Ahoy Gauntleteers!

22 thoughts on “Ahoy Gauntleteers!”

1. Neat! I’ll take a look later today or tomorrow.

2. Neat! I’ll take a look later today or tomorrow.

3. Jason Cordova Thanks! Look forward to your suggestions.

4. Jason Cordova Thanks! Look forward to your suggestions.

5. This looks like fun! I’m going to bring it with me to game night on Thursday and see what happens. I’ll let you know what everyone has to say if it ends up getting played.

6. This looks like fun! I’m going to bring it with me to game night on Thursday and see what happens. I’ll let you know what everyone has to say if it ends up getting played.

7. Edward Hickcox Fabulous!

8. Edward Hickcox Fabulous!

9. Ari Black Argh, I clicked away from my long, long reply and it went poof into the ether. I’ll try again.

   When I pitched …With Friends Like These to my group there was a lot of interest. I ended up with five players, playing the Guard, the Tech, the Loader, the AI, and the Cat. My first recommendation here would be to determine who outranks who, or if there’s a rank structure at all. How big is the original crew?

   Character creation went pretty quickly. One thing I would suggest is stating plainly that the “To my Left” and “To my Right” moves are supposed to be completed by the player, as we found that unclear. Also, the move for the Cat needs to be edited, because there’s a missing word there.

   When I explained the XP mechanic my players were somewhat taken aback at the concept of an RPG with a win condition. I like the mechanic for gaining and losing XP, and taking it from other players, but it’s unusual to see and might put people off or encourage PVP (which would probably make the action more tense and interesting, so…)

   I came into the game having done ZERO prep. I wouldn’t recommend this completely. This is a great game for prep-light presentation, but coming in with a name list (for the other crew, other ships, etc), and a list of potential disasters to inflict on the crew is a good idea. If I play this again I’ll definitely do that. Including these kinds of things on the handout sheet (like on the back of the rules) would be really great, and would make this a truly no prep/prep-light game. As it stands, if you print the file straight to double sided it prints out wrong, with the rules sheet getting one side of the character sheets on its back. Just saying.

   My players found it VERY difficult to accomplish anything with the -2 penalty form their Major wounds. If there’s no way to get medical attention (ie: nobody is playing the Nurse, or the ship’s Med Bay doesn’t have a surgery pod, or the Med Bay systems are offline) the game is going to go downhill very quickly.

   As an aside to that, I think treating the AI’s wounds differently might make things a little more interesting. I basically ended up listing out ten systems (for easy math with percentages) and telling the AI character that they would get -2 for systems that were “offline” if I determined they could act on that at all, -1 for partially restored systems, and no penalty for fully restored systems. Ask the players to tell you what happened to the ship, if you haven’t determined this in your prep. Based on that, determine which systems are disabled (the engines are the only system that must be offline) and mark them partially or fully disabled as necessary.

   I would recommend if you decide to use this, put a list of systems on the rules sheet with two boxes or bubbles beside each one. If the boxes are empty the system is offline, so as you establish which are working, fill in those boxes (partially functional systems get one box, fully restored systems get two). As the tech fixes things, fill in the appropriate boxes.

   If you don’t present any complications to the plot, the Tech may be able to fix the ship and end the game with as few as two rolls (to fix the engines. Even if the navigation system is offline, with the engines functional the crew can stop the ship’s progress towards the planet.

   When you determine what happened to the ship and what systems are or aren’t working also decide where the ship was headed when it was damaged. Are they on a popular trade route? What is the name of the planet they’re heading to? Is it inhabited? It this the same planet as their original destination? Did their accident happen while they were flying in Hyperspace / at Warp speed / Faster Than Light (if that exists in your world)? Are they now lost in the blackness of space? Figure these things out so that when the crew gets the sensors or comms working you can tell them if they reach anybody, or what they see (ie: the rapidly approaching planet).

