July Update

Better late than never edition.

I have awoken from my ursine slumber possessed of the muse. Work resumed at a fairly rapid clip, the first portions of which are almost finished. 

One of the major struggles in something as complicated as Sword & Scoundrel is that it can become very overwhelming. Related and interlocking bits can get all tangled up, keeping a mental model of the entire game and its working parts can be brutal, and I've had days where writing shut down entirely because I ran into some kind of order-of-information problem and my brain just said "No. Not today." and close the document. 

Fixing this has been.. something. Not least because we're simultaneously rewriting the game as an Essential Edition project and thus cutting things out as we go. My solution has become effectively rewriting the game, from scratch, from first principles. Trying to do as much as possible without direct reference to the existing text, and only comparing it afterward to make sure nothing important got missed. My instinct being that if it was a detail I didn't recall off the top of my head, there's a serious chance it was either not necessary or it was more fiddly than it should have been and in need of reworking. 

So far this has been a great success and a really good experience. A deciding factor in the viability of this venture has been actually working on the thing in a different way. Rather than trying to do development and chapter-writing at the same time, I've instead taken to sketching out the system in a kind of abridged, bullet-point presentation. This has been massively helpful in boiling down the essential points and makes tackling flow-of-information issues far easier - after all, I can always just scoot a particular bullet up or down the nest.

The biggest benefit, by far, has been that this approach has dramatically expedited the amount of ground I can cover at a given time. The entire Book I: Initiation section was re-completed in a day or two. I am now working my way through Book IV: Tribulation. If you're in Patron chat, you've probably been able to guess this already from my ramblings.

From here, the plan is as follows:

Stage 1: Bare Bones. I'm sketching out all of the Book 1/ Core material, as well as the bits from Book 4 absolutely necessary to the way the system works - Skirmish, Full Contest, Social Conflict, Melee Combat, Ranged Combat, Wounds & Healing. Once those are done in their EE incarnations (ETA, by the end of next week, at the latest. Likely much sooner, at this rate) I'll be running a few one-shots with my home group just to make sure that the new rules set isn't missing anything mission critical or that my revisions haven't broken anything along the way. 

Stage 2: The Flesh. Assuming there's no snag in the above, I go back and add in character creation and it's accompanying materials, wealth, armor/weapons/goods connections & contacts, and a few other new pieces I have planned for this release (Skullduggery, anyone?). Once stage 2 is finished, I'm going to release the bullet point version to the patrons to look at, play with, and dig into. This will be a Live Edition/Notion release. Format aside, this will be a point where all of the extant rules are in one place and you lot can play merry hell with. After you've had a week or two to look at it, give feedback and so on, I'll go ahead and make it a low-key public release, likely limited to the folks on the discord. At this point, I'll also attempt t do some PbP stuff -- one shots, mostly, and short scenarios, with the goal of letting different people get involved over time. 

Stage 3: Skin Deep. While my generous patrons are combing through the new rules, providing feedback, and so forth, I get to turn around and start writing up the new rules in proper chapter form. The goal of stage 3 is to produce a version of the text ready for primetime and a legit DTRPG update. 

Stage 4: New Horizons. Once the DTRPG update is ready, things get real interesting. I'm going to have a handful of tasks simultaneously. On the dev front, this is where we begin nailing down GM stuff, NPCs, magic, and anything else missing from the core of the game. On a company front, this is where kickstarter planning and logistics go into high gear. On a public front, this is also when outreach has to be a massive thing, as if you want a successful kickstarter, you need to have momentum before you launch the campaign. This latter will also be a big place where you guys can show your support. Word of mouth is everything in the TTRPG space. 

The goal for all of this is to be finished by year's end. Stage 1 is likely to be finished within the next week. Stage 2, by the end of August, at the latest. Stage 3 will hopefully be by the end of September or mid October at the latest. Barring some unforeseen calamity, we'll be in KS territory Q1 next year. 

