I'm making a playbook to cover some aspects of the game i find missing and i'm struggling finding the font to match the one used in the playtest doc. Anyone knows it? (and as a "gift" i'll post the playbook in this forum when it's finished :p)

Last weekend we playtested the game at a gdr convention in my area. I was the MC and i had the time to collect some thought when we headed home. I'll keep it simple, but we can discuss about it further in case:

WHAT WE LIKED A LOT
- The stronghold creation. It reminded us the Covenant creation from Ars Magica (a game i always liked for various reasons) and it was a good starting point to dive into the narration because all the players were involved in some way with the stronghold and the people.
- The experience system. A lot of options and a built in system to prevent abuses (i had some in the past in AW, Dark Ages felt a lot more "safe" against powerplayers)
- The Join Single Combat move. You can win a duel by taking damage. Brilliant. (there is BUT sadly, some MC could ruin the players game by spending 2 in "position" every time. Players will be more careful because Harm is really deadly in DA)
- The Aid move. Streamlined, no rolls required, beautifully simple.
- How the harm is handled and the lack of an "healer" playbook. When you can heal, the harm is almost meaningless and the healer mandatory (that's why i disliked the Angel in AW). When you don't have the option to heal, you can "fear" for you character and you tend to resort to violence only when you can't do anything else to avoid it. A lot more pathos at the table, i love it. Please never ever bring an "healer" playbook in the game. (ok you can heal using the enchantments, but there are sacrifices involved. So it's good)

WHAT WE DIDN'T LIKE
- Weird. Too many contact the other world rolls, too many "weird" people. My players all had +1 or +2 in weird and they kept contacting the other world, after a while it felt like it was the norm to speak with entities.
- The lack of Act under fire or something similar. I think the game could have a move to handle stressful and risky situation, like sneaking behind someone or breaking undetected inside an enemy camp. Leap into action feels wrong when doing something cautious but potentially deadly. This imho was MAJOR, because if there is an archetype i love in medieval settings, is the rogue.
- The lack of 2 archetypes i feel they are needed: the rogue and the spymaster. The outranger just isn't what i expected him to be and i didn't like the "step out of earthly life" move on him (while i like it on the wizard), so i feel the need of an assassin/trapper/sneaky playbook. The spymaster instead would be someone more like Varys from A song of ice and fire, an educated person who can speak his way out of the most dire situation and can collect knowledge to leverage people. Those two playbooks would be really good to have more "social" oriented campaign in a medieval setting, something i would love to play.
- The setting in the real world. It was somewhat limiting, but i understand the reasoning behind this choice.
- The absence of a move to fight something different from a single enemy or a war company. When you fight 3 vs 5, is that a join single combat? It's not a 1v1 and the fiction most of the time doesn't allow for "duels". We didn't understand how to handle these situations.

Ok, i want to create a war company but i can't find the rules to assign the various values like the ones for the people. And i thought the war-captain would have a war company (judging by his name) but in the playbook there isn't a rule to allow him to have and create one (like the gangs in AW) but you have "the right to roll your company's war".
Am i missing something?

So my players decided for a Glacial Apocalypse, set in the far north. The fun part was how the Apocalypse originated: one day, for some mystical reasons (maelstrom?) all inhabitants of the earth started to tell the truth and couldn't tell lies anymore. The war came, and the nuclear fallout left the earth with toxic clouds that obscured the sun and led to a glacial era. Decades after (or centuries? no one really knows) the mankind could start to tell lies again, and some form of society began to resurface... Ice, mutations, toxic wastes, subterranean cities, cannibals, polar smilobears, pockets of "lie detection" and condensed maelstrom artifacts are part of the setting.

All the apocalypse was to teach something to mankind? It was an act of god or a mere supernatural/natural disaster?

What do you think? How can i make this little start more awesome?

Yesterday i watched the premier of the Dominion tv series and it gave me some interesting ideas about a Real Apocalypse (armageddon)

Yes it did that:
- Conventional War - No
- Climate Chaos - Yes if polar
? Flooding/Searise - Yes
? Biological War/Plague - Yes
? Desertification/Solar Radiation - No
? Thermonuclear War - No
? Methane Eruptions/Poison Atmosphere - Yes
? Acid/Toxic/Disgusting Precipitation - Yes
? Polar Reversal/Tectonic Chaos - Don't Know
? Radioactive Fallout/Waste - No
? Meteorite/Planetary Impact - This could lead to most of the things already said it before
? Cosmic/Galactic Rays/EMF - Same as Climate Chaos
? Alien Invasion - No
? Zombie Apocalypse - No
? AI/Robot/Nano Revolution - No
? Psychic Apocalypse/Singularity - Yes

I thought of a couple new Apocalypse Types:
- A new intelligent species is now the top of the food chain and it's not an alien (like planet of the apes)
- A beast of the legend comes real (think like Reign of Fire)

If anyone have something to add to the possible Apocalypse Types, is more than welcome to do so!

But is the rulebook available anywhere? can't seem to find it...

1) let's crunch some numbers: a 1-2 person gang with dmg 3 vs a small gang with arm 1 deals 1 damage or 2 if they choose to deal more damage on the roll. 2 separate people with a shotgun each, deals 3 dmg each, reduced to 1 because of gang size and armor. So 2 dmg, if they choose to deal more damage, that's 4 damage. Dead gang. That's a big difference, even more if you factor in AP bullets and some moves that gives +1 dmg.

My take on the subject is:
when some pcs fight a gang, they are acting like a gang. The size depends on how many are and the damage depend on the weapon average. If one of those pcs wishes to make a different move, they are not counting towards the gang numbers but if they end up inflicting damage, they do it only to a single person and not to the whole gang.

But what if the optional battle rules are in play? Those rules aren't good when gangs are involved it seems.



3) Same thing, even worse. 2 separates gangs deal a lot more damage than 1 bigger gang. Expecially with AP bullets.


p.s.: addendum, since 1 PCs is not a gang, when he deals dmg to a gang it only harm one member of this gang or he deals damage as a 1-2 person gang and thus spreading his damage to the whole enemy gang?