Cool to see some mix and match between supplements in play. I'm inspired to take my twisted minions out and try it. I ordered mine from lulu when it originally came out but its the only lulu product that I got that came with what I thought to be weak binding that seemed would come apart easily, so I've rarely opened it and just haven't gotten around to buying hardback edition, yet. If playing one or two add on supplements, physical copies are appreciated, but a true gem and fun of the game is owning the pdfs, too, for one you do you can copy and paste pdfs together start creating your own tables and content (been a minute since I worked on it, but I did this for my own "monster tome"). After familiarity with the system, the "play-master" style really is the preferred way to play- what they give you and build from that, either by mix and matching like legos or build off it (like 4 against the Great Old ones or using 4ad to solo D&D or similar games). The cards are a great add on to the system, too. A new updated version of the first card deck, Stump of Elemental evil, is no free for pdf as it adds on the 2 boss monsters and 2 magic treasures missing in the first print run. Either quest decks or Monster decks would give you tons of new monsters to play with Twisted Minions (each quest deck gives you 14 new monsters in total and each monster deck gives you 24 new monsters). Highly recommend downloading pdfs for Fiendish Foes (3rd level monsters) and Caverns of Chaos (4th level monsters). I think hands down on the FB fan page, myself included, for best supplement is Wayfarers & Adventurers. The option to add character traits and milestones to any character during creation really helps add in a splice of roleplaying and some nuggets to build a backstory from. Your idea for invisible goblins is a great one. I think the intention was always that you'd play the core for a few dungeon runs to get a feel for system, but then you're supposed to move on to other monsters. I recommend skipping 3 rings and the Knights Quest book, for now (unless you want more choose your own adventure style play vs random dungeon explore style play). Some books add A LOT of crunch (again that you can mix match in) these are usually White Title books (by the same author of TTT, and play and read more like AD&D versus basic with adult humor and nude art dispersed throughout, fyi- just the white title books, though, which, again, I kind of dub Advanced 4ad, though the fandom just dubs "White Title" books-- there is somewhat of a color code system for the titles of the books based on the author). Of these "advanced play", and "deadlier" books, my favorite is Digressions of Devouring Dead which creates crazy crypt-necropolis themed dungeons. That book gives you "layered" dungeons. All the "twisted" themed books are minion, twisted dungeons, twisted final fights, the magical treasure one, and the Warlike Woes comes with a d66 table that gives the final bosses liar of each dungeon a "Twist". Adjacent to the twist books is the gladiator arena book, Tournament of the Undead Viscount, that also comes with a twist d66 table to roll for each gladiator arena you fight in. Creating storylines, wise, Final Fights is my favorite of the twisted line. Though it is fun to roll twice on the Twisted Dungeons and creatively combine the two results together and come up with a backstory for the dungeon. The Dungeon Atlas book gives short little dungeons to run through with one or two twists to just your normal run of the mill dungeon.
Thank you so much! This is packed full of information and great ideas. That's a bummer to hear about the weak binding - I haven't ordered anything from Lulu yet, but I had thought it would be fun to get a few books from there and compare them to the books from Amazon (which is, against my preference, where the three physical books I have came from), but money is a bit tight for experiments. I love the idea of creating your own "monster tome". I finally came to the realization there's a whole world of "backend work" one can do with the tools provided to craft your own amazing world (or dungeons) to play around in. These are skills I don't have, but I can envision pairing 4AD with some light hexcrawl rules and losing yourself in your own world. Add a simple "oracle" (which I've only learned of in the last month or two) and you could really do anything. I stumbled in to 4AD because I was striking out on dungeon crawler board games that scratched the itch (Sword & Sorcery by Ares Games is high on my list, if anyone seeing this is in the same boat). I am very much in the "I'm just here for the adventure" camp, which I think is in part why I am struggling with the 4AD system. Coming at it from my "this is a board game" perspective is all wrong. It's less "a box (book) of fun", and more a framework; a toolkit. I'm finally coming around to shaking my preconceived notions and seeing 4AD for what it can be. You're dead right that the core book runs its course quickly. It got a bit stale for me after four or five dungeons; I felt I had "seen it all". That really tanked my enthusiasm. I don't know how much the 4AD lore (I don't mean 4AD "game world", I mean 4AD itself) has been retconned, but at this point it is definitely more of a flexible game system than "a game contained within in a book", if that makes any sense (it's 3AM, I can't sleep, forgive me 😁). But, as a newcomer to it, that is partly what makes it so confusing. The core book is written as "here's an adventure in a randomly created dungeon using these classes you choose from" and not "here's a launchpad for unlimited creativity, knock yourself out", with the caveat it takes some effort on the part of the player (unlike a board game, where it's just all in the box with hard set rules for each piece). I had no idea the color of the book title meant anything. I feel like this little bit of knowledge is very useful, if you know about it. I like your "Advanced 4AD", I'll have to have a look at them. Before I start tacking on added complexity (this is hard for me to say because it's the board game equivalent of "house rule", which I generally shy away from) I will likely find something I like to implement in to my more vanilla adventures. After Twisted Final Fights, Warlike Woes was next on my list! I happened to see a description of it somewhere and it sounded exactly like the next supplement/book I desired. Which makes me think "marketing" might be a bit of an issue with 4AD. How is anyone supposed to know what they should buy and in what order (Shadows of Brimstone suffers from this as well)? There's just so MUCH out there and almost none of it feels planned; it all feels tacked on. It feels completely haphazard, which adds to the confusion for newcomers (me!). The worst part is once one familiarizes themselves with what is out there you can become blind to how opaque the system is from the outside and forget the struggle of breaking in. I very much appreciate your well detailed post. I hope others see it and learn as much as I did. Last up is classes. So, off the top, I dislike the "race as class" thing, but without rewriting it myself, that's what the core 4AD book has. Thirty years ago (oof!) I was an AD&D 2nd Edition player (nothing before or since, just so you know where I am coming from), so I have only known race/class. Getting over that, after less ~10 plays of 4AD, I have found myself wanting some more variety in my party. I bought Dark Waters and was very pleased to find the Swashbuckler class included. That said, I think Wayfarers & Adventurers has jumped to the top of my list.
