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After probably decades of looking for my perfect set of fantasy RPG rules, I finally found what I believe is the single most elegant system I've ever seen.
This is crafted with so much insight it blows my mind. Loved it so much, I had to leave my first ever review of a game.
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Trauma |
by JD S. [Verified Purchaser]
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Date Added: 02/23/2022 02:30:18 |
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You can't beat the page count or the depth of detail. This is not an expansion for the faint of heart; but for those willing to put in the time, it will produce a gaming experience that is unmatched.
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Crimson Exodus and the Fantasy Dice System is quite simply; exactly what I have been looking for to take my RPG gaming to the next level. I have been playing Fantasy RPGs for over 30 years, and I have played a tremendous number of different systems. Of them all, the only one that really takes me into the story with just the right amount of crunch is Fantasy Dice. For the last 15 years I have been running an Epic Fantasy Campaign using the Rolemaster system, and while I loved the variety and detail, I came to loathe the plethora of books and tables that the system requires. But I could not find a system to switch to that gave me what I needed. Until I found Fantasy Dice. With one very simple mechanic, any skill can be chosen and used by any player simply, quickly, and easily. But what if you want to use two skills in conjunction, say Acrobatics and your spear. Claus Bornich has created a simple system for doing that as well. And it won't require you to look up a bunch of stuff in a rulebook. The base mechanic behind Fantasy Dice/Crimson Exodus is simple and elegant. Your attributes determine how many dice you will be able to roll. Your skills are based on which dice you will roll. When you increase your ability with a skill, you move up a die size. So you start out with d4, and can upgrade to d6, d8, d10, or all the way up to d12. You will spend your experience points to upgrade your skills. Again, simple, and easy. So if you have a skill of d8 and the associated attribute is 3, your base roll is 3d8. If you have the needed specialty of the skill you are using, you gain a bonus die, so in this example your base roll would be 4d8. That brings me to the next elegant mechanic of Fantasy Dice/Crimson Exodus, scaling. You are allowed to scale your roll to move up to a higher sided die, or down to a lower sided die. How it is done is again, simple and elegant. Want to move up to d10s? Simply drop one die and roll d10s instead of d8s. Maybe you are using a skill in which the associated attribute is very low, like 1 or 2. So you might have a roll of 2d8 even with a specialty. Want to roll more dice? OK, you can scale down to d6s and roll an extra, so now that 2d8 becomes a 3d6. But why would you want to scale down your roll? Every roll (skill use) has a target number of 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 etc. If you need a 4 for example and are only rolling 1 or 2 dice, there is a chance that you won't get it. But if you scale your roll down and roll more lower dice, the chance of all of them coming up low is much reduced. This translates into your character being more careful, while scaling up, is your character trying as hard as he or she can to do a great job at his task. Simple, Easy. But what if you really need a really high roll and failure is not an option? Let me introduce you to Trigger Points. With the Fantasy Dice system, every character has three aspirations: An Immediate Aspiration, A Grand Aspiration, and a Counter Aspiration. These are chosen by the Players and can be anything at all. Since these Aspirations are part of the core of the character they can be used as inspiration in Roleplaying the character. And when you really need to do something extraordinary you can invoke one of your aspirations (but it must really tie into your aspiration). This is what Trigger Points are for. Each character has a certain number of Trigger Points, and at a Trigger Point reload they receive one less than their maximum. So what happens to all of those left over Trigger Points? They are given to the Gamemaster, heh, heh, heh. So the Gamemaster starts the game with one point for each of the players in his game. I can best explain how these work by a couple of examples from my own game. One of the characters who is a former Captain of a slave army allowed himself to be captured in order to start a slave revolt from the inside. While talking to his equal in the castle, he chose to use the skill Dominate, specifically the specialties Intimidate, and Command. He invoked his Grand Aspiration of freeing his people from bondage, and used two Trigger Points to take the maximum result of a scaled roll, and came out with a 12. It was an opposed roll, and I rolled 10 for the rival Captain. Pretty good roll, but his 12 gave him a normal success. He laid his cards on the table, and said "Do you realize what is about to happen? There is going to be a revolution, and you need to decide which side you are on." With his success, the Captain chose to join the rebels and his first duty in the revolution was completed. Awesome use of Trigger Points and led to spectacular roleplaying. What about the Gamemaster? Well, after a long drawn out wrestling match in the canopy of a forest, one of my players used his Acrobatics to jump onto his opponent and yank my NPC scout off his perch in the treetops, causing them both to fall to the forest floor. Again, using his Acrobatics and the required Trigger Points, the player maneuvered himself to break his fall by landing on top of my scout, breaking his pelvis. I invoked his Aspiration of completing his scouting mission by any means possible, and spent a Trigger Point so that became "Not as Bad as it looks" Still a Nasty wound, but not the debilitating injury that it could have been by the dice results. The spent Trigger Point went back to the players. There are many other awesome things about the Fantasy Dice system, such as Life Paths that your characters walk which gives them special abilities that only they have. Characters can choose multiple paths if they want to, or can specialize on one Path that they want to master. Choose Way of the Beast, and your character will be at one with animals and the wilderness. As your character progresses, he can choose more aspects of his path by spending Hero Points that he earns as he roleplays his character. I have completely converted my campaign to Fantasy Dice, and my players are enjoying it tremendously. We haven't lost any of the crunch that we loved from Rolemaster, but we have done away with all of those tables and Rulebooks. That brings me to another thing that I absolutely love about the Fantasy Dice/Crimson Exodus system. It is so easy to adapt to whatever your Fantasy World requires. I was able to adapt it to work with all of our existing Rolemaster characters relatively easily, and that was a task I was dreading. Fantasy Dice made it easy. And that was quite a nice surprise. Because the mechanics are so simple, making adaptations is simple as well, and does not break the game, which is always a concern with most RPG Systems. I could go on all day, and wax fantastic about how great Fantasy Dice is. But instead I encourage you to grab your own copy. and while you are at it, check out the new 2nd Edition of Crimson Exodus which is Claus Bornich's setting for the Fantasy Dice system. It is an awesome setting, and it comes with the latest version of the Fantasy Dice system including some new optional mechanics.