Depending on time, inclination, and inspiration, I'll also begin working on the Fightbook supplement that will add back in all the extra melee crunch that is getting stripped out for the sake of EE. There are big plans on that end, as some of the changes to core mechanics being made by the current edition of the rules will lend themselves to some very interesting shit when we build back up to the advanced melee rules. That said a finished core game is the priority. The supplement must be strictly secondary if I'm going to meet my deadlines. 

Thanks for the support, Scoundrels. Couldn't do this without you.

-Brooks

(P.S. The News page on this site has become more of an “official update” channel, rather than an ongoing dev blog. If you’re interested in more informal announcements, musings, and other ephemera, they show up on the Patreon.)

What Inspired Sword & Scoundrel?

Kredonystus asks..

So what inspire the want to make this game? Not good enough combat in others? A response to a particular game? A lack of realism in most games? Just coz why not?

These are the sorts of questions that game designers wish people would ask more often. It's so rare that people who put ridiculous amounts of thought into their work have a chance to show off they "why" and not just the "what?" without feeling self-indulgent.

Sword & Scoundrel has a very long history at this point. The very first version of the game was essentially a fan-made second edition of the by-then defunct The Riddle of Steel. It was one of a few projects born of the trosfans forums, and one of only two that saw the light of day (to my knowledge, anyway). In those ancient times, there were a few of us on the team. Myself, Higgins, and a helpful dude named Sean Cochran, both of whom still have a credit on the project. It thus started with some very simple goals: we wanted to take all the splats from TROS and make a single volume book that ironed out some of the bugs that were commonly known to people in that community at the time.

It didn't take long before our focus shifted, though. As the project went on, it became clear that we weren't just polishing old mechanics but creating a lot of our own material whole-cloth. The more we iterated and innovated on the subject, the more it became clear we were making a new game in its own right. Since then the game has gone through a handful of significant design generations and a few different names. Even the actual design goals have shifted over time.

Bumping into TROS the first time was for me magical and formative. The game's creator, Jake Norwood, used to bandy about the saying "they come from the sword fights and stay for the spiritual attributes." This was absolutely my experience. I was originally captivated by TROS for the way it approached combat -- it was, in effect, my first exposure to HEMA -- but what really got me was the way in which play focused on who the characters were and what was important to them. It was a piece of the puzzle that I didn't know I was missing and radically transformed the way I played literally every game thereafter.

In the years since, I've learned a lot about game design and I've learned a lot about fiction. While it would be easy to groan in dismay at the years spent on this project, I don't think I could have designed what this is becoming before now. It's truly only been in the last couple years I've finally put my finger on what I was trying to achieve and figured out how to articulate the kind of intense, personal experience I want to deliver. It's taken a great deal of time and study just to wrap my head around what makes the genre S&S is tackling work, and it's only been in the last year I've been able to properly explain what we're referring to in the first place.

So to answer the question more directly:

Sword & Scoundrel is my attempt to sooth a longing. It is a system built around satisfying a craving for intense, personal storytelling about passion and conflict. It's an exploration of morality and ambition, and about who we are when push comes to shove, what we're willing to do to get what we want and what we're willing to sacrifice for what we believe. It's a kind of niche within a niche whose exemplars span westerns and crime dramas, political sagas and samurai films because what matter is the human conflict at the heart of story, rather than the trappings it wears.

Other games have come close but have all fallen short for me in some way. TROS ignited this flame for me, but was a diamond in the rough. In some ways more beautiful for its flaws. The Burning Wheel is another contender for the prize and is an absolute marvel of design, but it is much like a Swiss watch -- a deep and impressive series of interlocking gears that are fascinating to watch, but requires serious commitment to mastering the game and its mechanisms lest innumerable mechanisms bind up against each other and cause the whole thing to seize.

Sword & Scoundrel is a mad attempt to fill an extraordinarily specific storytelling niche. It is balanced between the kind of depth of mechanics required to inform and deliver that experience, and the kind of approachability and ease of play lacked by the few other games that have tried. It is by now an old friend. My shadow, at once muse and nemesis. We have together both grown and matured over time, constantly pushing me and challenging me to be equal to its measure. I am incredibly grateful for the way it has caused me to develop as a writer and designer, and for the awesome people I have met as a result. Even if the game goes nowhere from here, it will have been worth every drop of sweat and tears along the way.

