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 Fellowship is a game about actually going on an adventure and saving the day from an evil Overlord. One player is the Overlord, and the rest are the Fellowship of heroes who have banded together to stop them. Fellowship is now available for sale! gnome7 fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Apr 8, 2016 |
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Sep 5, 2015 15:53
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Cyphoderus posted:This looks super interesting. Absolutely. Reskinning is a major part of it - I really wanted to get away from every elf being a tolkien Elf. The Elf playbook lets you place as a merfolk or a space alien just as well as it does the traditional forest dweller. The commonality all Elves have is they're really good at the basic move Get Away, and they have a few weird abilities others mistake for magic. There is an outline for what they have and what they do but the fluff of how they do it is very open ended, and there are explicitly options for being veeeery different. All of these are level 1 Elf possibilities:  Tree man, Merfolk riding a hermit crab, alien with a laser-bow, and tiny fairy are all very within the playbooks' realm.
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Sep 5, 2015 16:48
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100% entirely because of this tweet by my good friend Clove: https://twitter.com/cloveochai/status/626519324992385024
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Sep 5, 2015 16:59
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On the topic of playtesting and playing this game, the kickstarter preview versions are not under any kind of NDA, so feel free to talk about rules, post anything from the book, or even host a public pbp. It's fair game now.
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Sep 5, 2015 17:37
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potatocubed posted:How close is the preview pdf to the final design? The previews are complete, excepting any changes as a result of feedback. The exceptions are: Every playbook has a few moves omitted because I'm a jerk like that. None of the moves you need in order to play them are omitted - just some of their Custom moves, half of their People moves, and half of their Fellowship moves. What's there is perfectly playable, just missing some choices. Chapter 4 is super bare bones because I've barely written any of it. That chapter will be around 20-30 pages of just first session and starting advice, and part of the delay on it is that I'm waiting on playtest feedback for how first sessions go to figure out what works best. Half of the Destinies in Chapter 5 are incomplete and only have a title/basic move. This is because their other halves are not written yet, it's on the to-do list. Chapter 7 needs to be a lot beefier, with more threats and more Set Pieces. It's something I plink at as I go, throwing in a thing or two as I think of them, so there'll be more there in the final version. Nothing is missing right now though - what's there is what I've got so far. In related-to-playbooks news, I've put up a kickstarter update with some pictures I wanted to share.  Golden Bee posted:Are you gonna run a playtest game? It was a big hit when Spirit of 77 did it. (And I ended up attending 6 subsequent adventure playtests...) Yeah actually, I'll be running a game with Six Feats Under next weekend, and it'll go up on their podcast before the end of the month. I'll be sure to link it everywhere once it is.
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Sep 5, 2015 19:27
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Yes that's intentional. I only use a separate 10+ when the 10+ success result is different from what you'd get on a 7-9. So when a move says "On a 7+" and then "On a 7-9," you do both things on a 7-9 result. Honestly I wanted to do it a lot more, and probably could with some creativity, but it wouldn't be too meaningfully different from what's there already.
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Sep 5, 2015 19:51
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Sailor Viy posted:This looks cool but the way you have organised your information in the kickstarter seems a little odd to me. It's strange that you have previews of set pieces and destinies but nothing more basic like, say, a preview playbook or a summary of the rules. Overall the description is a bit vague for someone who knows nothing about the game before they click on the KS page. I've gotten this feedback a couple times, so I edited the main description of the game a bit. Hopefully that should help things out some. Also, 
gnome7 fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Sep 7, 2015 |
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Sep 7, 2015 00:45
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Benly posted:I'd like to run the preview version with some friends who are kind of on the fence about backing. Would it be acceptable to pass the link around/Dropbox the preview files, or do they have to suck up the dollar each? Nah, feel free to share it. The official legal text on the PDF is "Do Not Distribute Too Much". A little is okay.
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Sep 7, 2015 03:49
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Sailor Viy posted:Looks much better now. Congrats on getting funded. There haven't been nearly enough games of fellowship for a "standard" number of sessions to become apparent. I have no honest idea! It'll take quite a few just to get a Destiny going, the game is designed to be long-running. I'd say an absolute minimum of 6 sessions. I have no idea what an upper limit or average number would be. Daeren posted:I just want to say that I finished running a nearly year-long game of Inverse World yesterday, and two players called it the best roleplaying experience they've ever had, even though we ended up playing a little loose with the rules by the end on accident. I've shown them all Fellowship and they've all gotten hype as gently caress for it. I've been waiting to back this since that storify chain of tweets a few months ago, and hope this poo poo gets the mad money it deserves This is very encouraging to hear! I am glad you had such a good time with Inverse World, and I can only hope you are equally pleased with Fellowship.