By the way, Claus Bornich the creator of this product is an awesome guy. I have spoken to him directly, and even made some suggestions. Imagine my surprise when I saw some of my suggestions show up in the 2nd Edition of Crimson Exodus. Not only is Claus a great person, he really listens to his customers and that is something that is really, really cool.
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Trauma |
by Elsje F. [Verified Purchaser]
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Date Added: 01/21/2016 11:12:21 |
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If you're looking to add a little extra verisimilitude (and tons of gory details) to your roleplaying combat then Trauma's definitely the book for you. It's written with the developer's own "Fantasy Dice" system in mind, but can be adapted to any other system with relative ease (and there are notes on the Radical Approach website for conversion to some common systems, including D20, GURPs, and World of Darkness).
There's a huge amount of information crammed into the book's 189 pages, so it's easy to get overwhelmed if you're not careful. I recommend picking and choosing only the parts you want to include in your game rather than trying to adopt absolutely everything (unless you're of a particularly simulationist bent). Surviving a brutal fight with a dozen orcs only to die of gangrene a couple days later might be medically accurate, but is probably going to be unsatisfying for your players (again, unless they signed up for a really hardcore simulation). Still, used with moderation, it's an excellent resource not just as a wound system but also to give you ideas for descriptions during and after combat. There is also enough colourful flavour text to avoid it becoming an overly dry medical textbook. I would definitely recommend picking it up!
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Crimson Exodus and the Fantasy Dice System is quite simply; exactly what I have been looking for to take my RPG gaming to the next level. I have been playing Fantasy RPGs for over 30 years, and I have played a tremendous number of different systems. Of them all, the only one that really takes me into the story with just the right amount of crunch is Fantasy Dice. For the last 15 years I have been running an Epic Fantasy Campaign using the Rolemaster system, and while I loved the variety and detail, I came to loathe the plethora of books and tables that the system requires. But I could not find a system to switch to that gave me what I needed.
Until I found Fantasy Dice. With one very simple mechanic, any skill can be chosen and used by any player simply, quickly, and easily. But what if you want to use two skills in conjunction, say Acrobatics and your spear. Claus Bornich has created a simple system for doing that as well. And it won't require you to look up a bunch of stuff in a rulebook.
The base mechanic behind Fantasy Dice/Crimson Exodus is simple and elegant. Your attributes determine how many dice you will be able to roll. Your skills are based on which dice you will roll. When you increase your ability with a skill, you move up a die size. So you start out with d4, and can upgrade to d6, d8, d10, or all the way up to d12. You will spend your experience points to upgrade your skills. Again, simple, and easy. So if you have a skill of d8 and the associated attribute is 3, your base roll is 3d8. If you have the needed specialty of the skill you are using, you gain a bonus die, so in this example your base roll would be 4d8.
That brings me to the next elegant mechanic of Fantasy Dice/Crimson Exodus, scaling. You are allowed to scale your roll to move up to a higher sided die, or down to a lower sided die. How it is done is again, simple and elegant. Want to move up to d10s? Simply drop one die and roll d10s instead of d8s. Maybe you are using a skill in which the associated attribute is very low, like 1 or 2. So you might have a roll of 2d8 even with a specialty. Want to roll more dice? OK, you can scale down to d6s and roll an extra, so now that 2d8 becomes a 3d6.
But why would you want to scale down your roll? Every roll (skill use) has a target number of 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 etc. If you need a 4 for example and are only rolling 1 or 2 dice, there is a chance that you won't get it. But if you scale your roll down and roll more lower dice, the chance of all of them coming up low is much reduced. This translates into your character being more careful, while scaling up, is your character trying as hard as he or she can to do a great job at his task. Simple, Easy. But what if you really need a really high roll and failure is not an option?
