Guild of San Marcos Forum

Black Jack Rackham wrote:Speaking of the map Jungen...

And for my two cents I love Love LOVE it! Left us room for Africa (which, lets be honest, should never have been left out).

It is, to be sure, an AWESOME map. I just was really hoping for continuity between the setting of the first edition and the setting of the second. I sometimes fear change.

I'm loving the change in the mechanics. I disagree with whoever said the Death Spiral (perfect name) would be a lot of paperwork. I used something vaguely similar playing 7th sea. Instead of doing math to track wounds, I had a track of circles to fill in. Every yin/yang symbol was 5, and there were markers for when you became impaired. All you had to do was add on wounds at the end of your wound track.

This has that same feel. Every time you take wounds, fill in that number of circles. When you reach the appropriate mark, you've taken a dramatic wound. Tah dah! If you elect to take a dramatic wound, just skip forward to the next star. (Maybe draw a line through the circles you didn't have to fill.)

I'm curious about Reputation, too.

The new reputation mechanic is probably my favorite thing. No more seemingly random number that encompasses everything, but rather a reputation for specific things.

Braggart 2
Honorable 3
Scoundrel 1

That kind of thing. Not sure if that's the number of dice you get to add to the rolls (though that would work out just fine) or if its just a number added into your pool (in other words, say I roll 5 dice to get some folks to do what I'm asking, I get 10, 8, 2, 4, 5. Now normally I'd just get 2 Raises, and the 9 left over just drop off. but with my Honorable 3, I get to add 3 to the last one and get instead 3 Raises).

And the kickstarter goals have been blasted out of the water. WOW!

Black Jack Rackham wrote:The new reputation mechanic is probably my favorite thing. No more seemingly random number that encompasses everything, but rather a reputation for specific things.

Braggart 2
Honorable 3
Scoundrel 1

That kind of thing. Not sure if that's the number of dice you get to add to the rolls (though that would work out just fine) or if its just a number added into your pool (in other words, say I roll 5 dice to get some folks to do what I'm asking, I get 10, 8, 2, 4, 5. Now normally I'd just get 2 Raises, and the 9 left over just drop off. but with my Honorable 3, I get to add 3 to the last one and get instead 3 Raises).

It'll be interesting to see if you can have a situation where different people catch different aspects of your rep. "I heard he's charitable! He defended the honor of a scullery maid and refused his Swordsman's fee!" "Well *I* heard he was a Scoundrel. Just yesterday he was running from the Alcalde's men!"

So, the KS total is up over $260K, and all the limited reward tiers are full. Not bad for the first 10 hours.

2 days down and it's closing in on half a million (407k last I checked) it'd blown through all the stretch goals and I'm having trouble calculating how much extra I have to kick in for the physical copies of all the books...

umm, 260 i think, unless he cuts us a deal later.

Nah, gotta be way more than that.
The New World
Pirate Nations
Nations of Theah Vol 1
Nations of Theah Vol 2
Heroes and Villains Sourcebook
City of Adventure: Iskandar
The Crescent Empire

And I want an extra (non-limited ed copy) of the basic book.

so that's 7 - $40 books and 1 - $60 book

Plus if he's doing an extra book per 40k extra, we're almost a quarter of the way there before he's even announced it.

So um, if this goes on too much longer im going to have to choose between origins and buying the source books.

And its going to be even worse on you Ken. Here's the latest blurb...

Additional Limited Reward Tiers

In addition to announcing a new stretch goal, we’ve also got some exciting news about our $500+ limited reward tiers. We’ve gotten a lot of comments and messages asking us to open up more of the upper-level tiers… so we’re going to open up a few more!

Here’s the list of tiers we’re going to expand:

20 MORE DREAD PIRATES!
2 MORE ULTIMATE ADVENTURES!
5 MORE HEROES IMMORTALIZED!
3 MORE MONARCHS!

(We may also have a few more TREASURES GALORE tiers, but we need to confirm with our suppliers! Stay tuned!)

We’re going to expand all of these tiers at 11am Eastern on Saturday, February 13th. We’re already pushing ourselves to fit in more folks into these tiers; these tiers are unlikely to expand again. If you’re interested in snagging one of these, this is probably your last chance.

*sobs*I know, I saw. But how many more books Can he print? If 7 nationsbecame 2 books, we have 2 society books, cathay, freiburg, 5 sails, a swordsmans book, a church book.. the sidhe book... Oh theus, my poor bank account.....


looks like iskandar is pdf only. so thats 40 bucks less.

I'm hoping they do the secret society books again

Yep, just reading your feedback and I can say, not surprised by any of it. Mike, there will be much more detail on how stuff works in a full book. But there is a good chance the days of the "polyglot skill master" are nearing an end.

As for balancing play between players and spotlights, that has always been an unwritten issue for GMs to fix. I would not expect a quick start ruleset to solve it.

Nabu, I am on the other side of the fence on new raises. Non-exploding diceean I will need to dial back my calls.

Steve, AEG had plans for official dice with bombs at one time, late in the run. 10 sets were made if I recall. Thwak got a set for fixing Cathay at the deadline (and, yes. He made that book MUCH better than it would have been). But they decided not to go ahead with the dice from chessex.

Glad this seems to be going well, will wait until it shows up at an actual game store to buy a copy from an actual merchant.

i'm only pledging for the base book and i'll pick up the other hard copies of source books at merchants as cash permits. not much more for me to say until i get my hands on the real book, then the "fun" begins. i honestly can't wait to start back up at home. the big question here is....... will HoA switch to 2nd ed or stay 1st ed through the rest of the run?

salamanca wrote:... Mike, there will be much more detail on how stuff works in a full book. But there is a good chance the days of the "polyglot skill master" are nearing an end.

