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basilhomebrews · 3 months ago

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Givin' It A (One)Shot: Monster Guts 1e Edition

So, this thing was supposed to be a monthly challenge for me to run and review a different system with friends. You may have noticed that this is the 2nd entry in the series, despite it already being March. Scheduling's a bitch. That's an official statement, btw. You can quote me on that.

Anyways, Monster Guts. February's system was supposed to be We Hunt Bugs, but because of scheduling issues (and the fact that that system's manual is a fuckin' slog to go through, like truly there are more pages dedicated to in-universe slang than proper GM support) we jumped right into Monster Guts 1e.

Resources Used: Monster Guts 1e rulebook, Threats from Another World unofficial supplement, Custom Character Sheets (made by me hehe), Tableplop VTT (not an ad, it's just a cool VTT that I wanna shout out)

TL;DR

Fun We Had: 4.5/5

Ease-of-Learning*: 4.5/5

*We are of average intelligence and have semi-busy schedules

Ease-of-Use (Actual Play): 5/5

Session 0 Necessity for Longer Play: 4/5

Good pick for groups of any experience level with TTRPGs; we had one player this time around who had less experience with TTRPGs than the regulars, and he took to it like a duck to water. It helped that we framed the oneshot as a typical Monster Hunter quest, since Monster Guts really facilitates that and he was super familiar with the series, but the simplicity of the system really pulled its weight in getting everybody on board and ready to play.

Also proven very quick to learn because we had a surprise player drop in last second and he managed to finish his character and understand the basic mechanics in around 15ish minutes.

In-depth stuff under the cut:

Adventure: Ding Dang Jaggis on the Ancestral Steppe

Session Time: Around 1 hour 30 mins, with 15ish minutes dedicated to answering questions and helping the surprise player make their character.

Session time is shorter now because we had a later start time than previously agreed and we had to cut it a bit early because of schedule stuff. It also helped that we had a session 0 the day before where some of the players made their characters ahead of time.

Summary: The party is composed of Hunters new to Val Habar, the port city bordering the Great Desert. They've been cutting their teeth on lower ranked quests in the first few days since their arrival, but have finally received their first big Monster Hunt quest: a Great Jaggi has been spotted in the Ancestral Steppe harassing local wildlife and passing travelers, and the Guild and Val Habar have agreed to deploy hunters to deal with it.

And deal with it they did; the party mercilessly slaughtered the Great Jaggi mere moments after making contact with it, regardless of all the monster's efforts to call reinforcements or fight back.

Cast of Characters:

Hyatu, the Vespine Spear wielding veteran hunter facing down the most lethal monster of all: old age;

Duram, the Modular Scythe wielding hometown hero turned professional hunter sporting Gammoth armor made using materials from his very first hunt;

Stanket, the Modular Scythe wielding veteran hunter (insert spiderman pointing meme with Hyatu) who wears a set of unique Uragaan armor (look up tuba boss, that's what he used as a token);

Tsunade, the Greatsword wielding huntress who sported a cheery demeanor despite the great amount of damage she caused on the battlefield (and in the discord call, spamming Simpsons edits of Naruto screenshots)

Lucio, the War Bugle wielding hunter who wanted to be like his Overwatch namesake and be a support, but encounter balance said otherwise; and

All fresh characters with no tags on their equipment.

Expectation: High-octane, fast-paced monster vs. hunter combat where both sides need to strategize and use their available options wisely. The Great Jaggi starting with 2 Jaggi as back up and being able to call for more seemed like something that would change the tides quickly.

Reality: One-sided beatdown where the hunters just wailed on the monster practically without repercussions. Partially my fault, the little Jaggis were all clustered together, and as such, were vulnerable to the War Bugle user's AOE technique. 1 Harm was all they needed to clear the field of mooks, allowing the rest of the party to wail on the Big Guy.

Was pretty good fun to just shoot the shit and wail on a monster in TTRPG format. The mechanics allowed for quick turns in combat so that nobody was twiddling their thumbs on the sidelines for too long, and the number of options felt just right so that people had variety in what they did, but not so much that it overwhelmed them in actual play.