Let me introduce you to Trigger Points. With the Fantasy Dice system, every character has three aspirations: An Immediate Aspiration, A Grand Aspiration, and a Counter Aspiration. These are chosen by the Players and can be anything at all. Since these Aspirations are part of the core of the character they can be used as inspiration in Roleplaying the character. And when you really need to do something extraordinary you can invoke one of your aspirations (but it must really tie into your aspiration).
This is what Trigger Points are for. Each character has a certain number of Trigger Points, and at a Trigger Point reload they receive one less than their maximum. So what happens to all of those left over Trigger Points? They are given to the Gamemaster, heh, heh, heh. So the Gamemaster starts the game with one point for each of the players in his game.
I can best explain how these work by a couple of examples from my own game. One of the characters who is a former Captain of a slave army allowed himself to be captured in order to start a slave revolt from the inside. While talking to his equal in the castle, he chose to use the skill Dominate, specifically the specialties Intimidate, and Command. He invoked his Grand Aspiration of freeing his people from bondage, and used two Trigger Points to take the maximum result of a scaled roll, and came out with a 12. It was an opposed roll, and I rolled 10 for the rival Captain. Pretty good roll, but his 12 gave him a normal success. He laid his cards on the table, and said "Do you realize what is about to happen? There is going to be a revolution, and you need to decide which side you are on." With his success, the Captain chose to join the rebels and his first duty in the revolution was completed. Awesome use of Trigger Points and led to spectacular roleplaying.
What about the Gamemaster? Well, after a long drawn out wrestling match in the canopy of a forest, one of my players used his Acrobatics to jump onto his opponent and yank my NPC scout off his perch in the treetops, causing them both to fall to the forest floor. Again, using his Acrobatics and the required Trigger Points, the player maneuvered himself to break his fall by landing on top of my scout, breaking his pelvis. I invoked his Aspiration of completing his scouting mission by any means possible, and spent a Trigger Point so that became "Not as Bad as it looks" Still a Nasty wound, but not the debilitating injury that it could have been by the dice results. The spent Trigger Point went back to the players.
There are many other awesome things about the Fantasy Dice system, such as Life Paths that your characters walk which gives them special abilities that only they have. Characters can choose multiple paths if they want to, or can specialize on one Path that they want to master. Choose Way of the Beast, and your character will be at one with animals and the wilderness. As your character progresses, he can choose more aspects of his path by spending Hero Points that he earns as he roleplays his character.
I have completely converted my campaign to Fantasy Dice, and my players are enjoying it tremendously. We haven't lost any of the crunch that we loved from Rolemaster, but we have done away with all of those tables and Rulebooks. That brings me to another thing that I absolutely love about the Fantasy Dice/Crimson Exodus system. It is so easy to adapt to whatever your Fantasy World requires. I was able to adapt it to work with all of our existing Rolemaster characters relatively easily, and that was a task I was dreading. Fantasy Dice made it easy. And that was quite a nice surprise. Because the mechanics are so simple, making adaptations is simple as well, and does not break the game, which is always a concern with most RPG Systems.
I could go on all day, and wax fantastic about how great Fantasy Dice is. But instead I encourage you to grab your own copy. and while you are at it, check out the new 2nd Edition of Crimson Exodus which is Claus Bornich's setting for the Fantasy Dice system. It is an awesome setting, and it comes with the latest version of the Fantasy Dice system including some new optional mechanics.
By the way, Claus Bornich the creator of this product is an awesome guy. I have spoken to him directly, and even made some suggestions. Imagine my surprise when I saw some of my suggestions show up in the 2nd Edition of Crimson Exodus. Not only is Claus a great person, he really listens to his customers and that is something that is really, really cool.
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One of the best ever. --- I've been playing since the early 80s; the systems I know well are D&D/ Pathfinder, Traveller/ T 2300, RuneQuest/ CoC/ BRP, HarnMaster, GURPS, BESM/ dX, FUDGE and Dungeon World. I've also bought and read others such as Savage Worlds, Cortex and Numenera.
Here are a few of the reasons why I think Crimson Exodus is one of the best of the lot:
The System -- just the right crunch for those of us who like mechanics that inform and help drive the story. This game really does sit at around the midpoint of rules-light to rules-heavy. A group will have to be willing to contribute their thinking power as well as their creativity with Crimson Exodus, but Claus Bornich, the writer, has a very good sense for what to detail and what to handwave -- even both at the same time. He has crafted excellent rules for many situations, but every rule is there to be used or set aside depending on the wishes of the group and the needs of the moment.
Skills testing in the Fantasy Dice system is such that greater aptitude is represented by an attribute number, and greater training by a "bigger" type of die. So a rough example, leaving out the nuances of the rules, might be:
"I have an Agility of 2 (average) and a Melee skill of d8 (pretty good), so my Melee roll is 2d8. It's a high-die mechanic, so all I'm looking for is the highest result to compare against either (a) a set difficulty or (b) a contested roll by my enemy -- how much I beat him by determines how thoroughly I kill his stupid face."
