The recent mention of TRoS on another thread reminded me that I was going to post a note about the fan made successor to TRoS coming out soon. Blade of the Iron Throne, is S&S rpg son of TRoS.

http://www.trosfans.com/forum/search.ph ... ive_topics

Playtested it and its looking great. Even thought about running a Blade Harn game. I think Harn would do S&S ok?.

Allan

Were there any major changes from the Old TROS rules?

I loved parts of TROS, though hated others

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

Is there a download somewhere I'm not finding (again) or are you just teasing us?

I loved TROS, what little I've played of it.

The "toughness" thing was always an issue for me.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

The Companion addresses the naked dwarf syndrome (I love that they borrowed that term) with a few options, although all of them are a little clunky; one is that TO can only mitigate ST (so TO in excess of your opponent's ST is ignored; monsters like dragons replace a lot of TO with armor points).

I do agree that Toughness is a silly mechanic, though - letting people resist or mitigate Shock in some way would have been a far better option (similar to how WP mitigates Pain). There's an idea; increase all Shock results by 4 or 5 and then deduct TO from them. Derive a "damage bonus/penalty" attribute from ST by deducting 4 or 5, and use that instead of full ST for weapon damages. There's still going to be a bit of a problem with not being able to score low-level wounds with some weapons, like greatswords, though. (A problem shared by Hârn, funnily enough.) There's other optional rules to use for that, though.

The fix I'd go with (for both issues) would be to use the raw damage of an attack (margin of success + weapon damage) as a dice pool with a TN equal to your opponent's Toughness. That gives you a chance to generate Level 1 Wounds with even a greatsword. That does add an extra roll to a hit, but it's a system where every hit is important anyway, and three rolls (attack, defense, damage) per attack isn't exactly bad or uncommon, especially in a game where a very detailed combat system actually flows so smoothly.

Honestly, the base rule book by itself is a bit poor, but with the Companion (for the skills and character creation and other optional rules to taste) and The Flower of Battle it's one of the best RPGs I know. (I love TFOB's advanced grappling rules and the winding & binding rules - and since everything always works on the same mechanic, they're much easier and quicker to use than they look.) I can't think of a better game to run 17th/18th century pirate campaigns or anything in the style of the Three Musketeers on, and I absolutely want to run a Conan game on the system.

Intertesting thought here - this might work. The thing is to make toughness have an effect to a point, but not overly to much of a effect. I like the TN idea, maybe a minimum would level of one? Perhaps combining this with the reduced shock for toughness, or using it as is. Only thing is that it requires an extra die roll, but TROS can actually be played rather quickly for all it's detail.

The other thing I had a problem with was the wounds that would be caused by a +3 damage weapon vs say a 0 damage bonus weapon. That TN thing might work for this too. Don't get we wrong - A battle axe can cause great wounds, but the standard arming sword can too, and a +3 wound level seems too severe.

Naked Dwarf



It's not nrealy as great of a problem with harn though. For instance, Harnic wound levels are generally is a range of 4-5 impact points per increasing wound level, dpending on which edition of HM played.

A Battle axe, with E impact of 8-9 is 3-4 points greater than an arming sword of E5 impact, so really in HM a big variance is one or less wound level, as opposed to the TROS variation of 3 wound level.




Yeah, the "fencing" rules lend themselves very well to this kind of campaign, though I don't care a lot for the TROS missile system.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

If you want a system that's great for pirates, musketeers, and the buckling of swashes in general, I strongly encourage you to take a look at 7th Sea.

I have, but for realistic, detailed fencing, great tactical depth (die pool allocation and maneuvers), and smooth play, I find TROS can't be beat.

Incidentally, TROS is also my first pick for historical Japanese games centering on samurai, even over Sengoku (although I'd probably use it for a setting book, just dumping out the rules/mechanics). The combat system is great for it, and the Stealing Initiative mechanics cover Iaijutsu nicely.

