HI all,

I was wondering if anyone had any commments they wanted to make regarding the rules for Fireborn, I've not managed to convince my rp group to try the game yet as they seem a little unsure of any dice other than D10's.

I'm hopeing a little feedback from the community can help me convince them to give it a try.

Regards

Surak

I am actually going to start up a first session of Fireborn shortly, and perhaps can give some info once I had a session?

What info are you really looking for though?

As far as I got from reading through etc. it's actualyl a rather easy system, but will take soem time getting used too due to it's reliance on shifting dice pools and the Karma bid.

If you want cinematic action however, I don't think many other rule systems can quite match it.

For my game I opted to use a one shot adventure first to introduce them to the overall game system, not using the dragon characters quite yet other then more of short narative scenes. I believe it's really best to get a grip on the system first, before introucing the complete package.

The idea of having action sequences, allowing for some spectacular atacks and scenes, is great! However, you may want to sue some game aids and be prepared well for a session you play.

If it works out, i'm sure I will be able to give some highlights on how it works in practice, and what makes it either loved or unloved by my players. Unfortunately many are thrown off the game due to a lot of comments on the eratta and editting issues of the book. (Beyond that, I still am of the opinion it's a good game).

While I HOPE others can come along which already play and give a better view on this..I doubt it..as they would otherwise already have posted by now.

Cheers Helios,

I look forward to reading some actual-play feedback on Fireborn - I also think it is a fantastic cinematic system but for some reason can't convince my normal players

Regards

Surak

Just had a session of Fireborn today

As stated before though, it only focused on the human part with flashbacks being more narrative.

(I used the "Lock, Stock, and three smoking souls" adventure that featured on GENCON 2005)

It worked well to introduce the characters, and the first part (which was mostly roleplaying) ended up giving a few oppurtunities to also see spellcasting in action and the effective use of trickery/Seduction to break into a building in a rather interesting and alternative way then the story originally planned out for them.

(the adventure would require the players to break into a house to get a specific object, the owner is not at home..but they decided to simply use the doorbell anyway, which made the housekeeper come out to answer eventually…even though his presence wasn;t immediately evident from the first look having no lights on.

Using trickery and a spell, they got him convinced his master was to return earlier then what he was told, and that he would meet them there..so he was to let them in to wait for him for a while.

Using this trick to get inside, they already got themselves passed some of the security measures on the house.)

But yeah ruleswise, it's really a lot of getting used to at first. While the concept at it's essence is really not that hard, it can take a bit to get used to the transfer of dice to other Aspect scores.

However, the biggest problem is simply getting into the thought of generating action sequences..really describing how your going to get out there and fight the creature you face. Once that idea gets over, it generally just goes faster and faster.. and the excitement grew as they started using karma bids to pull of the larger combo's they created.

There was a bit of a problem with the Martial art style though, and I think I am likely to change how they "work", since the preset movements with payoffs may look interesting.. there is a lot more fun that goes into creating your own method of attack.

The martial arts didn't get used as a result, even though I do like them as giving players specific flavours in how they fight and giving bonusses for conforming to them.

They might have worked better if they gave out a small advantage using the style, or had some moves as examples with some method to tack on payoffs for self made sequences within a specified style.

Overall, I really enjoyed the game, and so did my players. However, there are some things to note, and it's definately not a game I feel will be liked by everyone.

The Karma bid idea, makes it occasionally feel a bit metagamey, and might make some players turn away. However, if you embrace the concept, it can put in tense situations and makes any action still have a chance to succeed or fail sepending on the effort and extra reources a player (or enemy) wants to put into it.

I also don't know if I truly understood the rules completely concerning exactly the nature of wounds, and found guns of any type to be especially deadly. Melee weapons tend to rack up quite some damage of their own, giving a high enough Fire score and a few Power actions to charge before your atack and gives the feel that weapon skill (especially using supportive edges, such as fluid fighter) is what makes the weapon more usefull, rather then the weapon itself.

Overall I think the players need to have some form of fascination with high action and and cinematic action scenes. The interesting part is, that if you string together a set of actions, you actually get a chance to have a part or completely pull off an attack that involves a lot more then "I attack, and I hit doing X damage" and also have actual results based on your actions.

I really do need to re-read the rules on some details, but I think that most of the game I ran pretty much according to the rules or at least the way I understood them. But as all players agreed to continue, I can only grow more acostumed to the rules after this.