Highlights:

The Stanket Special: hook your scythe around the monster's neck and just fuckin' drop onto your back;

Lucio putting together that one of his techniques is an AOE that deals one damage, and the clustered up mooks only have 1 HP;

Hyatu pretending he's geriatric only for him to launch himself into the air with his spear and immediately perform a Cirque du Soleil act;

Tsunade's "finishing move", choosing to use Charge Slash at the very last round of combat to prepare a super powerful attack that hit nothing but air.

Duram casually chunking the Great Jaggi for 7 HP twice, literally around 25-30% of its HP in 2 turns; and

Some pros, cons, and opinions that came up before, during, and after the session:

Pros:

Quick to pick up and play, the most labor-intensive part of this whole thing was setting up the VTT but that was mostly just me being picky about graphics to use;

That little P.S. at the start is golden (fuck white supremacy and fuck late-stage capitalism)

YMMV, but the fact that this system is obviously inspired by Monster Hunter really helped in making the fiction "click", especially for the more inexperienced player. It was a familiar series for us and it didn't take much for us to buy into the conceit that we were monster hunters hunting monster.

Cons:

Depending on your setup, range bands might get confusing. We used Tableplop for our oneshot, and some of the players expressed difficulty in understanding ranges/confusion as to what range they were at relative to the monster because of the way I set it up. I suggest following the variant rules and setting up a grid, and using a standard top-down battle map instead of a background;

There were some things that weren't explained properly in the manual, like how Aerial Rodeo for the Vespine Spear worked and at what range some of the Modular Scythe techniques could be used at, but one of the players said that the designers addressed this in the upcoming 2nd edition of the system;

The provided character sheet is kinda ass, unless you approach it with the mindset that it's probably supposed to have the page of the weapon you're using stapled onto it. Like, you print out what weapon you use and the character sheet, and keep those bundled together. The character sheet alone's kinda ass and doesn't really have all the info you could possibly need to know at a glance, like HP.

Monsters not having a dedicated turn or a way to react to players is fuckin' rough man. The GM has to rely on the players rolling a 4 or lower to even get the chance of using monster moves, and even then it's not assured. Again, though, the upcoming 2e of Monster Guts addresses this through the Monstrous Response mechanic that happens at the end of a player's turn, so it's mostly a problem if you play 1st edition; and

Opinions:

Have I mentioned that Monster Guts is getting a 2nd edition? After the session, the players asked me when the next session's gonna be and whether we were gonna use 1st or 2nd edition. I think that's a pretty glowing recommendation for the system, the fact that they asked when the next session is and if we're using the same rules or not.

The Village is very sparsely described and touched upon throughout the entire book. It just sorta exists, not being used for much except for a handful of mechanics or vague allusions to them in certain sections. Once more, say it with me gang: "they're working on it in the sequel"; that's right, judging from the tidbits of info on Monster Guts 2e's itch.io page, the Village is getting some much needed love;

In conclusion, Monster Guts is fun. Like, idk what to tell you man, one hunt is roughly around 60-90 minutes, as advertised on its itch.io page, and is filled with player-driven action thanks to the simple mechanics provided by the LUMEN Creation Kit/SRD.

If you want a no nonsense bash some monsters in the face time, I highly recommend Monster Guts. Players can maybe (65-75% chance) get away with just skimming the rules, Game Masters I would recommend reading the rulebook in its entirety to at least get a grasp of all the mechanics involved. Shouldn't be too hard, given it's just around 50ish pages.

That's pretty much it for the review, thanks for reading. Til next time, internet stranger~

#givin' it a (one)shot #ttrpg #review #monster guts 1st edition #this took much longer than expected #scheduling is the demon that will kill me someday #anyways play this system #have fun killing monsters #especially in the default setting where the monsters are embodiments of late-stage capitalism's greed and wanton exploitation of resources #good stuff right there

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basilhomebrews · 4 months ago

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Hey there, I happened upon your co-host blog while searching for homebrew FU accessories, and I saw you posted some MonHun themed ones over there, but the archive didn't seem to actually save the images. Just wondering if you have (or could?) posted them elsewhere? Searching this blog doesn't seem to have them as far as I see.

