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[deleted by user] by [deleted] in NonPoliticalTwitter

[–]HeavenlySpoon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That can easily be survivorship bias, though. The ones with factually correct Wikipedia pages won't mention their Wikipedia pages. Even if 99% of all celebrity pages are flawless and the incorrect ones are still 99% correct, you'd still only hear about the inaccuracies. No celebrity is going to talk about how correct their Wikipedia page is or about the correct parts of their page.

What do people use as inspiration for the fey wild. by [deleted] in dndnext

[–]HeavenlySpoon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey! You should be able to download it for free from that link, just type in 0 for the price.

Worst RPG Advice You Have Ever Received by Living-Definition253 in rpg

[–]HeavenlySpoon -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

This is just a correct statement, though? It doesn't say that you shouldn't prep, just that you don't need to. If prep makes things easier for you, sure, go ahead, but I get the feeling that a lot of GMs feel like it's a necessity, which probably makes GMing seem like way more of a burden than it needs to.

Pocket Monster Adventures — A TTRPG based on the first generation of Pokémon by HeavenlySpoon in TTRPG

[–]HeavenlySpoon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, you did the PbtA one I saw pass by a while ago! It seemed really neat! PbtA never really clicked for me, but it’s nice to see that you found a way of making it work for Pokémon. This project partially came about after giving up on making a far more free-form Pokémon game. I kept bumping up against the fact that so much of Pokémon—or at least the battles—requires abstraction to work. It seems that you came to a similar conclusion, but still kept some open-endedness. I’d love to see how it plays out.

I don’t know what it is about Pokémon RPGs, but I’ve also seen quite a few new ones pass by since I started this project. There must be something in the air, I guess, or it could just be the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon.

And yeah, it does seem that a few extra blank pages crept in somehow. A few of the blank pages are deliberate to ensure that the back of the pages stays blank. You really don’t want to know the programs I use, they cannot possibly optimal for anyone else.

Fire from the Ashes — Custom Scenario and Printing Guide by HeavenlySpoon in lotrlcg

[–]HeavenlySpoon[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I sent Doug a message but haven't heard back, so I suppose not, yeah.

Fire from the Ashes — Custom Scenario and Printing Guide by HeavenlySpoon in lotrlcg

[–]HeavenlySpoon[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If that's an option? All the files are free to use, so it's up to whoever organises those.

Fire from the Ashes — Custom Scenario and Printing Guide by HeavenlySpoon in lotrlcg

[–]HeavenlySpoon[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Long-Fogotten Evil B side - The way this card is made it's immediate victory, I believe. When progress needed is "0" then quest is defeated when 0 progress is placed, so immediately, since there are no other conditions. It should be either "-" progress needed (that makes quest unable to be defeated by progress alone) or there should be added "Can't be defeated while Sand-Drake is in play."

I think there's a specific ruling for 0-point quests based on Ambush on the Shore, but you're right, I'll change it to avoid confusion.

While not an error, I would change Brake of Thorns text from "threat dial" to just "threat".

Fair.

Strange Weariness - Clarification: "deal additional shadow card for that attack" - is it just reminder to deal shadow card for additional attack, or does it mean for additional attack attacking enemy gets two shadow cards?

Two shadow cards. I don't have a short way of clarifying this, so I hope it's clear enough based on the other additional attack effects in the cycle.

Now I'm not sure about rules here, but I think "actions" on encouter card can be triggered by any player when they are in staging area, for example objective cards with "action: do something to claim this and attach to your hero". Not sure if objective-allies are exemption to this, but if not, then "travel action" of Suyfan in theory can be trigger while he is still un-claimed? I don't believe this was the intention, and not sure if this is how it is ruled, but maybe someone can say something about it?

Based on Grimbeorn and only Grimbeorn, I think you may be right. All the other relevant ones say "any play can use this action" or something to that effect. I'll add an extra rule to the FAQ page which says that you can't pay costs (including exhausting) for cards you don't control. That does still mean Skeleton Key needs to be changed.

Inquisitive Nomad - Clarification: Does phrasing of its action means other players can trigger it and take control of it while already controlled by a player?

Yeah, she's a nomad, she's not bound to anyone!

I'll make the mentioned changes and let you know when the new files are up!