I would have to admit, it will be hard to promote this game to players which may be a bit adverse to the dynamic D6 system or the whole karma bid thing, or in general the way declaring actions works. It's really a nice game, but it requires a certain mindset..If anything they need to experience it first, perhaps can explain it shortly or give them an example.. beter yet, just have them play through a short sample of how you go through 1 combat round.

Just explaining how it generally goes, helped well enough for my players. But I guess they are used to playing wildly different rpg's by now.

Helios,

How is the on-going campaign shaping up (if indeed you carried on)?

I'm still trying to convince my players on this system and would like a little more ammo if possible

Regards

Surak

Helios,

How is the on-going campaign shaping up (if indeed you carried on)?

I'm still trying to convince my players on this system and would like a little more ammo if possible

Regards

Surak

Ah, sorry!

I rarely go look around here anymore, simply as there is no activity in the Frieborn section.

It is also the only rpg of the ones here I actually play right now.

But to answer the question;

Yes, I sure did continue with the campaign and so far it is a great success.

Even if we do not get together as frequently as another rpg group I'm in (D&D which is weekly), the Fireborn group comes together (almost) monthly.

After the initial "short" mini adventure with premae characters, we had a new start with the official adventure booklet (Fire Within).

Fo this new characters where made, and I ended up with a group of 4 players.

We have a police man, a mystic which is also a dance instructor and likes to fight with a rapier, a monk of a secret order (Church of St. Cuthbert), and a computer hacker.

I won't want to go and spoil too much of the adventure, but it starts with a flashback that really "drops" the player's in peace negotiations between two sides on the brink of war.

My player's went along with it quite easily, even though very little is known to them about why or what exactly is going on at that point and why they must solve the situation. (this does become clear later on however).

After the peace talk, they all where brought together through a strange pulling sensation/headache and whispers.

They immediately put that in relation with what happened before and thought it was meant to bring them together again at one location.

In all actuality, it brought them to a rooftop cafe, where they where soon to be assaulted by a sniper and several crazed people runing up the stairs after them.

(it's a trap set up for them by an unkown enemy, the same enemy of the mythic age which is reawakening in the modern times, and a bit faster then they are)

The strange crazed people instantly set on fire and birn to a crisp whenever one gets put down, and soon after the last one is downed.. they hear the sirens

They fought off the ambush, got away from the scene just in time before the police would arrive.

Going back for some investigation of their own, they find the police more concerned with covering up evidence then investigating much.

Here they ahd a bit of running around, asking questions, and getting a bit of help from the police man, as he could easily convince peoiple they arefrom the police to get their questions asked.

Highlight must be when they found a trail of blood, which evidently came from a woman which hit a strange man running on the street.

It led to a man at a Turkish man, which talked to them with a very thick Turkish accent and ranted more about his spoiled cookies and baklava then the men which walked into him. (He did give a big hint to continue with; a name to search for) but the accent and excentricity of the guy made the group laugh.

This was however actually run as is stated in the adventure, and really recommend doing the guy with the crazy turkish acent if you can.

Using the internet, the hacker came up with an email adress for their target guy, and send him a mail.

(The Mystic used his trickery and knowledge of the occult, to make himself apear as a guy of similar interest asking for a meetup)

They found him at his house, but as he noticed something was up..he escaped through a window, and there the chase was on!

Finally meeting him in a busy metro, a rather itnerestign scene came about, and a flashback brought them all abck as their dragon selves...

I did not yet run the dragon battle yet, but we have made the dragon characters now and hope to run this battle next time we come together.

This wil be epic indeed....

For the dragon characters, I had them also choose some pictures from google to give an appearance and type of dragon, and went from there to construct them.

We came up with some very interesting and nice creations as a result, but won;t be too long since we will have out battle.

I did change thigns a little for the combat styles, having it a bit more freeform to "make your own" maneuvers on the fly, with appropiate payback based on the amount of moves and what you want your style to focus on.

Not quite finisched though.

Primarily I give a bit more cinematic bonus dice when people come up with cool moves that fit their fighting style as well, and that has had great results in making players think like using actual martial arts or moves of the style they picked.

(it also helps increase the chance to actually pull off the moves they want from their list)

I have been tinkering a little on some rules, but otherwise still play mostly using the original rules, and it works out great so far.

