Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan. And I'm the merriest of merry,
merry man, and. And today we're going to be
looking at Sherwood. This is a game of outlaws and
arcanas and a fantastical version of 13th century England
by R Rooks Studio. Yes, Yeah.
I also fixed my light so that, like, the light doesn't fucking
glare off my covers, so you can actually see a nice, beautiful
cover. This isn't So what I have in my
hand is the print version of of this game.
It's nice. It is, looks nice.
Was it? It's Tod or?
No, this is I I'm 99.9% positive I picked this up from Spear
Witch which which I'll talk about where you can pick up the
prints, but the print quality is really nice.
It's that like soft touch mat, you know what I'm talking.
About SO. It feels soft.
It's really nice. It's a nice book.
Yeah, but I'll be at Artwork Studio.
We recently went over what did we do?
Roseville Beach from Artwork Studio.
Fun game yeah and I I, I I really like this one as well.
Yeah before, before we intro the game a bit is anything.
Oh, we have a new discord server.
New. Brand fresh, brand new, quiet,
but getting bigger every day for those that listen to the show
and I want to come talk about it.
Or game stuff in general. Mechanics.
Definitely some Warhammer shit in there too, both fiction and
and painting and stuff. You can find the links in in the
notes where you can find all the rest of our links and shit.
But come, come pop in the Discord server and say hi.
Tell us that we're wrong about something and we'll tell you
that you're right. Yeah, but, but hop into hop into
our Discord server. We're trying to build, I don't
know, just a bit of a more of a community, I guess, more people
to talk to about games and shit and make sure you read the
rules. Don't, don't, don't, don't at me
with your shit. That's what an e-mail address is
for. I think that's that's he's.
Referring to me, I've been I've been adding him in the in the.
Server. He's like he just emailed us
bro. Yeah, yeah, you would have to
actually talk in the server to to to at me in it.
So that's bullshit. But but anyway, oh, that's
that's one of the things the light was that's that.
So yeah. So the game.
So Sherwood. Sherwood.
I have notes. We have notes for every game
we've done so far this year, I think, except maybe one or two.
Sherwood is inspired by modern Robin Hood fantasy stories, the
Robin Hood Sherwood television series and medieval outlaw
ballads and romances designed for a game master and one to six
players. It uses a quick 2D6 core system,
encourages you to devil and magic rituals, and has character
Christian inspired by Traveler that also lets you make the
outlaw you want to make unconstrained by societies
biases about race, ethnicity, sex, sexuality or gender.
The first demo portions of the game are released on February
9th, 2022. Then went through a few beta
tests before the full game was released on November 2nd, 2022.
It's currently available digitally on Itch and Drive
through RPG and in print at Spearwitch, Indy Press
Revolution, and the 20 Sided Store.
And we'll get into the value and stuff and like the what those
things cost to different places. Well, I guess this is a Zine, so
not so. Oh yeah, no, no, we won't,
because it's a Zine. Yeah.
So I think the PDF is 10 bucks wherever and then Spear Rich and
E Press Revolution have the game in print for like 20 bucks and I
think on the 20 side is, so it's like 18 bucks.
So pretty much wherever you prefer to get your games.
It's a great price point, you know, like it's a very low price
point. I think this is, I would
probably pay a little bit more for this, you know, for.
This I agree, especially with I'm going to be honest with the
quality of the print. I definitely would like if it
felt cheaper, you know 20 bucks would be fine, but I'd be happy
I'd be fine paying a little bit more for this just because they
obviously bumped up the the cost of printing with this cover.
It's very nice and obviously you can see the light hitting it.
Like I know I said I adjust my light, but it is very matte and
very nice. It's soft like I've been walking
around with this for a couple of days now just being like damn,
this is soft scene, so it's good.
It's good. Anything else before we hop into
the game? It's good to see you.
Now good to see you buddy. So that's a no.
So we'll just, we'll hop in. We'll hop in.
So first and foremost I got to say cover fucks.
Yeah, cool piece of art, like very like a not monochromatic
because there's two different colors, but it's like very
simple color scheme that works really well.
What? There's, I mean, there's three
colors. I know.
That's why I said not monochromatic, but like a very
simplified color scheme, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, very greens.
I think. I don't know if the A Game of
Outlaws Narcan is just a very light green, but it's definitely
not white, which is really nice. It's a very green.
I don't know what color green this is, but it's a beautiful
green. Like it is a stunning green.
It's got a much lighter yellowish green Sherwood logo.
And then the logo of the game going down is like a sword in
between two arrows all pointing down with like a ribbon slash
piece of claw thing, kind of like floating through it.
It's beautiful, It's clean. I love.
Yeah bro didn't see that. Literally just off for the first
time, yeah. I didn't see it the first time I
looked at it and then I looked, I think yesterday I was like,
that's an ass. I yeah, I did not realize that.
Now it's even cooler that the the the ribbon thing floating
through it is an S That's awesome.
If you look at the original beta version stuff, it is a much
better cover than the original cover was.
Let me you know what, fuck it, Let's grab it real quick.
I think one of the beta covers, like it was fine, but I will say
I do prefer this one much more. I think the cover for beta
three, yeah had like a very fuck boy Robin Hood on it.
No, a normal Robin Hood. Yeah, but let me, I'm just going
to. My phone die.
I'm just going to grab this picture real quick and I'll just
copy paste it on and show you guys the cover.
Like I said, it's fine. I do think I think that this is
a much better cover for the game.
Let's see, let's call it Sherwood Beta and we'll drag
this over. Here you go.
Yeah, this is better. So this is the original cover of
the game and it's fine. The illustration is good, the
art is done well. Whoever did the artist is good.
Totally. But I've met this guy before and
he's, he's kind of AD bag, you know?
Yeah, he he definitely is. Definitely.
This is Mr. Steal Your Girl from the Hood.
Robin Hood. One bartender in downtown LA
who's just kind of rude to you. This is every bartender in
downtown LA. That's who this is.
But it's a great illustration. It's it's Robin Hood kind of
popping out of some some bushes and he's got to sword in his
hand, axe on his back. It's cool.
I don't I think the color choice too.
It's got like brown across the tops and yellows in the
background. I just think I I'm definitely a
fan of simplicity and everything.
I think this this cover looks so fantastic and the use of fonts
throughout the entire thing, like the layout throughout the
entire thing I'm a big fan of. So we'll we'll get into that a
little bit more. But anyway, cover slaps.
It's really good. And where do you describe that?
We gave the alt text for those in podcast land.
Now I can't not see that S so opening page.
Unlocked a new level of like Perception for you, you know.
Oh. Fuck, did I did I?
I don't think I did like an ad page because I do want to.
It's good enough. I don't think it's the the real
spreads, but I can't see spreads in here.
So we'll get to it. Look at us just right, right,
right in the thick of it here. Today so.
So anyway, so there's a cover page before you get anything.
It's got the same Sherwood logo again on it.
And there's a little line, a little little ditty here from
the jest of Robin Hood. It says live and listen
gentlemen, that'd be a freeborn blood.
I shall tell you of a good Yeoman.
His name was Robin Hood. Robin was a proud outlaw whilst
he walked on ground. So curtsy an outlaw as he was
one was never none. You found.
Yeah. Skirt.
Yeah. So then we go directly did did
we? Is the contents page before the
Oh, it's on the credits page. OK, so we get to the table of
contents. So right off the bat there are
bookmarks in it, which is really nice.
It is well bookmarked all the way through, but there are no
hyperlinks. And I will say there are a
number of things here. It says welcome to Sherwood then
we're going to do making a character creating and equipping
your outlaw band, how to play arcade talent, rituals of
divination and sorcery, the game masters guy to Sherwood
opponents and ABC's adventure starters.
But then all the way in the back of the book is an inspirations
page and it I would not it would not hurt anything to throw
inspirations page 28 on the contents too because I love the
inspiration page. Yeah, I love in games have that
and do that so that's nice. So again, wouldn't mind,
wouldn't mind that on there. So let me get to the credits
here. Sherwood, a game of outlaws
Narcana created by Richard Rune. Obviously, I work studio editor
is Lisa Pedal, designer and illustrator is Eric Swanson and
the readers are John Harnes, Justin Kaler and Leila Edelman.
If by design and if designers, comma illustrators, Eric
Swanson, if they're the person who did the outline or the the
layout, it slaps. I'm a huge fan.
I like that the on the inspiration page that they
didn't put that one Robin Hood classic movie with who's that
really great sword fighter Hollywood star that was like an
awful person. Errol Finn, those name I.
Have no idea what you're talking about.
Oh, yeah? Well, I'll find it.
You keep going. I'm.
Actually going to just for low light in here.
Indeed, Eric is the layout person.
Eric, Eric Swanson, your layout fucks.
It's wonderful. I'm going to go over it more and
more. I'm obsessed with it.
I don't know what specifically is about it.
I'll try to to figure out what it is specifically about it, but
and and go over the things, the pieces and parts that I do
really enjoy about it. But man, I'm a huge fan.
I think he did a killer job and we're going to do all that.
So that was our Rook studio is actually in the chat with us
today. So that's fantastic.
We love when that happens here. That's why we still do the shows
live on Twitch. And and for those that listen to
the show or watch the show on YouTube, you can always catch us
live. Who knows what our schedule is
going to be like. It might change shortly, but
catch us there. It's Errol Flynn, the 1938 I
think Robin Hood was like a very famous movie.
Also Errol Flynn was like a fucking terrible person.
So shout out not for big knows your inspiration shout.
Out not Errol Flynn, apparently you huge tool but but yeah so
there we go and my light is going to piss me off forever.
So welcome to Sherwood. Let me see what my notes here
says so welcome to Sherwood, Robin.
So right off the bat, let's look at the let's look at the the
there's not a ton of illustrations about the book.
Most of it's like spot art kind of, but the the illustrations
are fantastic. So even the I love this page.
It's so. Nice, I like.
The like the opening like the like explanation of kind of like
the like not lower implications, but the kind of the mythology
this comes from and then the kind of like.
About. This game and being in this game
and it, I thought this was a great page, so yeah.
It's really great. So the at the top it says
welcome to share with the Sherwood's got a very
beautifully done, like drawn out like it looks great and the S
from that is the same SI don't know why I didn't see it because
it's the same S. It's in the logo and stuff.
There's a tree across the top obviously give you that forest
stuff. The beginning of almost every
section has like a a line from a book or a movie or something.
This one says Robin Hood started out as fan fiction and there's
never been anything else. Carrie Vaughn airs of lock
Loxlet so and then it goes into first of all, that beautiful W,
which is very fucking vibey. Like this is the way to make it
like a game vibey. There's not a ton of art on this
page, right, but the West in that kind of like medieval giant
like draw like very fancy W vibes for days, right?