The funny thing is, while I want to run a Conan game in TROS, it's actually the one I think will fit the system the least (not badly, though), despite the game's name and sword & sorcery inspirations, and the general harsh realism of Howard's novels (sure, Conan is awesome, but he can't cut through mail hauberks and he can't fight ten men at once unless they're drugged-up degenerates who don't know what they're doing, à la The Slithering Shadow). Conan d20 actually captures the action and feel of Conan pretty damn well.



The Companion actually recommends a lot of "change it into a die pool" fixes for combat; frankly, the core book by itself feels VERY incomplete after you've read The Companion. I think the combination of damage die pool and Toughness TN works great to mitigate the main issues. It's also already a part of the game's mechanics - "use your opponent's attribute for TN" is everywhere in the rules (such as in Stealing Initiative).

And while it does add another roll, that's only "up to par" (RuneQuest, for instance, has three rolls per attack, and so do most other games I've played). I found TROS combat to be so surprisingly fast and smooth I wouldn't worry about adding a damage roll. (The main delay is players picking maneuvers, which should go away with experience; not that mine lingered long on the choices on their first time, even when using the TFOB grappling rules.)

Dangit, but now I want to run The Riddle of Hârn.

Edit: Funny thing, that made me think "but the combat is very Renaissance longsword." But then I realized that's just the Winding & Binding mechanic (optional, from TFOB) and some of the combat styles and maneuvers (like longsword). You can't half-sword with Sword & Shield, and the game even supports things like striking at a shield user's legs as a good tactic, etc. It should work great for more 11th-12th century combat, too.

Hi Guys,
Sorry about the delay, as your responses came in after I left for the States on a working holiday, currently at Boulder City NV.
I was in the playtest and hopefully very soon they will announce the fan Blade download and there was talk of a print on demand version.
They fix lots of the bugs from TRoS, but it is gear specifically towards S&S.
Also the original designer of TRoS is playtesting a new game at the moment, there is some discussion on the forum if you search his name maybe you will find it. I think it was 17th and 18th century historic rpg.
Sorry again, on my wifes borrowed laptop and she wants to talk to the kids.

Allan

Any notes or thoughts on this that you would like to share would be much appreciated as I had the same though after looking through the rules but never having played it I didn't really know where to start.

Scott

Unfortunately, The Flower of Battle supplement is kind of integral, but finding any of the TROS books is probably a monumental task by now. TFOB contains the Kenjutsu and Kenjutsu/Daisho combat styles (although, really, they're not that special; the Quick Draw maneuver added by TFOB is useful but not mandatory either, you can just fudge it as a Terrain Roll and an Attack on the same action, and/or Stealing Initiative, with the Attack dice lost if the Terrain Roll fails). TFOB also has stats for katana, wakizashi, and early firearms, along with a bunch of other weapons.

The system really works for jidaigeki-style games almost right out of the box; TFOB works perfectly, too. Maneuvers like Master Stroke and Evasive Attack fit kenjutsu to a T. If you examine and try out the Stealing Initiative mechanic, you'll notice it really fits the classical samurai duels, iaijutsu/battojutsu or not - you're trying to get that all-important first strike that will probably end the fight, but there's a real risk of mutual injury, too.

I'd make armor Scale (for the lamellar stuff) or Banded Mail (for the heavier mail-backed armor). Switch social classes to Hinin/Low Peasant/High Peasant/Buke/Kuge. Not a lot of changes necessary, really.

If you've got TFOB/The Companion, I can send you my .rtf docs with my Sengoku combat styles, character creation notes (which rely on The Companion), and weapon stats (again, TFOB-based missile weapons). Without those books, the notes probably won't make a lot of sense.

Thomas, thanks for that. I can get access to all the rule books so I can probably sort out something.
If you could send your notes to me at lazy.beargarden@gmail.com I would be very grateful.
Thanks

Scott

Hello,
As a further update, Blade now has its own website and the game is only days away from launching;

http://www.ironthronepublishing.com/

Please remember it is a free fan update on TRoS and it has taken awhile, but the time spent looks like its going to be really well done.
If you like TRoS or Burning Wheel this game should be great.

Allan