Fable on your Table

Sort of. I'm working on a second edition which will have a new megadungeon-style setting that uses many of the Realm of the Wraith miniatures and terrain.  So it will be new adventures but the same papercraft (although there will be a few new minis, too).

Dang, yeah, that sounds like a bug – sorry about that!  Hopefully I can figure out a way to reproduce it and fix it!  Thanks for taking the time to let me know.

I’ve got some updates in the works but I’ve got some other projects going, too. Once I finish Welcome Aboard, Captain, I hope to get back into a 2nd edition of this game. There are a few issues with the 1st edition I want to address, plus magic, but it also would involve updating the app.  And I want to make a mission generator that doesn’t use the app, so there’s a lot of stuff needed for a new edition.

But hearing people want it will help! The game didn’t seem to attract much interest after the competition, but now interest seems to be picking up.  It also helps because then I get more feedback on any pain points, unclear concepts, gross imbalances, etc. which I may have missed in my own testing. Always looking for feedback on how to improve the game!

Glad you're enjoying the game.

Question 1 : Can you save the game?

Yes, you can, now.  Your comment made me realize the save feature must be broken since it wasn't offering any save restoring.  Version 1 had it, but version 2 seemed to have dropped it, so I just made a fix. It should save your game now as you go, and when you return, it should prompt you to see if you'd like to return to the saved game.

Question 2 : Do skeleton warriors have 10 health?

The way it works is that those dice have "boons" on them, just like your own weapons can have boons.  A "boon" is a special effect on a die that triggers when that die is highest in a 2x2 contest. So, skeletons only have 5 health, but if they roll their Undead die in a contest and it comes out on top, its boon triggers, and it heals five, giving it unholy longevity beyond its mortal frame.

For example, say you are fighting a skeleton warrior.  You hit it for 3 damage.  Now it's health is only 2 because it starts with 5.   Later, you attack it again, and it rolls its Ignore Pain and its Undead dice to defend against your own two attack dice.  All the dice come up 1's except for the Undead die, which comes up a 5.  That means the Skeleton's Undead trait comes out on top as the determining factor of the contest. It receives no damage (because it defended successfully), but on top of that, it gets to apply the boon of its Undead trait - to heals 5.  Since 5 health is also its maximum, that means it heals back up to full health of 5.  The other 2 points of healing are "lost" because it can't go above its maximum.  Not only do you fail to do damage to it, but it has fully recovered from the deadly blow you landed earlier - this thing has unholy resilience against wounds that would fell any mortal!

This sort of effect is true for all the little notes underneath the dice.  For instance, the Skeleton Warrior also has a +1 damage boon on its Pitted Sword die. If it attacks, and that die comes out on top, it will add +1 damage to the normal computed value for damage.  As another example, the Rat Swarm will only give you Rat Bite Fever if that Nasty Bite d4 ends up being highest.  If it hits you with its Swarm die, it won't infect you with the fever because that die doesn't have the boon on it.

Hope this clarifies things!

To play it solo in the manner intended, yes, you'd need the app.  You can check it out here: Fable on your Table if you are curious as to what it entails.

But you could also use Fable on your Table as a miniatures skirmish system for a TTRPG experience, and make up your own scenarios.  The app is there to enable solo play, but the system itself doesn't rely on the app to work, any more than any other TTRPG combat system does.  For instance, you could write up your own adventures and share them with friends, and it would work perfectly fine.

Glad you're enjoying the game!

You're not the first person to contact me about playing with two players, so yes, I have some co-op ideas in mind for the game.  Unfortunately, I don't have anything playtested and ready, but here are some untested, draft rules for playing with two players:

For every two "non-boss" enemies spawned, listed in order on the app, choose one of the following:

*  Double the health of the first enemy OR
*  Spawn another version of the furthest enemy adjacent to the nearest enemy, and drop a coin in its space.

For every "odd man out":

*  Double the health of the enemy and drop a coin in its space.