Thanks again to all of you who have shared this journey with me.

-- Brooks.

Fechbook Update 0.5.1

So in case you didn’t check the date, we did not become a 5e supplement sponsored by Raid: Shadowlegends. Instead, I’ve spent the last month or two busily hacking away at an update for both DTRPG and along with it, a new fechtbook update for testing. As mentioned on Patreon:

Those of you following us in discord have heard me murmuring for a while now about this update. Nearly a month of intense workshopping later and I present to you our newest fechtbook rules.

Weighing in at over 27,000 words and ninety four pages, it includes everything you need to get started testing, along with an updated dueling sheet and two pregenerated characters to test with.  A full mechanical breakdown of the update is on the first page, but briefly:

• Reach has been revamped and overhauled to address some user experience complaints and to make edge-cases less of an issue.

• Grappling rules have been modified to make wrestling a dude in heavy armor as scary as it should be.

• The maneuver spread has all kinds of new bells and whistles, emphasizing differences in playstyles and tactical application.

• Armor and weapon codices both have some new nuggets of fun.

As always, beta be beta, and having stared at this for what feels like a thousand hours, there are bound to be mistakes and typos. If you catch'em, let me know. Otherwise, I'll see you in the #fecht-club. 

Thanks Scoundrels.

-- Brooks

If you want to join in the fun, the rules are hosted on Patreon here. The post is public and they are free to download. You don’t need to be a member.

If you want to get involved with the fecht-club shenanigans, feel free to join our discord here.

THE KING IS DEAD: LONG LIVE THE KING

My fellow scoundrels, I present to you the most momentous of Thursday™ Announcements. It's been a long, difficult road but behind the scenes, the wheels have turned. It is with great pride that I today unveil the final chapter in our development. Thanks to our new partnership, Sword & Scoundrel has become RAID: SCOUNDREL LEGENDS.

In this brave new edition, we've undergone some major overhauls. Mechanics have been stripped down, cleaned up, and optimized in a way like never before. Powered by the 5th Edition of the World's Most Popular Role-Playing Game, R:SL will allow you brand new experiences and heroes to suit every play-style.

In addition to a redesigned core system, we've optimized both our mechanics and business model to better suit the realities of online play. Fully integrated into Roll20, we will be releasing all future development as curated content packs. Purchase as few or as many as you like to expand your game! Each Rules Box will include a dozen random mechanics, up to three new playable characters†, and at least one rare appendix! Pre-order today and you will get exclusive access to our Founders Edition Character Pack for use in your very own campaign, including the Rare Six-Star ROGUE DOGGO!

Come experience tabletop like never before with RAID: SCOUNDREL LEGENDS.

Are you as excited as we are?
Join the conversation our on discord server!

†Rules Box Heroes™ have the following drop rates: 3 Star (90%), 4 Star (7%), 5 Star (2.5%), 6 Star (0.5%)

Experimental Fecht Rules, Phase Three: Public Testing

I've been busy behind the scenes. A couple months ago I had a burst of inspiration and began an experiment.

One of the best parts of Sword & Scoundrel has always been its shared TROS heritage. Norwood's baby has had a profound effect not just on the way S&S developed, but on the way I ran and played games, period. Years after Driftwood went under, S&S started life as an unofficial fan-made second edition. Over time, the game took on a life and identity of its own.

This document represents the largest departure to date. It's an experimental reimagining of the combat system that allows for a more fluid experience. Phase one of the testing involved a closed group aiming for proof of concept. Phase two got the patrons involved. Now we're at stage three, releasing it to you lot to break.

Thanks again to all of you for your support. You make this possible.

-Brooks

The rules are publicly available on our Patreon.
As always, join the conversation on our forums Or join the fight on discord.

And We're Live

For those rare few souls who are watching this project but aren't on discord, S&S Live Edition is now fixed and live. You can see it here.