Thanks for your time!

Oh, yeah nah I think I only posted the MonHun FabUlt decos over at Co-Host (which I uh sorta keep forgetting to use lmao)

Anyways, here you go:

#fabula ultima #ttrpg #homebrew items #monster hunter

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basilhomebrews · 5 months ago

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Had some free time today, so I whipped up some printable spell cards for Fabula Ultima. They print eight to a page, have an illustrated back, and there's a Class Skill spell and a Ritual Spell version. PWYW, feel free to use at your tables!

#ttrpg #fabula ultima #other creator #tabletop resources

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basilhomebrews · 5 months ago

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I want you to remember:

The fascists hate you too and they just will pretend otherwise until after they've killed the rest of us, before they turn on you.

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basilhomebrews · 5 months ago

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this blog hates donald trump

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basilhomebrews · 5 months ago

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Idk if any of the data we (you, specifically) got was accurate/useful, that bear Polarian was a sitting duck and the rhino Rynocerant was equipped with a high-powered gatling laser. Feels a little unbalanced, s'all I'm tryna say :shrug:

Heyo and a-hello, my name is Basil and you're watching the- *LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER*

In all seriousness, I've not had much creative energy to really homebrew anything for a while now (i.e. me and that friend of mine never really finished our entry for the Fabula Ultima game jam thing we joined, which kinda bummed me out), due to irl stuff taking up a lot of my time. So, instead of agonizing over making and balancing homebrew mechanics for TTRPGs, I've decided to just *play* TTRPGs! (what a concept, amirite)

Specifically, me and a couple irl friends are gonna try and play oneshots using a bunch of different systems and record our thoughts about them, which I will share with y'all. It's not gonna be anything scientific or follow super rigid review guidelines, it's just gonna be a measure of how much we enjoyed the system, how easy the system was to learn/play, and the specific things we liked and disliked about the system. This post'll be the first one in the series, which I am calling-

Givin' it a (One)Shot: Savage Worlds Adventure Edition

Resources Used: Savage Worlds: Adventure Edition core rulebook, Official SWADE Character Sheet, SWADE Science Fiction Companion

TL;DR

Fun We Had: 3.6/5

Ease-of-Learning*: 2.8/5

*We are of average intelligence and have semi-busy schedules

Ease-of-Use (Actual Play): 3/5

Session 0 Necessity for Longer Play: 4.3/5

Would recommend for groups with 1-2+ years of experience playing crunchy/semi-crunchy systems looking to branch out to new “medium crunch” systems, would not recommend to groups with less experience looking for something quick to pick up and play, unless they really take the time to read through the rules and pick what works for them. For oneshots, either ask the players to make their characters ahead of time or make premades.

In-depth stuff under the cut:

Adventure: Xenos Misadventures on the ISF Galway (Unofficial/I made it the fuck up)

Session Time: Roughly 4 hours, with around an hour dedicated to creating characters for half the party (2 people)

Summary: The party is composed of the surviving crew on the ISF Galway, a Peregrine-class transport ship tasked with carrying refugees and prisoners from one star system to another. Halfway to their destination, they collided with a mysterious asteroid that flew under all their detection systems. Upon closer inspection by everyone higher up on the authority ladder, Xenos (Legally Distinct Aliens) burst out and ravaged the ISF Galway’s crew. The party holed themselves up in the cockpit until the ship grew quiet once more before trying to escape, or worse yet, to fight back.

Cast of Characters:

Delusional Sanitation Officer turned “Captain”, armed with pilfered Sec Officer armor and a service pistol;

2,500 kg (important [not]) Rynocerant (intelligent rhino race) ship security officer with a grudge against one of the Polarian (intelligent polar bear race) prisoners being transported;

Private security android employed by Unnamed MegaCorp to guard corporate interests (read: POWs for experimentation) on the Galway; and

A straight up elf wizard. Stowaway from one of the Galway’s pit stops, is just a straight up space elf wizard.