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Sep 7, 2015 06:07
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homullus posted:
Well in the game I played this weekend, the fellowship were a bunch of rum-runners who found out the overlord's minions were elementally weak to alcohol, so now they're saving the world with booze. Also their moonshine is made from actual moonbeams plucked out of the night sky, because it was cool.
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Sep 9, 2015 03:21
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JesterOfAmerica posted:I've backed I kept the weirdest and most interesting moves visible and blocked out what was left, to give the illusion that every move is clever and interesting. Now, this isn't to say the hidden moves are less good. I just thought I'd do better showing off the weird things you could take rather than the moves to make you the Dwarfiest Dwarf to ever Dwarf, because you already know there's gonna be moves to do that. I also kept every move listed as a requirement for one of the Destinies in the rulebook, so you could use those if you managed to power through like 10 sessions with your friends before the kickstarter ends and you get the full PDF. sentrygun posted:I really like the idea behind Overlord on the whole, and 'cuts' is an excellent term to use that really helps put me in the mindset of how GM moves are expected to be used in a cinematic style. It doesn't really change anything about moves, but just framing it that way immediately gives me a ton of ideas where I always had trouble following how soft and hard moves are supposed to hit when I did stuff in Dungeon World. It's weird because that was an actual last-minute change before the kickstarter launch, but its one of those things that's just so fitting in retrospect. It came about when I realized just how confusing it was that the Overlord had Moves from their playbook, but also the GM Moves from Dungeon World, and that was a really bad terminology clash. The GM Moves needed renaming, especially since the Overlord isn't quite the full GM role. It took me a while but then I thought of Cuts, like scene-change Cuts, and it really stuck with me and now it's too good to change. My favorite bit was getting to change the definition from "GM Moves are how you influence and control the world around the players" to "Cuts are narrative weaponry you wield to destroy them with." Also "Hard Cuts" and "Soft Cuts" are really nice terms that I enjoy saying way more than Hard Moves / Soft Moves.
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Sep 11, 2015 21:48
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First things first: The Mask rules, that is a good first fan playbook right there. Second, a pretty big kickstarter update just went up. To everyone worried about only getting one vote, I got your back. I've got your back like, six times.
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Sep 22, 2015 01:03
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JesterOfAmerica posted:Would he alternate Overlord be something that still might occur in its own pdf sometime down the line if its not funded? Its sounds pretty cool It might, but it's not definite. A lot of the voter playbooks may happen anyway, but they probably won't have nearly so nice art because art costs money and this kickstarter is basically all of my income for the next while. I want to keep writing for Fellowship and it'll definitely be something I might write a small thing for between other projects, but once I'm done with everything from the kickstarter I'll probably move on to something else. I've got like, 3 other games partially written and at least two of them are really really good so one of those would be next after this. So it's a very tall Maybe, and an alt-Overlord is definitely the hardest of these stretch goals to fulfill so its pretty low on the list of things that will get made if we don't fund it. And anything that I do make extra for Fellowship after the kickstarter would be a separate release that would cost money. Higher on the list for things I'd make later would be to convert Inverse World over to Fellowship's ruleset, with another alt-Overlord playbook - the Horizon. The Horizon would be a non-hostile entity representing the dangers of exploration and the thrill of discovery, with an eventual "defeat" caused by the players finding the thing that puts their names in the history books and gets them a happy retirement. It'd also have a few changed up basic moves/rules/principles to go with the change in perspective from "fighting evil" to "exploring the world". This was also gonna be a stretch goal for the KS at like, 40k or something, but that isn't going to happen so. Might as well mention it here.
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Sep 22, 2015 18:50
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I'm testing a website for running the Fellowship poll after the KS ends, for when we get to those voter tiers (we're definitely hitting at least one at this rate). I'd like as many votes thrown at this thing as possible, feel free to share the link around: http://www.demochoice.org/dcgridhballot.php?poll=Fellowtest This list of potential playbooks for the vote is near-final, I might add one more if I get a good suggestion from somebody but otherwise this'll be the list.
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Sep 25, 2015 01:35
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Of the voter ones? I think The Spider is my pet favorite, but The Pair is the one I like the most from a conceptual level. But I didn't put anything on the list I didn't like, and I have ideas for all of them. I was actually just working today on writing up a move or two for each concept so there'd be something more solid to vote on come next week.
