25 + 25 Game

[Super Squirrel]

Has anyone actually PLAYED this level on a Fantasy Campaign. I haven't had this much fun on a fantasy game in ages. Character creation is actually much harder. 50 pts to build the entire character. You have to be very careful about what skills and powers to pick.

 

I have a Lumina Priestess and spent most of my points on having a 10 point Multipower Reserve. I can only read the minds of small children and animals. And we just earned 3 XP. Talk about excitement. It was like winning the lottery getting enough XP to raise a power Telepathy half-a-die and buying a familiarity.

 

There is much fun to 25/25 campaigns.

[Xandarr]

Kudos to you, Squirrel. Many of us long for the days when getting a few XP's brought that sense of wonder and anticipation. Glad to see it's still alive out there.

 

Now if I can only find someone to run a game for me....

 

Hopefully,

Steve

[Arthur]

The lowest I ever ran was 50+50. I concur that those low point games are better. Jacking the points up just raises the bar for everyone. It's like the old pinball machines - used to be a replay was earned at about 10,000 points. Now it's more like 2 million. Why? What's it get you, other than more zeroes?

 

When FH is at 75+75, all the opposition tends to be things like Ogres and Trolls.

 

When you are at lower points, suddenly those Orcs become scary. To me, that's more in keeping with the source literature.

 

However, many players would balk at playing in a really low-point game. That's why I went with 50+50.

[Markdoc]

I have both run in and played 25 +25 point games. Like you, I found them to be some of the most enjoyable FH games ever. There are two benefits: the first is the sense of instant achievement from small amounts of Xp. The second is that the game actually seems a lot more "real" when the characters interact with normal NPCs instead of Kings and Dragons. In my experience that leads to a lot of fun roleplaying.

 

Which is not to say I would want to play 25 + 25 ALL the time....

 

cheers, Mark

[Lucius]

I played in a game that was 25 + Disads, when there was no hard limit on Disads but when each one after the first in a given category netted fewer points - i.e. the first Hunted gave 100% of its value, the second was 50%, the third 25%, etc. We probably had about 75 pts total.

 

It worked, and it was fun.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

That was before I met the palindromedary....

[AnotherSkip]

i dunno about the "all you fight is Kings and Dragons and Ogres and Trolls"

 

there are some very dangerous combinations of "low points" critters that are _very_ dangerous.

 

That being said the highest character in our recent campaign just got past 200 points _after_ aiding a town defeat 2000 out of 3000 Zombies. Yes we had a _ton_ of help. but there were dammably few of us who even at 175(75+75+25xp) could take on a Zombie mano a mano even with all the goodies we have. especially my 200 point mage.

 

we pulled every trick in the book we could think of to slap around that army before it seiged the town:

Grass fires

splitting off little groups

Rolling boulders down hills

ambushes

traps

 

and that was with 46 PC(6) and NPC 150 point+ people

working together.

 

Man it was UUuuuuuuuuuuuugly

 

Still managed to save most of the townfolk

[MarkusDark]

Yup, I ran in one. It was funny.

 

"Did he just throw TWO dice of killing???? Run!"

 

"He has 18 strength.... oooooo...."

 

I thought I was kickass because I had a dagger AND a level in its use.

[BobGreenwade]

My idea of a great 25+25 campaign would be with the PCs as shopkeepers and other everyday folk, having to deal with a gang of thugs that the local guard can't (or won't) touch for whatever reason.

[doppelganger]

I like the idea of 25+25 because everyone the characters meet can be a problem. Normal people can put up one hell of a fight and a trained town guard can really put the fear of God into a party. Outside of combat, NPCs with odd or rare skills become very important people. When characters have to trust an NPC to do something the characters don't know how to do, like appraise a rare gem or shoe a horse, players tend to be much nicer to the NPCs than when they're the wondermen who can do it all.

 

The problem in practice is getting the players to go that low. They LIKE being the wondermen who can do it all

[Alibear]

Originally posted by doppelganger

I

The problem in practice is getting the players to go that low. They LIKE being the wondermen who can do it all

 

Maybe but if you are GM you set the guidelines, right?