The Sherwood, the illustrations at the top and and the otherwise
they pronounce. Loxley so, but just throwing it
out there, you think? Oh, that's AY, not AT you are.
I kept being like that's so close to Locksley.
I wonder why it's different. But I kept reading that as AT.
So yeah, there's two paragraphs. There's a bunch of paragraphs
here on this page. The 1st 2 are about yeah, the
mythology of like a cursory scratching in the forest floor
shows England's mythological outlaws.
They occupy this and that. It's great.
It's a lot of really cool information.
I love that there's a sense of like we're going to do this like
kind of like magical fun Robin Hood game, but we're going to
make sure you get Robin Hood and like where it came from and
stuff. Really great information about
all of that here. We're not going to read it.
I highly recommend you do though.
It definitely gives you a lot more context for Robin Hood,
which is cool. And then there is section I am
going to read here. It says share.
What is game about outlaws like the earliest outlaw stories.
It takes place in an England of chivalric romance.
So the outlaws may encounter aristocratic sorcerer's and
mythical beasts or weird strange magic of their own.
Like the later outlaw stories, the outlaws are not waiting for
a true king to return and grant pardons, but have gone to the
woods to pursue justice and rescue people from predatory
powers that be. As you make your journey back to
the forest of medieval England, I encourage you to keep the
following principles in mind. I both like like these and have
some questions about them. So there are a number of
principles here. It says be an outlaw, fight for
something and dabble with magic. Ditch the ethnic conflicts and
fuck the true king. Not in the fun way.
So first one is be an outlaw. It says even a sheriff never
declared your character a wolf's head.
You do not need to worry about what a typical medieval villager
aristocrat would be. Basically this is saying like
play what you want. The forest is too grand a place
for plate. Society's anxieties about
sexuality, gender and propriety, propriety.
Make your character whomever you want to be.
I like that. I don't know if it's be an
outlaw though. Like when I read Be an Outlaw, I
thought I was going to talk about being an outlaw.
I think this could be more of like be the outlaw you want to
be kind of thing. You know what I mean?
It's being. This, it's being your character,
Outlaw for this, you know? Yeah.
Fight for something is great, basically like struggle for
justice, fight for revenge. Just have a goal whether it's
your character or your bands and make it big and wild and and
strive for it which is great. Dabble with magic.
It says that traditional stories don't really have a ton of
magic, but who gives a shit. Later stories do so include
curses, prophecies, spells, craft, all that kind of stuff in
there. Then the last two, it says ditch
the ethnic cleansing. The Saxon Norman conflict was
tacked onto Robin Hood legend and LL tradition in the 19th
century. It was not originally part of
it, it says. Ditch the ethnic conflict.
Conflict. Also, don't do ethnic cleansing.
Just throw that out there. If you're out there doing
athletic cleansing right now, you shouldn't ditch the ethnic
conflicts and then fuck the true king.
Waiting for King Richard to return was a very late addition
to the Robin Hood legend. In the original ballads, kings
were occasionally useful and that was about it.
So my only issue is those last two aren't really principles,
they're more just like information.
I would have not. I think ditching the ethnic
conflict is a principle of this game because it's like kind of a
major story beat in a lot of those stories apparently,
apparently tacked on and later year I was born in later years
than that. So yeah, again.
This is being super pedantic. I think these are fine.
I think this you could have just done like don't worry about
history because like the ditch the ethnic conflicts 1 is one
line. So like it could have just been
like one principle that was just like don't worry about history
and then put these two together. Like it would have been the same
thing. It doesn't make much of a
difference, but that's one thing I noticed.
But talking about no, we won't talk about layout on this page.
We will in a second, though, we're going to get to I just
realized I don't have water right, never making a character.
So gosh, when do you want to talk about the thing that let's
just do it now. So making a character is the
next chapter. And we've talked about this a
bunch of times. We've said this before.
We're going to get the entirety of making a character right
here. And then we're going to get the
next chapter is equipping your band.
And then we're going to get to the rules of the game.
So the first place where you're going to find out what the core
dice mechanic of the game is, if you haven't read the edge page,
and similar to Roseville, it's on the back of the book, which
in the PDF is the very last page.
The core dice mechanic that you get from the game, the skill
check and saves. The first time you know that
it's like a two to six dice game, as far as I'm aware, is
page 12 after the entirety of character creation.
Yeah, yeah, after the entirety of character creation and after
even equipping your war band and equipment and everything, then
you get to that. So which is fine.
It's a Zine, so it's a little bit less.
But my issue and the reason we talk about this all the time is
the way we do the show. We do it as if we just got the
book and we read it from one cover to the end and then we
talk about it. And the reason I think it's
important that we, we have settled on is that doing
something like in that little intro section, maybe there's
like a couple lines of like this is a 2D6 game or you're going to
add skills and da, da, da, da, da.
It gives you context during character creation for like why
you're doing the things that you're doing.
Because otherwise what's going to happen is you're going to
read through character creation, we're going to read their
equipment, and then you're going to read the rules and then go
back to character creation to reread character creation so
that you have more contacts to be like, oh, This is why we did
this, This is why we did that. So again, in Zenes it's not as
important, but I think it just flows better, especially when
there's so many games to play. If sometimes reading it, yeah,
context for when you're talking about character creation, but
also like if people bounce off because they're like, wait a
minute, like how do I play the game?
Like anything that makes it a little bit easier to flow from
beginning to end of the book, I think is super helpful.
So I think just a mention of the dice mechanics prior to the
entirety of character creation or like right at the beginning
of character creation would always be a good thing.
And that doesn't have this in here.
But again, it's pretty simple system.
So it's not big a deal. It's just something pointing out
like in general more than necessarily just this.
But when you start Sherwood is a life path system for creating
player characters. Where do we know that from?
A life path. Yeah, like the whole.
I mean, I'm, I'm thinking Traveller.
So yeah, Traveller. I I I love that this is like AI
didn't use. My Traveller mug today.
I almost did. I wanted the big mug, you know.
Oh, I should. Have got my traveller mug this.
Tiny Cat believes in you. Oh, don't you?
Isn't your cat name Tiny Cat? My cat.
Is named Tiny Cat. You were correct.
Did you? Find that or did you have that
made you just found one that had your name cat?
Your cat's name on it? Yeah.
They like thrift store. Yeah.
And it happened. To be your name.
That's cool. That works out.
So big fan, big fan of the way that the careers work.
We'll get to that. But I love this love.
I mean Traveller is some of the best character creation in
tabletop role-playing games for anyone.
That's like, we know so much more now and games are so much
better. I'm like go back to like
19/20/17. Classic travel war and read it
and then tell me. That again, yeah, it's a, it's a
bad take, but anyway, so there's a character checklist here.
Love that, love that right off the bat.
So character checklist, describe where your outlaws, where your
outlaws grew up, roll your outlaws attributes, choose 2
background abilities, come of age and decide what career your
outlaw had before turning to outlawry.
If your character was not young, not a young outlaw on Notorious
criminal, determine the trouble they sent your outlaw into
Sherwood. Name two people that your
character knows as connections who might provide help and with
the other players at the table, determine the resources and
legend of your outlaw band and choose a mission in code.
Easy peasy, straightforward, just like that.
So describe your character. Basically it says it's a name in
a home. You pick a name in a home and
your outlaw can be from anywhere.
You don't have to keep it to English Midlands in northern
England. It says you can do Normandy,
France, German kingdoms, Africa, Persia, India, whatever the fuck
you want. You can be an outlaw, just do it
up language. Everyone is assumed to speak
English, and despite the fact that a lot of people weren't
literate, it is assumed that you are.
Because we don't need that extra extra bullshit in the game.
You do not. So no, this is not the game, you
know. Exactly.
And then gender and sexuality. Your character is not limited to
heterosexual relationships, social assumptions about gender
roles, the gender they were assigned at birth, or their
society's binary assumptions of gender identity.
Just like Roseville, this game is very like LGBT plus forward.
Just again, be an outlaw. Be the, be the, be the change
you want to see in the world. You know what I mean?
Be whatever character you want to be, however you define that
and have fun with it. Obviously there are attributes.
I'm just going to read the rules language for this.
Roll 286. Do you want to, do you want to
make a character as we go do that, you bring up a dice roller
and then that's 10 seconds. I'm going to get water.
OK, I'm pulling up a dice roller.
Everyone who's still here with us grabbing a pen, still using
my, you know, Sharpie S gel pens.
I still highly recommend them. Best pen ever.
What notebook is this? Perfect.
Honestly I disagree because we all know that the best pin ever
is the .38 Pilot G twos. Any of this mean?
OK, there we go. So.
What you're going to do is you have 4 attributes and you're
going to roll them in order SO2D6 four times.
And as you do that, I'm going to say what those attributes are.
We'll go over a little bit more in a second, but Endurance,
Luck, willpower and Wits are going to be the four attributes
you use. You're going to roll them 2D6
four times in order, then reroll the lowest attribute, ignoring
the new result if it's lower. It's very generous, Richard,
very generous. And there says and swap any two
of them. I, I, I would put in you can
swap any two of them. The way it's rating, it kind of
sounds like you you're supposed to.
Yeah. But so you could just say, and
you can swap any two of them. I think there's plenty of room
on the page for that, but I definitely would.
Well I rolled A5 for wits and that was my lowest 1 and I
rerolled it and that's 10. So there you go, you got.
Smarter so. So what are your stats?
Straight down I have. Endurance 8.
Luck 7. Will 10.
Wits 10. Oh, so Will Tin.
As if you weren't going to be a magic boy already.
Yeah. Well, I rolled the five.
I was like, that was like, Oh yeah, re roll 1.
So I re rolled it. Yeah, like, there we go.
Attributes may decrease during a game session from damage or
spinning them, but cannot permanently increase.
I like this. Your attributes you roll when
you start. That's you.
You're a, you're a grown ass adult human being.
You're, you're not going to get smarter, You're not going to get
more endurance. You're going to get skills,
which which I like. I like that your attributes that
you start with are are what you are with.
And that's the thing I like about it.
This is just like, yeah, that stays.
That's who you are as a person, fully formed.
Well, and. Also why I think that the IT is
a little bit I did say it was a little bit generous, like being
able to reroll the lowest and then swap to if you want, let
you make the character you want knowing that your attributes are
never going to get higher. So yeah, so then we go over the
four stats, so endurance, as I said, so each there's a a great
looking page here and we can talk about the layout a little
bit on yeah and why I like it too.
So it gives you the four stats, it gives you a little line about
each, and then gives you three things associated with that
stat. It's a great page.
So for example, endurance, it says ability to withstand injury
and exhaustion damage. Any attack that deals damage
comes from your endurance unless otherwise specified.
Exhaustion when your outlaw fails and archery, athletics, or
melee skill check. You may spend 3 endurance to
improve the world by three and then psychic exhaustion once
your outlaws willpower drops to zero.
