Back cover blurb:
The PC of this book has slight more of a background than the average generic adventurer, as revealed in the beginning of the introduction:"For centuries the balance of the Forest of Night has been preserved by mankind and nature alike. Now a dark enemy has appeared to threaten the uneasy peace. Terrible creatures stalk the forest and the ancient Elf paths are closed. No news has come from the distant city of Sardath for weeks. In the isolated town of Grimmund, on the very edge of the looming forest, the townsfolk can bear it no longer. Some brave adventurer - YOU! - must journey into the Forest of Night, and beyond, to find the source of the evil and the way to defeat it!"
It's kind of vague here, but it reveals that it's someone who's based in a specific region rather than spend most of his time travelling the rest of the world/continent. In fact, in the introduction, it's revealed that he's a member of the Council Chamber of the Grimmund Town Hall.As an adventurer in the Forest of the Night in north-east Allansia, you are renowned for your skill with sword and bow, and for your knowledge of the Forest. In fact, the people of Grimmund rely on you to protect them from the many dangers that exist in this wild region.
Grimmund is the town on the south end of this map, which shows the setting of this adventure:
While going through the rules of the game, bits and pieces of the background also comes through. The PC is apparently also something of a forest ranger, and good friends with the Elves in the Forest of Night (one of them in particular, named Sorrel, who taught him to use a bow, and also gave him the leather armour and helped make the bow that are part of his starting equipment). He also has some kind of friendship with the Dwarves of Sardath, who forged a sword for him.
But let's just get though the general rules first:
Standard FF Boilerplate Rules:
Skill, Stamina, & Luck
[spoiler]SKILL score: Roll one die. Add 6 to the result.
STAMINA score: Roll two dice. Add 12 points to the result.
LUCK score: Roll one die. Add 6 to the result.
SKILL score reflects your expertise in combat, your ability with weapons, and your dexterity. STAMINA is your general constitution and "Life points" . LUCK score shows how lucky you are. None of them may exceed their Initial score unless specifically stated.
Testing your Luck: When instructed by the book to Test your Luck, roll two dice. If the result is equal to or less than your current LUCK score, you are Lucky. If the result exceeds your current LUCK score, you are Unlucky. Whatever the outcome, you must deduct one point from your current LUCK score every time you Test your Luck. The more you use your LUCK, the less likely you are to be Lucky.[/spoiler]
Combat:
[spoiler]SKILL and STAMINA scores are given in the text for each adversary that you face.
The combat sequence is then:
1. Roll two dice for your opponent. Add the total rolled to its SKILL score. This is the Attack Strength of your enemy.
2. Roll two dice and add the total to your own current SKILL score. This is your Attack Strength.
3. If your Attack Strength is the higher, you have wounded your opponent: deduct 2 points from your opponent's STAMINA..
If your opponent's Attack Strength is higher, it has wounded you: deduct 2 points from your own STAMINA.
If both Attack Strengths are equal, you have avoided each other's blows.
4. Begin the next Combat Round, starting again at step 1. This procedure continues until either you or your opponent has a STAMINA score of zero. If your opponent's STAMINA score reaches zero, you have killed it and can continue with your adventure. If your own STAMINA score reaches zero, you are dead.
Using Luck in Combat
You can use your LUCK in combat to inflict a particularly serious wound, or to minimize a wound that has been inflicted on you.
Whenever you wound an opponent, you may Test your Luck. If you are Lucky, you have inflicted a severe wound: deduct an extra 2 points from your opponent's STAMINA. If you are Unlucky, you have merely grazed it, and you deduct 1 point less than normal from its STAMINA.
If you have been wounded, you can Test your Luck in exactly the same way. If you are Lucky, the wound upon you was only a glancing blow and you can deduct 1 less point of STAMINA than usual. If you are Unlucky, the wound is serious: deduct 1 extra point from your STAMINA.[/spoiler]
Most of the new stuff in this book involve our Starting Equipment, which, other than the standard sword and leather armour, also include a bow, as mentioned earlier, and also bundles of herbs instead of provisions.
Herbs are pretty much treated like Provisions, except more realistic, each bundle restoring 4 STAMINA, We only start with 5, though.
The Bow can be used before battle if the text tells us so. It will also tell us how many shots we are able to get off before the enemy closes in. Each bow shot is basically a SKILL test. rolling less than or equal to it means we hit and inflict 2 STAMINA points of damage to our opponent.
We can use LUCK for Bow shots, but it's a bit different from hand-to-hand combat: if we miss, we can Test our Luck to correct it. If we're Lucky, the arrow hits after all. If we're Unlucky, our bowstring breaks (and we therefore lose any extra shots that we may otherwise have), and we will only be able to fix it after the combat is over.
Our quiver can hold up to 6 arrows, and that's the amount we start with. We also start with 15 Gold Pieces.
It is also specifically mentioned in the Equipment section that if we ever lose our sword, we will need to deduct 2 from our Attack Strength during battles until finding a replacement.
The one other special rule for this book is, again Time. We don't have as many as 20 time units this time, though. We have 7, although technically each unit probably lasts longer, since it's 7 days of the week. We need to accomplish our objective within the week, and the book will be telling us to mark off days. The Adventure Sheet actually lists the names of the 7 week days in Titan: Stomsday, Moonsday, Fireday, Earthday, Windsday, Seaday and Highday.
House rules: Stats assignment, and extra lives
This book is hard but not necessarily the toughest in terms of stat requirement. Like the last LP, this one's difficulty is more in terms of finding the hidden true path, and the complexity of the design is close enough to rival Creature of Havoc. But since it doesn't necessarily require sky-high stats, I'm taking a more flexible approach.
First, we do what we've done for the past few LPs: I roll 4 dice for stats, and players can vote to assign each to SKILL, STAMINA or LUCK.
With regards to extra lives/chances, by default we will start with 1 extra chance per day. But for each extra point we do not assign to our stats we, we can trade it for an additional extra chance per day. So if I roll 4 sixes, we have 24 points to assign, but we may choose to remove 1 point from each of the dices and assign to extra lives per day, so we get 3 extra chances instead of one while only spending only 22 points on stats. However, you cannot sacrifice more than half of the points on each die (so if I roll a 3 on 1 die, you may only take 1 point out of that to assign to extra lives).
Yeah, probably overcomplicated/convoluted, but like the last book, this one doesn't have any underdeveloped or redundant mechanism that I can exploit, and I wanted to implement something relatively flexible (sacrificing stat points may increase the chance of you dying by combat or failed stat tests, but at the same time it grants you extra chances to try again).
Potentially having up to 20+ extra lives may look over-generous compared to the last book, but that only happens if I roll 4 sixes, which I doubt will happen. And note that unlike the last book, I'm not auto-rewinding to the true path for each failure. The players choose where he wishes to rewind to. If they wish to be told where was the last time they got off the true path, they need to sacrifice 3 extra chances.
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Ok, that's it for both the official rules and the house rules. Now, we'll start with rolling to see how many points we get to assign:
Dice rolls = 5, 3, 2 & 4.
Please assign the above dice to your stats and decide if you wish to sacrifice any points for extra chances before I continue.
But at least I got 1 supporting vote for the 1 idea suggested for assignment this time, so I can proceed. There are currently a lot of suggestions for names, so I'd let the players dwell on them longer before deciding (and make a poll if required).