   So, in my estimation, the most important characters in the game are , in order, the Tech, and the Nurse. The least important character is the Cat. The others are neutral. If nobody plays the Nurse the wounds the crew start with will prevent them from making many of their vital rolls. If nobody plays the Tech then fixing the ship will be really challenging.

   Maybe consider letting people spend an XP to increase a die roll result up one level (6- becomes 7-9, 7-9 becomes 10+). Actually, don’t do this, because it would mean that rolling a 6- would always grant the character XP to spend to improve their roll (unless you rule that you cannot spend XP generated by a roll to improve that roll – that would work).

   All in all, we had fun, and everyone seemed pretty involved in the game. My recommendations to MCs running the game are as follows:

   1) Come to the table with a list of disasters to inflict on the crew. (alternately, you could include such a list in the rules as suggestions).

   2) Be prepared for the crew to figure out and fix the problem immediately, effectively ending the game. Have another challenge in hand to present to them if this happens (pirates, aliens, reavers, lost in space), or else the game could be really short.

   3) As always, use the following: Say, “Yes, AND…” and Say yes or roll the dice.

   Hope this helps, and feel free to email, chat, or reply to me if you want to talk about it more.

10. Ari Black Argh, I clicked away from my long, long reply and it went poof into the ether. I’ll try again.

    When I pitched …With Friends Like These to my group there was a lot of interest. I ended up with five players, playing the Guard, the Tech, the Loader, the AI, and the Cat. My first recommendation here would be to determine who outranks who, or if there’s a rank structure at all. How big is the original crew?

    Character creation went pretty quickly. One thing I would suggest is stating plainly that the “To my Left” and “To my Right” moves are supposed to be completed by the player, as we found that unclear. Also, the move for the Cat needs to be edited, because there’s a missing word there.

    When I explained the XP mechanic my players were somewhat taken aback at the concept of an RPG with a win condition. I like the mechanic for gaining and losing XP, and taking it from other players, but it’s unusual to see and might put people off or encourage PVP (which would probably make the action more tense and interesting, so…)

    I came into the game having done ZERO prep. I wouldn’t recommend this completely. This is a great game for prep-light presentation, but coming in with a name list (for the other crew, other ships, etc), and a list of potential disasters to inflict on the crew is a good idea. If I play this again I’ll definitely do that. Including these kinds of things on the handout sheet (like on the back of the rules) would be really great, and would make this a truly no prep/prep-light game. As it stands, if you print the file straight to double sided it prints out wrong, with the rules sheet getting one side of the character sheets on its back. Just saying.

    My players found it VERY difficult to accomplish anything with the -2 penalty form their Major wounds. If there’s no way to get medical attention (ie: nobody is playing the Nurse, or the ship’s Med Bay doesn’t have a surgery pod, or the Med Bay systems are offline) the game is going to go downhill very quickly.

    As an aside to that, I think treating the AI’s wounds differently might make things a little more interesting. I basically ended up listing out ten systems (for easy math with percentages) and telling the AI character that they would get -2 for systems that were “offline” if I determined they could act on that at all, -1 for partially restored systems, and no penalty for fully restored systems. Ask the players to tell you what happened to the ship, if you haven’t determined this in your prep. Based on that, determine which systems are disabled (the engines are the only system that must be offline) and mark them partially or fully disabled as necessary.

    I would recommend if you decide to use this, put a list of systems on the rules sheet with two boxes or bubbles beside each one. If the boxes are empty the system is offline, so as you establish which are working, fill in those boxes (partially functional systems get one box, fully restored systems get two). As the tech fixes things, fill in the appropriate boxes.

    If you don’t present any complications to the plot, the Tech may be able to fix the ship and end the game with as few as two rolls (to fix the engines. Even if the navigation system is offline, with the engines functional the crew can stop the ship’s progress towards the planet.

