Pacifism is a type of hindrance/disadvantage/flaw that works very differently in different types of games. In most games I play or run, no-one would take the pacifism unless there's a work-a-round against it's limitations - and I can't blame anyone for that, as these games usually have at least one combat each session, and usually everyone's most eagerly waiting for those combats! And they often are the most exciting parts of a game session.
Spoilers warning! This session actually reminded me of my Ptolus 4E campaign, with a difference of things happening instantly instead of calculating helpless villain's hitpoints from thousands to zero. But let's start from where the heroes ended the last session, running away from a horde of snake men in the ruined city of Quollaba. They ran down the hill and hid in a building, and everyone was able to jump to the roof of an adjacent building from the balcony when the creatures finally found them. Some climbing over a wall-like barricade composed of rubble and the heroes were closing a tower, where Unoch, the eunuch who had found them, was clearly taking them. Arrows shot from the tower started hitting the snake men behind the heroes.
High Space briefly, with minor spoilers: An inspiring space/scifi setting that gives you an option of running a long epic story or Traveller -like small adventures. The main story feels a bit like Babylon 5 spiced with some cthulhu/galactica -like elements and unique, 'realistic' style space battles.
I've been very busy lately, and even now I haven't been able to read Beasts of the Dominions completely, even if I got it... at least three months ago I believe? But I've read most of it and thought of giving a reviewish of it. To be honest, when reading the book's description when it kicked off at IndieGoGo I wasn't fully convinced if it would have enough substance to the cost. But I've learned to trust the quality of stuff written by Umberto Pignatelli and jumped in, and I'm happy I did so.
Warning: This post contains spoilers from the adventure! As we were playing in the middle of the week and were able to start closer to 9pm, we weren't able to get very far this time; This was the first session with no combats, we started right after a combat against captain Nekerios and finished when a group of crystal spirits pulled themselves out of spears they were impaled to and rushed towards Tereis and Doris. I'll post the next session in this post too as I run it before being able to post this... But let's start from the beginning.
It's been a long time - I apologise for that. To put it shortly, life has been intervening this project badly. But I'm back with Epsilon, trying to find as much time as I can to go on with the game.
A few days ago I saw a new interesting Savage Worlds product at Drivethrurpg, and did something I rarely do - bought it right away. While Beasts & Barbarians scratched my Sword & Sorcery gaming itch, this High Space(link is external) might well scratch well enough my Space gaming itch.
A week ago I run the first part of Death of a Tyrant, one of GRAmel's published adventures. While I don't like published adventures much, I bought this for it's background information but liked it enough to run it. If you keep reading, be aware that this post contains some spoilers about the first part of the adventure. This session log isn't as detailed as most others as it's about ready adventure, where a lot of material is written down; I'm still trying to tell about the events so that they open up to everyone.
Session starts where the previous one ended - the group is attacked by a patrol from the mercenary fortress. A fight that was meant as a warmer took surprisingly long, due to standard start-of-session circumstances as our little girl is still up, constantly climbing to my lap and keeping my wife (who's playing Doris) occupied. Also, damage rolls were very low. You'll find the photos related to each chapter after the text.
The story starts where the previous session ended. Doris, Falchor and Godzul have been jailed for drunken hooliganism, and Tereis had been carousing elsewhere, surprisingly having not got into this big trouble. This shows an excellent example of how after adventure partying can set up the next adventure!
This project started after I got tired of photographs of games taken on an old, almost white D&D miniatures battle map. I looked for vinyl mats first, but it started to look like the ones I was interested in weren't available anymore, and I wasn't perfectly happy about them either, so I decided to create real 3d ones of my own. I wanted to find a really strudy base for the terrains but couldn't find any, making me dig up some hardboard and use it as a base. The result was satisfactory, even if there is a bit distortion. If I would have found light but hard material (that stays straight!) for the base I would have used it instead.
Savage worlds is a great system that translates action descriptions easily into mechanics, but sometimes you just need a bit help when thinking what you want to do, or a cheat to see how to do it. For this purpose, I give you Savage Tactics, a sheet resembling Combat Survival guide, but from a different point of view - concentrating on character strengths. This sheet is concentrating on medieval/melee -focused game, I might make another for modern settings later, although it may depend more on equipment.