Hi, I'm Sebbaa. Long-time nerd, dungeon master and writer of fantastic stories. On this channel I talk about tabletop RPGs such as D&D, Mörk Borg or Call of Cthulhu. I do system and adventure reviews, advice for game masters and sometimes talk about books, games or movies.
That's out of the Coriolis: The Great Dark quickstart. Where the table references conditions, I wrote in what those conditions actually mean with a pencil.
@@Sebbaasdungeon Ah okay, I will take a look. Thanks. Will take over the table nearly 1:1, just have made a few adjustments to the weight of the more severe entries. Any further house rule tipps?
@@MasterZelgadis I like the additional talents you can find in Extended Horizons. Gives the players something to put XP into, if you plan a long campaign. I would also change what to give XP for to fit with your campaign and your group's playstyle. I started my campaign with the "Dark Flowers" adventure from the quickstart as a oneshot with the pregenerated characters. This allowed everyone to get a glimpse of the setting and rules. (make sure all PCs go onto the station, and don't stay back on the ship. A radio blackout might be useful) Than we created characters and talked over the houserules in a session 0. And in session one, I kicked the campaign of with "The Last Voyage of the Gazali" which is a kickass adventure. Much better than the one from the quickstart, or the core rules. I'm sure I'll come up with more house rules, as I make the videos for ship creation and spaceship combat. Making these videos is a great way for me to familiarize myself with the rules.
@@Sebbaasdungeon Thanks, looking forward to the videos. I will also start with the Ghazali, even from reading the book it seems like a perfect start to kick off the icons campaign
I know the German editing team is doing a lot of German exclusive stuff, like erratas worked into the translations, extra chapters, whole books. What about that distribution deal?
@Sebbaasdungeon , apparently in the 80s, D&D didn't have any distribution rights for Germany, possibly because they didn't feel like it was an important market? (It may not have been Germany specifically, but maybe all of Europe) 🤷♂️ I don't know what their actual reasoning was. BUT, FASA (the company that owned Shadowrun) DID pursue distribution in Europe. So, for some extended period of time, Shadowrun was the only big tabletop game available. At least that's my understanding of how it happened.
@@chthulu27 I know the D&D story. The big German Board Game producer Schmidt Spiele tried to get the license for D&D from TSR. At that point in time, Schmidt was by far the bigger company. Apparently TSR tried for a price way above what Schmidt was willing to pay. The director of Schmidt was so angry, that he hired some German authors from the fledgling German role playing scene, that write an entirely new game in a matter of a few month. The first edition is honestly a mess, rules wise. But they got the setting and general feel of the game right, and continued to support it with a shitton of adventures, novels etc. And D&D had a really hard time finding players in Germany until the popularity of 5E.
I also did some digging on the Shadowrun front: From what I hear, the game hit a nerve with the big German punk culture at the time. Also the German publisher put out their own supplements, like the Germany sourcebook Deutschland in den Schatten, or Asphalkrieger. Greatly expanding the Allianz Deutscher Länder in the 6th world. Man, the ADL is crazy, full of megacorps, pirates, dragons, readioactive wastelands and so on and so forth. They put every idea from the entire Shadowrun world just into Germany.
Mm interesting. I think some of it comes down to personnallety. I like a lot of the details that you dislike. I rather have it there then not. Because I needed it, you don't... but if you take it away - I loos something, but if we keep it as is you dislike it and you don't need it... but it doesn't take anything away from you. You can only ignore it and do exactly what you are doing and adapt it to your stile. Conclution... most of your critic is invalid... from my point of view 😅 but hey, we are all different...
Great stuff. Our group primarily did 5e, but loved our intro Symbaroum ToDD game, so we did the 5e version for the first ToT adventure. I really agree that the rest system was good addition. Unfortunately, this conversion had a lot of flaws for us. The casting was off for corruption math (way too many free of corruption spells). A lot of unbalanced or not well developed classes, and feats and items that were really lacking. I want to come back to this for another game down the line, but will have to do a bunch of reworks.
@Seeba I'd love to see you review this game again now that you've done so many others. If you are using the combat system from Conan or D&D its kind of hard to understand why bother with a mashup of Lemuria given that it neither adds advancement nor interesting character generation as far as I can tell from the review.