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Oct 4, 2015 00:06
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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1552912590/fellowship-a-tabletop-adventure-game/posts/1372502 Final kickstarter update before funding is over! This one is full of previews for the next draft of the book, you don't want to miss it. We're in the last 8 hours now, and it's been a fantastic campaign. Thanks all!
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Oct 4, 2015 22:12
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I am absolutely no good at general advice questions like this. There's so many different ways to go and sometimes you just need to take a design decision and stick with it. Number one thing I've learned, though: Question everything. Ask yourself "Why is this in my game" about every, single, thing. If you cannot answer that question, remove it. You don't need it. Do something else. Second question: "What purpose does this have? Is it fulfilling that purpose?" If you cannot answer the first question, remove it. If you say "no" or "not quite" to that second question, change it. Sometimes you won't be able to answer this question until playtesting, and that's okay. That's what it's for. Number two thing I've learned: Sometimes you need to stop tinkering and just release the thing. Otherwise you'll just sit on it forever and it won't get finished.
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Oct 6, 2015 02:11
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I have no idea! I ran a test poll a couple weeks ago. The results are over but you should still be able to access the poll and throw in a fake ballot: http://www.demochoice.org/dcballot.php?poll=Fellowtest If you can access that via model, then yes. If not, then maybe I'll extend it a couple days for anyone who was gone over the weekend. I didn't even think about canadian thanksgiving; the USA's Thanksgiving is still six weeks away.
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Oct 6, 2015 17:15
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The Overlord's ruling on being hit with a Destroy Them result is in their Threats to the World move: "Your Threats to the World also function as your stats. When you would take damage or be destroyed, you damage one of your Threats, and you lose that threat until you heal." All it does is damage them - the main difference between the 10+ and 7-9 results against the Overlord are that you don't lose your advantage. You use Get Away when you want to escape a situation. You use Overcome when you need to prevent harm. So if you're dodging through a dangerous place, you need to Overcome the harm the place is throwing at you to get through. You'd roll to Get Away if you decided to turn around and leave, or duck and hide until the problem goes away (which probably wouldn't work in the clocktower example). UNLESS, you have the Squire's Run For It move, which lets you Get Away by running right past or right through the danger. If you need a catch-all move for doing something risky, roll Overcome to prevent the harm of the risky maneuver. The fellowship should form bonds with each other basically whenever feels right, yes. You should be doing it regularly. For the Overlord, they have different rules for Forging Bonds - they Forge a Bond with a player whenever they cause serious harm to them, and they form a Bond with NPCs when they level up. For the fellowship, forging their own bonds with the Overlord does not inherently come with any downsides and could, in fact, be a source of power and leverage against them. So that's worth doing.
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Oct 8, 2015 16:53
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The more I think on it the more the pit example just isn't good. SO. TIME TO RETHINK IT SOME. So the five basic moves for getting through a problem are: Finish Them: To attempt to defeat or get rid of something forever. Overcome: To react to danger. Keep Them Busy: To proactively stall danger. Get Away: To run away from or avoid danger. Talk Sense: To ask for help/convince someone to do something for you. So for the pit example, Get Away is the best answer. You aren't Finishing It because it's still gonna be there, it'll still be in everyone else's way, and you might need to deal with it again on the way back. You would instead Overcome it if the pit, say, suddenly opened up underneath you and you needed to do something to prevent the fall from seriously harming you. But leaping over it is Get Away, and the only option you need to pick to succeed is to get there Quickly, Avoiding Harm. I'll need to change up and possibly extend that sidebar about this. gnome7 fucked around with this message at 07:56 on Oct 29, 2015 |
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Oct 9, 2015 17:34
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The Fellowship Voter Poll for backers is now up. There is a kickstarter update you should check out to get in on that.
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Oct 9, 2015 20:29
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Impermanent posted:Is it too late to commission the guy who did the placeholder art to do more stuff in the margins of the rulebook? They've already done some of the other art in the book, specifically, these pieces:    But I am always up for paying them for more art, so maybe some margin squiggles could be fun. Impermanent posted:If the beta poll was anything to go by, we're likely getting constructed, hatchling and pair. The beta poll was also basically a poll of just this forum and a couple of my friends. I have no idea how the larger population will affect it, that's about 700 more people potentially voting on it. The beta poll only had a final total of 50ish votes, it isn't very conclusive evidence of anything.