Going forward, I'll try to keep a change log for the things that get changed as I continue to update it. As of now, the overwhelming majority of stuff is up and ready. Still in progress:

• Session Zero is being edited still. Nothing fancy to report here, I'm just not entirely satisfied with the way the information is presented.

• Social Classes are still getting cleaned up/fixed/ready. After a lot of feedback on the fiddliness of the Resources system, it's been thrown out and replaced by a choice of starting packages based on your social class. These are still in dire need of balance adjustment and in some places, completion.

• Wealth and Maintenance is scheduled to be adjusted next. Maintenance is now by default tied to the social class package you chose.

I could have held onto this for a little while longer to iron out all the wrinkles, but I figured you'd rather see what we had where we were than wait for me to polish further. That's half the advantage of this format. You get to see the process, warts and all. Another advantage is how easy it is to host experimental rules for feedback. The first such offering is the Mounted Combat rules for melee. They are currently listed in the appendix. Thank you to all of you who have followed this project and supported it for so long. I'm continually humbled and amazed.

I'd also like to extend a particular thanks to the patrons whose support has helped me carve out time to give this project the attention it deserves. As a token of gratitude, I'll be posting a patron-only poll to vote on which section of the book gets developed next.

For now, I want your feedback. Questions? Concerns? Likes? Dislikes? Opinions on this format? Typos? All of it. The more, the better.

Hit us up on our forums.
Or join the conversation on our discord server

Fecht-Club 0.3.1 Update

This month's end-of-month post brings us updates to the fecht-club docs released last time. I've taken the feedback you guys offered and made some changes accordingly. I'm also happy to announce that in addition to the edits made for clarity, we've done some pretty significant updates to the content itself, including:

• A substantial overhaul to the blade codex, allowing you significantly more options for customization and personality of the weapon.

• Tweaks to the hafted codex to reflect changes with blades, as well as some minor tweaks to help differentiate weapons.

• Rewriting and separation of the armor traits for clarity and ease of reference, as well as a minor balance adjustment to maille.

• The return of several old favorite maneuvers, including Feint and Wrap

• The inclusion of the Encumbrance rules for clarity where they apply to our fecht-club scenarios.

• Rebalanced wound charts, presented as a two-page pdf spread for ease of reference on the computer.

• An updated fecht-club character sheet with both adjusted wound wheel outcomes and an upraded armor dummy that both indicates which locations can be bypassed via pinpoint and gives you space to record secondary AVs where necessary. 

We've gotten close to having this system about as polished as it can be. Assuming nothing here is broken, the next step is to finish the DTRPG document update. 

I can't thank you enough for all of your help and support.
-Brooks

Pick up the files here!
Join the conversation on our forums
Or get into the fight on our discord server

Patreon Fecht Club Preview Released

Just in time for Thursday, I'm releasing the Fecht Club preview build. For those outside of our discord server, Fecht Club is a channel where players get together and challenge each other to duels, both for their own personal glory and to test out the combat system for the game. The players in that community have done wonders in propelling the game along and really helping those systems mature into something we are all extremely proud of. 

This release will be the largest update to the combat system since the original Sword & Scoundrel launch. A lot of things have been rebalanced, systems have been tweaked, and a number of things have been added whole cloth.  The pdfs contain everything you need to get started testing melee combat and its associated systems:
- An all new armor codex
- Rebalanced weapon codices with new options
- A new system for playing with weapon reach
- Revised text in the combat section to make learning easier
- New and rebalanced maneuvers
- Rebalanced Wound Tables
- An updated Dueling sheet, form-fillable so you can get started now. 

To anyone who hasn't joined the fecht club before, I invite you to join our discord and get started. Our community loves getting new folks involved, and there's plenty of people around to help you learn. 

Thank you again to all of my patrons. Without you, this wouldn't have been possible. 