You use endurance for the cost of our intelligent magic
rituals. So we're not going to go over
all four of these, but basically one of the core parts of the
game that we're getting through character duration in the rules,
which again, if rules were before could be set a little bit
different, is your attributes are what they are when they
start and can get lower during play, because obviously when you
take damage, your endurance is going to get lower.
We just learned that as you read like willpower, if you spend
willpower to improve roles and stuff, you can spend a lot of
your attributes. You can spend them as points to
adjust roles, which is really, which is great.
I love that. I do.
I do think later when we get to the rules, it doesn't really
ever like spell that out in the rules section.
Yeah. The only rules language part
that talks about any of this for the most part is here in
character creation. So having it like when you're
going over skill checks and saving throws, like going back
to this, unless I'm completely wrong, get to it.
Maybe I am. And talking more about how much
that's impactful in the game is huge because this is a core
mechanic of the game. It's not just adding your skills
to your roles, but like adjusting your roles with all of
your stuff. If I'm wrong, we'll look at it
later. I think you might.
And then, yeah. And then background abilities is
at the bottom of this page. And let's talk about one of the
things I like about the layout here, we'll talk about a little
bit more anyway, is the way that the layout uses both A2 column
and three column throughout is. I love it.
I think it does a really fantastic job of breaking up the
page in a beautiful way. But not only that, they do this
thing. We're going to talk about
background abilities in a little bit, the Arcane talent.
So there's two in the left column, two in the middle column
and one in the right column, But the third one in the middle
column actually fills the second and third column.
So it breaks across visually. This tickles my brain in ways
that just make just it's so good.
And we get to tables later with their table wrap around tables.
It's so beautiful, like just the way they fit everything on the
page in a way that looks so nice.
For those in podcast land, you just got to look at this page.
It's I don't know what it is about it, but the layout, I was
just a guess. This is this is so good the
layout. Finish what you're saying.
I was gonna say the. Font choices throughout.
I don't know what the the Capital Endurance Willpower Luck
font is. That's like, it's capital, it's
sans serif. It's a little, it's got a little
extra spacing like in between all the letters.
I don't know what about it. I love it.
And they use the same thing for damage for like headers and
stuff. I don't know what it is about
the difference between the sans serif bolded kind of like wide
mixed with like the serif normal font throughout.
It looks so nice and so clean without doing like way too much.
It doesn't look super bolded because it's got like space in
between the letters. I don't know what it is, I just
it gets me. The layout is Traveler E yeah,
there's definitely a couple things that that are modern
layout decisions that are good. But yeah, definitely Traveler
esque layout. Now it also has, I mean, it's
usually too common, but also has like where it goes from 2:00 to
like a three column. But this does it a little bit
better and also has more like page head art, you know?
Yeah. It's so good so background
abilities so you choose to it character creation.
Each character has 2 background abilities to show the talent,
skills, natural abilities they pick before turning 18.
I so I would just so there's two sentences here that could easily
just be written as one. It says choose, choose two at
characterization, each characterize 2 background
abilities. Sounds a little bit redundant.
It could just say choose two, you know, or each character
chooses 2 background abilities at characterization that show
the talents and skills. Like you could just be combined
into one. It just feels like you say the
same thing twice there, but there are 1234.
There's I wrote notes. There are 66 abilities, So
there's aristocrat, Jack of all trades, dabbler, heroic ability,
arcane talent and background skills.
Obviously we're the two we're going to read are the two that
you pick, one of which is obviously going to be arcane
talent. But what's?
Obviously going to be Jack of all trades.
Such a good one it's. Such a fucking good one,
especially when we get to, like, playing the game and you realize
that, like, if you don't have a skill, you you just have
disadvantage on it, Yeah. Every, everything, yeah, yeah.
So Jack of all trades. Most characters have
disadvantage on roles which they don't have a relevant skill.
You don't. And then arcane talent, choose
one arcane talent and take one in skill with it.
So true. Seeing illusion, necromancy or
pyromancy, you can take this twice to improve your arcane
talent skill to two or choose a second arcane talent.
So which one? Which one are you going to start
with? Let's do one I normally wouldn't
do. Let's do pyromancy.
Interesting. Obviously you know which one I
would pick. Yeah, I mean least.
Shocking thing ever. Yeah.
So background skills is also another good one.
Background skills, you choose two skills of the list listed
here and you can take it twice if you want.
So you could really not if you wanted to in the way this game
works. And one thing that I really love
about it, especially with the career stuff, is you could just
not go with a career and just be just like the everyman.
Like when we get down there, if you go like young Outlaw, Jack
of all trades and background skills, you're just you can do a
little bit of everything all the time.
You're the most useful. Person who's ever lived, yeah.
It's it's really good. It's really interesting and it's
cool the way it all ties in together, so.
I I, when we get to it, I'll talk about how I like it, But I
do like that if you don't have a skill, you have disadvantage of
thing like I do. Like you're able to make a
specialized character and like, if your character, like other
characters won't necessarily be able to be as good at what
you're good at. So you can feel like your
character's good at a thing, you know?
Instead of everyone can do up temp to everything all the time,
you know? Yeah.
I feel like I have a different take on that and we'll talk
about it. I guess we'll take that.
Yeah. Yeah, so this is another page
that I think just tickles my brain in just so in.
It's so good, it's so good. So I zoomed out to the whole
thing. But so at the top has this
beautiful illustration of like a like a path kind of going into
like a little town. It's got a tree, it's stunning.
And then it says turning 18 on the top there.
So basically it starts out, this is not a two column page now
it's a whole a whole page, but it still breaks into 3 columns
because there's this table to the side that has like text wrap
around it. And then below it is another
table that's all the way across. And just every way that that is
put together throughout this whole section here, it just like
you don't really see these tables with like text.
A lot of times you'll see like half a blank page with like
tables all stuffed onto the side.
It's just, it feels like it fills a page in a beautiful way
without feeling crowded. Like at all.
Yes. The table still stands out on
its own like this is a good way to do this.
It's. Gorgeous.
So turning 18 is turning a career.
Especially as like a Zine where you're really trying to like
make what you need fit within like a certain amount of space,
you know, and you want to keep the page count account like not
out of hand. Like this is a great way to like
take up space. And we often complain about how
much white space there is and stuff so.
Yeah, we do. That's the thing that we do all
the time. We complain a lot.
That's what the show is the. Show is just complaining about
how much we like a thing, yeah. Like we love this, but here's
the thing. So as you're outlaw, so turning
18 and starting your career, so there are 6 careers that you can
and then a seventh one which is young outlaw, which basically
means like you know, you dropped out of high school and just
started, you know, you hit the life.
So as your outlaw turns 18 and goes through character creation,
that will have a chance to improve their attributes and
gain skills. When your Outlaw gains a skill
for the first time, it becomes one.
Each time they gain the skill after that, add one.
When your Outlaw turns 18, they can either start an Outlaw's
life despite being poorly prepared or begin their first
career. So pick 1.
And so how do you want to do careers?
I feel like we should look at 1:00, but Young Outlaw doesn't
really fit. So do you want to just kind of
look at young? Outlaw and then look at the one
I pick. OK.
Oh yeah, 'cause you're going to pick 1.
So all right, young outlaw. So basically use this table only
if your character is going to begin out all life at 18.
So with most characters this one you get starting skills.
Lucky breaks are Hard Knocks and wolf's head are the three things
you get and then there's a table for that.
And then each table will have each outlaw has a a thing on the
bottom for like accusations and stuff.
So your starting skills for young outlaw you gain thievery
and one other skill from a list, lucky breaker Hard Knocks.
So you roll 2D6 if your outlaw has luck, 8 plus add 2 to the
roll on an 8 plus on the roll, roll on lucky breaks.
Otherwise you roll on Hard Knocks.
So some things on there are lucky breaks.
Basically you get more skills and Hard Knocks you get
different kind of skills. So lucky breaks are like
archery, thievery, silver tongue.
Your Hard Knocks are streetwise, carousing, intimidation.
So you can see why like they're split in a way where it's like
you learn something in something good that happened in your like
silver tongue, like things like that or like archery, you
learned archery versus like thievery and carousing.
So like at one, did you get this kind of sense of like what kind
of character could have been if they got lucky breaks versus
what kind of character they are when they if they got Hard
Knocks? The last thing is a wolf's head.
So of course you're young. You have an entire life of
possibility. But Long story short, like if
you're ever listed as kaput Lupinum, kaput Lupinum let me
ensure a wolf's head very similar to what's the game you
did with Lee Reynoldson, Palo Greco, Lost pages, Wolfwald.
Basically, you are outside the law.
People can beat the shit out of you, kill you, do whatever they
want to you and no one gives a shit yeah, you have 0 rights so
that sucks for you and then then you roll or choose one of the
accusations below. So there's AD 6 list we'll go
over it on on Hunter's character.
But the that I guess the wolf said is your troubles already,
then that's why you don't roll on troubles later.
That would. Make sense Because it's the only
one that doesn't say, you know, into the Sherwood or into
Sherwood and then get in trouble.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or.
The notorious criminal. So which which one are you going
to pick for your background? So so the list is young outlaw,
hermit of Saint Eustis, Guild trader, wandering performer,
cavalier, free laborer, and notorious criminal.
I'm going to pick Guild trader. Would you, in classic fashion of
traveler of classic travelers that I can attempt this, attempt
to be admitted to the Guild and then fail, which is I fucking
love. I really enjoy, like, the
character creation being its own mini game, you know?
Yeah. It's fantastic.
Real quick before we get a Guild trader, I also think the
accusation table is part of your troubles and stuff too.
I I know I'm I'm fucking up here.
So for example, if you roll for and get like murder, you have to
say who died, who blamed you and the one time loved one who
believes you did the crime. So that's part of your troubles
and and connections and stuff too.
And that's why you don't roll on it later.
So you get for each of these, you have to say like you know
who, who was accusing you, what happened, all those kind of
things with it too. So murder, arson, larceny,
illicit sorcery, secret affair, assault.
They're great. So Guild trader.
So tell me about Guild Trader. Yeah so yeah Guild trader is
great. Like you roll 2E6 and then on an
8 plus you're admitted to the Guild of your endurance or wits
are 8 plus you can add 2 to the role.
Hey, good news, they're both 8 plus if an aristocrat -1 because
aristocrat's not good traders. If your outlaw does not become a
trader, you have to choose another career well before we.
Even do it roll roll because we already rolled up, man, I
rolled. A7 and I have +2 so I have a
nine boom. You got admit to the Guild.
Good job. Just barely if.
It wasn't for the stats. I failed.
Yeah. So you gain the Sailing your
cart driving skill when you become a trader.