@@CeePhour Yes these are all fair critiques. The main author and creator of 4ad is just really a one man show (who also makes other games, like his wargame skirmish system, Song of Blades and Heroes) and isn't really a "company", with like a team for marketing, strategizing what comes out when, overall picture, and as you can tell from the core rules, the community was able to point out to the creator organization issues that has now warranted a second edition (it's supposed to just organize the rules cleaner, new art, the inclusion of Fiendish Foes, and a small prewritten dungeon to help newcomers- my guess is that it comes out this year at some point?) Something of the effect like this, an indie game was written by an Italian artist and game designer, a few supplements were made (Fiendish Foes, 3 Rings, maybe a few more) and then game slightly fell off for like a year or two. Then like a lightning strike, more and more began to be drawn in to the Facebook fan page and then after a strong community on FB was built, there was a lot of interest in the system. Andrea began making more content, BUT he also began allowing freelanced authors write for 4ad as well (Erik, the author of the White Title books who demonstrated how one could take the basics and just build in the crazy). Still there was the advertisement issue, ect, ect, however, the model that Andrea seemed to decide to go for, now that there were was all this interest and content flowing in, was semi to go the "subscription model" without the subscription. There was a time, I'd say 2019,2020ish (so maybe covid?) where there was a 4ad release about every month, maybe from Andrea himself, then one month from Erik, then one month from a new author. The idea was it was kind of like, pay like 8 bucks a month and you have NEW missions or content to add into your games, OR skip it and only buy like 3 titles that year, up to you. And again, A LOT of this was driven by the community on FB, who also were making their own content (myself included, I converted 4ad's Sunless Citadel). Covid was nuts and people were indoors and here was this fun community that was kind and respectful (and the therapeutic nature of drawing dungeons was also a big draw in that first covid year). And new content was being made and being bought so kind of the MORE, MORE, MORE mindset was there from the community and not, hence a LOT of books began to get planned and written (Andrea has a huge backlog). THEN the Ukraine War happened. Andrea has just married and moved to Ukraine, so he was right there when this conflict first started. His wife and fled back to Italy, BUT hardrives, art equipment, and all of his 4ad files, had be to left in Ukraine. In many ways, he is still "recovering" from just how much the War and other world-wide occurrences effected a indie-rpg-game creator like himself. This why 4ad 2e hasn't come out yet. It was going to be the next release, and THEN the war happened. Right after that, he was going to produce a 3 volume set of collected monster manuals, and again, the war completely obliterated those plans. What got "released" since, was things that he happened to have on hand, that needed little work from him, because he was limited on what he could do, at the time, and a patron was created not only to help refund his company, get funds to have his 4ad files rescued, and help provide food for the people still stuck in their building who weren't able to escape, as well as trying to get his wife's parents to safety. So content was made over the past, what a year or two, but that's where a lot of the "haphazard" comes from, and the, wait, I thought you promised X. TTT has had a HUGE demand over the past 5 years or so from the community, and so it took Andrea probably all of fall and right until December working on formatting and editing that book alone. A little bit of "backstory" and "context" I 100% wished Andrea had a "team" and there was a marketing department ect, and more of a "plan". But I can understand not being able to "pay" such individuals and that this is just all on his shoulders and those that can help out. Another thing to consider, most of the 4ad products were put out with the mindset, you just need core and this and you're good to go! BUT Erik's books are a whole other monkey (to some degree the White title books literally ARE the equivalent of D&D basic vs AD&D1e where there both "D&D" BUT different games) and when designing his games, he basically DID intend that all his games combine together (hence why all throughout the White Title books it will say, if you have XPZ use table QVX ect ect ect because unlike non WT books, his were designed from the mindset of creating just MEGA huge dungeon content to combine together, hence the HUGEness of TTT and why ALL the White Title stuff can be connected to it and why WT books will all reference TTT somewhere).