- Brooks

Pick up the free documents here.
Join the conversation on our forums
Or get into the fight on our discord server

Fresh Piotr Chrzanowski Art

Boxed Setting: Assessing Interest

It's a fairly common feature for RPGs to come with some manner of prepackaged or boxed setting. Many games are written in such a way that the elements of that setting influence the rules themselves. Up to this point, I've largely resisted writing a dedicated setting for Sword & Scoundrel. I have a handful of reasons, not least of which is that I generally assume the setting you create with your players will be way more interesting than whatever I might write, but also because the game itself tends to work better with shared setting creation as part of character creation.

That said, I know a lot of you have talked about wanting a setting over time and there's no doubt that it makes certain things (marketing, for instance) easier. It probably will also help ease the transition into S&S-style gaming for GMs and players who come from more traditional RPG backgrounds.

So I'll leave it up to you guys. Should S&S come with an (optional) boxed setting in the core book? Toss a vote in the straw poll and let me know, along with whatever questions and comments you might have.

Leave some feedback 
On our Forums 

Or join the conversation on our
Discord Server 

Signs of Life

It's been a while, my beloved Scoundrels, but despite the radio silence, big things are in motion. 

I want to start with an apology. 

I haven't kept up with the dev updates as I should. There are a shocking number of you who follow this project in some fashion, and I need to be better at keeping you up to date. On my end, it's been a weird and wild few months and with the bat bug scouring the globe, things look to get even weirder over the next few weeks or months. At the time of writing, large portions of the US are in some stage of stay-at-home orders, my own state included. While this has caused some serious disruption in my seasonal work, it does represent an opportunity to switch gears and give S&S the last push it really needs to prepare for kickstarter. To that end:

The State of Things

Behind the scenes, we are getting things done. As of now:

• The current draft is about 80% done. Nearly all of it has been written, though it still needs a solid continuity pass before I throw it out to the volunteer editors.

• The forums have been reset. We recently migrated hosts and took the opportunity to update our software. In the process, we killed a whole lot of spam bots that had worked their way in over the years. All of the existing posts are still there, but if you have never posted before your account likely got thrown out with the bathwater. You may have to register a new one. Sorry for the inconvenience. 

• Kickstarter is coming. A timeline has been set out and the ground work is being laid for the logistics. I don't want to get into too many details yet, but short of a global economic collapse it's happening this year. 

• We have an artist. The amazingly talented Piotr Chrzanowski has signed on and I've already ordered a good chunk of art for the KS campaign. If the latter is successful, he will be handling the rest of the book as well. I couldn't be happier with the results.

Going Forward

The goal now is to get the next update into your hands as soon as possible. To aid in that goal, I've started a patreon. While certainly not a requirement, any funds thrown towards that end are not only providing me some financial security in some very uncertain times, they are buying me time to focus on dev work instead of hustling for freelance gigs. In addition to getting the work done faster, it's going to help keep me accountable for development and communication. Backers will get early access to material as it develops, sneak peak at future art releases, and direct input into where the development efforts go. If you've found value in this project, please consider supporting.

It's been such a long journey, but we're almost there. Thank you all for sticking around. I couldn't do it without you.

Questions? Comments? Feedback? 
Let us know on our Forums 

Or join the conversation on our
Discord Server 

When We Last Left Our Heroes..

Writing began anew, rewrites abound, and brace yourself: updates are coming. While an official change log will come out ahead of the release, I thought I'd tease a bit in the meantime.

This release will be a fairly meaty one:

• While the migration to scrivener will mean a slightly less polished pdf, the transition will make my work-flow easier and make any future updates or corrections easier to manage.

• This revision involves a lot of clarity edits in areas people have had questions on, and quite a few convenience changes that people have asked for (duplication of the resource chart comes to mind).

• Armor locations have long been one of the more arduous parts of the system, and they will not only be getting some changes to streamline the process, but we'll be seeing a codex for them as well that allows for a lot more options to play with.

• Combat is getting quite a bit of an overhaul, particularly if you haven't been following the fecht-club updates.

• And at least one new chapter will be added to the existing text with new content. Several more are in the works, though they may or may not be in this coming update.