So we'll say right now sailing because I see my, my character
is a Mr. Worldwide who picked up magic on his various travels.
You know, sailing means never come back in because we're going
to be in the forest. But I like it for the story, you
know? Well, you know.
What They're rivers. They're you sail rivers.
You sail rivers. Rivers.
Yeah, yeah, I was just saying when you you're going to roll
1D6 twice on the table below, choose one column to roll on and
take the skill or both from each.
You may roll on the same column both times, or different columns
each time. You may repeat this step as many
times as you'd like until your character is older than 35,
aging 1D6 years for every two skills you roll, because this is
a another class of Traveller is like you spend your time and
your life going and doing things and you're awarded these skills,
but you do play as an older character.
I like this one stops at 35, which makes more sense for the,
the, the kind of time period and more 'cause, you know, punch
Trevor's like 55 and you're like divorced dad simulator.
Yeah. However, the older you get, the
worse your trouble. Maybe later if you, if you add a
skill, you already have increased it by 1.
So yeah, we'll go ahead and do that now.
I'm just going to add 1 D six years.
We'll say that I had a, you know, a short career.
Yeah, so I'm 23, I'm a very prolific 23 year old.
And then for my skills, I'm in the role on the sue, the
interests and travels because it requires willpower, A + 8 and
hey, guess what? So black powder.
Oh damn, that's. Right, I picked up the secrets
of black powder. I went to China and then we'll
never guess. Arcane talent I got.
Arcane talent boom. So what are you?
Picking this time. I think, do I want to add +1 to
pyromancy or do I want to take another one?
No, I'm going to take illusion. Interesting choice.
Yeah, I create heat illusions. You know, heat.
Illusions like the, the, the the The Mirage that comes off the
ship comes illusions. Look at tying it together.
Synergy, synergy. Like us, we're creating internal
lore. Yeah.
And then into the Sherwood where it says for many of these,
eventually you get in trouble and you have to explain what
happened and create 2 connections.
So. Right.
Which again, with the young outlaw you already do with your
accusations and stuff. Well, I think Guild.
Trader and you said interesting, what did you think I was going
to pick? So The thing is, there's not
really like obviously there's not like a magic class like
everyone can technically do magic, so there isn't 1.
So I like, I honestly looking at these like it was a shot like.
Cool. Yeah, because you could.
Have had no. Great thing is you could take
arcane talent. I mean, great thing for me, a
person who always picks magic. You can take arcane talent and
then any of these, like, classes or life paths work for you.
Fine. Yeah.
And you can create this really interesting story like we just
did with my Guild trader who travelled the world and like
learned magic from like hermits in the desert or something, you
know? Exactly, Yeah.
And again, like anything you pick, if you, if we would have,
you know, Jack of all trades, background skills, young outlaw,
all that kind of stuff, you just stack all of your stuff.
But you, yeah, you can. It's really easy to make the
character that you want to make and and again, it would also be
super interesting if you would have failed the Guild trader
role. I mean, like, well, fuck me, I
guess I'm doing something else. It's not just making the.
Character you want to make, it's creating the story of the
character you are creating, you know, and maybe that even in
your internal head Canon, because I like stuff like this,
if I fail the Guild trader role, it like maybe that is actually
integral to the lore of my character.
Like tried to be a traitor and failed, then maybe became a
notorious criminal or whatever came next, you know?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's neat.
I I, I mean, transforms fantastic.
And this is such a great adaptation to this is a great.
Adaptation of it, you know, it feels it's much quicker, but it
has like a lot of the same effectiveness and to a degree, I
think even making a character in this, I maybe enjoyed more for
the narrative, the internal narrative aspect, but you know.
Yeah, Yeah. I mean, maybe one day we'll look
at Classic Traveler and we'll talk about for those that
haven't checked it out, I did grab that Classic Traveler.
Do you want me to grab a stack of Classic Traveler?
Do you want me to show off? Is that what you just did?
Is this what you wanted me to do?
Well. I pulled it out to look at the
layout because I was like, I feel like this layout traveler.
I just want to look before I say it.
OK, hold on a second. You want to do that then, huh?
You know that I'll win, right? Yeah, I know.
All right, I did. Oh, wait.
Who got you that? I must say.
The The joke here is that Ryan actually bought this for me, so
even though I'm showing it off, Ryan's the football for those
of. Podcast Land, I whipped out my
very original Traveler box set that I have and then Hunter
ripped out, whipped out his original Traveler box set that I
got for him. That's the joke that I that I
spend too much money on games and I'm broke as fuck.
So anyway so next is troubles. So if your character started as
young, outlawed, notorious criminal, they don't get it blah
blah blah outlaws who came from other careers role to determine
what misfortune befell your character.
So you are. And it it's it's modified by
age. So 24 to 29 you get a + 2 and +3
if you're 30 or older. So the older you get the more
troubles you have. That sucks for you.
So you are 23. I am 23 and really you.
Don't have to add a modifier, doesn't matter.
Because I I already rolled for it and I already rolled the six.
So sick you. Wanted.
Yeah, wanted. Yeah, so I'm wanted.
I've been accused of a crime and named an outlaw.
I have no rights and your enemy, my enemies may kill, arrest, or
detain without due process, just like the US -1 luck.
What, Just this fucking world, man.
Yeah. Haha, dark jokes, yeah.
So basically. So here's the thing, you're
wanted, but that also makes you a wolfs head, right?
Your wolfs head. And then on this table you can
also roll for name. Where does this?
As always, if you get a skill, you already have increased by 1.
So you you name, so you're wanted, you name the person who
accused you and the and the official who sentenced to you.
So that's two NPCS. And then you also pick up
forestry. So that's crazy.
You have so much you're you are a very well versed 23 year old.
I know, I guess. I mean, you died like 35 in this
in this time period. So you're you're an old man.
Really, you're just about an old maid, so that's cool.
So that's most of your characters.
There are some sample names for your troubles, so there are.
What is it, 12345? There's like 7 examples here.
So fun. Cool one.
Let's see Drogues Halifer. They them a commoner.
Name is so funny to say. Drogues Talifer.
It's good. A commoner turned King's
assassin, Drogues is a master of poisons and disguises with an
amoral disregard for innocence bystanders.
Great. These are all great.
The all of the NPCS listed here are fantastic.
Old Will Philip de Pavley. So those are your troubles.
That's what you do. And then you have connections.
So beyond Sherwood, name two people who are close to you.
Friends, colleagues, mentors, paramours, dependents, siblings,
colleagues or others. And that's your character.
And what's your name? Oh.
Fuck, I have one, that's for sure.
Usually I'm the guy who jumps on name really quickly, but I'm
from Blanken today, so yeah, you're.
You're Jimbo Baggins. I'm.
Jimbo Baggins. So.
So run through your character real quick, top to bottom, yeah?
Absolutely. So for so, I'm a Guild trader.
I was a Guild trader for several years and I have the Jack of all
trades skill. I've to have the arcane talents
of pyromancy and illusion. I have sailing the knowledge of
black powder and forestry. Very nice, Very, very nice.
There's no character sheet in this book, correct?
I don't think so. I did not look for it, to be
quite honest with you, but no, there's not.
OK, I just want to. I just want to grab it real
quick and show people because it's a nice little sheet.
You can it, it comes with the PDF.
So it's not like you don't get one like you, you get it
whatever you get APDF, wherever you might get that PDF.
So this is a character sheet so you can see what that is.
Boom, we'll just blow that up right there.
So this is actually 2 sheets. So the sheets are pretty small.
So it says name and pronouns at the top.
You get your 4 attributes, which and it has like the A slash
between the two because again, your your attributes are reduced
as you go through play. It's got your background
abilities. You can just check 1230.
Interesting. There's only four background
abilities listed here. They don't list the, they don't
list the Arcane talent, which I guess I don't know why.
And then they don't list Dabbler.
So Dabbler and Arcane talent are not on the character sheet,
which is interesting. I mean earlier yeah.
And then per your career, if you get a skill once.
So this might be an earlier version.
I might need to just re download the new one because in my
Dropbox, and I apologize Richard, if I'm giving bad
information here. I believe in my Dropbox it says
like version O one or something. So I might have mixed like old
versions and new versions and not downloaded the newest
version. Oops.
So I'll have to check that out at some point and make sure that
we know that. So it says character sheet
version 0. So there's a good chance that
I'm just not looking at the right character sheet.
So, so don't listen to me. It's a nice sheet though.
It's got everything you need. And this is straight.
It's such a straightforward thing that you pretty much need
to check boxes or just write down skill lists and then you
have what you need. So that is through character
creation. Then we get to creating and
equipping your outlaw band. So this is going to talk about
equipment and stuff like that. I do have some questions again.
Now we're going to equip our entire band and still not know
how to play the game, which is again, but we'll get to that.
I do love the header here again, creating your outlaw band and
then outlaw band isn't that beautiful typeface that's very
fucking vibey. It's got some like arrows going
down the the this is such a perfect example of a gorgeous,
gorgeous, gorgeous game that has basically no art in it
whatsoever. Just by using a couple piece of
spot art, some cool fonts and stuff like that and, and a
beautiful layout. Like if this, if it was like
this for 200 pages and we did it as a book, I would still give it
super high scores because this is when people like, oh, you
can't like without art and books and blah, blah, blah.
Like fuck off. Like this is how you do it.
This is how you make it interesting.
Very. Good, yeah.
So living in Sherwood with other outlaws, your character doesn't
have personal or individual equipment.
Basically, once you and your friends have created outlaws,
roll 4D6 as a group and divide the dice results as you wish
between your cruise 2 scores, resources, and legends.
So roll 46 and find out what your total dice pool is. 11 Wow,
that's. It oh the 4D6 on a 4D6 yeah I.
Rolled A1A1A4 and A5, so let's. I'm going to roll 46 and I
rolled a six. I rolled a 16.
So it's not like it's that much better.
But no, I mean, you're fucked. Yeah, you get 11.
So. So let's talk about resources.
Rolled A22 there, how about that?
You just don't. Sure.
There you go. We'll we'll let it go.
A 22 out of 24. Yeah, I roll a little bit better
than. 11/5. 566 The dice roll on Google is very.
It's why I don't use it all the time.
It's very I. Don't.
That's why I use this most of the time.
We get it, you got cool stuff you got.
Cool stuff. I actually only use this.
I try to only use it for like space games.
So because then I feel like I'm like on a computer.
For those in podcast land, watch the show to see what I just
pulled up. So resources and legend are your
two stats, right? So under resources, there are
there are a number of ways that you can spend those resources.
So disguises, hiding places, equipment, room and board and
ammunition. What's funny is when I was
reading this, I was like, you know what?
I don't know why it's called room and board.
And I'm like of an age where I should know by now.
So I looked it up and you know what room and board means.
I've always been like, obviously I know board means food, but
why? I looked it up because you sit.