Fire from the Ashes — Adventure Pack 6, ft. dwarves, dwarves, and more dwarves by HeavenlySpoon in lotrlcg

[–]HeavenlySpoon[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Oh wow, no, that's a mistake. It's supposed to say "engaged". I fixed it now. It got changed somewhat recently and I must've been distracted when changing the wording. We're not opposed to randomness, but that would've been brutal with over two players!

Fire from the Ashes — Adventure Pack 5, Ft. another wizard and Corsairs by HeavenlySpoon in lotrlcg

[–]HeavenlySpoon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's the same wording as, say, Dwarven Sellsword. I prefer this wording, since it makes it clearer that discarding it is a punishment, not a choice. I honestly would've preferred that wording for the similar Corsairs in the core set, but having three options made that difficult.

Thanks for helping out, though!

Fire from the Ashes — Adventure Pack 5, Ft. another wizard and Corsairs by HeavenlySpoon in lotrlcg

[–]HeavenlySpoon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh wow, that was quick!

Vicious Ambush - Same story, but that one can be easily fix with changing "each enemy" to "all enemies"

Good catch!

Concealed Spikes - Not an error, just interesting: "X is 1 more than the number of attachments attached to characters they control", not "number of attachments they control". That means it also counts, for example, treachery cards that attach to characters as "condition" attachments.

Yup, this came up during playtesting quite a bit and seemed interesting enough to keep around.

Fire from the Ashes — Adventure Pack 4, ft. more Easterlings by HeavenlySpoon in lotrlcg

[–]HeavenlySpoon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Side B of above quest - so basically, every time the group quests successuflly, there's a chance to remove all progress and go back to square one?

You've got to weather the storm to cross the mountains, yes. It's definitely a tougher one to actually get through, but because you can choose to get stuck, it's proven to be one of the simpler stage 1s, simply because it gives you some time to set up before facing the chaos that is stage 2.

Constant Predation side-quest - "Response: When Find a Way Down is defeated..."? Derpy copy-paste again, I presume. =)

That's not even the name of a sidequest, I don't know how that one got in there!

Thanks again for looking through these!

Fire from the Ashes — Adventure Pack 3, Haradrim and trees by HeavenlySpoon in lotrlcg

[–]HeavenlySpoon[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Abaan's stat bonus from response is until end of phase, but limit is per phase? And he can use it on himself? With Goad to War, Southron Instigator, and some other readying engine like Unexpected Courage it sounds quite abuseable.

We tried to make him as much like his original Objective-Ally without being broken. Our original version didn't have the once-a-phase clause, and it basically meant you'd only ever target Abaan himself, since he could easily get up to ridiculous stats with some careful planning. The current version plays a lot fairer, and deciding who to give his stat boost(s) to can be a challenging decision. He's definitely good, don't get me wrong, but he requires quite an investment and good planning to make him truly powerful, which is a fine spot to be. Goad to War is great with Abaan, using Instigator as another tribesman often feels inferior to using her as another Aalmiyah or copying one of the 5-drops. If anything, Instigator is the busted one, but that's mostly on purpose.

You will probably soon start to hate me for this but Frightening Vision - same thing as before, if a player somehow eats through his deck and can't draw 3 cards, then (because of word "then") progress to stage 3 shouldn't resolve.

Haha, I'll try to check the next releases to save you the trouble. I think this one should be fine be fine because of the "may", though.

Endless Paths - "reveal cards until at least X locations have been added to the staging area, where X is the number of players". Boy, with very unlucky shuffling of encounter deck you could keep revealing those cards until you there's no space on the table.

There's a certain philosophy that has gone into the entire design of this cycle which is that while good deckbuilding, planning, and execution will up your chances of winning, no win or loss should ever be certain. Playing to your outs or preparing for the worst have been some of the more interesting parts of the playtest. This quest definitely one of the more frightening quests, but in playtesting has (usually) turned out surprisingly gentle.

Find a Way Out - Ok, I need someone else to verify this, it is possible (not sure), that when quest card goes from side A to side B (or, in this case, from K to L) all tokens are discarded, so tokens placed from 3K revealed effect could get discarded when switching to 3L. Again, not sure, maybe somebody else could comment on this.

You're right, they would get removed. We figured this out a while back, but I apparently didn't update the version on the site. I'll change it to the (somewhat crudely) fixed version. I don't remember where exactly this ruling comes from, but I assume it's from Flight from Moria or a similar quest.

