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Age of Sigmar RPG


Emmetation

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On 1/18/2019 at 10:25 AM, Overread said:

Daughters of Khaine are not evil! I assure you all those hearts are donated freely by the weak, the meek, the feeble and the fallen in battle! It's not the fault of the sisters that many in the Mortal Realms are just not as gifted as those who follow Khaine. 

 

Interestingly I see DoK and Idoneth as closer to neutral than pure evil, yet both forces are capable of more evil acts than many order factions. Idoneth are just soul-vampires (essentially) who are also somewhat shunned, hated, feared and also very cautious themselves in how they hide up. 

Whilst DoK are mostly just obsessed with the simplistic concept of survival of the fittest in terms of strength and skill in battle. And hearts, or at least the queens like hearts a lot.

The Idoneth are more neutral I would say, as they do whats needed for their survival and feel bad about it.

The DoK are just straight up evil. They worship the God of Murder and their Queen is evil and treacherous as are the Daughters themselves. 

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@Emmetation I just came across this book The Loathsome Ratmen and all their Vile Kin* for WFRP (video linked below shows it off a bit)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCybmrLla5Q

Have to say I'm really sad that its now out of print, but I wonder if that's the kind of depth and detail you guys are looking to be able to put into factions for the game. I also wonder if, and I don't know the legalities of who specifically owns copyright on the book it might stil be GW or it could be 3rd party; you'd be able to put pressure on GW to bring such books back into print even if its under "print on demand". They'd be fantastic for your Old World RPG game. 

And if you could do books like that for your AoS game it would be beyond awesome! 

 

 

*its kind of scary that this now sells around the £100 or more because its out of print. 

Edited by Overread
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  • 2 weeks later...

 

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So, our man Emmet did a bit of explanation and introduction (note this is still early in development).

 

Body encapsulates anything physical, strength, speed, balance etc

Mind is deductuve reasoning and awareness of surroundings. Book learning and street smarts

Soul is your force of will, grit and determination, and strength of character

minutiae is handled through skills, talents, and positive and negative traits

So Soul + Intimidation (a skill)

Or Body + Intimidation for a big bruiser

Or Mind + Intimidation for a Hannibal-esque serial killer

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Hey folks,
 
So shortly I'll be sharing some major news on AoSRPG. In the interim I asked a few different communities what they'd like to know about (so please let me know) and a few questions popped up that I've already answered so I wanted to collect them into one place. The communities are quite fragmented across TGA, Facebook, Discord, RPG.Net, and Reddit so I'm doing my best to keep everyone informed! And do let me know anything you'd like more info on and I'll do my best to answer. Some of this info you might know already
_____________________________
Q. How much fluff will be there? I don't play AoS, so aside from what I read in White Dwarf I don't know a heck of a lot about the setting. I'm assuming this is meant to be an entry point, which is part of my interest (there is like NO AoS play here, and barely any 40k).
A. The corebook is written with the assumption that players have no knowledge of the Age of Sigmar setting. We will present an introduction to the setting and how it got to be where it is, information on each of the Mortal Realms (with a major focus on one in particular), a run down of the major players and factions, some information on the gods, and then discuss what daily life in the realms looks like
 
Q. Mini-friendly? I like minis :3
A. Options for using miniatures and theater of the mind :)
 
Q. Reference heavy? As a HERO player I love not needing to open the book to play. Pathfinder drove me nuts because of all the referencing I needed to do. If there's a cheat sheet or player's book that'd be welcome.
A. No. The system is built to be unobtrusive and to make it easy for new players to learn. We will have a section we're calling our "toolbox" that allows you to plug in more optional rules and complexity to your desire.
 
Q. Are PCs always assumed to be Order? Or, over time, will there be options for Death, Chaos, and Destruction campaigns? Even if its just to make more memorable NPCs, that'd be interesting.
A. Out of the gate we're going with Order only, simply because of the breadth of options available that we didn't want to overwhelm people (the same reason we are focusing on a particular realm). We certainly have plans for "unconventional" heroes (or villains) but they won't be in the corebook. Plus, Order doesn't necessarily mean good :D
 
Q. What sort of game are you going for?
A. As was mentioned, WFRP does low-level heroes brilliantly so there was no point in us releasing something similar with AoSRPG. Age of Sigmar is heroic fantasy, with some post-apocalyptic steampunk horror throw in. You start as competent heroes able and willing to face down the forces of Chaos, Death, and Destruction. The question isn't if you'll win, its how long can you keep winning against overwhelming odds. The players will be beacons of hope in the world, but the ravages of the realms will take their toll.
 
