Not quite a once and done then! It was nice to get Hjältarnas tid out to the table once more at TavernCon. The game ran very smoothly, demonstrating most of the key concepts, or at least as many as I could manage in a one shot.
The open and closed rolls worked really well, as did the dice swapping using the Traits and Relationships. In fact Opening and Closing the rolls looks like a useful core lever for difficulty, brought on via a range of in-game circumstances.
I’d like to run the game some more. I think I need to tighten up the translations of spell descriptions and magical traditions as I’d like to add my own for both for my home brew world that I’m playing in.
Here’s a slightly after the fact screenshot of the game room on Role VTT.
The game runs really well in Role VTT. I like how robust the characters are with Guard as an extra track to absorb damage. The Talents were put to good use in the game too.
Skill Deepening
I may need to think about what I do with ‘Skill Deepening’ (Specialisations). Due to the way that I translated the game, the understanding of certain sections are coming later in play. The layout of the PDF has certain tables represented as embeded images, so they are mostly skipped with a Google Docs Translate. Skill Deepening is an option for when you have at least 50% in a skill. Using Enhancement Points you can choose one or more ‘specialisations’ of the skill. I’ve now translated all the specialisations, which has also made me reconsider some of the base skill names. I’m still vasilating on ‘Perception’ or ‘Search’.
Specialities have three possible effects. Which effect applies depends on the circumstances.
- You get to use the skill to achieve the result. This applies to situations where specific cutting edge knowledge is required and training to achieve the goal at all, and where the general skill is not enough to be able to do what you want.
- Having the right speciaility grants an Open 2 roll.
- You can avoid having to make a roll. This applies to situations without much risk, where you have plenty of time, but you still need expert knowledge.
I don’t have anywhere to acknowledge them on Role or on the physical character sheet. They’re a nice extra layer to the game, without complicating the core skill list.
Will the game get some more play? I hope so, as I enjoy the game more every time I play it. There remains the wiff factor of starting adventurer skills at 15%. You could fix that by making the base 22%, or having different base skill starting percentages as per BRP.
I’m still tweaking. I like the idea of an outstanding success on an improvement roll giving you a best of 2d6 increase for example. This is all just froth on the surface of a really nice evolution of the game I loved so much back in the 80s.