@@Joshuadmathews Wow, learning how this unfolded and then has been impacted by the pandemic AND a war... this would make a good documentary. Thank you for putting in the time and effort to explain all of this. I would have never known about most of it, and in particular the three volume set - that's basically the exact thing I've been thinking this "needs". And now I know why we don't have it. 😒
@@CeePhour As for lulu binding, I've usually had no complaints from lulu before I think maybe bc TM is maybe so short that is where the print problem came from. Tit for tat I think I've normally prefer the lulu prints over amazon (there are slight differences in everything) and "I think" I prefer lulu's hardbacks over Amazons (undecided though). OH! And one book from lulu, HB, was printed wrong once but I got it sorted. As for Warlike Woes (mind you these are just my opinions) this is a white title book (and the less "rules crunch" of the white title books) BUT I'd go with FF over WW in playing order. FF can be played out of the box, but in my opinion, WW has to be "playmastered" to get the most enjoyment out of it. What I mean is, with FF, once your players are majority level 3, close core book, open up FF and you're good to go! Whereas going from level 1 to 2 to jump into WW and you slightly need a "roadmap" to navigate just how exactly you prefer to incorporate the book. Half the monsters are Erik's creation and half the monsters are Andrea's (they're all separate tables) to my knowledge the book doesn't tell you this, but reading the monster descriptions and making inferences, the first set of monster tables make no logical sense to be found as random enemies in a dungeon. If you didn't know that and just randomly rolled you'd be like, wait this is weird--- if your narrative was moving on from a L1 dungeon to a L2 dungeon. Andrea's tables are the second set of Monster and Boss tables THOSE way more fit the progression of oh we succeeded the core books level 1 dungeon now we're ready to move on to level 2, oh now lets move on to L2 (though I'd argue you still wouldn't be able to use Erik's vermin or boss tables in the front of the book as stand ins for you vermin or weird monster tables to go with Andreas, and instead, would recommend building your own thematic vermin and weird monsters through the monster decks OR use Kobold's boss table as your WM table and probably turn Kobolds Vermin/Minion table as a d12 Vermin table -- or for hard mode --- just use Kobold's minion table for vermin tables and allow for XP or XP for ever two Kobold minion encounters). Again my opinion. Again WW is more of that toolkit hodgepodge game and is super cool mind you once you tweak to your own playstyle--- but I believe that book demands "extra" content and some playmaster customization to get FULL enjoyment out of - but again-- my own opinion and own play experience. A SWEET hack is this, although the book doesn't say this (maybe it does...) I think Erik intended for all the monster tables he wrote to be ALL on the road encounters to and from your towns to your dangerous areas. Narratively, his tables work best as your part just left the town gate (TTT) and have to travel x days from the countryside to get the forest where your next dungeon is. Maybe x days or hexes require you to roll on the first monster tables and this is what happened or who met on the road between town and adventure. THEN, once you've left civilized areas and entered "the forest", then put away WW and crack open Erik's Crucible of Classic Critters to build a forest dungeon (or use a forest quest deck) for x amount of tiles until you reach your dungeon entrance. You can even find rough hex travel rules in Erik's Four Against Netherworld (Forest of the Warlord also has some forest hex travel rules and Erik's book, More Monstruous Mayhem can be used to create those out door crag and mountain locations if you wanted your party to climb mounts before reaching their dwarven Moria esque dungeons to delve in). So as can be seen, FF was created to just lego right on top of the Core book, WW on the other hand was probably more intended to be combined with other lego sets --- to me, WW, Greedy Gifts of the Guildmasters, and TTT seem like they all go together like a trilogy because their rules for factions overlap and WW was like this early sneak peak that was like, hey, with some creativity, here is how you can use 4ad OUTSIDE of a dungeon. BUT AGAIN this is to be expected of Erik's books because they were intended to all overlap customize together NON White Title books for the most part just require the Core book to get the most fun out of (or Abyss if the supplement is intended for L5 and higher). In my opinion, the most "boardgame" experience would be Play Core book. When they're level 2, roll their character trait and milestone from W&A and switch out the minions table from core with the minions table at the back of W&A if you want a slight change up (or just keep corebook stuff). Once they're level 3, play FF. Once their level 4, play Caves of Chaos. I love the 6 missions idea presented in that book, too, you can loosely tie them together to create a semi-connected campaign. Once they're level 5, witch to Abyss. That's the most right of the box boardgame experience with 4ad, and with some customization, you can use WW instead for level 2 and leave and entirely move away from the corebook. The rest are all then legos to expand and build your own experience out of.