At the board and eat. Sure.
Yeah, because it says board refers to food provided the use
of the term may derive from the English word Bord board.
It's an old English word meaning table.
So yeah, board, it's probably derived from the word for table.
Yeah, but yeah. But it's one of those things
where it's like, sure, it's the table, but like because it's a
board, but also it's not really because it's a board, because
board is not the origin of that word.
It's just similar to the board which tables are made of kind of
thing, you know, like a RET, you know, so.
There are. Ways that you can spend, you
basically spend one resource for things.
We're not going to talk about a bunch, but just for example,
though, so like disguises, you spend one resources, one
resource to convincingly disguise an ally or remember the
outlaw band as a guard, aristocrat, commoner, or
remember the clergy. So that's how you can do it.
Like you can when you need stuff to do a thing, you can spend
resources. I like that.
I think it's fantastic. I definitely, this is basically
quantum inventory taken to like a crew level, which is really,
really cool. And then you also get Legend,
which is basically like a renowned system, which obviously
this game should fucking have and I'm so glad it has it.
So basically you spend your band's Legend score to get
favors from local towns folks. Especially useful when your
outlaw needs help and you don't want to risk the consequences of
skill check because every skill check could have consequences,
which we'll find out later in the game.
For each favor your outlaw needs, find someone who might be
impressed or intimidated by your reputation and spend one point
of legend. Fantastic.
Love it, it's cool. There's a lot more to legend
than that that you can read on your own, but like, that's a
gist of it. So basically you roll and that's
your total pool, and then you can use resources when you need
stuff to do things. And then you use a legend when
you need favors or actions and stuff from people that can help
you, which is so cool. Mission and code.
You have one, it is a thing. So a mission is composed of one
or two goals, and your code is the outline of a few things that
you won't do. Like, you won't rob from the
poor, you won't murder children, stuff like that I think.
You robbed from the poor. Fuck you.
They're already poor. Fuck you, I mean.
Yeah, that that we just talked every billionaire out there and
then encumbrance and load. We're talking about heavy loads
now. So, yeah.
So when you head out on a come on and you have, you can't laugh
because then I laugh. Yeah.
Just have to keep going, you know?
So when you go out on an adventure, you choose which kind
of load you're going to take with you.
Stop. It Ryan.
Stop. You choose the equipment that
you go out with. So clothing your outlaw clothing
that you're wearing a small coin purse like simple jewelry.
None of that counts. You do not need to select the
weapons or other items in advance.
You can always state that your outlaw has the dagger, sword, Bo
staff, act, whatever indicated by the equipment that they have
with them. Otherwise, the cost of an item.
If the cost of an item is greater than a group's resources
score at the time you state your outlaw has it, reduce resources
by the difference between the score and the cost.
So I have questions on this because that confuses me
slightly, but let's talk about the different loads and stuff
you get. So there's light, medium, and
heavy. So with light it assumes your
outlaw has no armor, a dagger, and one other weapon, which
again you can just say when you have it.
Again, Quantum inventory taken to a very cool level.
I love this and three other pieces of equipment.
Light are ideal for most disguises and give advantage on
checks related to speed or stealth.
Medium is roughly the same except you're wearing leather
armor. You get a dagger, one other
weapon or a dagger and two other weapons and no armor.
And then you can carry 3 items or seven with a pack and then a
medium batch of equipment has makes some disguises difficult.
And heavy roughly the same except you're wearing chainmail,
you can switch out some other stuff, and then the heavy load
makes it difficult for most disguises and you have
disadvantage on checks related to speed or stealth.
So basically advantage, nothing, disadvantage, and then the
different kinds of armor you're wearing.
This basically this gives you a loan out without having to pick
it, and you can just pick quantum stuff.
Then we get to weapons. So weapons are all 2D6 damage,
3D6 damage, or 46 damage. 2D6 is like daggers and stuff, 3D
sixes, axes and swords. 40 sixes is long bows your favorite rule?
Yeah. Oh yeah.
I love this little rule right here that it's just like very
tacked on the end. It's an unstrung or unstrung
long bows can be used as a quarter staff, which completely
makes sense. And if this wasn't here, my
characters, like, can I unstring the bow and beat people with
them? Like, yeah, absolutely.
But I love that it's in here because it's just like a little
nugget of kind of like realism, you know?
I do like the line. I really enjoyed this, though.
But it's. A little things in the systems
that are fantastic, obviously we like, we like light systems, we
like streamline stuff. But like if all you do is pair
it down to like the very bare minimum, like there's nothing
fun or interesting. That's a lot of things with like
older games where it's like that doesn't make any fucking sense,
but it's fun. So when we get these like 1
little rules and it's like, yeah, that's the fucking shit.
That's the shit. There's also range weapons.
They exist, they're here, there's rules, there's armor.
And basically it's just damage reduction.
So Gammas on a leather reduces by two, chamber reduces by 4
Shields. This is my favorite way that
Shields work in any game ever. Like if I have Shields in the
game then I might be working on. This is exactly how they work.
So basically your outlaw can choose to carry a shield.
The wielder can use a shield both as AD 6 damage weapon or to
get themselves a saving throw against normal weapon damage
they might take as a consequence of their own skill check.
Unless disguised as a soldier or guard, a shield is difficult to
ignore blah blah blah. So basically if you do a skill
check and you're holding a shield, how about if you do a
skill check and you're not holding a shield?
You just suffer the consequences and that sucks for you.
If you are holding a shield, you could have a saving throw to
save against damage and stuff from Shields.
And there's actually more shield rules later.
I like that. I'm personally more of a fan of
like, if you have, if you suffer the consequence, your actions,
you just do. But if you're suffering the
consequences of someone else's actions, you can get a saving
throw. But this lets you do it for
yourself too, which I mean, carry a fucking shield.
It makes sense. Again, a little bit of realism
in it. Having a shield will save your
life a lot of times. So equipment and supplies here
we're going to get into let's talk about resources again a
little bit. So standard adventuring gear
cost 5 Lantern, torch oil, 50 foot rope, 10 foot rope,
etcetera, etcetera. Quality adventuring gear cost 8
lock picks, toolkit, unusual materials, above average
crafting, everything like that. And then room and board.
It's it's different costs for like bread, luxury shit, stuff
like that. So my question is.
So let's say your resources are like 5.
OK, the way this does it work in such a way that you're like, OK,
well I want a lock pick, OK. And you just go OK, well lock
picks cost 8. The difference is 3.
So now your resources are two. Is that how I'm reading it
correctly? Because I'm just a little bit
confused on the way some of this works because like, let's say
for example, like I want like a like I guess beyond the quantum
weapons stuff, weapons don't have costs.
So you can't have any weapons beyond what's in your load.
So you're just talking about equipment?
Yes, that is how I understand to work, yeah.
So I guess my only question with that is the only things in the
entire game that have a cost are the standard or quality
adventuring gear. So as far as resources go, as as
I read it, those are the only things that you could gain when
you don't have it because it says the cost of an item is
greater than your group's resource score at the time you
state your outlaw has it reduce resources by the difference,
right. But then we go back up to it
talks about resources in an earlier part.
I don't remember where it talks about resources in an earlier
part. I don't either.
Maybe it's in a later part it talks about it again.
No, Yeah. Because we're already in
endurance load. So that's, I guess I said like
that. That confuses me just a tiny bit
because basically it says like if you ever need something, you
can just reduce your resource score.
But the only thing that hasn't cost are these two specific type
of things. So I my assumption is that you
can. It's just adventuring gear.
If you don't have a piece of adventuring gear you need, that
is. Kind of how I assume it to work
as well. And standard gear is just like
against standard shit like easy peasy stuff.
And then the quality stuff is, yeah, tool kits, above average
shit like things that are a little bit more so interesting.
I like it if that's how it's read, you know, otherwise it
does say somewhere, and I don't remember, maybe it's in the how
to play section here that we're going to get to.
Anything you find doesn't cost resources.
So that's really just like, fuck, I really need a torch.
You just have it if it's below your resource score.
But that's my other question. Like you start with 22, so does
it stack? Like if I say at one point I
need lock pick, if it doesn't, you say OK, that cost 8, but
there's no reduction in your resource.
If there's no, if it doesn't cost more than what you already
have. So like 5 minutes later if I say
lock pick and I that's another eight.
Or am I tracking the whole time? Because then what if like 5
minutes later I say well now I want to find vile and like
basically if it's not reaching the Max at one time, is it
reducing? Or is it just you need to track
and once you go over you start reducing the score?
Because there's nothing that says like track the resources
you do up until you go beyond it.
That is interesting. It really doesn't say track.
I mean, my assumption on this was like, when you get these
things, they're like adventuring your room board that does take
away from your well, hold on, let me it doesn't.
Take because it says like at the time you stay, it says if the
cost of an item is greater than your group's resource score at
the time you state what your outlaw has, reduce resources by
the difference between the score and the cost.
So until you're above your resource score, you're not
reducing your resource score. Let me reread.
This one section real quick. So equipment room and board,
your outlaw may have as many items of equipment as they have
available in their load, but if one has a cost higher than your
bands resources, reduced resource.
OK, yeah. So use the same method for
paying for room and board one away from your outlaw van camp.
Any equipment your outlaw fines during the course of the
adventure may be used at no resource cost.
I mean, I think this is written weird, but like, I'm still into
the assumption that you, like, spend resources and it's just
when it gets to the point where it's above how much you have,
you do the difference. But doesn't say that.
I don't know. Yeah, so that's my, that's my on
this guy's stuff, it says. Spend one resource right but
like because you're. Spending to use it but for.
Equipment, room and board. It only says the the rule on the
difference, you know? Yeah.
My assumption, and this is how I'm reading it right, is that
you have 22 resources. Yeah, right.
And that if you use eight, you're not losing the eight,
you're not spending quote UN quote, the 8:00, that's just the
eight that that's in there. Yeah.
It's within the eight. Yeah, yeah.
And then? So what I would do is I would
mark 8 and then I would mark 8 and then I would mark 8 and once
I hit something like a inventory.
Like you can assign resources. It's like a weird kind of Yeah,
but. But if you.
Never go above your 22. Once you get at the end of the
adventure, you can basically just like put stuff away and
pick up different stuff. It's just when you go above, you
start to reduce the total. So it's again, it's quantum
inventory in a way that like I, I just wish it did say somewhere
in there that like track what you use and then once you go
past it, I think that would make would, would be a little helpful
because that's exactly what I would do.
Because if I use 888 and then on that last eight I hit 24, you
then reduce 22 to 20 and then on your next adventure you only
have 20, you know, because you basically went beyond anyway.
So that was one of the big questions I had in the game, one
of the only big questions. So we can kind of cruise a
little bit more here. So we get you how to play the
game now. Again, same thing, beautiful
little illustration, cool little header for this align.
