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Anonymous10/17/25, 20:18No.96776272Vagabond Pulp Fantasy RPG
What's /tg/ thoughts on this new game?
Saw a video review by Deficient Master and holy shit the glazing was hard, especially clear when him and the creator are close friends. Heavily biased review, so I am curious to see what others think.
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Anon10/17/25, 21:26No.96776834
Never heard of it. The eternal question I have whenever any new fantasy RPG comes out is "what does this do that actually, genuinely separates it from the 4897543 FRPGs out there?" If it can't make a clean case to even exist in the first place, I can't see caring about it.
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Anon10/17/25, 22:16No.96777237
friends were really into the character class art but I doubt we'll play it. Nothing I haven't seen before, But I might copy the magic system as some kinda class thing for another game
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Anon10/17/25, 22:18No.96777252
Don't own it. From this review, it seems like a variation of modern attempts to fix D&D by making it more elegant and simpler. Like Black Sword Hack, for example. I think any dedicated GM can make something like that for his friends by himself, adding home rules to the B/X.
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Anon10/17/25, 22:31No.96777330
>class based when classes aren't generic archetypes but oddly specific baseless power sets
why are rpg designers still doing this
>no you can't make your own hero or choose a blank template, you have to choose between Spiderman, Batman, Ironman, Hulk, or Superman! Oh you don't want to play those? Well what about Lice Summoner and Upholstery Bandit? You've never heard of those before!
It's so strange to me
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Anon10/17/25, 22:45No.96777444
The spell system is pretty cool, but it will have scaling problems due to oversimplification and how area of effect works. The solution is the complexity it tries to run away from (such as providing different scaling for different delivery modes for the spell).It also has the same problem with gish builds, were starting as a caster is way more efficient to build one. The idea of sorta building your subclass yourself through perks is pretty good, but if the aim is to streamline it, he could provide premade packages of perks and label them as pseudo-subclasses. This would help him introduce further (managed) complexity that is needed to address edge cases and lack of balance in some regards. It also feels a bit flat, were the fastest and the slowest characters are not that far apart.Also, the art is kinda gay. Only a bit. It could have been great, and the overall layout is good, but some features of the characters rub me the wrong way. Oh and the creator has some silly opinions.
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Anon10/17/25, 22:51No.96777506
seems pretty cool. no GM rolls and TN on character sheet are things I agree are good design. I prefer roll under because it's simple but I can see why some people would prefer roll over, higher=better is intuitive.
The class + perks system seems like a good way to differentiate characters for such a simple system. And it's compatibility with OSR stuff is neat.
I'd like more modifiers but I'd have to try it before I mess with balance.
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Anon10/18/25, 00:09No.96778027
>Pulp Fantasy
What does this game do that Savage Worlds doesn't already?
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Anon10/18/25, 00:43No.96778221
Me personally, I backed this game back in I want to say October of last year.
I backed the book back when this bad boy had so many fucking options it made players head spin because they got choice paralysis.
In 3 months of me backing this damn book, a good chunk of the core game was changed, to be more like bx.
However I'm willing to overlook that shit because there's a lot of pieces within Vagabond that are genuinely cool.
I like the World Design. I like the vibe.
however I'm waiting for Vagabond's Second, third, or even fourth books. I might run the game at a table, because he's posted on bluesky that he's taken steps to get a foundry module up, but it costs MONEY and tarron is BROHKE. so we will just have to wait and see.
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Anon10/18/25, 01:05No.96778356
I picked a copy of the book up, awaiting it to arrive.
The magic system is very cool, and i think the game itself will be a good fit for my pals who want to play something a bit more fantastical than bx/osr stuff.
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Anon10/18/25, 01:20No.96778448
For a B/X with high customization and not-so-high lethality but still dangerous, it's a great system. You can't go wrong when it follows the same rules for dungeon exploration. Anything outside of that is easily explored as well.I don't like that there's no way to generate treasure, whether it's just treasure or monster-derived treasure like B/X. So it falls on the GM to decide what to give or populate the dungeon with. But it's not like there's a guide on how to make one either, you'll mostly be using pre-made adventures.Classes, Perks, and magic system are perfect, I have no complaints. Now, although they are perfect in the sense that they work well for the system's purpose, creating a character that has access to various Perks and/or Spells is time-consuming. You have a huge list of Perks and Spells, but manually there is no way to quickly filter to see what you have as a complete requirement. And there are just too many Spells for those who are deciding which one to use for the first time.
Don't get me wrong, it's nice to have lots of options, but if only there were some way to filter them or make them easier to choose from. Anon's (
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Anon10/18/25, 04:02No.96779391
Haven't played yet, and I don't care about the creator's political views or whatever, the art also is too wacky cartoony for my taste but it's also something easy to bypass by just drawing/imagining my own characters/worlds with the ruleset.Positives that I have to say:
- the new 6 stats and how they function with HP, skills and your rolls are great.
- armor reducing damage and the players having to dodge or defend every attack is way more fun than D&D's AC.Can't really say much about the classes, perks and spells so far, but the ruleset feels like an updated B/X, but this time really updated, not just some homebrew over the same things everyone does. I'll try a couple of sessions.
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Anon10/18/25, 07:37No.96780111
Bump
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Anon10/18/25, 18:17No.96782735
Bump
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Anon10/19/25, 06:39No.96787276
Bump