My favourite part is this -- I can also "scale" my dice pool in number or type of die. For example, if I have 2d8 as a pool, I can scale my roll up to 1d10 (increasing my absolute results ceiling), or down to 3d6 or 4d4 (decreasing my likely results floor). Especially with the new critical failure and success rules in this 2nd Ed, this scaling is important, and it very simply puts a powerful, informative and dynamic dice mechanic at my disposal. And this isi only the most limited example.
NO. My real favourite part springs from being the GM: I can write up an important NPC in two minutes, using two short lines, and that write-up will perform well in terms of both mechanics and narrative. There's nothing to it, once you get a handle on what, for instance, "3d10 Crazy Lady In Waiting" can mean.
The Setting -- just about as good as the system. If you only ever use your own setting, CX might not be for you -- in that case just buy Fantasy Dice: Same rules, no setting! But man, this is a well-planned and well-executed milieu.
Bornich has written a straight-no-chaser low fantasy, but one that doesn't bog down in self-important detail. With a hint (in the geography and names, mostly) of the Norse sagas, the Finnish Kalevala epic, and Baltic legend, the setting is one where the Elves are, for reasons unknown, abandoning their empire, and other races are rushing into the vacuum of power.
Magic is possible in the forms of Sorcery, Black Magic and Witchcraft, but the usefulness of each is very nicely "spiked" by the difficulties, practicalities, and dangers of them. Meanwhile, we have a plague that causes the afflicted to rise after death in search of the blood of all living things.
Bornich takes (almost, it seems, as a challenge) elves, dwarves, orcs and halflings and ends up with a pretty astounding, conflicted, DYNAMIC world. Stuff is happening everywhere, and the stakes are high. You certainly could just ignore it, really. But DON'T! Give this world a spin; it's really great.
As far as the new edition goes, I've found nothing but improvements on the first edition. There are still quirks of layout and language here, but nothing that should discourage anyone for a moment. Crimson Exodus is THE game for those of us who love to use and abuse a great set of mechanics in a dangerous world.
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Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the second edition of Crimson Exodus; currently the only pre-written setting for Radical Approach's Fantasy DICE system. And what a setting it is. This book includes all of the rules from the stand alone Fantasy DICE book, and may be bought and played as a standalone product. Those of you who already have the first edition need to know no more than that post trauma has been simplified, the layout makes far more sense and the editing is vastly improved. Everything you loved about this system is intact; most of it is improved on in some way. For everybody else, here is the remainder of the review.
The book begins with the standard "What is a role playing game" chapter, in which it explains the core concepts of the game. This includes the idea that the player characters are protagonists in this world, and as such are all special in some way, the idea that deciding whether or not the party stands a chance at an encounter - and whether the reward is worth the risk - is the party's job, not the GM's and the idea that the party's allies should be controlled by the players during combat. It also includes a list of assumed responsibilities for players and GMs that should be self explanatory, but is there just in case.
Next up, we have the known world. This comprises of an area the size of Europe, though not the entire continent from the Western coast to the wastelands and great savannah of the East; from the frozen North to the vast jungles of the South. I quite like that this is the extent of the setting; there are quite a few different peoples within the known world, and there is plenty of room for creative GMs to expand. This portion of the book describes the places and their histories, as well as how the law tends to work and the wilderness surrounding them.
After this, we have our races, or Peoples as this system calls them. This is because culture is just as important as racial heritage in terms of your statistics and what skills and equipment are available to you at the start of the game. Each People is described in terms of its culture, its history, its laws and finally how it affects you in terms of starting statistics. It's similar to the races section in some other fantasy books, but with more setting detail to go with the numbers. Certain things, such as prices for starting equipment, may be a little confusing at first, since the wealth system hasn't been described yet, but there are tables of available starting equipment and their costs.
The fourth section of the book is character creation. Character creation is pretty in depth, and uses a semi-classless system. I say semi-classless, because almost everything you do is based off of a skill, and the only starting limits on these skills are down to whether your character could have learned that skill, generally based off of your character's People. On the other hand, you have a Heroic Path, which grants additional abilities based off of an archetype such as that of the archer, or the warrior. Multiple Paths may be taken, and none are mutually exclusive. Your attributes are based off of your People, but are arranged in pairs. You may improve some, but for each that you improve, you must reduce the one it is paired with by the same amount, to a minimum of 1. You also pick a talent, which describes something that you're good at without needing to roll for it - singing, or cooking for example. This should be described in a short sentence rather than as a single word. Also, we have Aspirations and Characteristics. These are very similar to Aspects in FATE, in that they are descriptive and they allow you to spend from a pool of points to affect the plot - and allow the GM to give you points in exchange for affecting your character in similar ways. After that, you name an ally and a friend within the world, choose your equipment and start play.
Next, we have Skills. The skills have quite broad reaches, but more specialised areas within each one. Specialisations are treated as one skill level higher than the actual skill level. More specialisations must be bought as you reach certain skill levels, though you may buy as many specialisations as you wish.
