Retrofitting rules from later games to Frostgrave?

[Grumpy Gnome]

Chief Lackey Rich has mentioned in another thread some folks are using house rules for Frostgrave based on the locked loot in Stargrave.

I would love to hear more about that and any other house rules people are making based on heir experiences in Ghost Archipelago and Rangers of Shadow Deep.

Mrs. GG and I use the random monster placement rule from Ghost Archipelago for example as we find it more interesting.

[Chief Lackey Rich]

We were using the deep water/swimming/boat rules from GA in a Frostgrave variant for a while.  One of the players had a huge collection of Venetian-style terrain so we shifted the game to a formerly-drowned and still half-flooded city that had recently resurfaced and was being explored and looted.  Basically a warmer, wetter version of Felstad.  Worked okay although we probably should have added some "unaffiliated with any college" spells and magic items to interact with the altered environment, maybe based off other GA stuff - the Wave Warden list in particular.

Our "terrain guy" is long gone (this was back in early 2020 just before the End Times began) so I doubt we'll get another chance to play around with the idea - unless Carnevale catches on big locally or somebody gets ambitious about building a Venicegrave table or something. 

[Grumpy Gnome]

Mrs. GG and I Love The TT Combat Venice Terrain and the idea of Venicegrave is appealing but the last thing I need is another biome at this stage.

Using the deep water rules for Frostgrave, where is may be applicable (underwater lake maybe?) makes sense. I think we will do that.

I had not considered magic to deal with all that additional water though. Interesting.

How exactly do you apply the Stargrave locked loot to Frostgrave? What about telekinesis? I really need to buy a copy of Stargrave it seems.

Mrs. GG likes the blip mechanic she heard about from Stargrave but I am unsure how to apply it to Frosgrave.

[Sunjester]

We were planning something similar using my TTCombat Venice set, but due to Covid it never got beyond a planning stage. Hopefully we will get around to it at some point.

[Chief Lackey Rich]

How exactly do you apply the Stargrave locked loot to Frostgrave? What about telekinesis? I really need to buy a copy of Stargrave it seems.

I'd just treat treasure counters as SG physical loot, with the usual TN14 Will roll to unlock and Thieves and Treasure hunters getting the +6 bonus for carrying picks and knowing how to use them.  Probably wouldn't allow wizards and apprentices to carry picks themselves (no training, right?) but they've often got pretty good Will scores anyway. 

Going by how Data Jump works in SG, I wouldn't allow Telekinesis to move treasure until it's been unlocked.  You could experiment with doing it otherwise, but at some point you'd need to unlock the token to get the contents off the table.

Mrs. GG likes the blip mechanic she heard about from Stargrave but I am unsure how to apply it to Frosgrave.

The Ping rules in SG are pretty much scenario-defined, but I don't see why they couldn't be adapted to FG.  You'd need to decide how to build the "Ping Results Table" for a given game, and how actual Ping tokens get placed on the table. 

The chart in Q37 is all bugs of various types, 15% of the time with two of them, 10% with three, so any given Ping is likely to be more dangerous than a single roll on the random encounter table - but you also have a 25% chance of the token being a "dummy" and no creature appearing at all.  To translate to FG in similar terms - well, you could just use bugs as-is, but you could also build a custom chart with whatever you think are appropriately sneaky monsters, preferably with some kind of unified theme.  Maybe spectral undead types, or bandits, or small but dangerous vermin?  You'd want at least three types with one being rarer and more dangerous than the others to emulate the SG chart, but maybe just varying the numbers more would do instead.  It's a lot like the way Blips work in Space Hulk, if that isn't Greek to you.