Great video, thanks a lot for all your synthetic work ! A quick question : where did you find references to "Lenn the cartographer" or "Lenn the left" ? I can't seem to find it in the books ... Thanks a lot !
Only the weapon damage without any bonuses is doubled. "Your weapon’s damage is doubled, excluding the damage bonus and other bonuses. Roll twice as many dice as normal and add them up. " p.41 Backstap dmg counts as other bonuses. But do as you see fit. There is fun in doing massive dmg spikes.
Love the setting, the system and everything about BSH (especially its Appendices [its oracle is my favorite]) I hope I can get it around at my table one day
Introduced my players to the game by having them fight a Krok in the Cy equivalent of a rainforest cafe where the animatronic crocodile you throw Pennie’s at in the pit is a krok they painted green and chained down. My players were all homebrew classes I bought on websites. We have a gorilla in a suit who uses a brick as his only weapon, we have a murderous Misses Clause, and an algae farmer who just carries a sniper rifle around and wants to melt things.
you state you are not taking jobs from artists because you're just a small time DM, but then you sell the product on drivethru RPG. This is exactly the issue. These uses of AI are reducing the ability of creatively skilled artisans to make a living. We should be using AI to work on problems humans are not good at not jobs we wish we could have someone do for us for free. Also each of our prompts draws on the work of Richard Pace, but what remuneration goes to the artists who's work Open AI trained on to be able to give you that response to that prompt? The writing process is important for thinking and for creativity. I cringe at the thought of a generation who writes research papers this way, or theorizes how to make the world a better place because this is going to produce skill at writing prompts not skill at writing a good adventure. You make no comment about whether the adventure was actually enjoyable, original, surprising, creative, laughter inducing, or memorable. I see no value in having a slightly different list of 6 fantasy beverages in an Inn when the players would likely better enjoy ad-libbing their own idea for one that was a call back to another session or an inside joke. If you need random tables there are already tons of books full of them. In fact that's exactly where Open AI is stealing all their ideas from....
I've been using GPT for a lot of my mundane tasks like formatting ideas into random tables, generating random names for things and also fact checking things to make it feel more "medieval" bur otherwise I write all of it myself because I love the process. I've also found that using royalty free fantasy art for landscapes or characters has been really helpful. Kevin Crawford who made Stars/Worlds Without Numbers releases basically all of his games' art royalty free as well. That said, I think it really comes down to what the goal with AI generated content is, I don't plan on releasing anything people can buy with AI generated images but if I'm running a home campaign I help myself to Midjourmey.
Free league have great gm sections for all of their games, Is really recommend the gm advice from Tales from the loop. I believe that was their first big "gm section".
I can’t wait to run this. We just finished wrath of the warden, we have years to go before we get here. Great video thank you for this overview it has gotten me so excited for Symbaroum and the Throne of Thorns game.
i think immersion might be the key -- a common thing i've noticed is that many players (and sometimes DMs) treat TTRPGs like they would a video game. this leads to unimaginative combat and lackluster roleplay. if they feel like their character is an active part of the world and they care about the NPCs, it will feel alive, and they will engage with it like an actual world rather than a game.
You definitely got a point there. You as a GM need to put forth the first step. Give life to your world and NPCs and combat descriptions, even if it feels goofy and awkward at first.
While i do have a lot of points where i disagree there are alot where i do agree. I believe the three way fight for the node is amazing. My players sided with an undead lord earlier on in the book so currently there trying to hide there patron while they rebuild the ruins so having them tey for the node whiel fighting off other Forces is amazing.
I dont know how many times ive rewatched these videos there isnt alot of symbaroum lore videos/adventures wich is criminal considering how fun the system is
Fleshing out a character, and having some supporting NPCs from their past helps a lot. The big thing you gotta keep in mind when playing D&D is you are not the main character - nobody is. It's a team game, and if you get someone with main character syndrome trying to push and pull everyone to do what they want to do, that gets really bad. Almost as bad as the meta-gamer that is trying to make the most powerful, well-optimized character. It brings everything down, and sucks the life out of the game. There's not much you can do about other players if you aren't the DM, but you can help your DM by trying to work with the other party members, and ask them questions aimed to get them into their character, and think what their character would do, not what they would do. Never play yourself; play your character. We had a guy playing essentially himself, he got himself killed, and threw a tantrum, quitting the game instead of rolling a new character. If you play yourself, and have a fragile-though-inflated ego, if your character dies, it can be difficult to accept that and move on. I've only played 2 proper D&D campaigns, and started about a year and a half ago. There's so much to learn, but our DM is great, and he makes it super fun. He also says we're the best group he's DM'd for in 10 years, and it's because while our characters are interesting, we let each other have our spotlight when it comes, and things unfold organically. Sometimes you get that really great group dynamic going, and man, we've had a blast! Doing the voices, playing the character, avoiding meta-gaming, all good things that make the immersion great. Sometimes we predict what the other characters would do, because we just know the character well enough. I consider myself very fortunate to have found this group, and maybe I'll DM someday, too, when I'm ready.