Chapter six details the Heroic Paths. Heroic Paths are improved by spending Hero Points; a method of advancement separate from standard XP. There are several Paths; some magic using, some combat oriented, some fitting other niches such as that of the rogue, or the hermit, or the leader. Each provides different perks, but doesn't restrict your ability to do other things - each is an archetype within which you can customise things, rather than a straitjacket to enforce a particular type of play.
After that, we have the Barter chapter, which explains the wealth system, and has price lists for almost anything you could want to buy. Wealth works quite simply; you have a wealth level. If a thing you want costs your wealth level or lower, you can afford it easily. If a thing costs one wealth level higher, you can buy it, but you go down one wealth level. If it's more than one higher, you can't afford it at all. It also explains how much money, in rough terms, is needed to go up or down a wealth level, and that if you would go up by two or more wealth levels at once, you go up by one fewer, as you treat yourself with all that newly acquired cash. This is followed by equipment lists for weapons and armour, with the appropriate stats. Everything here is self explanatory, pretty much, aside from the damage listings for some of the weapons - this makes more sense later once the damage system is explained in the combat chapter.
After this, the mechanics of the system are finally explained. All of the standard things, such as social conflict, fatigue, crafting and so on are explained here. The one thing that really stands out is the die rolling mechanic. All skills are listed as a die type. Your attribute tells you how many dice to roll, your skill tells you the die type, the highest die is your result. So far, so simple. However, you may also choose to scale your roll - rolling fewer dice in order to roll bigger ones and potentially get a better result on harder tasks, or rolling smaller dice in order to roll more of them and get a more reliable result on easier tasks. This is done on a one for one scale - one extra die for one smaller die type, or vice versa. It works rather well in practice, and adds a level of control for the players that many other systems don't have. This is followed by character development; spending XP and the like, but also advice for the GM on developing important NPCs in the background.
Next, we get to one of two reasons why I love this system so much - the combat. In combat, each turn lasts about three seconds, and you get two actions. Defending against an attack requires the use of an action. More often than not, a player will use one action to attack, one to defend. On a particularly successful defence, the defender may choose to attack their attacker immediately instead of waiting for their turn to come around, in what is known as the riposte. This, naturally, means that they have no actions when their turn comes around, and so their turn is skipped. Hit location is chosen randomly, unless the attacker chooses to aim for a specific target; in this case, the attack requires both actions. The attacker may choose to take a penalty to hit in order to deal more damage on a successful attack, though the opposite is not true, and the level of success affects the damage dealt. There are many other tactics listed, and the GM is encouraged to make up rules on the fly for anything not covered.
The second reason I love this system is the Trauma system. This gets a separate chapter from combat, simply because it is so much more in depth than the standard hit point based systems. Simply put, damage is taken in the form of discrete wounds. There are five levels of wound severity - Superficial, which is rarely more than painful and will rarely even leave a scar; Nasty, which will generally hurt a lot and leave a scar, but is rarely fatal; Grievous, which can potentially be fatal if the right treatment isn't give; Grim, which is definitely fatal without the right treatment, and finally Mortal, which is almost certainly fatal. Bleeding can be very serious if not treated quickly, potentially leading to Shock (the medical condition generally caused by severe bloodloss - fatal if left untreated). Bones can be broken, and can lead to permanent disfigurement if bad enough, or left untreated. Internal Trauma again can be fatal when left untreated. All three of these are potential issues from a wound, and the GM gets to describe what happened.
But that's only if you use the Trauma system provided here, which honestly I wouldn't do. Why? Because there's a nice big book of wounds called Trauma, by the same publishers, which provides a far more in depth system of wounds than could ever have been provided here. In that book, you have damage tables for each part of the body and each wound severity, where you roll a die and that's the wound. Also, while you could just use those tables to determine the damage done, the book also provides medically accurate details of just how bad each wound is, from sucking chest wounds through amputations to severe burns and brain damage. In my opinion, the two books go incredibly well together, even if only for the extra flavour to damage that the Trauma book provides. Also, because the Trauma system is only used once the fight is over, and often only on the PCs, it does surprisingly little to slow down play.
Once this is done, an example combat scenario is given for one player and a GM to run through. It's a fairly simple example of how combat runs in the game, and is designed to teach newcomers how to kill things and not be killed in the meantime. After that, comes a standard how to run the game chapter, which comes with very good advice that can be found in almost any role playing book you care to mention.
Next, comes magic. Magic is interesting in this system, for the simple reason that the powerful stuff comes at a price. There are three kinds of magic in Crimson Exodus - Elven Witchcraft, Dwarven Sorcery and the Black Arts of the Toth. Witchcraft is the magic of nature, and is powered by blood. It can cure or it can kill, and it can even create outbreaks of Plague - the setting's equivalent of the zombie virus. Sorcery is mastery of the elements, and while it cannot directly cause damage, nor cure, causing a campfire to leap at an enemy, or a tunnel to collapse on their heads will leave some questioning the difference. Finally, the Dark Arts involve feeding that part of yourself that would do absolutely anything to survive, at the cost of all others. It can also heal or harm, though healing from this form of magic comes with a price, and it can cause an affliction just as nasty as the Plague; the Rot, which creates the setting's equivalent of ring-wraiths.