@@CeePhour Albrisalso has print on demand printing and Pnparcade during blckfriday also sells pdfs at like 20%, that's how I've gotten my pdfs in the past. As far as class/race, because of how the game was built, it is very tricky to create balance when trying to combine classes together (although I have a trove of google docs where I've attempted it in the past). Simply putting the thief and dwarf together will create an OP character (unless you wanted to make 2 Against Darkness). Probably the easiest route is just use imagination and add in a character trait from W&A. Look at which one would fit for your race or class, or use them as a guidepost to create a custom one. Add to a Rogue the character trait which gives a character a luck point per adventure, and BAM you have a halfling Rogue now. Want a dwarven one, add the character trait that adds one extra life point and now you have a hefty dwarven rogue. Because you chose your CR, instead of rolling randomly, you might rule that now you must give your character a negative character trait, too, then give your Dwarf Rogue the Drunkard character trait to boot. If you want "more crunch", any encounter that says, X enemy will use any spare attacks towards Dwarfs, now also counts against your Rogue, as well as any game effects that say, skip reactions if Dwarfs are in your group and X enemy now will fight to the death. It will be up to you if you should allow your Rogue dwarf saves, too (maybe your Rogue can save as a Dwarf x many times in an adventure where x is their level or maybe half their level rounded down, or just skip that and they can only save as Rogues). This would probably be the easiest method. Another class that semi-has the imagination aspect built in the sub-classes for Clerics throughout the books. In Crucible of Classic Critters there is a subclass cleric who worships an elven deity and can change their blessing spells into spells similar to charm, just cosmetically say this is an elven cleric. Likewise in Degressions of Devouring Dead there is cleric variant who worships a dwarven smith god who can repair broken weapons and can perform trap saves like a Rogue, and that cleric can cosmetically be considered either a Dwarven Cleric or Dwarven Rogue right out of the gate. More Mountainous Mayhem has another dwarven deity worshiping cleric variant as well as a cleric variant who worships the deity to the orcs, so again, cosmetically turn that character into an orc cleric. Other than that, anything else will require open the hood to a lot of the classes and require a lot of tweaking and reworking for balance sake. Another rules mechanic to use as an avenue is the minor skill mechanic. Only a few classes have them. In Concise Collection of Classes, for example, starting at 3rd level, Dwarfs can choose a clan and begin to learn clan specific minor skills when they level up giving them unique buffs. You could just start 4ad out as a regular Rogue whom you've cosmetically changed as a Dwarven Rogue (but not mechanically), once they reach level 3, you might rule that they too have now access these Dwarf clan minor skills. The minor skill book Fighters/Knights/Cavilers, ect, is Zealous Zouaves, which I think calls their fighter minor skills: Knight guilds or something like that. Maybe your "fighter elf" starts the game as an elf mechanics wise (and you roleplay all their moves ect as an elf fighter would play) but once they are 3rd level, you allow them access to a Knights guild and perk making them official a Warrior Elf. Maybe OP, but perhaps you allow them access to both Warrior and Elf 5th level Skills from Abyss-- or maybe rule that since you went the Elf-Fighter route, they no longer gain access to Elf Skills from 4AA and instead can only pick Warrior skills (or for balance, the only Expert Skills they can pick up are any crossover skills that both Warriors and Elfs share, eliminating the others as options that don't. For Clerics, just rule that your Halfling at level 1 worships x deity. Once they are level three, whenever they cast blessing from a scroll, they gain access to that deities blessing found off of whatever cleric subclass variant you are modeling after. Wizards, maybe allow them to once they reach 3rd level they can add 1/2 L to spellcasting rolls and trade an success XP roll to memorize a spell form a spell scroll.
@@CeePhour being a game dev, working with creative stuff on the computer is quite nice actually to have music / podcast / video playing in the background. :D I just spread it out if it is too long ;)
(commenting as I watch and this may take more than 1 day to watch due to it's length, so this comment will grow as I watch the video) I've bought .pdf's for all my 4AD stuff because yeah, printing out pages as needed is handy, and especially in the 4AD books they stress to change the change to suit you and that is a good thing, so home-brewing the invisible gremlins out is good :) ) Waiting for Szilvi to get her canva tutorial done :) (as an aside, how many cameras do you use? What sort fo setup do you have?)
While I still have a little bit of usefulness of my eyes left (since 40 they've started getting blurrier every year) I think I can print four pages per side of paper and get by with the PDFs printed out. The tables might need to be larger, but the flavor and fluff I don't think I need to "waste" so much paper on. I maintain I'd like to get a PDF with purchase of a physical book, but I get that that's having my cake and eating it too. My setup is pretty basic, and most importantly, inexpensive. I'm not an A/V guy, so I don't really know what I'm doing, but it's working well enough. There are three Logitech webcams (C920, C922, Brio (the original)) hooked up to my main desktop PC, all recording in 1080p. Two of them I had for years, as I used them back when I did a video game related podcast that I started posting on UA-cam (the videos are gone now). Here's a bit of useless trivia: I started the podcast before "podcast" was a word, back on February 25, 2003, exactly 20 years to the day that I posted my first board game video here on UA-cam (Final Girl). One of the webcams is pointing straight down over a rectangular dice tray that I was able to greenscreen using a lime green posterboard from the dollar store. As I'm sure you know, lighting is a huge issue, reflections are the bane of my existence! I have a few cheap lights around the table and constantly have to move them around the room to avoid glare. Also, due to not knowing what I'm doing with lighting, the green sheet hanging on the wall behind me sometimes it doesn't work so well. The microphone is less of a challenge. In my very first videos I was using a $170 Yeti X, and no matter what I did I wasn't happy with what I could do with it for what I'm trying to do (it works fine for what I would do with video games). I then tried a cheap $30 lavalier Sony mic that was terrible (I don't think that one actually made it into any videos), lesson learned on buying cheap mics! Finally settled on what I'm 90% happy with, a $100 Rode VideoMic Go II, which I would replace with the big brother version if I ever get $250 to blow on upgrades. It's been working great, almost too great. It picks up the neighbour mowing their lawn, for example :) Cameras and mic are connected by USB, everything recorded in OBS. I tried to use my "real camera" (Canon M50, first gen) for the overhead shot, connected to a video capture card but because I don't know what I'm doing I could never get it to look half as good as the webcam. I imagine I need a certain lens but I can't spend hundreds of dollars on testing lenses. I tried to find help online but nobody seemed to understand what I was asking, and information I read didn't compute because I didn't understand it (I'm not an A/V guy...).
