1d8+2 sword in the hand of a strong fighter does between 1 and 4 points. When an attack does multiple dice of damage, you just count each separately, applying any damage bonus to one die of the attacker's choice.
This damage is subtracted from a hero's HP- or from another creature's
hit dice. Thus, said strong warrior has a chance of one-shotting an ogre, and that same ogre with a 1d10+2 club can't do more than 4 HP of damage to the fighter each round.
In the same vein, heroes have a Fray die. Each round in combat, they can roll it and do that much damage to any single target of equal or fewer hit dice than they have levels. Fighters get 1d8, magic-users get 1d4 that can harm any target, and everyone else gets 1d6. You can use your Fray die even if you're not attacking that turn, as it represents bolts or smacks that you're delivering in passing as you pay attention to something else.
If damage from weapons or Fray dice overkills a target, you can spread the remainder out to another valid victim. Thus, a strong fighter with a two-handed sword that does 1d10+2 can theoretically whack up to six 1 HD enemies in a single round.
If you've got only one hero, this means they're pretty hot stuff against a single enemy, but they still can get nibbled to death by a sufficiently large pack of enemies. Still, they're tough enough that they have time to run for their lives rather than getting one-round wasted. With two heroes, you're putting out a lot of damage, but there's still only two targets to soak up the punishment you're taking- you may run less, but you're still not unstoppable. With three heroes... that's when it starts to get to be a meatgrinder for the enemies, with the heroes killing them too fast for them to mount a serious effort.
As Skywalker said, the whole thing is intended to be a stand-alone game that can also be dropped as an overlay over your own favorite old-school game when you only have one player to hand. If you liked my Solo Heroes freebie, well, this is it expanded, polished, and stacked full of GM tools and adventure tags.
A few questions from the Beta:
- if a PC doesn't have a level of Cleric, they don't have any healing ability other than resting, right?
- I assume Dex subtracts from AC like B/X D&D, but I couldn't find anything saying such. Is that an ommission caused by assumed knowledge?
- why a 2d8 for checks and saving throws? I would much prefer to use a d20 for these. If you assumed an 11 base for saving throws, it would to work OK despite losing the bell curve.
And my wife has just agreed to play Dwellers of the Forbidden City using the Scarlet Heroes Beta :D
Edit: I just saw the 2 HP recovery after a fight from bandaging rule. :)
If they have no cleric or healing potions, their two sources of healing are resting and the first aid they can perform after battle or other injury, healing up to 2 hit points of damage from their most recent fray.
It's 2d8 instead of 1d20 because heroes tend to be a lot more reliable in their primary shticks than Joe Dirtfamer. A 1st level thief with 16 Dexterity and an "Adventuring Thief: 3" trait has a +5 bonus to doing thiefy things. With a 2d8 randomization range he's very rarely going to botch any normal exercise of his talents. By the time he's 10th level, he's simply off the die for most stealth-based skill checks, and that's intentional- a 10th level thief is the Gray Mouser with an invisibility potion. Nothing short of the supernatural is going to be able to stop him from going where he wants to go.
If you use a 1d20 instead, things get a lot more unpredictable. Which may be what you want for your game, and if so, it'll work fine for checks and saving throws. Remember, though, that since non-thieves will never get more than a +6 bonus on their dice, even highly focused heroes are going to be blowing a lot of rolls.
Dexterity does indeed subtract from AC. It's listed under "Final Touches" on page 11 where it tells you to write down your AC, but there might be room to underline that somewhere else.
And a 5th level hero ought to be a fine match for the Dwellers if they're capable of some selectivity about the battles they fight. Just remind her that since she always wins initiative, a willingness to run from losing fights is a healthy thing to have.
Thanks for that. 1d20 is more unpredictable, but that is compensated somewhat by the greater upper range and higher average result. Rolling a d20 is such an ingrained procedure when playing D&D it's difficult to drop it :)
Quote from: Skywalker;728792Thanks for that. 1d20 is more unpredictable, but that is compensated somewhat by the greater upper range and higher average result. Rolling a d20 is such an ingrained procedure when playing D&D it's difficult to drop it :)
If you don't mind that extra dose of randomness, then it ought to work just fine for your table.
Quote from: SineNomine;728793If you don't mind that extra dose of randomness, then it ought to work just fine for your table.
Thanks. Will keep this in mind when playing.
One reason why Dwellers was chosen is that it has relatively high degree of freedom for the PC to pick and choose their battles :) I am expecting her to go with 4-5 levels of Fighter (maybe a touch of Thief).
I subbed to the kickstarter. I don't know that I've ever bought a Sine Nomine book that wasn't useful. Heck, I use a lot of the Stars Without Numbers stuff with my Eclipse Phase game, at least the tags.
My daughter said she wanted to try gaming, so I'm thinking Scarlet Heroes would be the perfect way to get her started.
I'm in at $20 level.
It just appealed to me, 1-on-1, OSR, etc.
I might even get the missus interested.
If you pledge at a higher level, you get a pre-release partial copy of Sine Nomine's new sandbox Mythos game, Silent Legions.
Even the partial copy you get is really, really impressive. It's already inspiring me to run a 40-K inspired SWN game, where the PCs are Inquisitors hunting down agents of the demonic and occult.
I agree with FBV; I've never been disappointed in a single product that Kevin's put out. I'm looking forward to seeing your latest.
In fact, I'm thinking that I might get my kids and wife together and run some Red Tide with it as the first thing.
Much later, after backing and downloading...
I didn't realize you wrote the setting for Red Tide! How perfect.
Sine Nomine just released a free version of this for Stars Without Numbers called Stellar Heroes, available on DriveThru. I haven't had a chance to really look through it, but at a glance it looks all kinds of awesome. It would probably be great for Jedi-style characters.
Quote from: Future Villain Band;730660Sine Nomine just released a free version of this for Stars Without Numbers called Stellar Heroes, available on DriveThru. I haven't had a chance to really look through it, but at a glance it looks all kinds of awesome. It would probably be great for Jedi-style characters.
I downloaded it last night and can't wait to read it. I've been dying to run SWoN for a good while now but keep hesitating because I have an ongoing D&D game and another waiting to be restarted. I think I could commit to something single-player, though.
I agree -- Sine Nomine has yet to put out a bad book, IMO.