After that, we have a list of artefacts; some magical, others merely thought so. Then comes herbology and alchemy. These work pretty much as expected, although healing through alchemy requires blood from still living beings. The dark secrets of the setting are discussed next, and provide many possible adventure or even campaign hooks, followed by a rather good introductory adventure that I won't spoil here, and finally a list of NPCs.
In conclusion, this is among my favourite games ever, and I'm very, very glad I kickstarted it. I heartily recommend it to anyone who wants to play a good fantasy RPG without D&D's baggage.
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This is a quick review after reading about half and skimming most of the other half. Just a couple of impressions. Here they are in no particular order:
• Composition and Art: Excellent. For me, anyway. Feels very old-school, but the text layout is very legible and has a lot of white space. The art is same. Mostly line drawings, not too many (which I like; it's a manual, not an art book), very well done, nice and straightforward. Clean and welcoming to the eye.
• Formal layout: Fair. As others have said, the ordering of subjects could have been better. You're reading about applying stats before you learn anything about what those stats mean. So, not the best.
• Writing style: Good to Excellent. Very well composed, in a simple, elegant style. There are some typos and composition errors here and there but I haven't come across anything that actually confuses one about rules or the writer's intent.
• System: Good to Excellent (no playtest). My group hasn't played it yet but I'm liking most of what I see so far. Not sure how easy it'll be to compute stuff on the fly like "you can scale your 2dx to 3dY, or 4dZ, plus your target here is a 4, with mods", but I do like systems that use dice in more intricate ways. I like the simplicity of stating the whole of what you need to know about a bit-player NPC with "3d8 Soldier". It seems pretty crunchy while still remaining simple enough for mouth-breathers like myself and my pals.
I hope to write a more in-depth review later. At one in-depth glance, I can say I think it might be the best ten-dollar PDF I've bought here at DriveThruRPG, and I have bought a LOT.
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Creator Reply: |
Just want to add a bit since we've been playing for a couple of months. Nothing much changes since my pre-play review; the system is as excellent as I suspected, my players now have in their possession three of the most interesting characters I've ever seen in a role-playing game (including my favorite, an elven surgeon wracked with guilt over war crimes), and it's still a bit of a pain in the butt to find stuff through the book, although I've hacked it into chapters and rearranged it to make a bit more sense.
The mechanics are great, character development rules seem well balanced and flexible (I like things stingy, and CX defaults a bit that way), and the world is both pretty grim and very engaging, a combination that I find to be rare.
Now if we could get a hurry-up on 2nd Edition, which includes changes (and good ones, from what I've seen) that are incorporated into the generic version Fantasy Dice, that would be awesome. And maybe some way to give a further break on the price to those who've already bought.
Note on changes I know of: Attribute rolls are on d8 instead of d10, and combat tactics are altered. I've read these on the Radical Approach forum, and they sound good. Claus, how about an updates singles-sheet? |
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This is a very early opinion on this product I longed so much for. I'll take the time to write something more detailed after reading the whole book. Let's start saying I already went through Crimson Exodus cover-to-cover and I think FD is the most modern, clever and versatile RPG System I've put my hands on.
The system itself offers a lot to storytellers and method actors, but due to its cleverly light, highly descriptive mechanics I bet it will entice more than a butt-kicker. Tacticians have a lot to chew also while cinematic action is guaranteed by trigger ammos (tokens that players could spend to gain positive contextual twists and gain performing good role-playing).
From a structural point of view, FD is a sum of the best of breed ideas I ever stumbled upon: ever read Greg Stolze's essay for GMs? In love with Robin Law's handbook on good game mastering? Tired of d20 oddities and fond of the novelties in system like Cortex or Savage Worlds? Well, FD has it all, but more streamlined, more lightweight, more cinematic and more tactic!
Even more candies: While the system is designed for a grim&gritty fantasy style, where wounds don't heal overnight and combats require skills and tactics more than high numbers on the character sheet, bending the system to one's own need is so simple that porting your favorite gaming style, campaing and setting to FD can be done with a bunch of notes on post-its in the right handbook. :)
I didn't test the system with non-fantasy settings yet but I bet it outperforms many sci-fi, horror, action and pulp dedicated systems.
So where the 4 star rating comes from? Mainly from two minor annoyances, legacy of Crimson Exodus setting.
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The layout and lettering is taken from CE 'as is'... It's not that much of a masterpiece of beautiful layouting and the release of FD was a good occasion for RA crew to put some more love on it.
- As in CE, FD suffers from a silly (sorry for the frankness) ordering of information. I extendedly poited this out in my previous CE review... Putting stats before descriptions or people before geography forces the reader to jump back and forth across the book or (worst) to keep on reading in the hope it will all become clear soon or late.
I can't find any good reason for such information structure and I hope RA will take the time to fix this thing in a future revision of the document.