@@CeePhour Hokey smokes. I'm 61, disabled and on a VERY limited budged - I use my tablet for most recording anymore, and i have a ps4 with a camera for other shots. My laptop isn't strong enough to run more than the built-in webcam... Not a bad setup you have then! :)
Cool to see some mix and match between supplements in play. I'm inspired to take my twisted minions out and try it. I ordered mine from lulu when it originally came out but its the only lulu product that I got that came with what I thought to be weak binding that seemed would come apart easily, so I've rarely opened it and just haven't gotten around to buying hardback edition, yet. If playing one or two add on supplements, physical copies are appreciated, but a true gem and fun of the game is owning the pdfs, too, for one you do you can copy and paste pdfs together start creating your own tables and content (been a minute since I worked on it, but I did this for my own "monster tome"). After familiarity with the system, the "play-master" style really is the preferred way to play- what they give you and build from that, either by mix and matching like legos or build off it (like 4 against the Great Old ones or using 4ad to solo D&D or similar games).
The cards are a great add on to the system, too. A new updated version of the first card deck, Stump of Elemental evil, is no free for pdf as it adds on the 2 boss monsters and 2 magic treasures missing in the first print run. Either quest decks or Monster decks would give you tons of new monsters to play with Twisted Minions (each quest deck gives you 14 new monsters in total and each monster deck gives you 24 new monsters). Highly recommend downloading pdfs for Fiendish Foes (3rd level monsters) and Caverns of Chaos (4th level monsters). I think hands down on the FB fan page, myself included, for best supplement is Wayfarers & Adventurers. The option to add character traits and milestones to any character during creation really helps add in a splice of roleplaying and some nuggets to build a backstory from. Your idea for invisible goblins is a great one. I think the intention was always that you'd play the core for a few dungeon runs to get a feel for system, but then you're supposed to move on to other monsters.
I recommend skipping 3 rings and the Knights Quest book, for now (unless you want more choose your own adventure style play vs random dungeon explore style play). Some books add A LOT of crunch (again that you can mix match in) these are usually White Title books (by the same author of TTT, and play and read more like AD&D versus basic with adult humor and nude art dispersed throughout, fyi- just the white title books, though, which, again, I kind of dub Advanced 4ad, though the fandom just dubs "White Title" books-- there is somewhat of a color code system for the titles of the books based on the author). Of these "advanced play", and "deadlier" books, my favorite is Digressions of Devouring Dead which creates crazy crypt-necropolis themed dungeons. That book gives you "layered" dungeons.
All the "twisted" themed books are minion, twisted dungeons, twisted final fights, the magical treasure one, and the Warlike Woes comes with a d66 table that gives the final bosses liar of each dungeon a "Twist". Adjacent to the twist books is the gladiator arena book, Tournament of the Undead Viscount, that also comes with a twist d66 table to roll for each gladiator arena you fight in. Creating storylines, wise, Final Fights is my favorite of the twisted line. Though it is fun to roll twice on the Twisted Dungeons and creatively combine the two results together and come up with a backstory for the dungeon. The Dungeon Atlas book gives short little dungeons to run through with one or two twists to just your normal run of the mill dungeon.
Thank you so much! This is packed full of information and great ideas.
That's a bummer to hear about the weak binding - I haven't ordered anything from Lulu yet, but I had thought it would be fun to get a few books from there and compare them to the books from Amazon (which is, against my preference, where the three physical books I have came from), but money is a bit tight for experiments.
I love the idea of creating your own "monster tome". I finally came to the realization there's a whole world of "backend work" one can do with the tools provided to craft your own amazing world (or dungeons) to play around in. These are skills I don't have, but I can envision pairing 4AD with some light hexcrawl rules and losing yourself in your own world. Add a simple "oracle" (which I've only learned of in the last month or two) and you could really do anything.
I stumbled in to 4AD because I was striking out on dungeon crawler board games that scratched the itch (Sword & Sorcery by Ares Games is high on my list, if anyone seeing this is in the same boat). I am very much in the "I'm just here for the adventure" camp, which I think is in part why I am struggling with the 4AD system. Coming at it from my "this is a board game" perspective is all wrong. It's less "a box (book) of fun", and more a framework; a toolkit. I'm finally coming around to shaking my preconceived notions and seeing 4AD for what it can be.
You're dead right that the core book runs its course quickly. It got a bit stale for me after four or five dungeons; I felt I had "seen it all". That really tanked my enthusiasm. I don't know how much the 4AD lore (I don't mean 4AD "game world", I mean 4AD itself) has been retconned, but at this point it is definitely more of a flexible game system than "a game contained within in a book", if that makes any sense (it's 3AM, I can't sleep, forgive me 😁). But, as a newcomer to it, that is partly what makes it so confusing. The core book is written as "here's an adventure in a randomly created dungeon using these classes you choose from" and not "here's a launchpad for unlimited creativity, knock yourself out", with the caveat it takes some effort on the part of the player (unlike a board game, where it's just all in the box with hard set rules for each piece).
I had no idea the color of the book title meant anything. I feel like this little bit of knowledge is very useful, if you know about it. I like your "Advanced 4AD", I'll have to have a look at them. Before I start tacking on added complexity (this is hard for me to say because it's the board game equivalent of "house rule", which I generally shy away from) I will likely find something I like to implement in to my more vanilla adventures.
After Twisted Final Fights, Warlike Woes was next on my list! I happened to see a description of it somewhere and it sounded exactly like the next supplement/book I desired. Which makes me think "marketing" might be a bit of an issue with 4AD. How is anyone supposed to know what they should buy and in what order (Shadows of Brimstone suffers from this as well)? There's just so MUCH out there and almost none of it feels planned; it all feels tacked on. It feels completely haphazard, which adds to the confusion for newcomers (me!). The worst part is once one familiarizes themselves with what is out there you can become blind to how opaque the system is from the outside and forget the struggle of breaking in. I very much appreciate your well detailed post. I hope others see it and learn as much as I did.