It does not do to hurry the Archer, it makes him miss
Stephen Lawhead from Hood. So there's some rules language
in here that I have questions on.
Other than that, I like the way the game is.
This all goes through and Sherwood.
Most character actions are simple conversations and this is
where it says so. Whenever an outlaw attempts
something risky where success is possible, failure is costly.
Love that classic OSR line. The GM can call for a role, say
what your character is doing and what the known risks are, and
roll 2D6. You can add one of your outlaws
relevant skills if you had one. Be careful though, bad things
almost always happen when a roll fails.
Once the session starts. The most common reason for the
dice to come out is the characters are trying something
risky, skill checks or avoiding danger saving throws.
Then we get you skill checks. Skill checks happen when an
outlaw tries something potentially dangerous if the
result equals or exceeds. Oh yeah, if the result equals or
exceeds 8, the action succeeds. If the result is lower than 8,
the action failed and the consequence, both expected and
unexpected happen. So I guess my issue with this is
that I feel like this middle paragraph here at the top.
Whenever an outlaw attends something risky, say what your
character's doing, roll 2D6. I feel like that should be under
skill check. Like it's the actual paragraph
to how to roll to play the game because once you get to skill
check, nowhere under skill check does it say roll 2D6.
Yeah, it says it in the like, yeah, it's, it's unfortunate you
have to sift through the paragraph for that if you're
trying to like, scroll through the rules, Yeah.
And then it says you can add your a relevant skill.
Obviously we know, I think there's some assumed knowledge
in here. We know that if you have a point
in a skill, a point in forestry, it's 2D6 plus one.
But it never specifically states that in here.
Yeah. So someone newer to games might
be like, well, how do I add a skill?
Like I have a one in this, is it 1?
Is this like advantage? Whatever it doesn't specifically
state so like. Sometimes I hand things to my
players to read. I know they don't read every
paragraph. Yeah, I mean, exactly.
They go through the sections and they read the like sections, so
they know the that's what I'm. Saying so, there's no there's no
one line that says a skill check is when you roll 2D6, add the
value of a relevant skill and roll equal to or greater than 8.
It's not listed anywhere. Anywhere.
I would just. Drag a whole paragraph down to
this. That's what I'm saying.
That's I'm saying I think that most most of this whole
paragraph, the from whenever that all starts to this whole
paragraph could be under skill checks, a paragraph below.
It could be above, and that could be in skill checks.
And the argument could be well, like it's the intro to how just
any role works. And then you go to saving throw.
But the problem is when you go to saving there we get to it
then too. It does say roll 26 right here,
but also it talks about adding a skill to it.
How are you doing a skill for a saving throw?
We'll repeat this again, this rhetorical for right now because
your skills are it's against your attribute, but it also
never mentions it later. So anyway, so that's my issue.
Kind of like with the skill check rules language.
We get it, it makes sense. But like you said, like if
someone might skip the intro paragraph, it doesn't ever say
anywhere in the actual skill check section.
Roll 2D6, add a skill. There is a section here on
choosing skill though. Basically you it, it just is a
little thing about like if you're intimidating, do this, if
you're performing, do that. Like pick the skill that's
applicable on trade skill and Jack of all trades.
We talked about this before. When performing a task, a
character with no relevant skill has disadvantage on the attempt.
Characters with the Jack of All Trades talent do not incur this
penalty. They perform any task as if they
had a relevant skill. So basically there is no such
thing as just a 2D6 role, right? Am I reading that right?
Like just flat 2D6 because. Always.
Well, yeah, if you, if you have a skill, you add it to and if
you don't have a skill, it's a disadvantage. 6 pick the worst
two essentially. You know, Yeah, there.
Is no flat skill yeah there there is only disadvantage or
add mod add your skill points, which is interesting I don't
have a problem with it it's just interesting I.
Think it's great, Yeah, Yeah. Crits.
Crits are 12 or better or two or less and that sucks or is good
for you. Advantage and disadvantage works
exactly like you think for the most part.
So basically for advantage you roll 36 and you can pick
whichever 2 you want. For disadvantage though, how do
you feel about this? For disadvantage, you roll 386
and the GM picks the 2 I. I I don't mind that rule, so I
don't. I don't mind it.
I don't necessarily like it though, because I think there's
other parts where it talked about the GM doesn't really
roll. Like the whole point of this is
like so. It feels a.
Little bit it brings a little bit of that kind of like
antagonism in a little bit where the player could be like, come
on, do me, don't do me dirty this time.
And you'd be like, no, picking the obviously you're going to
pick the lowest. Like I'm OK with the GM not
being involved in someone's role at all and just being like, no,
you just get the two shittiest roles.
That sucks for you like. Only player facing roles.
I do. I've never.
Heard you say that before. Yeah, that's.
Crazy. Yeah, that's crazy.
But so it's it's it's it's interesting.
I don't I don't necessarily mind us in here, but I wouldn't play
it that way. I would I would play it as
disadvantage As disadvantage. You get the two worst.
Yeah, I probably. Would play it like that as well
honestly so. So saving throws are different
than skill checks, as we said. So saving skill checks is when
you're trying to do something, when you're doing an action.
A saving throw is when you were trying, when you're facing
dangers that you must evade or avoid, such as a trap, a rain of
crossbow bolts, or the effects of sorcery or something like
that. That's why you do a saving
throw. The GM will ask you to roll a
saving throw, and the way that a saving throw works is you roll
2D6 if the result is equal to or less than the current score of
your attribute that you're using, which could be lower.
So like if you're, if you're doing endurance and you've been
taking endurance statements the whole day, like that sucks for
you. It constantly goes down.
Your outlaw succeeds at avoiding it if it's lower.
So roll under. So saving through as a roll
under skill checks are 8 or above.
If your current attribute score is less than two, it's
impossible. And if it's higher than 12,
you're succeeding no matter what.
Right. Which is interesting.
Yeah, yeah, Saving with luck is an option.
You can always choose to save with luck instead of an
attribute, but you then reduce your luck by 1.
And then there's a whole section here on consequences of actions.
They exist and PCs don't get saves versus the consequence of
their own actions, except for like a shield, which we talked
about before. There's a specific example here
talking about under most circumstances, you don't get
saves against consequences except shield.
We talked about it. There's a table here which I
really, really like. It says make a skill check win.
There's something on the line. Yeah, when there's something on
the line, success is possible. Failures cause greater risks and
there's more writing underneath for each.
And then make a saving throw a win and outlaw face the
consequences of another outlaws failed role or when the outlaw
faces imminent danger present in the environment.
Great table. Love this.
Fantastic. I think the other the the
question that I have a saving throws is do you add skills to
saving throws? I don't think so.
Yeah, and that's my issue then too with the original paragraph
you talked about, because if that's like the base role and it
applies to both, it does talk about adding a skill, but like
how would you add the skill literally is?
Only talking about skill checks in that paragraph.
Yeah, which? Is why I think that paragraph
should really just be dumped out under skill check because there
is a big paragraph that started saving throw that is similar to
that under saving throw. So, and those are the core role
for the game, combat and initiative.
So basically it's combat works like skill checks and saving
throws like there's no difference.
A textual skill checks, defense is saving throws.
That's how it works. Melee is a skill, things like
that. So you can use your melee I
love. Attacks of skill checks because
the implication is there that like, hey, if you're not fucking
skilled at fighting, you're going to hit disadvantage every
time so yeah, you. Disadvantage every time in
combat if you're trying to hit melee without a melee skill man,
hey. Yeah, does that just click for
you? Yeah, I mean, obviously you're
going to pick melee at some point, but like, that's that.
Yeah, man, it's rough. Oh, I don't.
I only have arcane town. Well I guess I have Jack of all
trades so I don't get disadvantage on.
There you go. There you go.
That'll do it. Initiative is conversational,
which I love Like there's really is what what's cool about this
and I like is that it doesn't feel like combat is ever combat
like you're never going to hit a point where someone goes all
right, now we're in combat. It's just like some shit
happened. So you just so you do a melee
skill check instead of like a of the.
Narrative. There's not like a break.
Yeah. Which I.
Love. So you know there is no as far
as I know, there is no rolling initiative.
You just keep doing the things in the order of people doing
things when they want to do things.
I. Think you're right.
Yeah, I mean. I think.
I think it's just narrative, you know?
Yeah. Which I love again.
Like basically there's two kind of different core mechanics in
the game, which is skill check and saving throw, but there's no
other like kind of like mode of play like in 5 E, like when you
want to combat, it's a whole different mode of play.
You know, it feels very. There is a hard stop where in
the other mode of turns become. Different rounds become
different like, but in this, it's just a continuation, which
I really, really love. I really.
Do like that as well, yeah. There.
Is that to other games? Every game.
Every game like I love that I hate, I hate rolling for
initiative who gives a shit. Just like if it's as long as
everyone kind of gets to go, just do the shit that people
want to do, you know? There is more rules here for
Shields, which is fine here, but could also be under Shields.
Opponents with a shield or offhand weapon may attack with
both, but the target of the second attack also gets the same
throw. There's more shield rules that
could also be in shield earlier. I love that you can.
Attack with a shield. I mean, it makes sense.
Obviously you can, dude. It's a big, it's a big piece of
wood. You can hit somebody with it,
Yeah. Shield bash it, Yeah, and it
also does take a hand. So like it does.
There is a downside. To it, but also like I don't
mind there being like a huge benefit to having a shield
because a shield is a huge benefit.
Like it really is contests and oppose roles.
It basically it's just a skill check.
Like if you and me wanted to go against each other, it's a skill
check for a skill check. High swirl wins very easy.
Like super streamlined. There's a whole section here on
allies. It's pretty much all talking
about NPC allies. They exist.
You can have them assistance, you can, you can grant your
allies assistance or they can grant you assistance by doing
things like you can make a skill check to give them an opening in
a fight and then they can jump in and and do something for you.
You can also send in PCs on errands, which I really love.
There's a whole thing if an ally is well equipped, highly
skilled, or especially suited you can you you roll with
advantage. I mean, if they're bad, you roll
disadvantage. And for your ally actions that
you want to send them on, you just roll AD 6, which I thought
was interesting. It could just be a 2D6, but I
kind of like that it's a 1D6 because I feel like your ally is
like a lesser character, you know what I mean?
Like it feels like you're just doing a side thing.
So they only get 1D6 for their thing, but it's a four plus.
So like mathematically it's roughly the same role, but I
like that your allies only get 1D6 and you get 2D6, you know?
And stamina and loyalty basically.
This is something we'll talk about later.
So it says here allies have the same attributes as opponents
stamina reactions to special abilities.
Keep that in mind. When an ally takes damage that
drops their stamina to 5 or less, they roll A1D6.