Thanks again for all of you following this project, especially those of you who are actively supporting us through donations or sharing this stuff online, on reddit, or hanging out on discord. Your help is huge.

Until next time,
--Malloy

Questions, Comments, Complaints?
Tell us on our forums!

Or Join the Conversation on Discord

And We're Back

Dearest Scoundrels,

I figure you guys are due for an update on things and I finally have some time to write one.

I've been out of contact for a while, for which I should probably apologize. It's no secret that Grand Heresy is a labor of love. As much as I would love to be able to treat it as a full-time job, my bread is buttered elsewhere. Earlier this year, I wound up picking up a seasonal gig. By season's end, it went from being a part-time job to something all-consuming. The last few weeks have been particularly demanding. Fortunately, the season has now come to an end and my schedule will be returning to normal.

All told, I think the time away has been really good for me. It's given me the chance to get excited about the project again and I'm looking forward to diving in with fresh eyes. The next few weeks are going to be fun. I intend to spend some time re-reading all of the existing material, then jumping into the deep end with some serious editing and rewriting. An updated version of the current rules will follow, containing the rewrites and clarifications as well as consolidating the dev-build combat rules back into the core book.

For those of you still hanging around, thanks for your support. Keep an eye on this space. You won't be disappointed.

--Malloy.

Questions, Comments, Cash Donations?
Let us know on our forums!

Or Join the Conversation on Our
Discord Server

State of the Scoundrel Address

State of the Scoundrel Address

My fellow Scoundrels, I address you today to discuss the state of our beloved game and Grand Heresy as a whole. The long winter months have not been idle.

After a heroic struggle, Barbarossa has gotten the roll20 character sheets uploaded to their service. They are now publicly available for anyone's use. Meanwhile, new versions of the print and form-fillable character sheets are in the works. The former are largely finished, the latter are waiting on tweaks to their code.

The GM section has been outlined and work has begun on writing proper. When finished, it will include all of the core GM rules, along with a full Session Zero writeup, campaign management, rules for creating and managing NPCs, and a host of samples to get you on your way.

Online play continues to flourish within our community. The discord fecht club continues to bring new insights to the table, many of which will make their way into the combat system in the next release. Forum play-by-post continues on, with a second campaign joining the first, run by yours truly.

On the distant horizon, several other projects have come into view. An honorary member of the GH team has already begun research and development on a unique supplement that details territory rarely explored by the role-playing hobby. Various game-aids have been slated for development, several of which have already begun. There are even rumors of other, larger developments once some of the current dust has settled.

It's going to be a busy year.

Glad to have you along for the ride.

-Malloy.

Questions? Comments? Cunning Retorts?
Let us know on our forums!
Or join the conversation on our
Discord Server

2018

2018 was a big year for Grand Heresy. I've done more writing and editing in the last twelve months than in the last few years combined. This was the year I finally got a playable version of the game into the wild.

I haven't quite gotten over what a milestone that is. I've been at this in some form or another for going on seven years. What started as a fanboy hack of TRoS has become a beast of its own with an entire community behind it.

Since the 0.2.0 release, things have only picked up steam. We've already released one update and we've got another on the horizon. We've gotten more playtesters than ever before and a ton of great feedback.

Our discord server is growing by the day and is only becoming more active as time goes on. Dueling there has become so popular that we've set up a dedicated channel and tags for it. They've been an amazing tool for fine-tuning the combat system. The last month or so has been even better. We've begun implementing experimental builds of the combat rules, allowing us to test things before they go into the book proper.

The biggest milestone, of course, is that we are now hosted on DriveThruRPG. It's a relatively minor thing, in the scheme of it all, but it has disproportionate weight. As a fanboy/writer/designer, it represents a huge step towards seeing the project get out into the world.

With only a few hours left in the year, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has reached out or gotten involved. I still consider myself to be an enthusiast and an amateur at all this. I can't tell you how grateful (and flabbergasted) I am that you guys are still out there and still supporting me.

2019 promises to be even better. Hope I'll see you there.

Happy New Year.

Xoxo,
Malloy.

