The Grind and Conditions

[Enoch]

I've mentioned both "The Grind" and Conditions before. Let's talk about what they are.

Conditions

First off: Conditions. Torchbearer doesn't use a hitpoint system to track your health and well-being. Instead, you gain (and lose) various Conditions throughout play that have a (mostly) negative effect on your character. Those Conditions are:

• Fresh: Every character starts with Fresh. When you're Fresh, you get +1D (an additional die) to all tests. You lose Fresh whenever you gain another Condition, and can generally only get it back when you leave Town with no other conditions (in other words, once it's lost on a given adventure, it's lost until at least the start of the next adventure, and possibly beyond).
• Hungry and Thirsty: Hungry and Thirsty subtracts one from your disposition (group hitpoints) in any conflict (a direct confrontation with another creature or group; non-conflict tests, like finding a way around a washed-out bridge, are more common in Torchbearer than in other systems). It can be removed by eating or drinking. It's one of the most common Conditions, and one of the easiest to relieve.
• Angry: Lots of stuff will make you Angry, and not just an argument with NPCs. Trying to do something and failing can be frustrating, and Angry may be the result. When you're Angry, you can't use the beneficial aspects of traits or wises (but you can still use traits against yourself to gain checks). Angry can be removed when camping with a Will test or in Town.
• Afraid: In D&D, your inexperienced farmhand may face down monsters out of legend without flinching, and stand up to a horror that just eviscerated a companion without fear. It's a little silly, honestly. Like Angry, Afraid is often a result of a failed test. Failure to successfully bridge a bottomless chasm may not necessarily result in your death, but you may become Afraid as you narrowly cheat death. It can be relieved with a Will test when camping or in town.
• Exhausted: Hopefully by this point it's obvious that the sorts of exertions and trials you're likely to face can be fatiguing. Exhausted makes most every test a little bit harder (except for Circles, used to find people you might know, and tests to recover from Conditions). You recover from this condition with a Health test in the camp or town phases. It's worth noting that things like wearing heavy armor and casting spells can make it harder to recover from Exhausted.
• Injured: If your makeshift bridge over the bottomless chasm collapses, you might skip across safely but Afraid, or you might just grab the lip of the far side, banging your ribs painfully on the rocks and becoming Injured (it's also a common result of combat, obviously). Being injured imposes a -1D penalty to Nature, Will, Health and all skill tests. This penalty is not applied to Resources and Circles, nor to Will or Health tests for Recovery. Even worse: a failed test while Injured can result in death! (The GM will tell you if death is a possible consequence of a test before you make it.) Recovering from Injured requires a Health test in camp or town. You do have the option to suck it up, however, which removes the Injured Condition at the cost of reducing either Health, Nature, or a Health-based skill by 1 (chosen by the GM).
• Sick: Lots of things can make you sick: that undercooked owlbear steak you ate or that brackish water you drank; the gases from that trap you failed to disarm; the poisoned blade of an orcish assassin. When you're Sick, you can't practice, learn from a Mentor, or advance skills or abilities. Nature, Will, Health and skill tests are all harder also. Like being Injured, being Sick makes death a possibility. Recovering from Sick is a Will test in camp or town. Like Injured, when Sick you can sweat out the fever, which works much like sucking it up.
• Dead: I think you know what this means. There's not really a test to recover from this.

You can suffer from multiple Conditions at once. In fact, that's kind of common. Death is rarely an immediate threat in Torchbearer, but crawling back to town Sick, Injured and Afraid and not having enough cash to afford decent treatment is a very real threat. Oftentimes less successful adventurers will stumble back out the town gates, still not in great condition but having used up all their cash. It can get ugly, especially until you start leveling up your skills.

There are two major ways to gain Conditions: through failed tests and from The Grind. The Grind will always award Conditions in a particular order, but a failed test can result in any appropriate Condition (except Dead, unless you're already Sick or Injured, or in a conflict to the death).

The Grind

I've mentioned the Grind several times. Let's talk about what it is!

Adventuring will, well, grind you down. Clambering through ancient ruins in the dark with minimal supplies for long periods of time and facing terrifying foes will leave you hungry, exhausted, and afraid. Every fourth turn during the adventure phase, you'll gain a condition, in order, starting with Hungry and Thirsty:

Hungry and Thirsty -> Exhausted -> Angry -> Sick -> Injured -> Afraid -> Dead

If you already have the next condition, you skip on down the chain. If you're Hungry and Thirsty, you become Exhausted; if you're already Angry, instead of becoming Angry 4 turns later you become Sick.

