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I just received my kickstarter backer pdf of Dicey Tales today. And I'm impressed.
What? You have no interest in pulp games and only play sword & sorcery?
Well, you might still find material here that could be of interest. For a start it has a large 'real world' bestiary of critters now updated to Mythic Edition BoL. It also has a neat chase sub-system that would also work for chases and fights between carriages or chariots. And the more subtle 1930s magic spells are also useful for s&s games.
It is mostly a re-write of the original Dicey Tales but updated to Mythic Edition, but some areas have been expanded and better explained, and there is some new stuff in there too. It benefits from including the BoL rules, unlike the original DT which was just a supplement to Legendary Edition BoL.
While the current focus is on 1930s/40s pulp, there are mentions of later supplements covering Bronze Age fantasy.
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How'd you get your copy? I backed the kickstarter but I haven't received any communication on the pdf yet
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The link to DriveThru just turned up with a link to Jeff where you can report any obvious errors in the pdf.
Did you fill in the survey Jeff sent around recently? I think that was to confirm where to send the pdf.
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I got it sorted out with Jeff. For some reason DriveThru wasn't sending the email with the link. When I logged in to DriveThru I saw the links had been posted in my messages. I'm not sure what happened with the emails; first time I've had that problem.
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Weird! If it makes you feel any better, I don't think you were the only one to have problems. I guess I was just lucky!
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It doesn't really make me feel any better, but thanks for trying LOL
BTW - have you compared Dicey Tales to Pulse-Pounding Pulp? I'm interested to know if they are products that go well together, duplicate each other, or just come at the same subject from different angles.
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Really it’s a different approach to inter-war pulp– slightly simpler and sticking closely to BoL, and avoiding the rather dice-heavy approach you see in some of the EW sub-systems.
Personally, I'll probably stick to Everywhen for my 30s pulp games, but I might well add some bits and pieces in DT to EW. As I said before I will be trying out the chase rules for my next EW game, as I've never got on with EW's Challenge Dice rules. If they work fine, and (I can’t see why they wouldn’t) I’ll probably stick with them in future.
I’ll try the BoL style critters in the bestiary, to see if I like them better than the critters with Rabble/Tough/Rival and Scale in EW. Not sure if I’d stick with the DT ones though – time will tell.
I will probably use DTs Mysterious Power boons for my EW occult games – I like those. And I’ve long used the 1930s magic spells from 1st Edition DT in many of my EW games.
Even if you use EW for 30s/40s pulp, you might find stuff here that you might want to introduce to your EW games.
Where the EW rules score for me is in the use of the damage track and in their firearms rules generally. They are more my style than the DT firearms rules – perfectly good and usable though they are. Also use of the Scale for heavy firearms and the use of Scale for big critters works really good for some dino hunting scenarios.
And the Boons and Flaws in Pulse Pounding Pulp are spot on! As is the whole pulp feel throughout PPP – an excellent piece of work from Mr. Elliott. However, DT has two of my favourite Boons ever – Thunderblow and Right Back At You.
So I’ll sum up by saying that they plough the same furrow but in slightly different ways. DT is a great piece of work, and if you are interested in 30s/40s pulp and haven’t got access to EW or have it but didn’t like the approach, then DT would be a good purchase. (Also I used it to run a series of sf games set in the Firefly setting – it’s adaptable for anything with guns really.)
For me EW is a better fit, but I will be adding some bits of DT to my EW games, and will definitely run the South Seas scenario using EW with added DT. I’m happy to support Dicey Tales as I played the hell out of it back in the day and I have a lot of affection for it.
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Great feedback Steve. Like you I played the heck out of DT back in the day; I actually converted some of the FGU Daredevils adventures, and I also converted my group's PCs from our early DD games. The characters worked out great using BoL and DT (although I do use a few house rules of my own to give the characters a little more depth).
I own EW and PPP but I haven't given them as much time as I should because I tend to just go back to BoL and tweak it with some Dogs of W*A*R, DT and Barbarians of the Aftermath. I'll be sure to give EW and PPP a deeper read soon.
Last edited by The GIT! (2/01/2023 8:35 am)
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On MeWe I just posted about BoL engine mash-ups, and listed mine.
For my Aja of the Isles Hyborian game I used BoL + the Resolve mechanic from Everywhen.
My swashbuckling musketeers game featuring Captain Treville's Daughter was all Everywhen + house rules for duelling building on the duelling rules in Pulse Pounding Pulp + the Careers from Honor & Intrigue.
I intend to use the chase rules from Dicey Tales in my next Lady Daisy St Clair game.
I played around with the original Dogs Of War + Everywhen for a series of 1960s spy games.
Also used Legendary Edition BoL + the fan posted Barbarians of the Void for a great series of Firefly games.
If you have a selection of BoL engine games it's a snap to merge mechanics to get just the sort of game you want.
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I like most of your choices. I'm a fan of Honor + Intrigue and I know we already discussed duelling options on this forum; I personally prefer the Advantage system in H+I as I feel it also allows for multiple protagonists rather just one-on-one, so I tend to leverage it in other settings while foregoing the manoeuvres.
I'm also a great fan of Barbarians of the Void. That is a terrific product that I would use to run Traveller adventures.
As I mentioned, I need to read EW in more detail, so I really can't comment too much on those options yet.