I Demand Satisfaction

Melee combat has always been a major draw for Sword & Scoundrel. The dynamic dice pool and cinematic maneuvers combine with a heavy emphasis on player skill to create an experience that is engaging enough to be stand on its own. Our discord community has taken to doing just that.

It’s become a popular feature of our server to challenge one another to duels, often taking place over the #fecht-club channel we’ve set up for exactly that purpose. To that end, a series of house rules have even cropped up in order to better facilitate The Gentleman’s Duel.

As a thank you to our ever-growing community, I’ve set up a custom Duelist character sheet, that is now available under Downloads. This one-page sheet has been heavily customized to the dueling format. The stat blocks are stripped down to be just what you need and the house rules are listed right on the sheet. Moreover, I spent the weekend pretending I understood javascript, so it’s all form-fillable and auto-calculating. Even the character creation math is built into the scripting, making it that much easier to get in the ring.

Happy fighting,

Malloy.

Questions? Comments? Typos?
Let us know on our forums!

Or hop into the arena on our discord server!
https://discord.gg/6pBQmSt

Sword & Scoundrel 0.2.1 Has Arrived

I’d like to start off with a big thanks to all of you who have been with us so far. It’s been a ridiculous journey, but things have never looked better. In particular, I’d like to thank all of you who gave feedback on the last update. I may be writing the game, but it’s you guys who make it great.

This release features a number of clarifications and minor fixes, but the big news is that the Sword & Scoundrel beta now has a new home, over at DriveThruRPG. The beta document is and will remain entirely free, but if you’re one of our fans who have been asking how you can help out, or you think what we’re doing is valuable, we greatly appreciate any support you want to throw our way. All of the funds raised for the foreseeable future will go towards commissioning art for the book proper.

Joining this release, the print character sheet is now available in our downloads section, with the Form-Fillable pdf and Roll20 variants coming down the pipe in the near future.

You guys have been awesome. Thanks for the ride.

-Malloy

Feedback? Concerns? Typos?
Let us know on our forums!

Or join the conversation on our discord server
https://discord.gg/6pBQmSt

Sword & Scoundrel 0.2.1 Patch Notes

Released ahead of the coming update:

• Character trait description text revised.

• Disengage maneuver updated to prevent use while prone.

• Drama rules clarified to emphasize the once-per-scene applicability.

• Encumbrance rules adjusted to be more forgiving of heavy loads.

• Firearm length now properly effects the use of the Quick Draw maneuver.

• Funds updated to be less exploitable.

• Grab maneuver and Grapple text updated to require a free hand.

• Hafted weapon codex updated to prevent super spears and extra hefty polearms. Two-handed maces now calculate damage correctly.

• Katana no longer cut through machine gun barrels.

• Laggy pdf no longer laggy.

• Limb disabling conditions clarified.

• Maille shirt now displaying armor locations correctly.

• Missing tables no longer missing.

• Other things probably forgotten.

• Out of place pdf bookmarks no longer out of place.

• Permanent injuries clarified to emphasize their application to combat pools.

• Property text updated to allow sharing of costs at character creation.

• Social conflict ties now favor the aggressor.

• Simple melee ties now favor the aggressor.

• Skills text revised to emphasize the free Lore (Own Culture) given at character creation.

• Substitutions now consume a tapping slot.

• Stomp maneuver updated to apply to any offensive maneuver.

• Strangle updated to prevent chokeholds through a rigid neck armor.

• Tables now correctly labeled.

• Two-handed pommel strikes now free of additional charge.

• Typos, grammar, formatting issues fixed.

• Various nits picked in text that none but the author will care about.

• Weapon ornamentation costs clarified.

• Wind updated to require initiative in order to declare it. Text clarified as to when the wind is declared.

• Wound Wheels chart updated to clarify legal favoring.

Sorensen's 3 Questions (Take 2)

With the play-test now in progress, I thought I’d revisit some old material. A year later, the game has undergone a few face lifts. I thought it was time to revisit Sorensen’s 3 Questions:

WHAT IS YOUR GAME ABOUT?