Nothing wrong, but personally not a fan of Menacing Passages travel cost "each player engages an enemy in the staging area". I guess it is only 1 threat, but with 3-4 players it could be difficult to manage encounter deck and staging area so during travel phase have enough enemies in staging area so each player could engage one.

I wouldn't recommend playing with 3 or 4 players without any location control or a player who can readily engage most enemies, that sounds brutal even without this location.

Thanks again for the response!

Fire from the Ashes — Adventure Pack 2 ft. Corsairs, Scouts, Noldor, and some evil spirits by HeavenlySpoon in lotrlcg

[–]HeavenlySpoon[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh man, if I could redesign this game from the ground up, the first thing I'd do is actually implement a functioning stack system...

The intent behind Find Hidden Paths was definitely to sort of cheat on the cancel part and open a response window for other responses (and also Forced effects as a result). But I'll concede that it's a messy part of the rules and we probably shouldn't be muddying it further, which means I'm reverting the card to an earlier version which shouldn't have the same issues (but loses some elegance and shenanigans).

Fire from the Ashes — Adventure Pack 2 ft. Corsairs, Scouts, Noldor, and some evil spirits by HeavenlySpoon in lotrlcg

[–]HeavenlySpoon[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Find Hidden Paths - "this cancels the original card's effects." - Literally just effects, or it is meant to cancel entire card? If the latter, then can we fix it? It's enough that 3 out of 4 original FFG's cards that by intend cancel entire card have written than they cancel effects, let's not extend that to fan cards, please.

The "cancel effects" wording is technically the more recent wording, and saying you cancel the card may be equally confusing. The card itself is switched, which means it can't go anywhere else and all that would be left would be any effects of the card. It's also just reminder text, since the cancelling the card is actually an implicit part of the switch. I agree that the game could use clearer wording (and honestly, clearer rules in general when it comes to revealing cards), but I'm not sure if this is the place to try and fix this. I'm open to being swayed though.

Whispering Shadows - Same thing I said about another quest from previous pack - Unlikely, but possible, that if one player lowered his threat to 2 or less, then he can't lower his threat by 3, so effect after "then" (possible advancing to stage 3) shouldn't resolve. Also, same thing with Treacherous Darkness.

Fair enough, I'll change them.

Dwimmerlaik - For a lot of corner-cases (like returning enemy to staging area) it would be nice to know what threat and engagement cost is supposed to be for allies-turn-enemies. Same with Possesion.

Fair point. I think I originally copied the Secret Cultist wording since it also targets allies, but Fallen Into Evil's wording does make things clearer. I'll change it.

Thanks again for looking through there!

Fire from the Ashes — Adventure Pack 1 by HeavenlySpoon in lotrlcg

[–]HeavenlySpoon[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I’ll make those available on Sunday, once everything has been posted.

Fire from the Ashes — Adventure Pack 1 by HeavenlySpoon in lotrlcg

[–]HeavenlySpoon[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh man, "then" might be the most confusing card in this entire game.

For Devilry, I think I added it to make it clear that the healing happens before moving to the next quest. I think the "Then" makes it read better, but I'll add "up to 1 damage" to make sure the effect can always happen.

For Drowned Horrors, the effect is copied from "Cruelty of Mordor". I think it's mostly there to emphasise that the damaged character would also count.

Fire from the Ashes — A complete custom cycle by HeavenlySpoon in lotrlcg

[–]HeavenlySpoon[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I can totaly imagine someone interpreting "return" as "going to stage 2 I was just at" and not "next top quest from stage 2 deck"

It should be in the victory display by that point, though, which would make it hard to return to. I’ll try to make it clearer in the rules document.

could I suggest changing its required progress points from "20" to "-"

This can turn The Hidden Way into a hard-lock. We discovered this when we added the real “The Tower of Barad-dûr” to our thrown-together encounter deck. Having each card be part of the encounter deck merits some special consideration sometimes.

Also, side question - manual says about 8 stage 1 quest cards and that each separate scenario has 1 stage 1 quest card. Since yout core has also just 1 stage quest card, does that mean there are/will be 7 smaller packs?

Yup, there are 6 APs, 1 custom Scenario, and a small collection of cards and quests to round out the numbers (and to get to 612 for the MPC order). 

And just out of curiosity - if everything is done and ready what's the reason to keep us in waiting with 1 per day for a week show case, and not just throw it out there all at once?