All Rank 0 Characters using mostly premade races (Rynocerant is custom, made before the session) following the flowchart detailed in the Character Creation Summary of the core rulebook.

Expectation: Stealth-focused session owing to the fact that there are 3 male juvenile Xenos and 1 queen on the ship. More about navigating through the ship and collecting info and parts necessary to escape while avoiding detection or running away from the Xenos.

Reality: PCs in Savage Worlds can hit hard, huh. They immediately took down one juvenile out of combat owing to a success with raises, and were able to dispatch the other two with only the space elf sustaining a Wound. They escaped pretty handily, getting in the escape pods just before the queen managed to get her claws on them.

Overall a fun experience, though whether that was because of the system or because we were friends bouncing off of each other’s energies, that remains a bit muddled. We had basically 1 1/2 combat encounters (the other one was resolved so quickly that it was barely a combat scenario), and the rest of the session was mostly the usual player-GM back-and-forth fare.

Highlights:

The rynocerant smashing the cockpit doors open so hard that it sent a juvenile xenos careening down the stairs, which the "captain" took credit for;

The "captain" fumbling his revolver shots so bad that it ruptured a fuel tank for one of the ship's Heavy-Duty Cleaning Armaments (flamethrower), filling the hallway with gas;

The space elf taking one Wound and deciding "fuck that" and casting Bolt straight at one xenos so good that it just died on impact;

Said elf asking me if he could choose what element Bolt can take since the book doesn't specify, then subsequently igniting all the gas in the hallway to absolutely destroy the last juvenile;

The rynocerant somehow tanking the above explosion perfectly, no Shaken or nothing;

[EXTREME RYNOCERANT ON POLAR BEAR VIOLENCE]

The pros, cons, and opinions that came up before, during, and after the session:

Pros:

Playing card initiative is fun. The randomness it provides each round is a breath of fresh air for our group, coming from systems with fixed initiative or ones where PCs and enemies alternate taking turns. Also, it’s just cool to deal out cards for initiative.

Bennies are fun to spend and give. As a metacurrency, they can do a lot: my players mostly used them for rerolls and Soaking, but I like that you can spend them to influence the story, after some hopefully constructive back and forth between the players and the GM. Giving them felt intuitive for me, as I like rewarding players with stuff when they play their characters accurately or advance the story in interesting ways.

Wild Die is useful, helps mitigate failure due to bad stats; the Wild Die is a useful representation of how the players (and some NPCs) are big name characters in the narrative, how they are generally more important and more likely to succeed than other characters. Really helps to ease the chance of failure when a player tries something they’re bad at it, makes it feel like they’re more competent than the setting’s average Joe.

Rolls exploding (Aces) is fun for players and GMs. Not much else to say about this, exploding dice is just a fun mechanic to have for most games that use dice.

Raises are an engaging and simple mechanic to play out higher degrees of success; in my experience, I like giving control to players when they succeed more than normal, so raises let me explicitly do that here. Whenever a player got a raise, I gave the floor to them to dictate what additional effect happens on their success, after a bit of back and forth to make sure that it makes sense and it’s not too much.

Cons:

Character creation is crunchy to the point of being a bit confusing. Lots of points to move around, but the allocation system was mostly intuitive save for when a skill went above the soft limit set by its corresponding Attribute. We had to double check our math a few times, just to be sure. This would probably be solved if we had the system more internalized, had more sessions under our belt, but otherwise it seems like a lot to consider when approaching it at an entry-level of familiarity. Might have also been easier if the character sheet listed all the skills instead of just the core ones, and what attributes they were tied to (i.e. Athletics (AGI) or something similar), so that players can easily reference what they might need to pump to get past that soft limit.

Adding to the above, picking out Hindrances especially (and consequently, Edges) at character creation proved to be tedious or an exercise in min-maxxing. I would suggest highlighting the optional nature of the Hindrances rule; make sure players know that you are allowed to take up to four points of Hindrance for the benefits, and that taking none, more , or less is a valid option. Not every negative character trait needs to be codified into a game mechanic, and good roleplaying should still be rewarded with things like Bennies or contextual advantages, regardless of what you've got written down on your character sheet.