Q. A couple sample PCs would be nice. Preferably one baseline human PC and a more advanced PC such a Stormcast for example.
A. I'll see what I can do :D
 
Q. I think more archetypes would be great. I think people are going to be generally curious what character options the core book will provide. I think a general discussion of power level the game is geared towards would be nice too. Maybe just describing what kinds of threats that a starting group of PCs should be able to comfortably face contrasted with what would be a hard challenge.
A. See above in relation to threats. Character options, we're hoping to provide at least from from each major Order faction but we'll see.
 
Q. What kind of characters do the designers forsee us as playing? From lowest level to highest?
A. See #5 above. You start as competent heroes. I liken it to levels 5 to 10 in DnD 5th Edition to start, going up to being able to face down a Mortarch or Chosen of Chaos.
 
Q. What kind of things are the opposition?
A. All kinds! I had a two-hour meeting yesterday trying to nail down our bestiary. Corrupted of Chaos, daemons, undead, monstrous beasts - all the greatest hits.
 
Q. An example of a plot/story outline for a game? What kind of things do characters get up to?
A. I'll try to address this in a later post, but our goal is that the heroes are these beacons of hope. Order and the Stormcast Eternals are stretched thing, particularly following the necroquake, so now more than ever they need heroes. Players will help push back the darkness and their actions will affect how settlements and the lands develop and change.
________________________________
 
Phew! Right, I'll try to keep this updated as more info becomes available. All the best
- Emmet
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Interesting that this won't be a "heroes meet in a pub and go on adventure" Style approach. Also shifting to having basic experience sounds neat; it gets that early phase where characters are still pretty rubbish at everything they do out of the way. Provided that experience scales nicely so that players get to adapt and change regularly then it should settle well. 

Focusing on Order makes sense as its got the most diverse army roster and faction roster open to it. And you can certainly have the dark Witch Aelf alongside the noble Stormcast and the Idoneth who keeps eyeing everyone up for a meal! 

This sums it up nicely

 18-06-RollModels6-fb_02-3.jpg

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I'm curious how you plan to structure supplemental releases. I find that there are two main approaches, releasing source books with a tight focus, which put lots of options front and centre (Dedicated bestiaries, equipment books, sourcebooks on a certain region or race). Whereas other game lines have loosely themed sourcebooks, which try to include a wide variety of different options (So say a book on a realm or an adventure module which includes with new character options, monsters, artifacts, lore etc.) A good example of the fomer approach being the Starfinder hardbacks and indeed 2e WFRP, and a good example of the later being how FFG have structured the splat books for the Star Wars RPG. Most game lines historically have a mixture (D&D for example.)

Are you leaning strongly in either direction?

I know as a GM the former is much easier to use at the table than the latter, although as I understand it the reason the second model is so prevalent is that it makes it easier for casual players to buy a book or two here and there, and get a lot of bang for their buck when it comes to expanding their games. Whereas the first model does lend itself more to the GM getting all of the books in the line sooner or later, so that you can have them all at the table, with all the rules nicely organised across the volumes.

I guess both models have their pros and cons for publishers. Ideally you want everyone to buy all the books, but in practice only a dedicated GM actually will. Especially adventure modules are likely to not be very attractive to players to don't GM, unless they have a solid appendix of new character options (as the Pathfinder Adventure Paths and D&D's hardback modules tend to do.)

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I wonder if the best way is Realm Books. 

Considering the vast diversity of beasties and lore and landscape it would be far easier to release a book for one Realm with a complete list of its own peoples, settlements, maps, beasts, notable features, notable local equipment etc..... Since how the GM builds the game is going to vary a lot on what Realm its set in that makes it a lot easier to organise mentally and it would give each book a really big chunk of content; both for gamers, GMs, lore addicts and the like. 

Plus when playing it makes it a lot easier to manage the book-keeping side because if you're in the Realm of Light you just need that book; if you're crossing between two or more realms you only need those books. Rather than having beastiaries and equipment books and having to flip around in each for various chapters on different realms. 

Plus from a writing angle it might be easier to have lore, beasts, equipment, peoples and maps all done for one realm at a time - making it far easier to focus and get things straight rather than spreading out thin over multiple realms. 

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Just so I can understand. 

We have 3 attributes (mind, body, soul) 

We have X skills that can combine which each of that attributes. 

f. e:

If we have an "Agility" skill we could throw:

Agility+body for speed. 

Agility+mind for reflexes. 

Agility+soul for performance. 

However, if we have an "Endurance" skill we could throw:

Endurance+body for stamina. 

Endurance+mind for madness. 

Endurance+soul for morale. 

 

Am I close? 

Edited by Asensur
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I'll try to answer both points if I can, and give a little insight into our approach when it comes to design.