I'll gladly change my rating to 5 stars then. In the meantime, if you're an experienced player or gm in search for a system to run your next campaign, take this as a five star product and swipe you CC at light speed! You won't be disappointed! :)
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Simply a 1-page overview for the full game. It has an interesting mechanic and mixes new RPG concepts with some old-school crunch. I was interested enough to buy the full game and so far I'm not disappointed.
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Trauma |
by Chris P. [Verified Purchaser]
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Date Added: 11/18/2011 15:32:13 |
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This book is quite possibly my favourite purchase from this website. The book opens up with the usual "why this book was written and how it should be used" blurb; in this case, as inspiration to writers, to provide healers with something more interesting to do than either roll a healing check or cast a healing spell and move on, and to provide warriors with more varied and interesting descriptions of what their attacks have done. Also, he didn't like the idea of someone's cause of death simply being "lack of hit points".
Next comes the bit about finding out what's wrong and how to fix it; it's all fairly detailed, with medieval and modern methods described in detail followed by ideas for futuristic methods and a collection of healing spells for a fantasy setting; from eliminating infection to regrowing bones and tissue.
Then comes the meat of the book; chapter after chapter of detailed information about the various parts of the body and the various hideous things that can happen to them in combat, as well as rules for bleeding, infection, shock, burns, broken bones, hypo- and hyper-thermia, anaemia, spinal injuries, dehydration and stroke. This section makes for interesting reading even if you don't plan on using the rules, as it is (or at least seems - neither I nor the author is a doctor) medically accurate and covers just about anything that could happen to the body once sharp pieces of metal (or fast moving pieces of lead, or fireballs etc.) are introduced.
Finally, there are the Trauma Tables; these rules are designed to be used after the combat is over, so as to avoid slowing down the combat. The wounds range from Superficial to Mortal, going from "That'll probably leave a scar" all the way to "Unable to halt or slow the impact, the skull explodes in a rain of brain and bone fragments. Bleeding (massive); Incredibly dead". Each entry refers back to the more detailed section, which in turn is used for healing (where appropriate) once the combat is over. This section also includes damage tables for electrical burns, which can have other, nastier effects than normal burns.
There is a free PDF available from the publisher's homepage which gives advice on using this book with a few different systems (including d20, World of Darkness and GURPS), and it runs very well with the system for which it was designed. The artwork is pretty cool, and if you have any trouble converting the book to run with your system of choice, the author is usually more than willing to answer questions (such as my ones about using it to emulate energy weapons).
In short, if you've ever wondered how your preferred system would play with the introduction of medically sound damage modelling, this is the book for you.
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Nice FPoTW that made me discover a masterpiece in indie games like Crimson Exodus. This single page PDF is not meant to be a real example of how CE system works but is good in summarize those aspects of the game that renders it peculiar and worth your bucks. Thumbs up.
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I purchased this book after a glance to FantasyDICE Primer (Gods from Below bless "free content of the week" :D)
If you're not in the mood for long readings, just: BUY THIS BOOK! And since you'll be likely to use it for years on, buy a softcover and a PDF, one for the table and one for quick and easy information finding, copy/paste, partial printings for your characters and so on!
OK. Since Adam and David already covered both game mechanics and settings information, I'll give some more info on the structure of contents and what you'll find in, and since I'm in a WOW moment, I'll do it with WOWs here and there! :)
First and foremost: I think I didn't see such a quality and innovations since the release of D&D 3rd edition. Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about piles of illustrations by famous painters. On that side this book is quite good but clearly a low-budget production. What I mean is that both in content quality, writing style and general information layout (how information is given to you and when, not just graphical layout), this book ROCKS! As I've never seen in indie productions.
Content is prince here. You'll get 331 dense pages, that depict one of the most complete world I've ever seen. At a first glance it's overwhelming and the fact that chapters order is somehow odd at first could scare more than someone (a PDF copy will definitively help rapid cross-references). Inside you'll find (chapter by chapter):
- Core game concepts
- A HUGE chapter on people and their habits (yes, elves and dwarves are there but they are much like "different" humans, not quirky beings... more like melniboneans in Moorcock's Elric saga)
- Rules for character creation
- Paths for your hero (think them not as classes but as heroic archetypal paths to excellence)
- Some detail on skills
- Rules for barter of both goods and money (this is one of the best twist: since GP-based trade would result in a very unlikely world, but tracking different coins and values in different places would be a PITA, a simple but effective wealth mechanic has been used and the barter is often the only way to trade at all. Nothing really new but details here are a lot)
- Weapons and armors
- A chapter titled "Rolls and rules", basically covering all task-resolution related rules, from fatiguing to social conflict, to emotional statuses, to crafting new items, and such
- A two-pages chapter is dedicated to character advancement, both for PCs and NPCs
- Combat rules
- Damage and recovery from various sources like combat, burns, suffocation, etc.