Book layout could be better: there’s a decent amount of going back and forth across the rules, and there’s some important things that are hidden or in small text. It helps that page numbers are clickable, but it still definitely feels like you benefit more from having the physical book on you with bookmarks since you might need to go back and forth.

The core rulebook seems really interested in WW2/modern era equipment, to the point where the options for medieval or futuristic settings are dwarfed by the wealth of options available to modern gear. I know that other genre-specific rulebooks exist, but if you tout yourself as a system that can handle a lot of genres, it seems reasonable to expect equal arsenals between genres. Could possibly be fixed by giving a quick rundown of how to make your own gear for different time periods using the options in the core rulebook as examples.

Opinions:

One of the players say that SWADE’s brand of setting agnosticism feels confused, at least for the core rulebook; they say that reading through the core rulebook gave them the impression that it was more of a grocery shelf of mechanics that let you pick and choose what you want to play with instead of a cohesive system that has no fixed setting. Another player agrees with this, calls it too broad; there’s a wealth of options in the core rulebook that newer players might think is fair game for any campaign, instead of an option that may or may not be allowed depending on the group.

A different player says that SWADE does not feel beginner friendly; while the core resolution mechanic is simple, getting to what Trait you need to apply can be tedious. Going through all the skills and remembering what each one does/where it applies can also be a hassle for new-to-semi-experienced players alike, considering how many there are and the overlap that they have (riding, driving, boating, and piloting are distinct skills which in their opinion seems to chase realism too hard).

Same player as above said that Hindrances specifically feel like an unwelcome crinkle; they complained that Hindrances feel like an unnecessary codification of character traits you would probably already have just making your character, and that you can easily min-maxx your way into getting max Hindrance Points for Edges and other benefits.

Personal opinion, what is up with the Obese and Yellow Hindrances. They gave me and another player the ick because:

Obese seems like a pretty fatphobic Hindrance. The flavor text doesn’t even seem like it’s talking about obesity, just being large and clumsy in general;

Yellow is a very outdated word for someone being very fearful, and with the book’s obsession with WW2, might be interpreted otherwise; and

There are definitely better names for them out there, like Bulky or Oversized for Obesity and Cowardly or Craven for Yellow.

In conclusion, SWADE embodies the system’s tag line of “Fast! Furious! Fun!” ok enough; it’s easy to pick up and play if you’re more familiar with TTRPGs in general, and it provides a bunch of tools to make game time dynamic and pulpy, but getting there can be a slog; character creation can be hard to parse through if you don’t have the patience or experience with crunchier systems, and the skills list can be a bit daunting if you don’t familiarize yourself with it ahead of time.

Highly suggest taking the time to sit down and give the rules a thorough read through, take notes if that’s how you operate, before running or playing this system. For GMs, especially those running this for the first time, I would suggest drip feeding the various mechanics found in the Situational Rules section to your players slowly/as they become relevant; there’s a lot of additional stuff in this section that may or may not come up, and you would be saving yourself a lot of hassle if you just kept bookmarks (for physical copies) or have the pdf handy to reference each one as you see fit instead of familiarizing yourself with all of them ahead of time.

That's all from us, hope this was useful/fun to read through. Til next time, space cowboy~

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basilhomebrews · 5 months ago

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Heyo and a-hello, my name is Basil and you're watching the- *LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER*

Givin' it a (One)Shot: Savage Worlds Adventure Edition

Resources Used: Savage Worlds: Adventure Edition core rulebook, Official SWADE Character Sheet, SWADE Science Fiction Companion

TL;DR

Fun We Had: 3.6/5

Ease-of-Learning*: 2.8/5

*We are of average intelligence and have semi-busy schedules

Ease-of-Use (Actual Play): 3/5

Session 0 Necessity for Longer Play: 4.3/5

In-depth stuff under the cut:

Adventure: Xenos Misadventures on the ISF Galway (Unofficial/I made it the fuck up)

Session Time: Roughly 4 hours, with around an hour dedicated to creating characters for half the party (2 people)

Cast of Characters:

Delusional Sanitation Officer turned “Captain”, armed with pilfered Sec Officer armor and a service pistol;

2,500 kg (important [not]) Rynocerant (intelligent rhino race) ship security officer with a grudge against one of the Polarian (intelligent polar bear race) prisoners being transported;

Private security android employed by Unnamed MegaCorp to guard corporate interests (read: POWs for experimentation) on the Galway; and

A straight up elf wizard. Stowaway from one of the Galway’s pit stops, is just a straight up space elf wizard.

