I ordered the book and pdf.  Got the pdf and have been perusing it.  First impression - its o.k.  (scale of 1 - 10, about a 6 or 7?)

Might have some things in it that I will add to my version of BoL, time will tell.  The adventures in the back do look promising though.  The bestiary is pretty "tame" compared to my bestiary (I like my monsters/animal to be a little more "dangerous").  But it is interesting to see how others stat up creatures.

Got to go, working on a BoL Witcher campaign.  
 

A poster on RPGnet going by zcthu3, posted some things about using H&I for a Witcher setting back in Jan of 2020.   Pretty good post.  I took some of that and re-worked it for my own game and came up with my own house rule for making a Witcher character.

At creation, a Witcher character must take the following careers (no deviation):  
Hunter/Tracker 1, Mage 1, Alchemist 1, and Investigator 1 (a career that I found on the internet, don't remember where or who made it up now)

A Witcher character then gets the following Boons at creation: 
Witcher Boons

• Witcher’s Physical Augmentation:
[list=a]

• Great Strength (as the boon Giant Strength): You may add 1 to your strength. Your maximum strength is 6 rather than 5, and your maximum starting strength is 4 rather than 3.  
• Extremely Agile (as the boon Winged-Man Agility):  You may add 1 to your agility.  Your maximum agility is 6 instead of 5, and your maximum starting agility is 4 rather than 3.

Witcher’s Enhanced Senses:

[list=a]

Sharpened Senses: You have Keen Eyesight, Hearing, and Scent.  You gain a bonus die to all Perception task rolls.

Night Sight: You receive a bonus die when darkness causes negative modifiers to see things.

Alert:  You gain a bonus die to your Priority roll.

Witcher’s Resilience:

[list=a]

Disease Immunity:  You are immune to all diseases, even magical ones.

Poison Resistance:  You receive a bonus die whenever you are resisting the effects of drugs, venom, toxins, and even alcohol.

Quick Recovery:  You are blessed with better endurance than many. When recovering after a combat, you regain 1 additional Lifeblood point, on top of the half you recover normally.

Trademark Weapons:  Witcher’s Silver-steel Sword and a Cold Iron Sword - all Witchers carry a silver-steel sword and a cold iron sword. Some monsters are sensitive to silver and others to cold iron, taking half damage unless attacked with the right metal weapon.  This boon grants a bonus die on attack roll with these weapons.

Boon from Your School

[list=a]

School of the Bear:  Armor Training:  Years of wearing armor, day in and day out, have allowed you to learn how to move efficiently when wearing armor.  Your armor penalty to Agility is reduced by 1 for each type of armor.

School of the Cat:  Finesse Fighter:  You can make a Finesse Stab with any one-handed sword (regularly it can only be with a Thrusting Sword or Dagger.)

School of the Griffon:  Shield Expertise:  a shield gives you a +2 to Protection.

School of the Owl:  Weapon Mastery “Polearms”, you gain a bonus die on attack rolls with them.

School of the Viper:  Two-Weapon Fighter:  Reduce the combat option penalty for two-weapon use by 1 (regularly -2).    

School of the Wolf:  Exploit Enemies Weakness:  You may take a -1 penalty to your attack roll to gain a d2 bonus to your damage roll.

Witchers also have these Flaws at creation:
Flaws

• Distinctive Appearance: Yellow Cat’s Eyes, this characteristic causes you to stand out. You gain a penalty die whenever you try to disguise yourself or maintain a low profile. If you are also Hunted, bounty hunters and spies are twice as likely to spot you on entering and leaving a city.
• Mistrusted:  Non-humans (Witchers are mutants) aren’t trusted by the human majority.  You suffer a penalty die in social situations with humans unless they are already friendly. 

Last night we played our third session of BoL Witcher.  I run a Witcher GM/PC and my wife has a Female Mage character.  Our first session was an introductory one, where her character had caught a ride with a woodcutter and his daughter.  They were attacked by some bandits, and before the battle, the Witcher arrived on scene.  A good battle.  After the battle, they continued on and as they made camp the following night, a pack of 4 wolves were spotted sneaking up on the camp.  The Mage - destroyed all 4 wolves with a Fireball spell (and HP used for Crushing Blow) - I messed up in setting up the wolves, placed them to close to each other - forgetting about her Fireball 

Then for our second session, I converted the adventure in the RTalsorian Games Witcher RPG book "To all a good night" for BoL.  It was a blast - I did have to modify it, because I knew that my wife's character would never surrender to the guard...  Still, my mod worked great.  She loved the adventure.

Last night we ran "Still Waters" from the Witcher RPG Easy Mode PDF.   It was fun and in addition to this adventure (its short) I added another little side-treck to the ending.  Resulted in her Mage acquiring a magic item, The Ring of the Magi (when worn, it reduces the Arcane Power point cost of a spell by 1.)

So far we have fought a Rock Troll (well - encountered, but didn't fight due to the Mage's good Diplomacy roll as a result of her Attractive boon - the Rock Troll was smitten by her looks), a gang of Nekkers, and some Drowners.  In addition, we have also encountered a band of Scoia'tael Elves, bandits, mercenaries, and a Swamp Dragon (from my Jalizar campaign).

I have the three volumes of the Giant Books of Battle Maps and have been using them a lot lately.  Great addition for our games.

So far, both of us are enjoying our time on the Continent.  (We just watched the 3 season of The Witcher on Netflix and are both reading the books.)  I have 4 more adventures to play out, two are already done and the other two need to be finished up.  So at least another 4 weeks - maybe more, because I bought the PDF for Book of Tales and there are 5 or 6 adventures for the Witcher game in there.  (I watched a You Tube video of two guys running one of them, they ran two Witchers for the adventure, one of which was a GM/PC; and did a good job with the story.  So I will most likely convert that one for our 8th adventure.)

Yeah, I am really getting into this campaign.  


 

Last edited by Sigulf (9/02/2023 6:33 am)

Gruntfuttock wrote:

Wow! Sounds like you are having a blast with the Witcher.

I'm still in the middle of a run of Victorian monster hunter games at the moment. However, looking at the Codex I've been playing around with the idea of an 'anti-Conquistador' game. 
 

As someone from Spanish descent, I am offended by your "Anti-Conquistador" game... (Kidding, kidding, kidding).

Sounds good, not an era or style that gets a lot of coverage in RPGs.  I told my wife that after the Witcher Campaign, we might go back to Warhammer.  I really like that setting a lot and have the classic "Night of Blood" adventure converted to BoL already and really want to run it for her.  But it might be a while.  To many campaigns/settings and not enough time.

I recently bought the rpg Eyes Beyond the Torchlight, it's mechanics remind me of BoL alot.  But it uses differnt die types instead of ranks.  So your character would have a Brawn d8, Agility d6, Intellect d6, and Presence d6.  You add the die type from your attribute to a d20 roll and try to beat the Target Number of 12.  Also has Boosts and Setbacks.
Interesting looking game from what I have seen on You Tube, I am trying to get my wife to give it a go... but she keeps saying "what will it do that BoL doesn't do?"  Oh well...

So, last Saturday night we finished our 8th session (1 night per week) of our BoL Witcher campaign.  My wife really likes this campaign - she is really enjoying the Witcher books (as am I) and wants to keep it going.

However, I am kind of tapped out at this time for more adventures, so I am thinking of returning to either our BoL Hyborian Age campaign or our BoL Warhammer Fantasy campaign.   Going to have to think about it.