- A sample scenario (The Ambush)
- A useful chapter on game mastering
- Demons and spirits (lore and reality of the evil things from the other side)
- Three chapters on magic: Witchcraft, Sorcery and Black Arts
- A whole chapter on artifacts
- Herbal for magic, poisons, healing and more
- Alchemy
- Geography of the Known World (finally... somewhat tells me that this would have been better put in front of the whole thing! :P)
- Brief but USEFUL information on travels
- A chapter on setting's secrets (wonderful! Finally someone thought about isolating this in a chapter for GM's eyes only!)
- Doom and Gloom, a complete introductory adventure to taste how roaming the Known World is.
- A 20+ pages original bestiary
Well, we can't say it will be a short reading uh?! :)
Apart from information quantity, the world itself is not only detailed but it's very likely. It just could be and I like realism in RP.
What entice me, beside the completeness of this setting, is that it explicitly targets mature players. Its state of the art (!!!) rules will make you enjoy a reflourishment of good old RPG paradigm. Unlike new-age games, GM is there to give you drama and storytelling but with something more. Some examples:
- No math (read again: NO MATH) but a full tactical system. This is really blowing, and you can't see how much without trying it at least once.
- No balancing. You as a GM should give some clue about the menace to your players, but if they enter "that cave" without knowing what they are doing, well... bye bye. So thinking, talking or even fleeing are often better options.
- No balancing but no sheer cruelty: game should be funny and instead of trying to fake your dice rolls or worse, your player have some token to spend to avoid critical situation. But they're a few and won't be back for free. BTW, even wounds don't heal overnight.
- You won't fight for treasures, at least not against a quasi-animal horror in a dark forest. Obviously I'm talking about treasures made of coins and jewels. But more important treasures such as good allies, reputation or simply your life are prizes that worth the effort.
- This is one of my favorites: in action scenes your player will take control of their allies. This relies on maturity and good role-playing, able to avoid metagame, but is a powerful tools for running a great game session as even whole campaigns! First of all, the master could focus on running "adversaries" avoiding long turns with players doing nothing. Moreover players will have a great responsibility in that other characters, maybe those they perceive necessary to the story, are in their hands. From time to time you could switch allies between players so that they feel the burden of their destinies or the excitement of some different mindset/skills. But again (and this is a powerful tool in the hand of a clever GM) you could make players role scenes about their allies in which their characters are not present. This could reveal small parts of the plot and create suspense, giving a great storytelling cut to your campaign. As every power it should be used with wisdom but this book gives you some rules of thumb even on this.
Before closing, just a couple of downsides: an overall detailed map of the land is missing, so it's a bit hard to wrap your mind on geography, jumping back and forth from a small global representation to detailed regional maps, but this is a minor flaw.
The chapter order is a little bit odd: some info would be of better use before other ones, but again, you will probably have to read this stuff more than once to grasp it all, and nobody is pointing a gun forcing you to read it in the order they're presented.
Meh, sorry for writing that much but my WOW effect is still on! I think I'll begin planning a long term campaign NOW!
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Don't let the character sheet fool you - it makes the game system look more complex than it really is. Crimson Exodus is a fantastic game, go and read the reviews for it, and then buy it!
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In short, I very highly recommend you buy this game. The long version follows:
Simply put, I think this is one of the best rpg systems currently on the market, and is definitely in my top 5 - simple and elegant mechanics, not too light on the rules but not too heavy either (the perfect sweet spot), the best of the old school and the new school gaming concepts with a healthy dose of innovation - I can't express how awesome the system is in words, it's that good. The setting is also a very interesting one, with many twists on your typical fantasy setting. David Vershaw's review covers the system pretty well - although he doesn't stress how awesome the scaling mechanics really are in play (they are a great innovation giving lots of tactical depth to player's dice rolls like no other system out there). So rather than talk more about the system, I'll give you some information on the setting.
Simply put, the setting is dripping with flavor and has years of gaming potential in the core book alone - there's no clear-cut good/evil, lots of shades of gray. The setting is based around the crumbling of the elven empire as they retreat from the area (the elven banner is the crimson banner, thus the name of the RPG - the crimson exodus - for the Elven exodus). The elves ran a huge empire, but are now retreating as the empire crumbles here on the peninsula (where the setting is focused). There are Elves (widely hated due to their superiority complex and years of harsh rule), Elnar (sort of like "lesser" elves though not as hated as the elves), dwarves, and humans too (of several cultural varieties), that's the bulk of races. There are Orcs (and the "greater Orcs", the Senshoul) as the main enemy races of the other races. There is a black-death-plague-like thing going on in the center of the crumbling eastern empire - except that those that get infected become the living dead (mix of typical fantasy vampires and ghouls). In the far east there are worshipers of an ancient serpent god that are a sort of "enemy" race as they gather strength and try to resurrect the long dead Serpent Empire that the Elves crushed when they conquered the lands here.
Well ok, a little bit more about the system - there are 3 distinctly different magic systems - witchcraft mostly used by elves/elnar, sorcery mostly used by dwarves and the black arts mostly used by worshipers of an ancient serpent god to the far east of the peninsula. There's also a separate system for alchemy magic and an herbal magic system. Each system has it's own unique flavor and feel, which a really awesome touch.
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