If the result is higher than their current stamina, they hide
and run away. Basically, stamina is kind of
like their HP but also their morale a bit, which is
interesting. And then when they catch their
breath, they can regain 2D6 stamina.
We'll talk about that a little bit later.
Injury and recovery, a couple of things here.
Taking damage out of action, catching a breath and what are
they doing here? So basically taking damage most
like physical damage is going to go against your endurance.
You know, it reminds me a bit of like Cairn, how you take
attribute damage. You know it's a damage reduction
when they hit zero. If you take any more damage,
you're out of the action. And or the other way you can get
knocked out of action is if your endurance is at 0 and another
attribute's at 0. So you could actually get like
let's say your wit's down to zero and then as soon as your
endurance hit zero, you're you're down right away.
You don't have to wait for that next hit because you have an
attribute down already. This could mean and if you do
hit zero, if you are out of action, it can be anything from
capture to death, depends on what's going on.
And if you do want, if there's some uncertainty whether it
killed you or not, you could do a luck saving throw.
And and that's it. Catching your breath is how you
heal. And basically it says in my
notes I wrote talk to the homies and roll 2D6.
That's what I wrote. But what it says is when your
outlaw gets a moment to converse with friends in a safe place,
they can refresh some of their attributes.
So basically you roll 2D6 and split that amongst any
attributes you want except for luck.
And the only way to get luck back is downtime.
If you and I'd love this next one, this is probably my one of
my favorite rules in the entire game.
So when you have a moment to catch your breath, you roll 2D6
and split that amongst your attributes, right?
But if you want another die roll, you can roll a third D6
for your attributes. But if it's four or greater, a
trouble from your outlaws path shows up at a bad time, they
discover a connection is in danger, or something else bad
happens. So if you want to get more
healing, you can risk it hoping to get a couple more points.
But if it's four or higher, like Trouble, Brute Trouble comes in,
which I think is such a fun mechanical narrative way to pull
that back in the story. Forward, you know it's so.
Good. I really, really like it a lot.
And then there's some other stuff about healing.
What are they doing here? In addition, once during the
session when you're Outlaw confronts one of their troubles
or tries to help out of the connections, they get the
benefits of catching a breath. Downtime is basically downtime
is what it says. At the start of downtime, you
reset your luck completely, you recover 2D6 points of
attributes, and you choose one activity.
You can choose teaching yourself a skill, teach a skill, learn a
skill. Big questions, which basically
means you're doing research and the GM can answer questions
based on what's going on the story.
Highway robbery means you literally go out and rob people,
rest and recover, and allows you to restore all of your
attributes to the sharding value except luck, but you already get
luck back at the start so it doesn't matter.
So if you choose to do just that, you get all your shit
back. Or there's Acts of kindness
where you can spend 1 E 3 resources and gain 1 E 6 legend,
which is cool. Yeah.
And then other actions. If there's something else you
want to do, do stuff and the GM will figure it out.
There's a table here for converting dragon game
characters upon its NPCS and Troika.
I like how. Specifically Dragon Games and
Troika. Dragon Games and Troika Like of
all the the two game types that exist in the world, there are
two genders, Dragon Games and Troika.
The two genders of games, Dragon Game and Troika, Yeah.
Right. Then we get into Arcane Talent,
so basically magic at the end and then we're basically done.
I'd love the header graphic on this.
It's beautiful. Again, look at it if you're in
podcast land. Another quote at the beginning
of this one from Little John. Yeah, yeah.
Now you listen to me, friend. You can surround yourself a
salt, soot or sausages for all I care.
But we've come too far to turn back now.
Hey, men are demons. They're going to be dealt with.
Robin or Sherwood, The swords of Wayland.
That's my favorite one in the entire game.
The favorite quote at the start of any chapter.
Surround yourself a salt, soot or sausages for all I care.
It's great. So basically we're going to go
over one of your two magics here, But the way magic.
Works. You want to go pyromancy?
Cool. So the way magic works is you
get you get an arcane talent, which means you get one you have
pyromancy and illusions I think and you get cantrip and powers.
You can use cantrips cost 1 willpower but require no skill
check and then the powers cost a set value in in the powers and
it does require a skill check. There's this section here on
player safety that basically says like especially like
illusion or like true seeing into people's minds.
If people aren't comfortable having the mind read, don't.
Basically. So parvancy.
Talk to me about parvancy, yeah. So parvancy, the camstrip you
get is you can summon a little flame, you know, it's like a
it's like a little hovering torch near you.
What? Was his name Calcifer?
Calcifer. Yeah, you got.
There you go. I did that with very few hints.
For those in podcast land, all I did was hold up my hand and
point in my hand and say what was his name?
That's where you can call a. Gentle flame like light that's
either as bright as a torque or as dim as a candle.
As far as powers go, they do require a successful pyromancy
skill check before spending willpower.
You have consume create flame or extinguish flame.
Consume just expands an existing flame to cover an area of 10
feet across, doing 2D6 damage to any person who enters, stands
in, or moves through the area. It cost 4 create flame.
Guess what, you create a campfire size flame doing 3D6
damage to any person you summit it on.
That cost 3 and an extinguished flame.
I'll let you guess and that cost 3 to extinguish the fire in the
person sized area. So so I have I have a 10 will so
really any any one of these and I've like a pretty high will
would be very costly and it would make saving against will
later on much more difficult. But that's cool.
I like, like, I like how limited the magic feels for this game
because it's a game in which like any amount of magic would
feel like a lot, you know, being the one guy that can call flames
and expand them. It's like, well, that's that's
fucking pretty good here. We're in, you know, you know,
13th century England or 14th century England like.
Yeah, and like you said, it's not, it's not crazy.
You can just be like, boom, there's a flame, boom, the
flame's gone. I I.
Think it's perfect for this, you know, I wouldn't want, you know,
your high level ultra sorcerer in this.
It just wouldn't feel like a fit.
No, and it's cool. I mean, so basically each, each
arcane talent gives you one kid tripping 3 powers like
necromancy, speak with dead Compella, dead animate dead.
Like again, like nothing super crazy, but like yeah, for 13th
century England. I mean that'll fuck somebody up,
you know, like totally. It's really cool you see some
guy. Who, like, raises his hands and
the fire disappears in front of me.
He puts out a fire. You're like, what the fuck?
Yeah. Burn him which the next section
is our rituals of divination and sorcery.
Again, beautiful like graphic here with some some some candles
and then that font that is just gorgeous sorcery.
Is a skill that was on a lot of the roll tables, including for
the Guild trader. I just didn't roll it so it's
just the other magic. And what's cool too is that I
really like that. Basically it says sorcerer's.
Sorcerer's rites and rituals are common in historic fantasy.
The following are among widely available to trained sorcerers
and diviners, though others may be found.
Rituals work like skill checks, and anyone who can find some
information about how to conduct them may attempt to do so.
So that says to me that you don't necessarily, if sorcery is
a skill, you don't necessarily have done the sorcery skill.
Like if you're just like I find a book and it has a spell in it,
you can try it, right? Yeah.
But I mean, but it's a skill check, right?
Yeah, right. If you don't have the sorcery
skill, the consistency of that. Rule is fantastic and the way
it's applied throughout this makes this like infinitely like
more interesting than another game using a similar framework
could be like, I love the way it's like, yeah, everything's a
skill check. It's all the same skill check,
and skill checks are a disadvantage if you just don't
know anything you know, like. If you're.
Fucking former free laborer picks up a sorcery book and you
know, it doesn't have any like any skill.
Like, yeah, he's going to fucking do it bad.
But the your Jack of all trades is fairly worldly is like, OK, I
might have a better handle on this, you know?
It's it, it is really good. I really enjoy it.
There are 12345, I want to say different sorceries listed.
There is fortune telling, bond of power, call power, lesser
weather working and weapon blessing.
We'll just kind of talking one a little bit.
So weapon blessing, we're not gonna go over the beginning of
stuff. It does stuff weather.
Working man alright. Fine weather working Go.
I talk about lesser weather working.
I love weather. Workers.
I you know, I grew up reading Ursula, Kayla Gwynn, and that's
a big being. Like a weather worker is a big
thing in that in that world. Yeah.
Tell me. About.
Tell me about. Tell me about it then.
Yeah. So a skilled sorcerer can change
the weather in small area, calling rain lightning.
If lightning summoned it does 5D6 damage and does not miss.
Other weather effects are just conditional to kind of narrative
things as appropriate. If the ritual fails, the GM
determines how the weather works against the leader and
participant. So if you summon some weather to
help you out, it might actually hinder you if you fail.
So they requires so it's got skill time required.
Area duration cost a source of advantage and source of
disadvantage to the skill of sorcery.
The time required is 2 hours. The area is up to 1 acre.
Duration is one hour of weather effects or instantaneous for a
lightning bolt, though environmental effects such as
falling trees or wet roads will last as long as they fictionally
would last. It cost 4 and then the.
The source of the advantage of the ritual is conducted in a
sacred place and the leader is assisted by at least three
others for the whole 2 hours. The ritual extends the effects
of existing weather, calling fog or wind after the ending of a
rainstorm and then sources of disadvantage.
The ritual takes only one hour. The ritual calls weather that is
unlikely, rain during a drought, fog at noon, etcetera.
So it's like a spell spell? It feels like it is similar to
like a 5 E spell ish in like but it but it's because it gives you
all the things like you said, like time duration area, like it
gives you all of the stuff to do for like this bigger kind of
ritualistic sorcery. So really like a lot.
Then we get to the game masters guide to share what I love this
page too. Like that's that font again at
the top. That's big.
It's it's it's full page, not 2 column.
Again, I love the 2-3 and single column throughout the entire
book, the mix and match. They did such a beautiful job
with it. So there's a bunch of principles
here, Wolf said. Having the rights, the forces,
domain of the king. And then in literal writing the
exit says and the king is an ass.
Law and order have a lot of resources.
Whoever is seen as remembered, give the outlaws a reason.
Make it strange. Power only wants more power and
show the diversity. That's all part of it.
There's a section here on assigning rewards at the end of
each mission or adventure. Tell the players what, if any,
resources and legend their outlaws have earned using the
guidelines below to assist you. So it's just a guideline of
between like 1 and 10 resources and from -2 to +9 legend and the
various different ways to get the the variations of that
opponents in NPC. So this is the thing that I was
going to talk about earlier. Share what opponents in NPC have
different stats than PCs. What's listed is stamina armor
reactions. What's listed under allies that
says it's the same as opponents was stamina reactions special
abilities? I think there aren't no special
abilities. I I control F special abilities
there aren't any. So the previous thing should
probably say stamina armor reactions.
But that space will be get stamina.
The opponents and NPC's have a pool of stamina that's damaged
and a bunch of stuff. Or pay any cost for any
supernatural abilities that they possess, is what it says.