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Oct 9, 2015 21:49
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Scrree posted:I Overlorded last night for my siblings and some friends - none of us have much experience with tabletop rpgs, but overall it went pretty well. I didn't have much prep time, but coming up with a basic concept for the overlord (a giant who slew his own god and now views the whole world as his to claim) and then presenting it and brainstorming connections with the players worked really well and was a lot of fun. We jumped right from character creation to combat against two groups of basic enemies, which took awhile and wasn't super challenging, but gave a good intro to the party. Yeah, the name describes the benefits the companion can bring to the field. When being zippy quick can help you out, you can damage the stat and it'll give you that benefit. quote:The way we read the 'Bonds that Bind Us' move was that the player using it gave up their 'turn' so that the person they're helping could roll with hope, but reading the description again makes me think we basically got it completely wrong, and anyone making a move with another member close by enough to help should be getting the benefit. Is the Fellowship working together basically always supposed to be rolling with Hope unless I as the Overlord separate and distract them? The way the move works is if two players are doing the same thing together, only one of them rolls, and they roll with Hope. So if someone is rolling to Keep Them Busy and another player steps in to help also Keep Them Busy, you roll with Hope instead of having each player roll separately to keep the same guy busy. quote:When I Deal Damage to a fellowship member, I am in charge of which stat is damaged by using the fiction ('Your leg gets stabbed, take damage to grace') and the other player can only choose to absorb the blow with armor or negate it with healing. Likewise, I determine which threat they damage on a monster (stat they damage on a threat? the terms for enemies are a little confusing) unless they're using a weapon with the piercing tag, right? Correct. Unless their move lets them decide what to damage, the Overlord decides which stat makes sense to damage. quote:Do you have any tricks for presenting threats to the players? Just trying to describe all the stats a group of wolves or soldiers have can get pretty wordy. The main solution I've had for this is to just put the stats out on the table for them to read, which isn't ideal when the book is only in PDF format right now. Saying them all aloud is definitely a bit wordy - a quick solution would be to tell them what stats it has, and only go into what the stats do as they come up. The names should be pretty good at letting you know roughly what something is capable of, and if they are not, that's something I can improve.
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Oct 10, 2015 08:12
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Reminder to vote on that playbook poll if you haven't yet. There's over 800 backers and less than 400 votes in.
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Oct 12, 2015 23:38
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Yeah, it'll be up for sale at the exact same moment for backers and non-backers.
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Oct 13, 2015 20:36
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Arashiofordo3 posted:Hey gnome, any way that we might see these other playbooks that weren't voted in in the future? I was especially interested in what you were going to do with the pair. It's such an interesting concept that I don't think I've seen done in any other playbook. Certainly not as the main focus. Yes absolutely, I'm gonna write The Spider and the Pair for sure. But it'll be after these other three, and they'll be sold separately, while the Dragon, Remnant, and Constructed are going to be sent straight out to backers free of charge upon completion. The funded playbooks will also be available for sale later, in the same way all my Dungeon World playbooks are, but backers will get them free.
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Oct 14, 2015 18:07
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Probably Hill Giant, Ents seem a populous folk. A case could be made for Cloud Giants if you wanted magic tree sap that gives super strength and healing.
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Oct 15, 2015 07:32
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For the moment the rules are backers only, my apologies.
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Oct 16, 2015 05:48
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I kinda wish there was a halfway point between Patreon and Kickstarter for things like this. Like a development-long fundraiser. I've had at least 10 people mention wanting to back this project after only finding it after it was finished. Basically, I'd want a Kickstarter without an end date - people buy a tier, the money is processed immediately, and then they immediately get access to the current rules draft, and the project would just stay open until the project was fulfilled. That'd be nice. Anyway, production process nitpicking aside, I do love writing games. It lets me do fun things like my bonus playbook Destiny outlines here: 
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Oct 16, 2015 09:07
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Scrree posted:Would you say that the advice from the DM's guide in the Dungeon World thread works with this game? I discovered this thread/game randomly and have been crawling backwards through the DW thread after realizing they're based on the same system, so I'm curious if you think there are any major differences in advice between games. Most of that advice applies yes. There's a few differences but I feel like I did a pretty thorough job describing everything in the Overlord chapter, so give that a close reading. Of course, chapter 4 will be basically filled with advice but I haven't written it yet. If you feel like anything's missing on that front, let me know so I can squeeze it in to chapter 4.
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Oct 18, 2015 04:09
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Not only that, but the Apprentice move is actually worse than the common move! Whoops. That's an oversight for sure. The Bonds That Bind Us was changed in this most recent draft, I'll be re-writing or replacing Apprentice for the next one.