I think we had about 5 sessions now.. or 4 if you don't want to include the pre-adventure, which was the gencon adventure.

I do have to admit, we have quite a bit of roleplay and extra bits going on in the adventures to flesh out a bit of personal life of the characters, and also went so far to have an extra in between flashback to have the characters meet their dragon selves when they had their dragon selfs made. (mostly to establish their relationships in the mythic world)

So..it's not all just the adventure campaign that took so long to complete.

Though admittedly, the camapign adventure "Fire Within" is indeed quite long, and has a lot of things going on in it.

Part of the reason why I added in some thigns is because I needed time to prepare the rest of it

I hope to finish the campaign next year, and continue with more of my own ideas.

I wish Fireborn had some nice internet or online dice roller that adds in the dicepool changes etc. If I could play Fireborn online through skype or so as well, it might make it even easier to get sessions going a little mroe frequently.

Helios,

Thanks for the reply, glad to here things got going and are working nicely for your campaign.

Looks like I might have finally managed to get my RP group into the right mind-set to try fireborn so I'll post back when I get a little further.

Regards

surak

Good to hear, you might want to do a few things to make character gen a bit easier..

Instead of the rather cumbersome point buy as stated in the core book, an easier method with little (if any?) difference is to simply use 16 points for a scion (or 20 for a dragon character) and allow the points to be ditributed on a 1 for 1 basis.

A score of 6 is maximum, and you pay 1 extra point for it.

(So a score of 5 costs 5, but a score of 6 costs 7 points)

It's a lot easier, and gives similar results.

If you think you preffer using the old method as stated in the book, I might advise you to use an excel sheet for it to make things easier.

You can find one on my Google + community page here:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/105713829403966293852

Or more directly, go to the google drive where the files are hosted;

Scion excel sheet:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_-AxldqQGhzWDlzNjc0d2x6aVE/edit?usp=sharing

Dragon excel sheet

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_-AxldqQGhzMTQwTVN1Y3lXREE/edit?usp=sharing

dragon excel I link too, uses the new method, but can change the costs easily enough. I deleted the extra breeds though..

I also have a version where the community made minor/mayor breeds where included, but you should be fine with the regular core ones

In the scion sheet I think I also had one style included that came from the Fire Within adventure booklet, but can ignore that.

Know tht the wounds system in the game is quite deadly(!), but that's what the extra Karma chips are for.

Especially as long as they do not yet have access to the strong dragon powers they will receive step by step.

(I would advise to do an adventure with the Scions first, then have their dragon counterpart added in gradually..so you won't have 2 whole characters to build up right away.

And by the time they played a while with the Scion, they should be a bit quicker making their dragon. Especially if you give them a chance to think about their dragon, and possible bodyshape/purpose etc.

You should be fine, and if in any trouble with the rules..

Well I'll be here!

Or the G+ community is a good place as well. It could use the activity.

Helios,

thanks for the info and links, I can see me using them. My players love point-buy so I can see us using the default character creation.

I'm still battling to get them to the table to get this started but now I have physical boks to throw at them they should be easier to motivate.

Regards

Surak

Great

Yes, having a physical book at hand is something I preffer as well.

Besides, easier to show to player's and with character gen etc.

The point buy thing as in the book works, and if your fine with it.. well go ahead

It's just not as intuitive, the one I mentioned is a point buy thing too. Just a little revised so the points are easier to allocate.

Wish you luck!

At last - some progress!

Got two scion characters built last night, both players really enjoyed the simplicity of the char gen system.

We have ended up with a japanese sensi who doesn't know why he's felt the need to travel to London, but knows its important and a British Security Service operative who has been told to work her way into the underworld of London and find out whats really going on in the Capital once and for all.

Now I've just got to nail my other two players down and get their characters made so I can run a few games.

More feedback as we progress.

Regards

Surak

Good news

Also, you might want to visit the G+ community again as well.

There was an old fireborn community/message board that kept quite a few things on it, like custom build character sheets, and some of the adventures etc.

The entire community died, and eventually was taken down completely..

However, the blog of the original owner was found, and he put up a link with all the downloads from the message board.

Some of the character sheets on it look really nice!

Cheers Helios, I will cetainly try and check it out over the weekend (no access at work to G+)

Regards