Sword & Scoundrel bears the tag: A Game of Passion, Violence, and General Skulduggery.

The game is above all a passion play. It's medieval morality theater presented as an HBO-style character drama. Players tell us what's most important about to their characters, and through play we challenge them on it. It's a game about exploring how far you will go, what lines you are willing to cross, and what — or who — you are willing to sacrifice for what you hold most dear.

The game is a blood-opera. Conviction and conflict are intimate bedfellows. Where the two meet, violence is all but inevitable. Player's passions can lead to quick and brutal violence. It's a western or a john woo film wearing a renaissance skin, where swordplay is quick, flashy, and lethal.

Finally, the game is about intrigue. Where the last two points meet, the third emerges. A fair fight is one half-way to lost. To achieve your ends, you may have to play dirty. Not every obstacle can be met head on. Success and survival demand every advantage.

HOW DOES YOUR GAME DO THIS?

Characters are more than just their attributes and skills. Their passions and convictions are represented by player-nominated phrases in the form of drives and traits. Traits allow you to flesh out aspects of your character's fictional positioning and their personality, granting them a mechanical weight. Drives represent the characters aforementioned ambitions, beliefs, convictions, and passions. Between the two, they give the player a direct way to communicate to the GM what they are interested in exploring. In turn, the GM is told exactly where they want to be challenged.

The game is written in such a way that it is explicitly about conflict. This is not only a guide to running the game, but one of the very first rules introduced in the book. Mundane and meaningless tasks never require a roll. You only roll when there is a conflict in play and there is something at stake. On the other side of that coin, the game embraces concepts like "let it ride" and "fail forward." Once the dice are rolled, the results are binding. Failing a roll means you didn't achieve your objective, but introduced a complication instead. Regardless of the outcome, once you pick up the dice, you're breaking the status quo of the game. The story progresses, one way or another.

The themes are further reinforced by the mechanics for supporting different kinds of conflicts. While for many players the combat systems are a major draw, the rules offer support for a wide variety of tasks. In time, we will be offering a full social combat system, faction and domain rules, magic, intrigue, and other abstract conflicts.

HOW DOES YOUR GAME ENCOURAGE/REWARD THIS?

The primary reward mechanism of the game is a meta-currency called Drama. Drama is the incentive that kicks off a feedback loop in play. Players earn drama primarily by playing their drives and traits to the hilt. When these drives and traits lead to conflict or introduce complications for them, they earn drama.

First, drama means that players are incentivized to make decisions according to who their character is and what that character wants, rather than taking the most optimal approach to a situation. They earn drama by creating conflicts and complications for themselves, which in turn moves the game forward and introduces new conflicts and complications for them to face. Players are rewarded for actively pursuing stories they themselves set in motion.

Second, earning drama gives players a resource that can be spent in order to gain various advantages in play. Drama can make a character perform better, reduce the effects of wounds, and otherwise grant the character advantages in a conflict. Meanwhile, by burning drama they earn marks towards advancing their various abilities. By following their drives, they grow and become more capable, able to better face future conflicts.

The end result is that the game asks players to make characters driven and passionate, yet ultimately flawed. They are then rewarded for role-playing them in a way that naturally creates intimate, personal conflicts that escalate over time. The end result generates the kind of intense and often violent character dramas you would expect from a game called Sword & Scoundrel.

Sword & Scoundrel 0.2.0

As the prophecy foretold, Sword & Scoundrel has risen from its slumber. The current release is the largest and most complete work Grand Heresy has ever put out, just shy of 250 pages. From the player-side, it is complete in core functionality. Basic mechanics, character creation, connections, social conflict, combat, gear, everything you need to actually grab on and start playing.

The accompanying character sheet will be released shortly, along with roll20 support updated in time. The next step is getting the GM section finished and released, but if you have prior GM experience, you can likely manage the rules as listed. This is especially true if you have experience with similar games like Burning Wheel, The Riddle of Steel, or even various Powered by the Apocalypse games.

Grab it while it’s hot.

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