 

25+25 reminds me of starting level D&D or Warhammer FRP characters.

[Fitz]

A super-duper low level game was one of the most enjoyable I ever ran, though of course much of the credit has to go to the players. Watching a bunch of hayseed farm kids trying to figure out what to take with them from the farm when they went a-venturin' was a hoot -- I'm still not entirely clear why they decided to take the anvil. Or, for that matter, why they thought taking a pony cart across rugged untracked hill country was ever going to work

 

Unfortunately, it's difficult to keep a campaign at that level if you're handing out any experience at all. A month or two of weekly play soon distorts such low-level characters out of all recognition. But it was real fun as a temporary thing.

[BobGreenwade]

Originally posted by Fitz

I'm still not entirely clear why they decided to take the anvil.

You obviously don't watch enough Warner Brothers cartoons.

[Sterling]

I am just started a pseudo low level campaign. The intention is for the characters to reach that 75+75 level in a high magic world, but I wanted them to start smaller so I set the starting at 25+75, and so far I am really pleased with the results. I still get all those disadvantages out of them, but they are not too large.

 

One of the games that I played in that was an absolute FAVORITE of all the players, was a superheroes game we called "Survivor" (Long before the TV Show!). The players started at 0+25. Very normal people that were then changed, mutated, infected or whatever made sense for the campaign. But then they were being Hunted or in an incredibly dangerous environment. In one game, the players were all transported by aliens to a jungle planet. Here is the fun part. Not only did we get XP, but every day (in the game) we survived we got 1 character pt, and at specified intervels we could buy more disads. It was a blast, and let me tell you these characters could almost beat more then twice thier points in a fight. Why? They had learned how to get out of their powers as much as could be done. They were inventive and knew everything they could do with their powers inside and out.

[Wyrm Ouroboros]

Originally posted by Alibear

25+25 reminds me of starting level D&D or Warhammer FRP characters.

 

ALERT ** ALERT ** ALERT ** ALERT

 

Gamer story follows!!

 

ALERT ** ALERT ** ALERT ** ALERT

 

Okay, that out of the way ...

 

In a long-running WFRP game run by the primary writer of the 'Children of the Sun' game, our well-advanced characters had been effectively stripped of all the cool stuff they'd acquired, sent out into the winter wilderness with little but their courtly clothes, and hounded across a country (Bretonnia, for those who know) and into the mountains. Still sans virtually any good weapons or armor, we got confronted by a really powerful necromancer, who had an army of ... hmmm. Something in the range of 500 skeletons, a few wraiths, all that sort of thing.

 

We got the grand choice of defending 50-some villagers, fighting to destroy the necromancer and the undead army, and eventually evacuating the lot. We managed to get SOME aid from a nearby group (15, IIRC) of dwarven miners, but that was it. We survived. So did most of the townspeople. The necromancer did not.

 

I think it was one of the best 'desperate fights against impossible odds' that I've ever played in, and our characters were by no means 'starting characters'. We just had nothing that could have made the job any easier...

[Old Man]

Even more pathetic than a 25+25 game was the campaign we ran where everyone wrote themselves up in Hero stats, as though we got sucked into a fantasy world... you know the drill. Anyway, I believe our first encounter was with one (1) goblin, who almost killed two party members before our feeble selves could bring him down. He was so fast, and so strong... Power levels didn't stay down there too long, though. We were in the habit of giving out 3-5 xp every other session which, on top of the magic items, quickly had us up to more "reasonable" power levels. Too quickly for my taste. It's a real change of pace being that helpless in FH.

[Alibear]

The thing that I noticed is that if you spend your points as a "fighter type" 25+25 can be made to be quite tough escpecially when you add a sword, shield and armour. The girly elf and wizards aprentice were chewed up nicely by the gobos though.

 

The elf was the proud recipient of a 11 body move through!

 

Another took a blow to the neck, only four body but still enough to make that impairing roll.