So maybe it's not completely wrong there, but like maybe
reactions? Is like a catch all or it must.
Be because like the green folk under reactions is arcane talent
and stuff so little little mixy matchy.
So yeah, so things have stamina, armor and reactions.
So real quick guard standard defenders of the interests and
stuff like that. Yeah, Supreme Court already said
guards the Supreme Court of the land already said guards have no
responsibility to serve and protect you.
So they are they defend the interest of those in power.
So stamina 13 chainmail 4 reactions are shield, long
sword, crossbow Russell tackle sees equipment.
And then there's AD 6 list here of kind of like means like short
tempered, irritable, surly, distant, inquisitive,
distractedly congenial. I love this.
It's it's simple, it's quick. They're great.
Silver Deer, Hard Assassin, Shade Night, Human Sorcerer.
They're great. I love them.
There's two starting adventures here.
There's the new sheriff's first tax delivery, and then there's
the prison keep of Lady Maude. They're beautiful.
There's an inspiration page that's got a bunch of stuff from
television, film and books. Great list of stuff.
And then that's the back of the book and we're done.
We're done. So let's hop over to the review
scores. So obviously this is going to be
Zine because it is a Zine. I have it in my hands and it is
Zine size and it taps out at 28 pages, which is less than we say
it was roughly 30 for zines. So for those that don't know
what we do on the show, we do quantify our terrible opinions
with numbers. Those numbers come in the form
of metrics 5 for books 3 for Zenes.
For zenes, we do visuals, which is the all the visuals of the
game, the cover, the layout, the art, everything visually.
How does this thing look? Rule set is if it's adapted rule
set, how well is it adapted? If it's a hack something like
that. If it is a new rule set, how do
we like it? You know and vibes are when you
look at the visuals and rule set together, how well do they play
with each other and when you close that last page, how bad
you want to play this game. That's the vibes overall, just
like how much you want to play the game and how how does it
work? So visuals.
What are your thoughts? I.
Really like how this looks, you know it's a it's a short Zine.
The the spot art that's in there is great.
I love the there is a name for what's called when the 1st
letter is very decorative and I'm sure Google has it and I'm
sure that's what Ryan's doing right now.
I like the traveler esque layout, but like with some
layout decisions of their modern decisions that use space better.
I like the font choices. I think visually I really enjoy
this game. You're doing a great job.
You got it. 1st letter of a paragraph that is enlarged to
drop down two or more as in the next paragraph.
Drop caps. Drop caps more often seen at the
beginning of novels. Oh, illuminated.
Illuminated. Letters.
There you go, illuminated letters.
They're. Gorgeous and they're they're
they're clean though still too. You know what I mean like it's
not super crazy. They're beautiful.
I, I said over and over again, I the layout on this just what for
whatever reason, the way that like the way that the tables
tuck into the text, the way that specifically under like the
background abilities, how the arcane talent breaks into two
columns, like the way that they, they, they filled the pages
without making it ever feel like really crowded.
Is this is like such a stunning layout to me.
Like I think it looks fantastic. Like you said, the spot
illustrations are beautiful. I mean, this again for like if
you ever want to look at a game that doesn't use a ton of art
and still looks absolutely stunning, this is the fucking
prime example for just a couple of spot illustrations and some
good layout and font choices and, and, and, and it will look
amazing. I think I I the, the logo on the
front, even the color choices on the the front with like the that
like cream color with like the two different color greens and
stuff. I, I, I love this scene.
I think it's fantastic. Yeah, I'm way up there on this
one. What are your thoughts when you?
When you pitch me a, pitch me a thing.
I mean, I'm somewhere between this being great and excellent.
I'm not going to lie, I'm. Also, somewhere between it being
great and excellent, so a lot of the.
Ones we've given like nines and tents who aren't scenes are ones
that were like fucking just puked on with color and shit and
like super whatever. Excellent in a different
direction. This is the.
Other flip of the coin for that we're like, if you're going to
do like black and white with just like this ideal to this is
yeah, as close to perfect as I can think of like I, I I think
to me personally, I think there's like an easy 9 yeah.
I'm good. I'm good with that.
OK, it's stunning. I can't remember the name of the
light R list. Eric.
Yeah, Eric, good fucking job. Stunning rule set.
So the only like knocks I have is a couple of clarification
things. I think the biggest ones are
like the skill check thing and then like a little bit more
explanation on the resources. I think of the only thing is
that kind of like you can like, I don't think those are huge
either. Like obviously we get how the
game works, but other than that, I really, so obviously I like
2D6, you know, mixed success or or you know, gradations are my
favorite, but the fact that it's like 8 plus and everything below
an 8 is a consequence anyway. Sure, it's close enough.
I think the character creation system is is amazing.
I love the consistency all the way through.
We talked about over and over again like the skill check at
disadvantage and how how well that like fits through every
core aspect of the game. Resources, like I said, but just
a little bit more explanation. I think the quantum inventory
not only for yourself, but for your loadout and for your entire
crew and the way that that works with your resources and legends.
I love that as inventory system because you're that really
allows you because your resources then aren't just like
your stuff. It's the things you can do, like
disguise, you know, things like that.
I'd love the hiding all that kind of stuff.
I might I'm like I I like this a lot.
Like I think the core mechanics are super easy and then every a
way that you use it is incredibly interesting.
What are your thoughts? I agree.
I mean, I think if other than a couple clarification points,
it's a nine for me, but I think because those it's probably like
an 8 for me. I, you know, that's exactly what
I was thinking. I was worried that you weren't
going to think as highly. Other than decided, I think
yeah. I think.
If resources are clarified a little bit, the rules language
in, I think just the way skills and saves work because like
because of the way the intro paragraph is, I'm not, I'm still
like, I'm like 99% sure you don't add skills to saving
throws. But because of the way it was an
intro part, I'm not sure. So I think a little bit more
language on, well, it's a roll. Under for saves.
So adding a skill to your save would be bad.
No, but so you would add it to the attribute before you would
roll under, you know what I mean?
So if you're 12 to attribute. I.
Know that's my point, yeah. So I think a little
clarification on the way that as you spend resources, if you
track them, and a little bit more clarification on the skill
check and specifically skill check.
One line of this is exactly how skill check goes.
And I think, yeah, it would be an easy 9 for me.
I think also the only other knock I have too is that like we
said before, like a little bit of like this is the core
mechanic of the game before all character creation, I think
would be great. So I think as as a game, I think
it's a nine. And I think if we add in like
rules language and some clarifications and stuff, it
does take a down to an 8 for me vibes.
I want to play it right now. I want to play it immediately.
Yeah. So yeah.
Well then, So what do we get for vibes?
I think we. Give this one.
I think we might give this one A9.
Two, I'm not really sure. I think it's a nine.
Two. And here's the thing, we do want
to. Play this.
I think it's really interesting. I think that the way that like
the, you know, we talked about the starting combat that the
structures never broke. Like it's the same narrative the
entire way through, the same system all the way through.
There's not this like delineation where you enter
combat because the story continues.
You know, it doesn't feel like this mini game tacked on to like
a story game, which a lot of combat sometimes feels like,
even if I don't necessarily realize it, I like the memoistic
magic. If if it is, I'd like when it is
a whole thing, when it is its own thing.
You know what I mean? Where like you do say here's to
fully mold to play, but like a lot of games do that kind of
like any kind of you're right. I like that this one doesn't at
all. But anyway, you were saying with
with magic, Yeah, the. Memoist magic that really fits
in with this like setting and like feels really good.
I I like the use of the life path system.
Like once again, it's like a it's a it's a traveler inspired
call back, just like the dice mechanics in this.
And it's done in the way that's like not expressly like a
traveler RIP. Like it's really kind of its own
thing that just takes bits and pieces from that and like
reapplies it. Yeah, I think this is good.
Yeah, I really like this a lot. I mean, he might be the highest.
Rate of Zine this year? Frankly, so it is.
It's it's it's not even I don't think it's even close.
And like I said, I think with a couple of of clarifications in
the rules, I think this would be like it would be a 27.
It'd be like as close as you get to perfect 999.
So it's a nine 8-9 with some of those clarifications with vibes
too. I do want to throw in like
value, like a tiny bit. I know like my vibes are good
when it's a relatively inexpensive like like it's not
good. It's cheap for that.
Zine is like. 20 bucks was yeah, 20 bucks gives you Zine, the
character sheets, like resources from from the website, the PDF,
everything. I mean, and again, like I said,
it's a nice Zine. The they did a really, really
good choice of cover on it. It's it's, it's, it feels the
thing too is like you can tell too, like the coating on the
outside, because when you look at the inside, see how there's
like a shine on it and stuff. And then when you look on the
outside, there's not like it's that really beautiful software.
Touch New York Studio is really getting.
Some high ratings this year. Well, I mean, if they keep
making good fucking games, they have a bunch more that I want to
read too. So Roseville.
Beach. Yeah, I want to play Roseville
too. So.
So that is our score for Sherwood.
It is a 26, nine on visual, 8 on rule set, 9 on vibes.
The only knocks really we give it is a little bit of some rules
clarifications, but otherwise it's the system.
I'm a huge fan of this vibes wise.
Again, like not only that, when you look at the vibes too, like
the little quotes are out and like the the, the all the
information beginning about like the mythology of it too
obviously was super well researched.
I mean every, every time I'm talking it just gets higher and
higher. But not only that, if you follow
RX Studio on Blue Sky, they are doing I think pretty much weekly
runs of their games for Roseville Beach and for
Sharewood. I've signed up to do one.
I'm super excited to play, especially not just play the
game, but play it, you know, run by the creator.
So I'm very excited to do that. But you could definitely do
that. If you do happen to do that.
I do think our studio leaves like a little tip jar up.
So if you have someone run the game for you and you're able to
to throw some bones, that's a really great thing to do.
But definitely check out our studio.
We'll make sure the links to this and all of their stuff are
below. Richard.
I mean, they again, I'm sure you'll see, I'm sure you'll see
at least one or two more games from our Rook studio this year
because again, we talked to this before.
Richard's a great, great person and makes great shit.
So we're going to keep talking about games we enjoy from people
that we we are fans of. So that is Sherwood.
No idea what we're doing next. Catch us Tomorrow, which if
you're listening to this not live, will be yesterday if I get
it out in time for our next episode of In the Light of
Setting Sun with with Stella and John as we continue our first
TWS campaign of the of of our Western Western adventure.
Otherwise, we'll figure out what we're doing by Friday if we have
the episode on Friday, and we will see you all later.
Just so you know, for those that do catch us, the date might
change soon or the day of the week might change, but you know,
that matters. Pretty much none of you except
for me and obviously Hunter. That's it.
I'm Sup. Yeah.
Rambling. Thank you all for being here.
We'll see you all later. Bye.