With our The One Ring and Adventures in Middle-earth line what we have traditionally done is release a region guide that has information on a particular part of the world, followed by an adventure book. For Age of Sigmar, we are looking at a sort of similar approach but not quite. One thing we want to avoid is RPG-encyclopedia - if we ever find ourselves saying there are 71% humans, 12% aelves, 3% duardin then we know we've taken a wrong turn (flash forward to me regretting this sentence 😄). Basically what I'm trying to say is we want everything we create to be functional, to have a purpose, and to fuel story-telling. With everything we put in the books we look at how a GM and players can use this to tell stories.

Release wise for AoSRPG what we would like to do is have a core release, like an adventure book or campaign, that has supplemental releases around it. So if we had a campaign set in Shyish for example, some supplements from that could look at monsters, players options, major cities, other side quests etc. Its not needed to run the campaign, but it adds value to it. Likewise, the supplement can be used in isolation from the campaign.

Hopefully that helps to give some insight into our thought process.

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3 minutes ago, Asensur said:

Just so I can understand. 

We have 3 attributes (mind, body, soul) 

We have X skills that can combine which each of that attributes. 

f. e:

If we have an "Agility" skill we could throw:

Agility+body for speed. 

Agility+mind for reflexes. 

Agility+soul for performance. 

However, if we have an "Endurance" skill we could throw:

Endurance+body for stamina. 

Endurance+mind for trauma. 

Endurance+soul for morale. 

 

Am I close? 

Pretty close :)

We want to allow people to combine Attributes and Skills in interesting ways, and what you've listed is what we envision people doing.

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1 hour ago, Emmetation said:

I'll try to answer both points if I can, and give a little insight into our approach when it comes to design.

With our The One Ring and Adventures in Middle-earth line what we have traditionally done is release a region guide that has information on a particular part of the world, followed by an adventure book. For Age of Sigmar, we are looking at a sort of similar approach but not quite. One thing we want to avoid is RPG-encyclopedia - if we ever find ourselves saying there are 71% humans, 12% aelves, 3% duardin then we know we've taken a wrong turn (flash forward to me regretting this sentence 😄). Basically what I'm trying to say is we want everything we create to be functional, to have a purpose, and to fuel story-telling. With everything we put in the books we look at how a GM and players can use this to tell stories.

Release wise for AoSRPG what we would like to do is have a core release, like an adventure book or campaign, that has supplemental releases around it. So if we had a campaign set in Shyish for example, some supplements from that could look at monsters, players options, major cities, other side quests etc. Its not needed to run the campaign, but it adds value to it. Likewise, the supplement can be used in isolation from the campaign.

Hopefully that helps to give some insight into our thought process.

Cool. It sounds like its going to be fun. I've gradually come to the conclusion that there is no perfect way to organise RPG material, but some systems definitely do it better than others.

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42 minutes ago, xking said:

But it will have some of that?  I want to know, what Hammerhal Aqsha is like? and how is it different from Hammerhal Ghyra?. What does it 's factories manufacture?, What does the city grow for food?, what are the different districts like? etc.   I want to know how in-depth are the city guides and region guides going to be when compared to your other RPGs?   The AoS setting desperately needs more depth and detail added to it.  

Yes there will. This may be slight miscommunication on my part, but a big thing for us is the day to day life in the realms and how people survive. We also have sections dedicated to major cities likes those you mentioned, I moreso meant that its present less in a factual and scholarly way and more in a natural way that can easily fit into your game.

32 minutes ago, Overread said:

Wait are you saying that you're not associated with 

https://www.warhammer-community.com/hammerhal-herald/#hammerhal-17

Because I was really looking forward to the included guide on eateries and pubs! 

I friggin' love the Hammerhal Herald

30 minutes ago, xking said:

Will magic work the same why it does in the WFRPG?  How will prayers work?

Nope, its a completely new system so the magic system is new too. I won't get into arcane and divine magic right now, I'll save that for a later post :)

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31 minutes ago, Emmetation said:

Yes there will. This may be slight miscommunication on my part, but a big thing for us is the day to day life in the realms and how people survive. We also have sections dedicated to major cities likes those you mentioned, I moreso meant that its present less in a factual and scholarly way and more in a natural way that can easily fit into your game.

(...)

And will there be cities and WORLDS maps ?

As @xking said, we really need more "depth" and "realism" to the lore* (even if we are in a High Fantasy setting, it was always a trademark of Warhammer's universes to have kind of reliable aspects - moreso if we have to immerse ourselves in the lore at a RPG-level). 

*I'm not saying there isn't right now, just NOT enough, NEVER enough 😛 The best things for AOS so far in terms of "general" worldbuilding is the Core Book and the Malign Portents short stories : https://malignportents.com/stories/ - as opposed to specialized  worldbuilding, i.e. one area explored in a Black library novel...

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