Clever adventurers will realize that, because camping resets the clock, camping often is important (but it's not without its dangers). Managing your Conditions and deciding when to press on and when to turn back is important.

Camping

Camping is covered in the core rulebook under the heading "Safe Havens and Other Poor Assumptions", and it's named that for a reason. When you make camp, the GM decides how safe it is, either Typical, Unsafe or Dangerous (though you can do things to try to make it more safe). The GM will roll for random events, and then you'll get to spend Checks (earned by using Traits to make life more difficult) to make tests. For instance, you might use Scavenging to look for some useful item or some food, or Cook to try to make your rations stretch. You might also use Checks to try to recover from Conditions.

Recovery

When you try to recover in camp, you must recover in a specific order as well. Note that this order is different than the order you get the conditions during the Grind. You can't alleviate a later condition until your earlier conditions are successfully addressed.

hungry and thirsty -> angry -> afraid -> exhausted -> injured -> sick

Note that there are methods that don't obey this rule - it only applies to recovery tests. Drinking a potion to alleviate a condition is a free action at any time and out of order. Clerics learn prayers which can resolve conditions at any time and in any order as well. Actions such as elvish singing, halfling merrymaking, or other creative use of skill or nature can temporarily or permanently recover conditions outside of the normal recovery process (and potentially outside of camp).

[Marullus]

Traits and Checks

So, with our house rules, you have a larger number of traits! You use them in two ways.

Help Yourself
Each trait can be used to help you once per session (which in PbP is going to be 10-13 turns, depending on story pacing).

You work the trait into your narration and use it to get +1D on a roll. (Only one trait per roll.)

Hinder Yourself
You can also use any trait against yourself in a roll instead, granting yourself a -1D. This gives you a resource called a Check.

Checks
Checks can be used to take actions during the Camp Phase, so are very important. Especially since this is when you try to recover from your Conditions.

(They also would normally be used to allow you to get advancement by helping but our house rules allow that without a check, so these are mostly Camp currency.)

Group Size

We're starting with a large group, which means tougher challenges to match. Even still, you are likely going to be making large die pools when you all help and cooperate. It is important at those times to Hinder yourself and get a check. Other times you will have a small group or be acting alone on an instinct and you will need all the dice you can get, so use your traits to help you.

A larger group has the advantage of being able to afford to Hinder themselves. A failure, though, can give everyone a condition at once and each condition and character generally needs its own Check to alleviate it, so the checks are also more important.

Tl;Dr - consider your traits and use them for or against you to enhance your roleplay as often as possible.

[Marullus]

You guys are already experiencing most of Torchbearer first-hand, but the creators posted this today as they announce the coming 2nd Edition and I thought I'd share.

Desperate Adventure
Torchbearer is a roleplaying game of desperate adventure.

You take on the role of a fortune-seeking adventurer. You’re probably not an adventurer by choice: To most people, ‘adventurer’ is a dirty word. It means you’re a scoundrel, a villain, a wastrel, a vagabond, a criminal, a sword-for-hire, a cutthroat. In Torchbearer, respectable people till the earth, belong to guilds, or are born into the nobility. But there are too many mouths to feed on the farm already. The guilds aren’t accepting apprentices and you’re too old anyway. Even if you were born into a life of privilege and luxury, your older siblings have soaked up your inheritance.

So here you are. To earn your fortune, you must explore forlorn ruins, brave terrible monsters and retrieve forgotten treasures. The expeditions you undertake are taxing to your body, your mind and your very nature. To survive, you must carefully manage your food, water and light resources. To excel, you must fight for what you believe in. To prosper, you must fill your bags with loot and treasure.

Torchbearer strives to make the logistical and physical challenges of delving into forgotten tombs and long-lost temples interesting and fun!

Three Books?
Dungeoneer’s Handbook, Scholar’s Guide and Lore Master’s Manual? That’s basically a Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide and Monster Manual? No. We considered that format, but our games don’t break down that way. Instead, these books are intended to serve two very different purposes: learning the game and reference materials at the table. There’s material for both players and GMs in all the books.