For every "boss" (any enemy with special rules or which acts as a quest target):

*  Increase the health of the enemy by half again, rounded up, and drop a coin in its space.

Coins represent ancillary treasure that can be picked up if you are adjacent to them as a long action.  They are one bulk and are worth 1 treasure back in town; imagine an appropriate treasure.  At the end of an adventure, divvy up the treasure as you see fit between your heroes who survive.

So, for instance, if you enter a room with the following enemies:

*  A skeleton archer
*  Two skeleton warriors
*  A wight
*  Two gravedigger beetles

...then you would:

*  Pair the skeleton archer with the first skeleton warrior and either double the health of the archer or spawn an extra skeleton with a coin.  (In the latter case, if the archer is closer, then you'll spawn a warrior next to it, and if the warrior is closer, then you'll spawn an archer next to it.)

*  Pair the second skeleton warrior with the first gravedigger beetle (since the wight is a "boss") and either double the health of the warrior or spawn an extra enemy with a coin (if the warrior is closer, spawn a beetle next to it, or if the beetle is closer, spawn a warrior next to it).

*  Since the last gravedigger beetle is "odd man out", double its health and drop a coin.

*  Increase the wight's health by half again, rounded up, and drop a coin there.

If you try playing with these rules, be sure to drop me a line and tell me how it goes. Eventually, I hope to get the option to select a number of heroes in the companion app, and have it generate rooms with appropriate difficulty, but I want to make sure I have the solo difficulty balanced first!

Cool.  Thanks. Glad to hear it's better.  Sounds like d6 levels might still be a little tough – was it the "standard" enemies that whittled you down, or was it a tough fight in the boss area, or both? (Those need to be balanced in different ways, since the bosses are unique.)

Thanks for the feedback. I’m going to roll out a new release of the web app this weekend that will address some of the difficulty issues on the app end, but that is a good point about health potions and access to healing. I may need to update those rules, too.

Also, let me clarify something.  If I understand what you wrote correctly, I think you might be making critical hits more powerful than they are supposed to be if you're taking 14+ damage from a single zombie attack.  A zombie at maximum can muster 10 damage with a critical hit.

Are you  adding the zombie's dice together, maybe? If so, that is not how it's intended to be played.  You take the highest die, not the sum, to compute the damage.

If there's no critical hit, then you subtract the highest die from the losing side to mitigate the damage.

If it is a crit, there are no dice on the losing side to mitigate the damage, so you subtract zero. The only other thing in play is that a crit allows both of the highest dice to apply their boons. Since zombies have boons on both of their attack dice, it would apply both.

Thus, a zombie which rolls a best-case critical hit of 8:8 would do 10 damage (8 for the highest die, minus zero for the crit, plus 1 for the Ragged Claws boon and 1 more for the Relentless boon). I don't see how it could muster 14+ damage unless you're referring to multiple attacks.

Heh.  The hazards of procedural generation. Maybe I need to revisit the algorithms.

How did you fare against them?

It means the lowest of all dice rolled, not just your dice.  In the example you gave, no, it would not cross off an ammunition because it's not the lowest roll - the lowest roll is a 3.

Note that if there are "doubles" for the lowest, then you would cross it off.  For example, if the rolls were reversed – the opponent rolled a 5 and 4, and you rolled two three's, or if you rolled a 5 archery and 3 bow, and your opponent rolled two threes – then you would lose the ammunition because three is the lowest die roll, and the bow rolled that value.

Also, note that the "lowest die roll" still counts even if there is a tie for highest and dice get removed from consideration for applying effects or generating rerolls.  If you, say, roll two fives, and the opponent rolled a 2 and a 1 and those dice are removed, your bow still didn't roll the "lowest" of all die rolls, even though all that are left are two five's and one of them is your bow; the lowest roll was still a one. (Another way to think of it is that the comparison is made before you remove dice due to matches for highest roll.)

The document has been fixed.  Thanks