    When you determine what happened to the ship and what systems are or aren’t working also decide where the ship was headed when it was damaged. Are they on a popular trade route? What is the name of the planet they’re heading to? Is it inhabited? It this the same planet as their original destination? Did their accident happen while they were flying in Hyperspace / at Warp speed / Faster Than Light (if that exists in your world)? Are they now lost in the blackness of space? Figure these things out so that when the crew gets the sensors or comms working you can tell them if they reach anybody, or what they see (ie: the rapidly approaching planet).

    So, in my estimation, the most important characters in the game are , in order, the Tech, and the Nurse. The least important character is the Cat. The others are neutral. If nobody plays the Nurse the wounds the crew start with will prevent them from making many of their vital rolls. If nobody plays the Tech then fixing the ship will be really challenging.

    Maybe consider letting people spend an XP to increase a die roll result up one level (6- becomes 7-9, 7-9 becomes 10+). Actually, don’t do this, because it would mean that rolling a 6- would always grant the character XP to spend to improve their roll (unless you rule that you cannot spend XP generated by a roll to improve that roll – that would work).

    All in all, we had fun, and everyone seemed pretty involved in the game. My recommendations to MCs running the game are as follows:

    1) Come to the table with a list of disasters to inflict on the crew. (alternately, you could include such a list in the rules as suggestions).

    2) Be prepared for the crew to figure out and fix the problem immediately, effectively ending the game. Have another challenge in hand to present to them if this happens (pirates, aliens, reavers, lost in space), or else the game could be really short.

    3) As always, use the following: Say, “Yes, AND…” and Say yes or roll the dice.

    Hope this helps, and feel free to email, chat, or reply to me if you want to talk about it more.

11. Edward Hickcox Thank you for that amazing reply and please thank your players for me (if they want, you can give me their names and I’ll add a playtesters thank you page to the PDF). Let me start working your suggestions into a v. 3 and I’ll get back to you if I run into problems.

12. Edward Hickcox Thank you for that amazing reply and please thank your players for me (if they want, you can give me their names and I’ll add a playtesters thank you page to the PDF). Let me start working your suggestions into a v. 3 and I’ll get back to you if I run into problems.

13. Ari Black It’s my pleasure, and again, please contact me if you have any questions.

    OH ALSO! I can’t remember if I mentioned this in my second version of my reply, but the way the document is set up now if you tell it to print double sided you get the first page with the the front of some characters printed on the back. I got around this by printing multiples of the rules page so everyone could have a copy, then printing the character sheets separately. You might do well to put a second page of “rules” in there, names lists, disaster lists, ships systems, suggestions and stuff like that. Just a thought.

14. Ari Black It’s my pleasure, and again, please contact me if you have any questions.

    OH ALSO! I can’t remember if I mentioned this in my second version of my reply, but the way the document is set up now if you tell it to print double sided you get the first page with the the front of some characters printed on the back. I got around this by printing multiples of the rules page so everyone could have a copy, then printing the character sheets separately. You might do well to put a second page of “rules” in there, names lists, disaster lists, ships systems, suggestions and stuff like that. Just a thought.

15. Edward Hickcox You did mention and that was my plan, yes 🙂

16. Edward Hickcox You did mention and that was my plan, yes 🙂

17. I have posted the v.3 PDF document which should print more logically and integrates many of Edward Hickcox’s suggestions. Some I left out as I don’t want to bloat the manual too much in the early stages and I don’t want to structure people’s play too much. As always, do let me know what you think!

18. I have posted the v.3 PDF document which should print more logically and integrates many of Edward Hickcox’s suggestions. Some I left out as I don’t want to bloat the manual too much in the early stages and I don’t want to structure people’s play too much. As always, do let me know what you think!

19. Temporarily removed as I jumped the gun on the acknowledgements page, probably up later today.

20. Temporarily removed as I jumped the gun on the acknowledgements page, probably up later today.

21. Apologies for the delay, the v.3 PDF is now posted!

22. Apologies for the delay, the v.3 PDF is now posted!

Comments are closed.