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Oct 21, 2015 01:31
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Quick errata for The Squire:  I've also entirely removed their "you also get a Gear option from Your People" from their Gear, because they aren't anybody's people anymore so that doesn't make sense. And they don't really need it either - that option was mostly a stopgap because the Squire had some fairly boring Gear for a long time, but I don't think that's true anymore in the current draft and hasn't been true for a long while. I mean it isn't as exciting as the Dwarf or Orc gear, but the Squire also isn't a playbook about having stuff to succeed. It's what's in your heart that matters more to the Squire.
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Oct 21, 2015 06:39
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xian posted:Just popping in to say that this game looks awesome and confirm that there's no way for me to donate after missing the kickstarter. I'm considering a few different options but right now no, there is no way to donate or get the materials late at this time. Sorry about that. Late backer stuff is a huge hassle that I am not equipped to deal with again.
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Oct 28, 2015 03:00
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Realtalk, just give them two characters. Or maybe three! Make it The Fellowship Player vs. The Overlord Player.
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Nov 7, 2015 19:20
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Kaja Rainbow posted:EDIT: Also, I'm curious who that character is in your avatar. It is a redesign of the Touhou character Kyouko Kasodani, and the redesign is from the touhou fangame Desire Driven. It is quite good and she is quite cute. For a minor update, to make this post on topic, I've been pretty slow on working on the book recently due to the holidays, but I should have a new version of the book up in January, with that errata and some other new stuff. Also I've got a sketch for the Halflings painting that I am quite happy with:  If all goes well I'll have a full color version to show off for the December kickstarter update. gnome7 fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Dec 15, 2015 |
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Dec 15, 2015 04:40
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Funny you should ask, because I was just in the middle of writing up an update for the kickstarter when you posted that! So check that out. I posted a bunch of new Threats and a new Set Piece, along with the Halflings painting, which is quite good IMO. Here, have another Threat preview, just for you, TradGames: 
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Jan 19, 2016 19:43
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It will be available in both hardcover and softcover, a month or two after being available in PDF. The Softcover version will be $25 and the hardcover will run you $50. The main reason for the delay between PDF and print is that printing it requires a few more steps and uploading it in PDF form is one of the first steps involved, so it costs nothing to also put it up for sale in PDF form at that time.
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Jan 21, 2016 21:08
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The newest PDF draft is now available to backers! Go check your emails.
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Jan 24, 2016 03:30
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Thanks for letting me know! I have now fixed the link.
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Jan 24, 2016 03:45
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Loki_XLII posted:Thanks for writing the when to use Basic Moves section, it's really helpful. One thing I didn't think of before, though: Talking Sense is for when you want to get them to do something for you this one time. You'll usually Talk Sense against an enemy when you want to talk them down from combat, convince them that something else is more important right now, or you just want to cut a deal. Talking Sense is that moment where you go "Whoa whoa, hold up, let's talk about this." You Finish Them with Wisdom when you don't want them to do anything in particular, you just want them to stop hurting you. There is some overlap with Talking Sense to talk them down, but you can't Finish Them without some kind of advantage, which Talking Sense could buy you. Generally, trying to "kill em with kindness" is a long process, especially if they were trying to hurt you. You can't really do it unless you're in a position to, which is probably harder to engineer than most other kinds of Finish Them rolls. An example of when you'd straight roll to Finish Them is if a wolf was biting on your arm, and your response is to go "shh, shhh" and start petting them, calming them down, and then you roll to Finish Them with Wisdom to de-escalate the fight. You can't (usually) Talk Sense with a wild creature, so in that case cutting straight to Finishing Them is reasonable. For trying to Finish Them against someone who actively hates you or wants to hurt you, you'd probably have to do it by like, treating their wounds while they were dying or saving them from some kind of trauma. Something big and decisive to get them to maybe rethink what they're doing. It's a bit harder to engineer but probably worth it for the chance to gain an ally, and the Squire definitely has the best odds of doing it thanks to their Fast Friends ability. Covok posted:I really like what you did with this iteration, but I just have one complaint on the player game handout. I feel that the font on Finish Them might be a little too small. I haven't printed out to check, but it looks like it would be hard to read. Yeah I'm a bit worried about that too. I'll probably need to re-do the formatting on that print out and put it onto two brochures and not one. I have plans for similar reasons to make the Overlord playbook 6 pages.
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Jan 24, 2016 20:37
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