The Dungeoneer’s Handbook focuses on material that describes characters. Character creation, abilities, nature, wises, traits, skills, inventory, magic, advancement and level benefits are all in the Dungeoneer’s Handbook. It also contains reference lists of gear, skills (and the factors GMs use to set obstacles), traits, spells and invocations.

The Scholar’s Guide contains the procedural elements of the game. How to start a session, how to factor the difficulty of skill tests, how to add up dice pools and help each other, how to apply and alleviate conditions, how to participate in conflicts and how to spend rewards to affect rolls. It has player and GM procedures for the camp and town phases. It also walks GMs through designing adventures and creating loot. Monsters, GM advice and the Dread Crypt of Skogenby adventure are all contained within. Finally, it has reference lists for camp events, town events, sample twists, and a conflict example.

The Lore Master’s Manual is a grab bag of optional rules that we’ve developed to support the game. Some new classes, optional rules for dealing with character death, new traits, new skills, new conflicts (Tunnel Fighting! Battle, Binding and more), new settlements, lots more gear, rules for making and growing the amenities of long-term camps, travel rules, economic rules for towns that allow you to crash (or turbocharge!) their economy if you dump too much treasure into them and more!

Simple to Learn, Hard to Master
The core rules are simple to learn, but Torchbearer is a technical game that rewards mastery. Resources like gear, tools, light sources, food and water must be carefully husbanded. Our inventory system makes these things easy to track, but the decisions around who should carry what, what you absolutely must bring with you and what can be left behind are fraught. The bookkeeping is easy. The decisions are hard.

Time is one of your most precious resources. As you delve into haunted ruins and other desolate places, you grow hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and so on. These are the elements of the character’s “damage” track. Neglect or otherwise fail to meet your character’s needs for too long and they will eventually sicken and die. Planning and teamwork can help you to stave off this fate by camping, but eventually you’ll need to score some loot so you can return to town to rest, recuperate and restock essential supplies.

As your character undergoes these trials and tribulations, you will learn more about who your character really is. Your character has a belief, a goal and an instinct that will be challenged at every turn. Facing, overcoming or turning away from these challenges will earn you rewards that can be used to alter your fate and grow in power. Your traits will help you and hinder you along the way, and your fellow players will at various times assign your character new traits or upgrade existing ones based on how they perceive the character.

You don’t start this game as a hero, but you may become one with perseverance and dedication! Or you might choose to become a hardcase that’s only in it for the treasure. You’ll discover through play.

Describe to Live
The basic interaction of the game is something we call Description Forward! The GM sets the stage by describing the environment and what you perceive. You, in turn, describe your actions in response to the GM’s narration, telling the GM what your character does, touches, manipulates, etc. You ask questions about the environment. The GM responds by describing how the environment responds to the characters’ actions. You go back and forth like this until the characters reach a point at which they are in danger or going forward is impossible without some feat: That’s when the GM calls for a character to make an ability or skill check.

If the test is successful, the player gets what they were after. There are no null results! If you’re searching for something and there’s nothing to find, the GM does not call for a roll. Just tell the players their characters don’t find anything and move on.

If a player fails a test, that’s where things get interesting. When players fail a test, the GM has two options: Give the character a condition (hungry/thirsty, angry, exhausted, afraid, injured or sick) but allow the character to achieve whatever they were attempting to do, or apply a twist—a new challenge for the characters to overcome. Twists can come in many different forms, from ambushes to cave ins, broken equipment or tearing a hole in space and time by miscasting a spell. The important thing is a failed test always changes the characters’ circumstances. Either they move forward with a condition or something new happens that they have to worry about!

One Who Lived to Tell the Tale
One friend recently described their experience with the game thusly:

“We wrestled with rules and gradually started to master them. We learned when to impose a Twist and when to impose a Condition. We learned the importance of maintaining access to a fresh water source. We took our lumps in nerve-wracking scripted conflicts. We had town phases, learned that towns were awful, and fled back to the dungeon. We swore at dice a lot.

“It was the first game I’d played that made the physical composition of the dungeon a meaningful part of the whole experience rather than an annoyance or a penalty on combat rolls. We lowered people on ropes through sinkholes and waded through flooded chambers with packs on our heads. We got lost in labyrinths.”

We hope this helps give you an idea of what Torchbearer is about!

Mange takk!

—Luke & Thor