All Rank 0 Characters using mostly premade races (Rynocerant is custom, made before the session) following the flowchart detailed in the Character Creation Summary of the core rulebook.

Highlights:

The rynocerant smashing the cockpit doors open so hard that it sent a juvenile xenos careening down the stairs, which the "captain" took credit for;

The "captain" fumbling his revolver shots so bad that it ruptured a fuel tank for one of the ship's Heavy-Duty Cleaning Armaments (flamethrower), filling the hallway with gas;

The space elf taking one Wound and deciding "fuck that" and casting Bolt straight at one xenos so good that it just died on impact;

Said elf asking me if he could choose what element Bolt can take since the book doesn't specify, then subsequently igniting all the gas in the hallway to absolutely destroy the last juvenile;

The rynocerant somehow tanking the above explosion perfectly, no Shaken or nothing;

[EXTREME RYNOCERANT ON POLAR BEAR VIOLENCE]

The pros, cons, and opinions that came up before, during, and after the session:

Pros:

Rolls exploding (Aces) is fun for players and GMs. Not much else to say about this, exploding dice is just a fun mechanic to have for most games that use dice.

Cons:

Opinions:

Personal opinion, what is up with the Obese and Yellow Hindrances. They gave me and another player the ick because:

Obese seems like a pretty fatphobic Hindrance. The flavor text doesn’t even seem like it’s talking about obesity, just being large and clumsy in general;

Yellow is a very outdated word for someone being very fearful, and with the book’s obsession with WW2, might be interpreted otherwise; and

There are definitely better names for them out there, like Bulky or Oversized for Obesity and Cowardly or Craven for Yellow.

That's all from us, hope this was useful/fun to read through. Til next time, space cowboy~

#givin' it a (one)shot #ttrpg #review #savage worlds adventure edition #new project!#hooray!

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basilhomebrews · 6 months ago

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Hey there! I’m setting up a new blog - @ttrpg-takes - for people to share their thoughts, ideas and opinions about ttrpgs together and hopefully form a new community. Would you (as a larger, pre-established blog) mind giving me a shout-out to get things going? Thanks!

Sure, I can do that. Always happy to see the creator space grow.

#not homebrew #signal boosting #also have this as my obligatory once every few months check in #been fucking around with other systems #idk when i'll get back into homebrewing

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basilhomebrews · 7 months ago

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Have been sick these past few days, but being unable to work is depressing so I tried to kill time by making scenes in Foundry for Fabula Ultima. I think the results are turning good so here's a breakdown (as well as links for the ressources and modules used) for people who would be interested. The basis is generaly 2 to 4 tiles to represent the background, as well as a tile used as a roof tile for the character portraits.

The sort of character portraits menu is made of different interface items from Fire Emblem Three Houses. The portraits themselves are easily swappable placeholders, these ones are from Final Fantasy War of the Visions. Each portrait has an invisible tile which opens a corresponding character sheet using Monk's active tile trigger.

The backgrounds come from Fire Emblem Heroes. They all come already separated in several layers, and surprisingly most of them loop perfectly when it comes to overlays (such as dust or smoke) and underlays (ie. clouds, skies). They're an incredible ressource for Fabula Ultima combat screens! To have the skies and overlay move, I used Ripper's Tile Scroll module. It's super easy to use. If you have several overlays (like in the factory scene), placing the moving one between the immobile ones had a sense of depth to the scene with very little effort.