Last up is classes. So, off the top, I dislike the "race as class" thing, but without rewriting it myself, that's what the core 4AD book has. Thirty years ago (oof!) I was an AD&D 2nd Edition player (nothing before or since, just so you know where I am coming from), so I have only known race/class. Getting over that, after less ~10 plays of 4AD, I have found myself wanting some more variety in my party. I bought Dark Waters and was very pleased to find the Swashbuckler class included. That said, I think Wayfarers & Adventurers has jumped to the top of my list.
@@CeePhour Yes these are all fair critiques. The main author and creator of 4ad is just really a one man show (who also makes other games, like his wargame skirmish system, Song of Blades and Heroes) and isn't really a "company", with like a team for marketing, strategizing what comes out when, overall picture, and as you can tell from the core rules, the community was able to point out to the creator organization issues that has now warranted a second edition (it's supposed to just organize the rules cleaner, new art, the inclusion of Fiendish Foes, and a small prewritten dungeon to help newcomers- my guess is that it comes out this year at some point?)
Something of the effect like this, an indie game was written by an Italian artist and game designer, a few supplements were made (Fiendish Foes, 3 Rings, maybe a few more) and then game slightly fell off for like a year or two. Then like a lightning strike, more and more began to be drawn in to the Facebook fan page and then after a strong community on FB was built, there was a lot of interest in the system. Andrea began making more content, BUT he also began allowing freelanced authors write for 4ad as well (Erik, the author of the White Title books who demonstrated how one could take the basics and just build in the crazy). Still there was the advertisement issue, ect, ect, however, the model that Andrea seemed to decide to go for, now that there were was all this interest and content flowing in, was semi to go the "subscription model" without the subscription. There was a time, I'd say 2019,2020ish (so maybe covid?) where there was a 4ad release about every month, maybe from Andrea himself, then one month from Erik, then one month from a new author. The idea was it was kind of like, pay like 8 bucks a month and you have NEW missions or content to add into your games, OR skip it and only buy like 3 titles that year, up to you. And again, A LOT of this was driven by the community on FB, who also were making their own content (myself included, I converted 4ad's Sunless Citadel).
Covid was nuts and people were indoors and here was this fun community that was kind and respectful (and the therapeutic nature of drawing dungeons was also a big draw in that first covid year). And new content was being made and being bought so kind of the MORE, MORE, MORE mindset was there from the community and not, hence a LOT of books began to get planned and written (Andrea has a huge backlog). THEN the Ukraine War happened. Andrea has just married and moved to Ukraine, so he was right there when this conflict first started. His wife and fled back to Italy, BUT hardrives, art equipment, and all of his 4ad files, had be to left in Ukraine. In many ways, he is still "recovering" from just how much the War and other world-wide occurrences effected a indie-rpg-game creator like himself. This why 4ad 2e hasn't come out yet. It was going to be the next release, and THEN the war happened. Right after that, he was going to produce a 3 volume set of collected monster manuals, and again, the war completely obliterated those plans. What got "released" since, was things that he happened to have on hand, that needed little work from him, because he was limited on what he could do, at the time, and a patron was created not only to help refund his company, get funds to have his 4ad files rescued, and help provide food for the people still stuck in their building who weren't able to escape, as well as trying to get his wife's parents to safety. So content was made over the past, what a year or two, but that's where a lot of the "haphazard" comes from, and the, wait, I thought you promised X. TTT has had a HUGE demand over the past 5 years or so from the community, and so it took Andrea probably all of fall and right until December working on formatting and editing that book alone.
A little bit of "backstory" and "context" I 100% wished Andrea had a "team" and there was a marketing department ect, and more of a "plan". But I can understand not being able to "pay" such individuals and that this is just all on his shoulders and those that can help out. Another thing to consider, most of the 4ad products were put out with the mindset, you just need core and this and you're good to go! BUT Erik's books are a whole other monkey (to some degree the White title books literally ARE the equivalent of D&D basic vs AD&D1e where there both "D&D" BUT different games) and when designing his games, he basically DID intend that all his games combine together (hence why all throughout the White Title books it will say, if you have XPZ use table QVX ect ect ect because unlike non WT books, his were designed from the mindset of creating just MEGA huge dungeon content to combine together, hence the HUGEness of TTT and why ALL the White Title stuff can be connected to it and why WT books will all reference TTT somewhere).
@@Joshuadmathews Wow, learning how this unfolded and then has been impacted by the pandemic AND a war... this would make a good documentary. Thank you for putting in the time and effort to explain all of this. I would have never known about most of it, and in particular the three volume set - that's basically the exact thing I've been thinking this "needs". And now I know why we don't have it. 😒
@@CeePhour As for lulu binding, I've usually had no complaints from lulu before I think maybe bc TM is maybe so short that is where the print problem came from. Tit for tat I think I've normally prefer the lulu prints over amazon (there are slight differences in everything) and "I think" I prefer lulu's hardbacks over Amazons (undecided though). OH! And one book from lulu, HB, was printed wrong once but I got it sorted.
