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Penny dreadful & Wyrd chronicle adventures - Difficulty levels


yool1981

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I have mainly read the TTB books for the fluff but some of my rpg players would like me to run a few adventures. I would be glad to oblige as this is one of the most interesting rulesets I have seen so far (+ the fluff is incredible as always with Wyrd).

I think the Penny dreaful and the Wyrd chronicle adventures may be a good start but I have a hard time figuring out the difficulty level for each of them.

Is there a nb of XP minimum per player/per group advised for each of the adventures ? Where may I find it ?

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1 hour ago, yool1981 said:

Is there a nb of XP minimum per player/per group advised for each of the adventures ? Where may I find it ?

There is not.

The adventures in Chronicles all tend to be pretty good for starting characters, as none of them are too terrible difficult.

I'm sure that other people will chime in to give you some idea as to the difficulty of published adventures.

 

 

Personally, I think that Bad Moon Rising and Child of Flame are among the more difficult adventures. Recruitment Drive and Sixteen Tons were both Free RPG Day adventures and as such are intended for starting groups, while Legacy of Darkness, In the Gutter, Honor Among Thieves and (later this month) The Hand That Feeds are all convention adventures, and thus play pretty well with starting groups.

Nythera was the 2015 Worldwide Event adventure, and should be good for starting characters as well, though it ramps up a bit toward the end. If your players have experience with other roleplaying games, though, they should be fine.

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Thx a lot for the answer !

May I humbly suggest to add an XP range or a sort of difficulty appraisal at the start of the future adventures? That may be of some help for starting fatemasters, especially since the ruleset is quite unusual compared to other games.

And BTW, I will never say it enough but you do a great job at expanding the fluff in TTB. This is coherent, inventive and well written. In brief awesome.

I cannot wait until the NB book :p.

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I'll definitely chip in and suggest recruitment drive as well, it's a very simple setting initially and then dives right in to the action, with plenty of chances for the characters to interact with the world around them. for a follow up I'd suggest Nythera- Nythera is a spectacularly well-written adventure and has a huge impact on the world of malifaux, it' s possibly my favourite supplement for any RPG so I can't recommend it enough. 

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25 minutes ago, yool1981 said:

Thx a lot for the answer !

May I humbly suggest to add an XP range or a sort of difficulty appraisal at the start of the future adventures? That may be of some help for starting fatemasters, especially since the ruleset is quite unusual compared to other games.

It's a bit tricky to work out.

For instance, you might one group that's composed of experienced characters who have taken non-combat Pursuits who struggle with a particularly combative adventure, while another group of brand new, combat-heavy characters breeze through it easily.

It's been something that I've been poking with a stick for some time now, but I just haven't found a system that works well enough to make it worth keeping. At the moment, I've been trying to note the more dangerous Penny Dreadfuls as such in their general description, just as a bit of warning for newer groups.

Generally, though, we tend to aim a bit low on the difficulty, since Fatemasters with combat-heavy groups can usually make things more difficult if necessary (adding more enemies, increasing Rank Value, etc.), but making things less difficult can something be trickier.

It's an ongoing process, though, and I'm definitely interested in hearing feedback from players on the difficulty level of adventures and how best to organize them for Fatemasters.

 

33 minutes ago, yool1981 said:

And BTW, I will never say it enough but you do a great job at expanding the fluff in TTB. This is coherent, inventive and well written. In brief awesome.

Thanks!

I've been working hard at it, and now I've got some great authors to help out.

April Hergert, Paul Lippincott, David Ivey, Chip Limeburner, and all the others have really gone out of their way to come up with some great adventures, and I'm really looking forward to this next year. I think it'll be a big one for TTB.

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I'll definitely chip in and suggest recruitment drive as well, it's a very simple setting initially and then dives right in to the action, with plenty of chances for the characters to interact with the world around them. for a follow up I'd suggest Nythera- Nythera is a spectacularly well-written adventure and has a huge impact on the world of malifaux, it' s possibly my favourite supplement for any RPG so I can't recommend it enough. 

I'll check recruitment drive. For Nythera, I will wait a bit. I think that although the story is interesting, it is a bit too linear on the investigation side (lack of lose ends and side scenes). It would require too much rework to fit my playing group's way of thinking.

Quote

Thanks!

I've been working hard at it, and now I've got some great authors to help out.

April Hergert, Paul Lippincott, David Ivey, Chip Limeburner, and all the others have really gone out of their way to come up with some great adventures, and I'm really looking forward to this next year. I think it'll be a big one for TTB.

I look forward to next year then :p.

If I may humbly make a wish for next TTB books, that would be to have more "lively" scenes in the artworks to increase the immersion. For example, in under the quarantine, there were some global artworks but without every day scenes or illustrations of the inhabitants.

Quote

It's a bit tricky to work out.

For instance, you might one group that's composed of experienced characters who have taken non-combat Pursuits who struggle with a particularly combative adventure, while another group of brand new, combat-heavy characters breeze through it easily.

It's been something that I've been poking with a stick for some time now, but I just haven't found a system that works well enough to make it worth keeping. At the moment, I've been trying to note the more dangerous Penny Dreadfuls as such in their general description, just as a bit of warning for newer groups.

Generally, though, we tend to aim a bit low on the difficulty, since Fatemasters with combat-heavy groups can usually make things more difficult if necessary (adding more enemies, increasing Rank Value, etc.), but making things less difficult can something be trickier.

It's an ongoing process, though, and I'm definitely interested in hearing feedback from players on the difficulty level of adventures and how best to organize them for Fatemasters.

Maybe a small requirement table would do. Something like below:

Combat skills requirements : 15 (where it is the total of the best combat skills+attribute of the PCs). The idea is that a combat heavy crew is likely to have 5-7 in each of their preferred combat skills+attributes (so if you take 3 PCs, you have 15)

Interaction requirements: 15 (something similar as combat, the fatemaster takes the lowest combination of the critical interaction skills below to see if his crew of PCs fits).

Critical Interaction skills : Barter / Intimidate

Investigation requirements : 10

Critical Investigation skills : Notice / Engineering

Survival requirements :10

Critical Survival skills : Sneak / Wilderness / Willpower

What do you think?

The Fatemaster will see at once that if some key skills are missing, he has to add NPCs for help or tweak the encounters/the scenes.

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