The Q37 scenarios either gives each player a small number of blips to deploy at the start of the game, or has one appear at the end of each turn, or both IIRC.  For FG you could do the same, or have them show up instead of a random encounter roll 50% of the time when you open a treasure, or some combination.  The more you use the more pressure they'll put on the players, so use more for co-op games or very simple terrain layouts, less if there are already a lot of potential hazards and difficult terrain to deal with or you just want to concentrate on killing each other instead of the NPCs.  You're already using the GA rules for random critters, and that's pretty close to how Pings arrive - at least 6" away from any crew and out of LoS, or anywhere on a table edge.  They get revealed if any crew ever ends its activation in LoS or vice-versa, but they can walk across fields of view while staying concealed.  The AI mechanics don't actually let that happen very often IME, but maybe that'll be different in FG.

Probably something I'm overlooking that would complicate things, but on the surface it seems like a simple port as long you can both/all decide on when to use Pings, how many to use, and what to stick on the chart for when they get revealed.

Have to say from the Q37 games I've played Pings don't feel hugely impactful compared to the Unwanted Attention pirates or random critter chart, but maybe that's just been my experience.  Haven't rolled a 20 yet and had 3 Warrior Bugs pop up in melee with my captain, but I'm sure it'll happen eventually.

[Grumpy Gnome]

Great stuff Rich, thanks for all that information.

I love the idea of some scenarios introducing some GF9 “bugs” to Frostgrave (along with the “hunter” from Ulterior Motives) but I suspect Mrs. GG will be less keen to mix such obvious sci-fi themes with her fantasy themes.

Now that you mention Unwanted Attention, and we play more competitive than confrontational, I am wondering if it would be interesting to adding that mechanic with some bandits.

[Chief Lackey Rich]

I love the idea of some scenarios introducing some GF9 “bugs” to Frostgrave (along with the “hunter” from Ulterior Motives) but I suspect Mrs. GG will be less keen to mix such obvious sci-fi themes with her fantasy themes.

Well, you could point out that various "Bug" species do show up in fantasy too.  The Fantasy Trip statted up all the alien critters from the old Chitin: I board game, added a few more to boot, and even had a "clear the hive" dungeon delve adventure in Interplay Magazine.  There's nothing particularly scifi about the Q37 Bugs - only one rare type has a ranged attack (and even that's just acid spit), the rest are all melee monsters just like the Chitin: I critters were (although there was a Space Gamer article that introduced an "Arch-Reaper" artillery bug that volleyed spikes at enemies).

And in literature, Alan Dean Foster's largely-forgotten Spellsinger series had insects as the weird creepy bogeymen that none of the other anthropomorphic animals of the setting could communicate with - IIRC there was a vague suggestion that their turf was like Soviet Russia in the worst of the Iron Curtain days, only with a hive mind instead of Stalin.  Jim Butcher's Calderon series had bugs as baddies as well, although I'm hazy on where they went with that in the later books, never did finish that series.

[Grumpy Gnome]

Oh she is ok with insect like giant bugs in Fantasy but I meant the Galeforce 9 Xenomorphs.


We got the xenomorph dragon from the Dungeons and Lasers 2 Kickstarter a while back for potentially just this kind of thing and Mrs. GG rolled her eyes when I brought it up.

She is also not keen on my suggestion to introduce a Yautja (Predator) as the “Hunter” in Ulterior Motives.

[marcnelsonjr]

We started using the random encounter placement rules from Stargrave. Instead of the center point of a random edge, you just roll a d20 and put the monster on the edge where the die is pointing.

[Chief Lackey Rich]

We started using the random encounter placement rules from Stargrave. Instead of the center point of a random edge, you just roll a d20 and put the monster on the edge where the die is pointing.

Makes the corners a lot less safe to hide in.  The GA rules (and the very similar Q37 Ping deployment mechanics) where randoms can be placed anywhere out of LoS of a crewman and at least 6" away are even more dangerous.

[Darkson71]

Feel I should point out that  GA and RoSD aren't "later games" to FG 2e, they're both "earlier games".

Having (nearly) finished a club FG campaign which had some house rules I wish I'd suggested (remembered) the SG random monster placement rules, as I'd have suggested we use them.

[Angrypantz]

From what I've gathered from the reviews of Silver Bayonet I wouldn't mind implementing some of the combat and fatigue rules in that.  Maybe the sprint mechanic as well.