Yes, but how the RPG character is created, and may progress/advance, is the beginning of it all. If that doesn't work for me, all the rest is irrelevant. I have little desire to go any further with game mechanics that artificially limits a character's interests.

Think versatile rather than polyglot.

Black Jack Rackham wrote:Nah, gotta be way more than that.
<snip>
City of Adventure: Iskandar
<snip>

The good(?) news is, I don't think Iskandar is going to be a physical book... Only a PDF. I'm betting that's going to be the case of ALL the Cities of Adventure.

And when all is said and done, there's going to be a single add-on for All The Sourcebooks In Hardcopy. I'm holding out for that.

and the next hundred thousand isnt going to kill my wallet.

Heroes of Altamira WILL be sticking with original system through the run.

Mark and I have discussed this a ton and the one thing we both agreed on is that we cannot ask players to rebuild characters halfway into a campaign.

1- we have no idea if all characters could be rebuilt (actually, we know the pyeryem could not for certain)
2- we don't want to lose play time to sitting around watching you all try and figure out the numbers.
3- I'm not doing that for you.
4- new map screws with some of Mark's plans.
5- new map screws with all of my plans.
6- GM learning curve just makes it easier to stick with what the rest of the team knows.
7- Mike will hate it. (yeah, the needs of the individual factored in on this for me. I like having Mike play and want him to stick around with us)
8- Possible changes in sorceries, sword schools and supernatural elements might mess up some of Mark's plans.
9- We don't want to force anybody to go drop money they may not have to stay in the established campaign.
10- I don't want to build another 35 pregens.

Those 10 points are all things that Mark and I talked about before we saw the first teaser from John Wick about this project. And while keeping to the original system may cost us a few potential new bodies, I think swapping will hurt us more.

Now, the door is still open on which system and setting we will use for the Canguine campaign Mark wants to run after this ends in 6 years. And I'm all for using the new system at home or for non-campaign games at a con. But ALTAMIRA WILL STAY WITH THE FIRST EDITION SYSTEM.

*hugs Annie and her asplody dice*

Okay, just ran this shindig for my home groups.. got both of them together to get enough players.


The risk/consequnce system worked fairly well. My players tend to overnarate their own things, so I had a lot of that removed from my plate.

Brute fighting. We read this section of the PDF and got two different interpretations... and then playing the adventure, a third interpretation. Basically, You get to knock brutes down, then you get a chance to avoid being hit by the ones that are left.. so unlike other contested events, you get to roll dice twice. this added confusion to my players.


The "countdown reaction" points where you give 5 seconds to the player to decide... half my players caught it, and half didnt.


The two end fights.. with the guard captain and with the swordmaster.. both raised some questions. In a non duel, all you do is spend your raises back and forth, in swings of damage and avoidance. But in the duel you have that plus mechanics where the player gets dice back, but the villian doesnt. My player with the duelist was dissapointed that the final fight seemed to run out of steam part way thru, because I ran out of dice, and with the special manuvers granting hero points, no way to recover them when he didnt roll 1s.

kenderleech wrote:Okay, just ran this shindig for my home groups.. got both of them together to get enough players.

Thank you very much for sharing this!

You're welcome. My players feedback was "The adventure was okay. the rules seemed a little clunky, but some of that might be having to look them up constantly."

salamanca wrote:7- Mike will hate it. (yeah, the needs of the individual factored in on this for me. I like having Mike play and want him to stick around with us).

Yeah, the 2.0 Rules seem to favor some rather complicated new tactics that many/most players will never understand or use.

It remains to be seen whether characters can be broad and shallow (relatively speaking) rather than narrow and focused. I'm going to lose interest if I'm relegated to a narrow character.

I believe most of us choose to play a character either like us or the opposite of us. Since I have/had lots of skills, even at age 21, it would be rather a put down to me if characters were artificially limited.

Everyone needs to keep the following in mind...

Even with the quick start, nothing is really set in stone. If you have tried the system and find a problem, contact John and ask if it really works that way. I am sure he will consider making changes if he sees multiple issues with a rule.

But also remember that stuff HAS to change to warrant a new edition. I doubt the system is too complex for players, you all are smart about exploiting stuff.

Sister Sonya wrote:It remains to be seen whether characters can be broad and shallow (relatively speaking) rather than narrow and focused. I'm going to lose interest if I'm relegated to a narrow character.

I was watching the Mythfits interview with John Wick (which is nearly safe for work, despite the disclaimer), and it sounds like the bulk of CharGen will involve picking two character backgrounds (no relation to the 1st Ed Backgrounds), and that will give you Advantages and Skills to start. I don't know if you also get "customization points" or what have you, and I've left that question on the KS comments. So, if you want to be a Blacksmith Swordsman like Orlando Bloom in PotC, you can. If you want to be a Sailor Fate Witch, you can. If you want to be an Accountant/Morris Dancer...

Sorcery ONLY comes from the backgrounds, now. I don't know if there're only Sorcerers and not half-, full-, and/or twice-blooded anymore (maybe you can take two sorcerous backgrounds?).

salamanca wrote:Everyone needs to keep the following in mind...

Even with the quick start, nothing is really set in stone.

It's true. They say they're totally wrecking the duelling system they had in the Quickstart.