runequester
Swordsman
- Joined
- 29 Apr 2018
- Messages
- 474
As usual, apologies for typing in English. You are free to respond in Swedish or English as you prefer.
So as I mentioned on the forum, I ran HT for my American (and one Egyptian) friend for around 11 months of regular sessions. I'd done a translated cheat sheet of the rules and skill lists and away we went. The campaign was set in a sort of fantasy-medieval Sweden circa 1200, which was good fun.
Assorted observations from myself and my friends from that time:
* Exceptional rolls on doubles made sense to us. We had come from a long Harnmaster game where criticals happen on rolls ending in 0 and 5, so looking at the dice felt natural to us.
* Character traits (karaktärsdrag) was loved by everybody. We also added the option from the supplement that you have relationships to the other characters that can be used in the same way.
* Everyone liked combat quite a bit. I think the "zone" approach to combat is more fun (and easier to do online) than squares but I did end up getting tired of creating maps in advance. Since we dislike roll20, I ended up just creating squares in Keynote (apple's version of powerpoint) and sharing my screen.
Damage rolls being quite dramatic was well liked, as was the roll over opponent part of combat (most of the group had prior experience with Pendragon so that helped)
The difference between Gard and Hälsa was well liked as well. People liked the idea that characters could get beaten up without being actually hurt whereas people really paid attention once the real injuries rolled in.
* As mentioned in the other thread, we felt that advancement was perhaps a little bit too fast. The combination of getting some free checks and checks for skill usage was liked, but people were hitting 90s in their main skills before we were done. In hindsight, Id probably either cut the bonus checks in half or reduce advancement to 1D4 or something. Not sure, for a shorter campaign, its fine.
* The special talents from the supplements people liked, but we ran into some situations where people didn't plan ahead and then realized they had to get a skill they rarely used up to 80 or 90% to get a talent they wanted, which felt like something out of 3.x D&D days. This definitely made people a bit discouraged.
* For some reason the Öppna - Spärra mechanic for difficulty never quite clicked with the group. I found myself having to remind people well into the campaign. Doesn't mean its bad, just that it didn't feel as intuitive. Your mileage may vary.
* Utmaninger was fun. I usually dislike that sort of mechanic, but we ended up using it a lot for things like travel montages and other extended-tough-but-boring situations.
* The one wizard player enjoyed the magic system. We ended up inventing a few new spells as well.
* Running bad guys was easy enough. I did not anticipate how much more heroic the characters are compared to many BRP games. "Grunt" level enemies get mown down. The fact that many enemies have no defense roll, as well as armor being fairly weak means the heroes can burn through a lot of health quickly, if they focus their attacks.
* It was pretty easy to invent new monster abilities like monsters that could smash the ground and strike an entire zone, enemies that could pull characters towards them etc.
Overall, we had an absolute blast. I am not sure if HT is the best BRP incarnation ever but it's definitely one of the best. Everyone of my players wished the rules were available in English.
So as I mentioned on the forum, I ran HT for my American (and one Egyptian) friend for around 11 months of regular sessions. I'd done a translated cheat sheet of the rules and skill lists and away we went. The campaign was set in a sort of fantasy-medieval Sweden circa 1200, which was good fun.
Assorted observations from myself and my friends from that time:
* Exceptional rolls on doubles made sense to us. We had come from a long Harnmaster game where criticals happen on rolls ending in 0 and 5, so looking at the dice felt natural to us.
* Character traits (karaktärsdrag) was loved by everybody. We also added the option from the supplement that you have relationships to the other characters that can be used in the same way.
* Everyone liked combat quite a bit. I think the "zone" approach to combat is more fun (and easier to do online) than squares but I did end up getting tired of creating maps in advance. Since we dislike roll20, I ended up just creating squares in Keynote (apple's version of powerpoint) and sharing my screen.
Damage rolls being quite dramatic was well liked, as was the roll over opponent part of combat (most of the group had prior experience with Pendragon so that helped)
The difference between Gard and Hälsa was well liked as well. People liked the idea that characters could get beaten up without being actually hurt whereas people really paid attention once the real injuries rolled in.
* As mentioned in the other thread, we felt that advancement was perhaps a little bit too fast. The combination of getting some free checks and checks for skill usage was liked, but people were hitting 90s in their main skills before we were done. In hindsight, Id probably either cut the bonus checks in half or reduce advancement to 1D4 or something. Not sure, for a shorter campaign, its fine.
* The special talents from the supplements people liked, but we ran into some situations where people didn't plan ahead and then realized they had to get a skill they rarely used up to 80 or 90% to get a talent they wanted, which felt like something out of 3.x D&D days. This definitely made people a bit discouraged.
* For some reason the Öppna - Spärra mechanic for difficulty never quite clicked with the group. I found myself having to remind people well into the campaign. Doesn't mean its bad, just that it didn't feel as intuitive. Your mileage may vary.
* Utmaninger was fun. I usually dislike that sort of mechanic, but we ended up using it a lot for things like travel montages and other extended-tough-but-boring situations.
* The one wizard player enjoyed the magic system. We ended up inventing a few new spells as well.
* Running bad guys was easy enough. I did not anticipate how much more heroic the characters are compared to many BRP games. "Grunt" level enemies get mown down. The fact that many enemies have no defense roll, as well as armor being fairly weak means the heroes can burn through a lot of health quickly, if they focus their attacks.
* It was pretty easy to invent new monster abilities like monsters that could smash the ground and strike an entire zone, enemies that could pull characters towards them etc.
Overall, we had an absolute blast. I am not sure if HT is the best BRP incarnation ever but it's definitely one of the best. Everyone of my players wished the rules were available in English.
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