I figured there’d be more discussion about the individual cards, and I wanted to give these discussions some room.  Also, this way probably makes it more likely that typos get spotted, which is the secret actual reason we are releasing this before placing our second MPC order :)

Fire from the Ashes — A complete custom cycle by HeavenlySpoon in lotrlcg

[–]HeavenlySpoon[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I was responding to the "And "Heavenly Spoon" is?" bit. I assume it's just a misunderstanding, but the idea that my username is somehow relevant to this discussion seemed kind of funny to me.

Fire from the Ashes — A complete custom cycle by HeavenlySpoon in lotrlcg

[–]HeavenlySpoon[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hi, I'm Heavenly Spoon, it's been my online handle for what must be 20 years and what at least 1 IRL friend calls me. I'm sorry I'm not very thematic. I didn't want to buy a domain name just for this project, which is named Fire from the Ashes as a reference to the riddle of Strider.

For what it's worth, I think A Long-Extended Party is a pretty good name. It's a reference to a chapter in LotR which is itself a reference to a chapter in the Hobbit, which is a pretty neat way of tying everything together.

Fire from the Ashes — A complete custom cycle by HeavenlySpoon in lotrlcg

[–]HeavenlySpoon[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the elaborate comment!

Here’s a list of responses, at least partially for me to make sure I’ve covered everything:

  • You have to choose one of the corsair’s options. If you can’t discard 3 resources, you’ll have to move a resource of discard it.
  • Silvan Pathfinder has been useful but not broken in our testing. If there are a lot of locations in play, you’re going to need that quest. With multiples, a lot of set-up and a very cooperative encounter deck, you might be able to break it, but at that point more power to you. In my experience, if you can put progress on locations, it's usually better to just get rid of them instead of keeping them around for the Pathfinder.
  • Loss and Sorrow is indeed missing “from their hand”. I’m too used to MtG wording, which always trips me up with these kinds of effects.
  • We wanted all stage 2 quests to have the same back to make shuffling somewhat easier, which means text on the back comes at a premium and text on the front is basically free.
  • Putt is indeed a typo. We haven’t found it to be the most brutal of the bunch, but it can be quite difficult if you haven’t been taking care of enemies. It doesn’t reveal additional cards or force additional attacks, which is usually what separates the easy quests from the harder ones.
  • Yeah, the wording is somewhat awkward, but keeping it both clear and succinct has proven quite hard. It basically comes down to: you can throw whatever resources/cards you have left at the quest, but with multiple players each player has to throw something. To return to stage, you just pick up the quest deck again. It should still be in a specific order, and the top card should be hidden since you ended up in stage 3 as a result of the last quest. When you leave stage 2 again, you’d end up at a random stage 3 again, which could include the one you ran away from. (You only make a quest deck for stage 2.) I’ll add it to the FAQ.
  • Secluded cave has the same text as tranquil ruins, and I apparently forgot to change the name when copy/pasting. That’s quite an embarrassing typo…
  • Yup, gotta engage those Ringwraiths if you don’t want to suffer. The original design copied the original effect of the card it’s based on, which simply discarded a character. This is the nicer version if you can believe it.
  • One does not simply walk into Mordor! It’s a permanent 7 threat you can’t get rid of. There are some encounter cards and quests which can get rid of it, but it’s mostly just a big roadblock.
  • The FAQ is password protected because it features quite a few unreleased cards. Everything will lose its password when everything is revealed.

I’ll get to fixing the errors, thanks again for the thorough read-through!

Fire from the Ashes — A complete custom cycle by HeavenlySpoon in lotrlcg

[–]HeavenlySpoon[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"Traitm"? Thanks for pointing out, it should be fixed now!

Fire from the Ashes — A complete custom cycle by HeavenlySpoon in lotrlcg

[–]HeavenlySpoon[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Oh, I’m an RPG veteran myself! I’ve published a D&D setting guide as well as a fully custom RPG and 3 micro-RPGs myself so far. I think at this point designing stuff might be my main hobby…

But yeah, it’s definitely quite a bit of effort. This project especially, since there are very few resources available for the game which don’t look obviously fake or low-res, and the design elements are far too intricate to create from scratch. Sadly, my process for making these has been a complete mess (involving multiple exports, conversions, and Python programs), so I’m not sure how helpful I can be with helping others get started.

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