Preposition_the_Noun

I don't know an exact date, but I've heard from others that the digital release is typically a month after the physical book becomes available.

Tales of Malifaux #6 contains the point at which I fell in love with the setting. It feels a bit silly to admit it, but specifically it was the moment at which Seamus attempts to fool Lady Justice with a fake mustache and gets stabbed for it. It's obviously meant to be a one-off gag, but seeing a bit of humor in the middle of this intense firefight in this macabre gritty world while still feeling like genuine characterization really stuck with me.

I've only ever run a handful of games but I wouldn't mind getting some more FM experience under my belt.

I feel like Ten Thunders is most likely, it's an older faction that doesn't have its own book yet. I also like the idea of an Explorer's Society book because that can fill in a lot of gaps. Personally, I'd love to see a The Other Side book. It feels like there's only three lore tidbits about what's happening Earthside in the TtB books so you'd have to dig through the podcasts and short stories elsewhere to know what's going on, and the only game rule is that you flip to magic while Earthside. My last guess feels like a long shot; we know they were going to do a high-level sourcebook using the Avatars storyline. They may have abandoned the Avatars concept but maybe not the high-level campaign idea. Malifaux Burns looks like it's bringing a lot of changes...

For casting outside of dramatic time(or arguably using any skill) you could take inspiration from D&D 3rd edition's "Take 20" mechanic. When trying to do something while not under any threat and there's no significant consequence for failure, your task takes 20 times longer to do in exchange for an automatic success. In D&D, it's representative of rolling the dice a bunch of times until it comes up 20; here, it would be the same thing as flipping through the whole deck until you get the TN/suit combination you want, but this method can also be used to bypass players trying to rack up Twist cards through their On the Pursuit abilities by flipping so much or trying to play the deck out of cards. Generally speaking though regardless of system, if failure is uninteresting or doesn't have any stakes in the narrative then simply let your players succeed.

It looks like it went up on DriveThruRPG today shortly after you asked this question.

LOTTERY ME

As someone that started with the first edition, I completely overlooked that second edition says that Fatemasters can flip for damage; I've been having my players flip for damage dealt against themselves. I like the idea of not having to flip, though, so I'll probably keep doing it the old way as a house rule. If my players get hit with severe damage, they have no one to blame but themselves.😆

I'm leaning towards no. The Fastest Gun trigger would only happen on a Defense flip while the wording for Finger on the Trigger implies that the enemy's ranged attack fails before any Defense flip is made.

You could make a new talent that gives the following trigger on all melee, and/or magical attacks: Suit of choice(I feel crows would probably be the best fit) : After succeeding, increase the value of the target's Crazy condition by +1. Alternatively, it could be a Manifested Power against the target's Willpower and increases the value of the target's Crazy condition by +1 and an additional +1 per Margin of Success. From there, you could make Manifested Powers that use the enemy's Crazy condition: Reduce the Crazy condition of each target in Pulse 4 by -1 and heal by the total value reduced. Deal a 1/2/3 magical attack, reduce the Crazy condition of the target by -X and add +X to the damage dealt. Those are just examples, obviously; Target Numbers, ranges, and damage values would need to be tested, but I don't think those kinds of abilities would be game-breaking. Honestly, there's a lot of potential there. You could easily make a whole custom Pursuit out of it.

My first group I ran through the Bad Things Happen adventure in the back of the core book. It was pretty straightforward and by the book, but it was also my first time running the game. For another group of new players, I ran A Malifaux Christmas Carol right at the beginning of this year. I'm a little sad that they solved everything without running into Seamus because I was looking forward to that encounter, but I like that that adventure has so many ways to get to the end.

Our group still likes to remember the time they had to deliver a carriage loaded with unknown products to the Quarantine Zone. Knowing how illegal it was to go there, they prepared elaborate aliases and backstories for each member of the party. They even wore masks and made up a gang name, The Masked Malifaux Marauders, so as not to have the job be traced back to their more legitimate business they collectively owned. They eventually delivered the load and discovered that they were actually delivering cadavers to a group of Ressurectionists. Upon finding this out, the face of the group(who hated necromancy) immediately pulled his revolver and shot one in the head point-blank. A fight broke out, nearby Death Marshalls that were on a covert mission got involved, and I learned a hard lesson about balancing encounters as a Fatemaster because my group barely survived by the skin of their teeth. They ultimately got arrested anyway, putting those aliases as the Masked Malifaux Marauders to good use. The next session naturally featured a jailbreak.

The only game I've run in which someone had a subordinate character was the swineherd whose piglet almost single-handedly(hoofedly?) took on the climactic battle against the big bad. I don't know if Piglets are just sleeper overpowered with Pigcharge and the Stampede trigger or if I made a mistake in how they work, but it was a hilarious time.

I've only run a handful of games so far, enough to get each of my players their first destiny step. So far it seems I'm best at what I consider to be straightforward adventures. The players investigate and/or overcome obstacles to reach the source of antagonism then put an end to it with a climactic battle. That's not to say I don't add in twists and turns with interesting characters, but I haven't really dabbled in other "genres" of adventures yet.

During a game I ran this past weekend, there was a moment when a player wanted to target a specific part of an enemy(in this case, it was a magical hat that the player wanted to shoot off the enemy's head). I couldn't find anything regarding called shots or even anything similar, such as disarming attacks. To keep the combat flowing, I simply disallowed it at the time but promised to research it so we'll be ready next time the situation arises. I still haven't found rules along these lines, unless I overlooked it. I understand some GMs and even whole RPG systems don't like called shots, but since my players are the ones asking for them I don't mind house-ruling them in. My idea is to have the player attack with a on the attack flip; when dealing damage, reduce damage to 0 but the player gets the desired effect(disarming, etc.). I'm also back-and-forth on whether I want the player to discard a card to use the option. Does this sound fair, or does anyone else have any house rules to handle them?