As for Warlike Woes (mind you these are just my opinions) this is a white title book (and the less "rules crunch" of the white title books) BUT I'd go with FF over WW in playing order. FF can be played out of the box, but in my opinion, WW has to be "playmastered" to get the most enjoyment out of it. What I mean is, with FF, once your players are majority level 3, close core book, open up FF and you're good to go! Whereas going from level 1 to 2 to jump into WW and you slightly need a "roadmap" to navigate just how exactly you prefer to incorporate the book. Half the monsters are Erik's creation and half the monsters are Andrea's (they're all separate tables) to my knowledge the book doesn't tell you this, but reading the monster descriptions and making inferences, the first set of monster tables make no logical sense to be found as random enemies in a dungeon. If you didn't know that and just randomly rolled you'd be like, wait this is weird--- if your narrative was moving on from a L1 dungeon to a L2 dungeon. Andrea's tables are the second set of Monster and Boss tables THOSE way more fit the progression of oh we succeeded the core books level 1 dungeon now we're ready to move on to level 2, oh now lets move on to L2 (though I'd argue you still wouldn't be able to use Erik's vermin or boss tables in the front of the book as stand ins for you vermin or weird monster tables to go with Andreas, and instead, would recommend building your own thematic vermin and weird monsters through the monster decks OR use Kobold's boss table as your WM table and probably turn Kobolds Vermin/Minion table as a d12 Vermin table -- or for hard mode --- just use Kobold's minion table for vermin tables and allow for XP or XP for ever two Kobold minion encounters). Again my opinion. Again WW is more of that toolkit hodgepodge game and is super cool mind you once you tweak to your own playstyle--- but I believe that book demands "extra" content and some playmaster customization to get FULL enjoyment out of - but again-- my own opinion and own play experience. A SWEET hack is this, although the book doesn't say this (maybe it does...) I think Erik intended for all the monster tables he wrote to be ALL on the road encounters to and from your towns to your dangerous areas. Narratively, his tables work best as your part just left the town gate (TTT) and have to travel x days from the countryside to get the forest where your next dungeon is. Maybe x days or hexes require you to roll on the first monster tables and this is what happened or who met on the road between town and adventure. THEN, once you've left civilized areas and entered "the forest", then put away WW and crack open Erik's Crucible of Classic Critters to build a forest dungeon (or use a forest quest deck) for x amount of tiles until you reach your dungeon entrance. You can even find rough hex travel rules in Erik's Four Against Netherworld (Forest of the Warlord also has some forest hex travel rules and Erik's book, More Monstruous Mayhem can be used to create those out door crag and mountain locations if you wanted your party to climb mounts before reaching their dwarven Moria esque dungeons to delve in).
So as can be seen, FF was created to just lego right on top of the Core book, WW on the other hand was probably more intended to be combined with other lego sets --- to me, WW, Greedy Gifts of the Guildmasters, and TTT seem like they all go together like a trilogy because their rules for factions overlap and WW was like this early sneak peak that was like, hey, with some creativity, here is how you can use 4ad OUTSIDE of a dungeon. BUT AGAIN this is to be expected of Erik's books because they were intended to all overlap customize together NON White Title books for the most part just require the Core book to get the most fun out of (or Abyss if the supplement is intended for L5 and higher). In my opinion, the most "boardgame" experience would be Play Core book. When they're level 2, roll their character trait and milestone from W&A and switch out the minions table from core with the minions table at the back of W&A if you want a slight change up (or just keep corebook stuff). Once they're level 3, play FF. Once their level 4, play Caves of Chaos. I love the 6 missions idea presented in that book, too, you can loosely tie them together to create a semi-connected campaign. Once they're level 5, witch to Abyss. That's the most right of the box boardgame experience with 4ad, and with some customization, you can use WW instead for level 2 and leave and entirely move away from the corebook. The rest are all then legos to expand and build your own experience out of.
@@CeePhour Albrisalso has print on demand printing and Pnparcade during blckfriday also sells pdfs at like 20%, that's how I've gotten my pdfs in the past.
As far as class/race, because of how the game was built, it is very tricky to create balance when trying to combine classes together (although I have a trove of google docs where I've attempted it in the past). Simply putting the thief and dwarf together will create an OP character (unless you wanted to make 2 Against Darkness). Probably the easiest route is just use imagination and add in a character trait from W&A. Look at which one would fit for your race or class, or use them as a guidepost to create a custom one. Add to a Rogue the character trait which gives a character a luck point per adventure, and BAM you have a halfling Rogue now. Want a dwarven one, add the character trait that adds one extra life point and now you have a hefty dwarven rogue. Because you chose your CR, instead of rolling randomly, you might rule that now you must give your character a negative character trait, too, then give your Dwarf Rogue the Drunkard character trait to boot. If you want "more crunch", any encounter that says, X enemy will use any spare attacks towards Dwarfs, now also counts against your Rogue, as well as any game effects that say, skip reactions if Dwarfs are in your group and X enemy now will fight to the death. It will be up to you if you should allow your Rogue dwarf saves, too (maybe your Rogue can save as a Dwarf x many times in an adventure where x is their level or maybe half their level rounded down, or just skip that and they can only save as Rogues). This would probably be the easiest method. Another class that semi-has the imagination aspect built in the sub-classes for Clerics throughout the books. In Crucible of Classic Critters there is a subclass cleric who worships an elven deity and can change their blessing spells into spells similar to charm, just cosmetically say this is an elven cleric. Likewise in Degressions of Devouring Dead there is cleric variant who worships a dwarven smith god who can repair broken weapons and can perform trap saves like a Rogue, and that cleric can cosmetically be considered either a Dwarven Cleric or Dwarven Rogue right out of the gate. More Mountainous Mayhem has another dwarven deity worshiping cleric variant as well as a cleric variant who worships the deity to the orcs, so again, cosmetically turn that character into an orc cleric. Other than that, anything else will require open the hood to a lot of the classes and require a lot of tweaking and reworking for balance sake.