Thanks to this video I now have a new playlist called 'DnD Tips!'. Thank you, this has been amazing and I really love your ideas. Can't wait to use some of them :)
Red from Better Games Old Leveling system - later used in Space Gamer / Fantasy Gamer Magazine Free Games All Ignobles must be checked off to go to next level Adventure, Travel, or Intrigue Bard's Tale, Fame, or Notoriety Battle, Military Engagements, or Strategy Desires Fulfilled, Profit, or Power Gained Prudence, Forethought, or Goals Growth, Leadership, or Politics Heroics, Audacity, or Courage Magical Events, Acquisition, or Exposure Either a GM would announce a player could check one off, or the player will ask if X was qualified to be checked off.
In D&D i removed the bless cantrip but give out d4s that can be spent like savage world bennies on non combat rolls. In SWRPG light side points as an RP reward rather than just rolling at session start. I trying out hinderances (deadlands) as a way to gain extra dice in other games as well. I've seen no game do as well as Deadlands in adding character to characters mostly from the low intensity flavor hinderances more so than the major ones... hmm i should write ones that fit the tropes of other genres....
We had a guy join our campaign, claimed he had been a DM for many years, but when he introduced his character, he had it just repeat its name over and over, as well as completely ignore all the roleplaying cues we were giving him regarding context of the situation in which we found him. It was super lack-luster, and while the character was not a bad concept, the execution was so poor we didn't invite him back.
progress is definitely a tricky one overall. I romanticically like the "If you use a skill, you get to level up that skill", but I dislike putting together a list of skills. It feels a lot easier when cobbling together my own things to just say there is one xp point for each adventure completed. I am not sure, what other ways would there be?
Very nice considerations! I will think about how I can use them without breaking the gamemechanics by awarding too much XP.... Concerning OSE, I think you don't only award XP for killing monsters, but for passing threats by monsters. That might of course be to kill them, but you get the same amount of XP for finding clever ways to pass them without a fight.
personally the font size was the final decider for me. My eyesight is pretty bad but I can read it just fine. While its clear you didn't approve, I and I'm sure other older gamers or anyone with poor eyesight for that matter appreciate the larger font. I love how clean OSE is but I have a hard time with the font size.
Dude's clearly never suffered eye problems or dyslexia. First time I've ever heard someone complain about visibility enhancements. Accessibility is an underreprseneted issue in this industry and Kelsey Dionne is one of the only creators I'm aware of who formats her products with this consideration in mind. She deserves all the success S.D. brings.
Greetings, Have you ever acquainted yourself with the teachings of Cardinal Jeffro Johnson the Wise and the principles of the BROSR as he laid them down? I'd be curious to hear your opinion on it.
I know of it. It seems like an interesting play style. What I don't like is categorizing any style of play as "right" or "wrong", "good" or "bad". As long as you are having fun playing, you're not doing it wrong.
Got dragonbane for the miniatures, treasure cards, map and inspiration adventures to play with my underage daughters. I'm not going to use those rules. I will house rule the sht out of this and use a simple RPG system to play. I don't know if 50€ was worth it but if I have some good time with my kids I will accept it as a "well spend". Not going to spend so much iany other time though. And not going to buy any supplements for Dragonbane. Prices are too high.
I played the quickstarter and had fun. Yes, there are some points that need to be refined. I do like the setting though. I am hoping far a hard sci-fi. No space wizards please. I like your ideas to improve the adventure specifically having to return the artifact to prevent moon fall.
Very useful, thanks. Your review clarified that I don't need this. The setting is too specific and ideosyncratic, and I'm already not a huge fan of the YZE system.