For the rain and the snow, it's simply using ghost'FXMaster module. The FEH backgrounds also have a few panels of snow, cherry blossom petals, flowers, motes of light, etc... I don't think they'll look as good, but some of them can have their use. In a volcanic environment, having motes of fiery lights constantly raising from the bottom of the screen to the top using tile scroll could work to denote heat.

As for the tokens, I simply used the ones made for the quickstart by Tiny-Overlord. Flying Minotaur's portrait maker is also an incredible ressource for this kind of setup. As the name states, it can even be used to make portraits and not just token, so you could make your NPCs with it too.

Have fun saving the world, adventurers!

#ttrpg #ttrpg community #foundryvtt #fabula ultima #other creator #ttrpg resources

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basilhomebrews · 9 months ago

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Been a bit since I last posted, just wanted to give an update and to share something:

There's a game jam for Fabula Ultima! Me and a friend are joining and we're writing up a location + villain combo ala the High/Techno/Natural Fantasy Atlases!

Real exciting stuff, this being the first game jam that I know of specifically for this system, so go check it out! Join in, if you want!

#fabula ultima #homebrew #ttrpg #game jam #warlock's sanctum #is the name of the group organizing this game jam #this was also advertised in the rooster games discord #fun fact

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basilhomebrews · 11 months ago

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Still reading through the rulebook for Fabula Ultima and I think the real genius here (compared to all the other attempts I've seen to create a definitive Final Fantasy or adjacent tabletop) is that it doesn't just provide rules for adjudicating combat a la JRPGs, but it provides rules for adjudicating & improvising what would be a dramatic story cutscene in a JRPG. Which is, like. A quintessential advantage table talk games have over CRPGs.

Rituals allow you to create powerful & unique narrative effects with magic that serve as plot devices where usual combat spells don't suffice. GM scenes are included - scenes that don't actually involve the player characters, but contribute to storytelling by creating tension & dramatic irony. There are even rules for creating a dramatic sacrifice with your character! And, when all else fails, there's always using Fabula Points to shift the narrative in your favor - something not just tacked onto the system, but is a core part of its progression and advancement.

This TTRPG is so fucking cool. Why didn't anyone tell me about it earlier?

#fabula ultima #hell yeah bud this system is awesome #so many juicy mechanics that facilitate narrative play #and an equal number of mechanics for crunchy combat too

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basilhomebrews · 11 months ago

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Disgaea-inspired Fabula Ultima campaign

Hey, so I'm looking to run a pbp Fabula Ultima campaign because the Game Master's curse is relentless and undying. Here's the pitch for it and the link to the application form if you're interested:

A cadre of overambitious demons has awakened an ancient evil that has quickly conquered a network of Netherworlds! This entity, known only as "Infinite Malevolence", is hellbent on ruling over everything with an iron fist. Aided by "The Elegy of Tomorrow", the cadre of demons, now Overlords, who awoke it in the first place, Infinite Malevolence seems poised to take control over all the Netherworlds. Are there any heroes left out there in the universe who would rise against this ancient menace and put a stop to its long-overdue ascension to the top of the demonic food chain?!

https://forms.gle/bdsXDp9pwRErUcvC8

#fabula ultima #disgaea #play by post #campaign #looking for players #reblogging on main because I can #signal boosting this for the people interested in Fabula Ultima and willing to give it a shot in pbp format

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basilhomebrews · 11 months ago

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I’ve come across confusion with how Fabula Ultima’s character creation works, especially in people coming to it from DnD5e, so here’s a post to break it down and show how awesomely customizable FabUlt PCs are straight from the hop.

In 5e, pretty much everything about your class is decided immediately. Take it at level 1, it drip-feeds you the same features in the same order. At 1st - 3rd level, you pick a subclass from a short list, and this sprinkles in a few more set-in-stone upgrades. A Level 10 Champion Fighter will have all the same class features as every other Level 10 Champion Fighter. If you multiclass, you get to add in some other features, but always the same features in the same order for every class you do this with.