Another rules mechanic to use as an avenue is the minor skill mechanic. Only a few classes have them. In Concise Collection of Classes, for example, starting at 3rd level, Dwarfs can choose a clan and begin to learn clan specific minor skills when they level up giving them unique buffs. You could just start 4ad out as a regular Rogue whom you've cosmetically changed as a Dwarven Rogue (but not mechanically), once they reach level 3, you might rule that they too have now access these Dwarf clan minor skills. The minor skill book Fighters/Knights/Cavilers, ect, is Zealous Zouaves, which I think calls their fighter minor skills: Knight guilds or something like that. Maybe your "fighter elf" starts the game as an elf mechanics wise (and you roleplay all their moves ect as an elf fighter would play) but once they are 3rd level, you allow them access to a Knights guild and perk making them official a Warrior Elf. Maybe OP, but perhaps you allow them access to both Warrior and Elf 5th level Skills from Abyss-- or maybe rule that since you went the Elf-Fighter route, they no longer gain access to Elf Skills from 4AA and instead can only pick Warrior skills (or for balance, the only Expert Skills they can pick up are any crossover skills that both Warriors and Elfs share, eliminating the others as options that don't. For Clerics, just rule that your Halfling at level 1 worships x deity. Once they are level three, whenever they cast blessing from a scroll, they gain access to that deities blessing found off of whatever cleric subclass variant you are modeling after. Wizards, maybe allow them to once they reach 3rd level they can add 1/2 L to spellcasting rolls and trade an success XP roll to memorize a spell form a spell scroll.
Since you mentioned it, I would like to see people playing d100 further then just the initial quest and one or two more.
Looking forward to watch this! So fantastic that you play through some of the other boos, and not just the base rulebook.
It's a bit longer than I thought it was going to be, hopefully you have time at work to kill, or a boring drive ahead of you😅
@@CeePhour being a game dev, working with creative stuff on the computer is quite nice actually to have music / podcast / video playing in the background. :D I just spread it out if it is too long ;)
“No Whammi’s” …🤣
(commenting as I watch and this may take more than 1 day to watch due to it's length, so this comment will grow as I watch the video) I've bought .pdf's for all my 4AD stuff because yeah, printing out pages as needed is handy, and especially in the 4AD books they stress to change the change to suit you and that is a good thing, so home-brewing the invisible gremlins out is good :) ) Waiting for Szilvi to get her canva tutorial done :) (as an aside, how many cameras do you use? What sort fo setup do you have?)
While I still have a little bit of usefulness of my eyes left (since 40 they've started getting blurrier every year) I think I can print four pages per side of paper and get by with the PDFs printed out. The tables might need to be larger, but the flavor and fluff I don't think I need to "waste" so much paper on. I maintain I'd like to get a PDF with purchase of a physical book, but I get that that's having my cake and eating it too.
My setup is pretty basic, and most importantly, inexpensive. I'm not an A/V guy, so I don't really know what I'm doing, but it's working well enough.
There are three Logitech webcams (C920, C922, Brio (the original)) hooked up to my main desktop PC, all recording in 1080p. Two of them I had for years, as I used them back when I did a video game related podcast that I started posting on UA-cam (the videos are gone now). Here's a bit of useless trivia: I started the podcast before "podcast" was a word, back on February 25, 2003, exactly 20 years to the day that I posted my first board game video here on UA-cam (Final Girl). One of the webcams is pointing straight down over a rectangular dice tray that I was able to greenscreen using a lime green posterboard from the dollar store.
As I'm sure you know, lighting is a huge issue, reflections are the bane of my existence! I have a few cheap lights around the table and constantly have to move them around the room to avoid glare. Also, due to not knowing what I'm doing with lighting, the green sheet hanging on the wall behind me sometimes it doesn't work so well.
The microphone is less of a challenge. In my very first videos I was using a $170 Yeti X, and no matter what I did I wasn't happy with what I could do with it for what I'm trying to do (it works fine for what I would do with video games). I then tried a cheap $30 lavalier Sony mic that was terrible (I don't think that one actually made it into any videos), lesson learned on buying cheap mics! Finally settled on what I'm 90% happy with, a $100 Rode VideoMic Go II, which I would replace with the big brother version if I ever get $250 to blow on upgrades. It's been working great, almost too great. It picks up the neighbour mowing their lawn, for example :)
Cameras and mic are connected by USB, everything recorded in OBS. I tried to use my "real camera" (Canon M50, first gen) for the overhead shot, connected to a video capture card but because I don't know what I'm doing I could never get it to look half as good as the webcam. I imagine I need a certain lens but I can't spend hundreds of dollars on testing lenses. I tried to find help online but nobody seemed to understand what I was asking, and information I read didn't compute because I didn't understand it (I'm not an A/V guy...).
@@CeePhour Hokey smokes. I'm 61, disabled and on a VERY limited budged - I use my tablet for most recording anymore, and i have a ps4 with a camera for other shots. My laptop isn't strong enough to run more than the built-in webcam... Not a bad setup you have then! :)