I think people's desire to make the chaos star mean more is more an issue of lazy GMing than the rules. They want a straight rule effect to give them punch when really they should be adding more serious complications to what is happening in-story. The Player's Guide has a short section on this that gives a good starting point on what is appropriate.

Adding challenge symbols rather than harsh "bad critical" effects makes the story less interesting. It's more interesting to have a character hit, but then lose his weapon or get slammed in the face and go blind for two rounds, than just "miss," which is all challenge symbols do.

If players don't fear chaos stars, it's not because they are underpowered. It's because the GM isn't doing his job in making bad effects and setbacks .

The players guide has really nice optional effects for chaos stars on page 55:

black die to next check/white die to opponent

suffer a fat/stress

lose maneuver

weapon

darw attention

decrease qualityu o success

worsent effect of failure

Emirikol said:

Oh nice... seems I have to get that book before our next session. Waiting for my retailer to get the creature guide and vault in stock, so I can order it all in one go.

Made new ruled for the blunderbuss as well. I want it to be an easy weapon to use, but one that a marksman can't benefit from.

Blunderbuss mechanic: A player can fire the blunderbuss at a 0d difficulty. The blunderbuss always uses the basic ranged shot action card and no other action cards can be used with the blunderbuss. The blunderbuss being such a silly weapon, doesn't allow for perfect rolls to have any special effect. You cannot add expertise dice to a blunderbuss attack dice pool. Everyone in the engagement is hit as per RAW rules.

Link: Gallows House Rules

Dropbox is awesome... thanks to Emirikol for the heads up.

Dropbox is awesome I use it for all my work stuff so I don't have to network the computers..and I can work on my house rules at work without my home laptop or a flash drive. The public link thing is about the smartest thing I've seen and beats the crap out of crappy download sites like Rapidshare, etc.. It's free for the amount of memory we use (just .doc files mostly anyways). We used it a lot for the Liber Fanatica #7 projects.

For those of you who don't have it, here it is again (it's free btw): db.tt/NapvCUi

Anyways, back to the house rules: I'm working on the following: Base Prices for Trade Tools (including Arcane/divine stuff from their relevant books). I'd appreciate any feedback you guys have about it. The equipment section in the core rules is too vague for the players to use without the entire game session becoming a "shopping waste of time session." I consider the equipment section to be the weakest part of the rules at this point. SUPERIOR items cost 10x the cost of a normal item..but since normal items aren't very clearly specified, I was thinking of just doing a base price for a bonus die (maybe plus the cost of the item). For example: A mystic's crystal ball..how much does that cost again? How much does a superior crystal ball cost that would impart a bonus white die to her intuition checks? Here's what I had in mind:

Price of More Stuff
* Items do not stack (i.e. two luckstones)
The standard price:
• Based on the loot/payment per 2 sessions per PC: Tangible rewards 100s/2 sessions
• PC’s can blow their gold for x.p. 1g per advance (in my world..this gets rid of excess loot rather quickly)

STANDARD PRICES (represents white die to a skill or action; SUPERIOR quality item)
Considerations for modification of this list: Group, Re-roll instead of white, yellow, blue, green/red, RANK of action, limited to one skill or any roll, ….

Die/Use/Who/Activation/Price/example
SINGLE USE SUPERIOR ITEMS
White single use; self (action) 50s Scroll
White single use; self (at will) 1g Token
White single use; group (action) 1.5.g Scroll
White single use; group (at will) 2g Token
(sacrifice, shrine)

PERMANENT SUPERIOR ITEMS
White 1x/week; self (action) 1g
White 1x/week; group (action) 2g
White 1x/week; self (at will) 2g luckstone
White 1x/week; group (at will) 3g
White 1x/act; self (at will) 3g
White 1x/act; group (at will) 5g
White 1x/encounter; self (at will) 5g Wand
White 1x/encounter; group (at will)7.5g
White at-will; self (action) 7.5g Holy symbol
White constant; self (constant) 10g Staff
White at-will; group (action) 20g
White constant; group (constant) 25g standard