In Fabula Ultima, each Class is a bundle of features called Class Skills, and in most cases these Skills can be taken in any order and as much or as little as you like. Each level your character has represents such an investment in a chosen Skill in a Class that you have. (There’s an example of all this later that makes it clearer.) Some Class Skills are one-and-done -- spend a level on it and it’s yours. Others Skills have multiple tiers to them, allowing you invest multiple character levels into them to make them more powerful. (Each class also has couple of Free Benefits, little boosts you get for having at least one level in a class.) You can also skip a class skill altogether, if it isn’t something you want for your character build.

Looking at each class, they seem a little barebones. Only five Class Skills, not a lot, and each class is kind of niche. The Rogue doesn’t get martial ranged weapons, and the Entropist's only damage spells deal Dark damage. But you see, in Fabula Ultima, multiclassing is mandatory. At character creation, you get 5 levels and you must invest them in two to three different classes, in any of the skills available from those classes. This does two very important things. One, it ensures a character is good in at least two ways straight out of character creation. Two, when combined with the previous point -- that class features can be taken in any order and arrangement -- it creates this unprecedented level of variety, including with starting-level characters.

Like okay, as an example of all this, I’m going to make two builds for starting characters. They’ll have the same number of levels in the same two classes (Guardian 2 / Weaponmaster 3), and not only will they not step on each other’s toes, they’ll play completely differently.

Our first character is going to be a teamwork-oriented tank, focusing defensive support and enemy debuff. The combined Free Benefits of Guardian and Weaponmaster grant +10 max HP, plus martial armor, shields and melee weapons. From Guardian, we’ll take Protect so we can jump in the way of attacks and spells aimed at our allies. We’ll also take Dual Shieldbearer, to give us some insane Defense scores and let us dual-wield those shields as brawling weapons. Now for Weaponmaster. First we’ll grab Counterattack. This grants us a 50% chance to hit back at enemies when they attack us with melee, including the attacks we block with Protect. And we’ll invest our last two levels in Bonecrusher, so we can choose to swap out damage with status effects and MP drain (lots of it because we invested 2 levels) when we hit -- and since we’re dual-wielding shields, we can debuff this way twice per turn without the damage penalty from dual-wielding mattering (because we’re giving up the damage anyway). Guardian 2 / Weaponmaster 3 who’s tanky as hell, can intercept and punish enemy attacks, and debuffs enemies with shield bashes.

Okay, same Guardian 2 / Weaponmaster 3 spread, same Free Benefits. However, instead of a tank this character is a simple but reliable damage-dealer. From Guardian, we’ll take one level in Defensive Mastery and one level in Fortress. These skills give us a bit of damage reduction and a bit of extra max HP, respectively, and we’ll probably level these up over taking new Guardian skills in the future. As cool as it is, Dual Shieldbearer won’t work for this build since we’ll use a two-handed weapon like a Katana or a Waraxe for bigger damage. From Weaponmaster, we’ll invest in Bladestorm and two levels in Melee Weapon Mastery. Bladestorm lets us spend MP to hit multiple targets when we attack, and the two levels of MWM give us a +2 on our melee attack checks. Guardian 2 / Weaponmaster 3 who’s got a little padding as protection while they focus on accuracy, damage, and hitting multiple targets at once.

So there you go. Same classes, same number of levels in each, completely different playstyles. And these are just starting characters. PCs gain a level every session or two, and they can invest in up to three classes at once (and 5-6 classes over a level 5-50 career). On leveling up, the tank could double down on Guardian to get even tankier, or level into Orator or Spiritist for more support options. The damage dealer could lean into Fury for increased crit chance and bonus damage, or into a magic-hybrid spellblade build via Elementalist. Or either of them could take on Wayfarer for an animal companion and increased travel/exploration aptitude. The possibilites are truly amazing, and you can get super creative with them as you find synergies and build up team combos. And I didn’t even get into Quirks, custom weapons or Heroic Skills.

So yeah, if you haven’t yet, check out Fabula Ultima. Character building is insanely fun and it’s honestly spoiled the 5e equivalent for me.

#ttrpg #fabula ultima #non-homebrew #other creator #character creation talk #nice little explanation on how FabUlt's character creation process is different from something like 5e

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