As a Symbaroum GM here, for magic, at Adept level in your tradition, you take only 1 temporary corruption per cast attempt. So I don't really get the comments on magic being limited. Also, Rituals is where magic lives in Symbaroum. Also, magic characters aren't limited to being only that. They can have another trick up their sleeves. It's very open.
More please. I've watched this several times now and really appreciate all of the players sharing their experiences. Consider doing this not just for Symbaroum, but your other games. Player insight like this is fantastic. Great job.
Last comment, the main campaign (Throne of Thorns) will bring you in Davokar, but not necessarily to search for treasure. It's more varied than that. There is city adventures, faction play, and expeditions.
Colonization. I love that Symbaroum, even the setting alone got you to question your presuppositions about land and who controls it. The setting is so rich and feels so real, it really can explore those nuances find in the real world. It's not as easy as colonization bad, traditional owners good.
Good talk. Interesting thoughts. I’ve now followed all your Symbaroum sessions and it’s quite fun. I agree with Mike, the most Symbaric and powerful moment this far was the meating and deal with Xanatha. What is her thoughts on the party not fulfilling their part I wonder ... But also. What you’ve gone through this far is an apetizer for what comes. The Throne of thorns-campaign is where Symbaroum really comes to it’s best. The world grows, the complexity rises as are the stakes, and the players actually can make some kind of difference. Looking forward to see how you’ll manage.
The tanky Bezerker has clear weakness, such as, how do they get our of Davokar if the rest of thier party is dead? In addition strangulation abilities and many spells can take them out of combat or ignore armour. As well as attribute damage especially to strength. Letting them shine sometimes is great, but you have to let them know they're vulnerable too
This was interesting, I don’t remember seeing a discussion like that about the system and settings. I’d love to see you guys comment on the published adventures as you go through them.
I love the setting and the system is good, even if the combat options are daunting when you first read the books (you can use so many different stats to attack). The corruption rules are still a little bit too harsh and the player's book could be better organized and some rules easier to be found. What comes to the exploration, we once had a game night where we went hunting. Played five hours and never had a dull moment even if our game comprised of finding edible plants and hunting animals 😅 In the end I almost died, because I tried to shoot a huge moose, which then attacked me 😂 But of course when following an adventure, you can't play each rabbit hunt every time, but there are different ways to make the forest feel alive and threatening.
Regarding character motivations to go into Davokar, that is Session 0 material. The adventures throw ideas up in the air that the GM and players can pick up and build upon.
In the GMG they say the design is intended to have offensive powers be more powerful then defensive powers. So risk will always be there, it’s ingrained in the system.
Thanks a lot for this video. I've been intrigued by the setting and this has only increased my interest. I was wondering what your thoughts are on the recent and successful Ruins of Symbaroum Kickstarter? Can that dark and intriguing system make the transition to D&D 5E? Curse of Strahd makes me think there is room for Horror in D&D. But can you preserve that sense of survival at all costs in an unforgiving and scary world? I'm tempted by the conversion because it's often easier to make players enthusiastic for a system they know and love.
Opinion is a little bit split on the team because we have some D&D folk and some not-so-D&D folk but even the latter think it's an absolutely solid step forward from Free League to get a higher level of visibility on the world of Symbaroum. Setting is one of the weaknesses of modern D&D, so providing something fresh for players is a real win. And for those of us old enough to remember Dark Sun and Ravenloft, I agree there is absolutely room for D&D to be unforgiving and horror-driven. Obviously it's great to have thematic mechanics, but given that Symbaroum has the inverse d20 core roll I don't think it'll lose too much in translation.
I have the Kickstarter books coming (that was actually how I learned about Symbaroum in the first place). They have some great rules in the conversion, like the way hit points are not automatically returned after a long rest, but they should have done even more. We still have the overly magical abilities and the fireballs and raise deads of the D&D, which are not the best fit for this setting. But it still seems better than vanilla D&D and we haven't really playtested yet, so it might be fun! And the books look awesome 😎
@@ShardCollector Yes, I'm looking forward to it. I think a D&D setting that makes players more wary and conscious of where the next safe place will be sounds interesting. And the setting in Symbaroum sounds different enough to make it feel mysterious to those used to the Sword Coast. I'm sure magic related corruption will be useful to tone down the reliance on the big spells too. I've only quickly gone through the PDFs. I'm waiting for the books. Can't wait to play it!
The dangers of Davokar. Yeah, you really have to utilise the survival and traveling mechanics to understand the threat. Because it's a slow foreboding threat. It doesn't kill you in one go, it wears you down. You run out of resources and slowly start to die and you have to decide if you turn around or keep going. Removing that takes alot away from the game.
Regarding magic, your theurg was adept in Theurgy, wasn’t he? He would then take 1 temporary corruption per casting attempt. Which means he could invoke multiple powers in a single combat scene without issue.
I would argue there is a kind of “good” faction, but it’s not all good for sure. And yes, I can confirm the designers voluntarily included the themes of colonization and exploitation to make us think about these things. Chris is right there.
Elle's right, Davokar becomes Davokar through mystery, exploration, discovery, more than just combat. It’s really a GMing challenge. There isn’t that much guidance in the books on how to GM this horror or this creepy ambience.
Interesting thoughts on colonialism. Brings me to this conclusion: Symbaroum is a great game for campaign play, at the table or on VTT, but not as much for RUclips Actual Plays. The themes of colonialism and appropriation are complicated for streamers, but at a private table, actually really interesting to include in the campaign as needed.
It is so easy to pull out a broken character sheet from googling "how to break symbaroum" that you as a dm need to either be ready to let the berserker or x roll over the encounters or risk killing all the weaker players outright by adding more ebemies and more dice. Thus, the berserker dying was great for the group. The group was much more even and dynamic after. It is hard to balance characters with 1 dice defense vs chars with 3. The archers cannot target the nonbroken pc as they instantly die if 3 attack them. But to challenge the broken pc you would need alternative damage, mind bend and 2 attack dice which risks oneshotting all the other pcs, each combat. Nah symbaroum is best on roleplaying. The conbat is onky balanced if you ALSO BUILD FOR RP. if you spend all on increasing offence and defence and rhe other picks flavor you just overshadow them all like we saw here.
As a Symbaroum GM here, for magic, at Adept level in your tradition, you take only 1 temporary corruption per cast attempt. So I don't really get the comments on magic being limited.
Also, Rituals is where magic lives in Symbaroum. Also, magic characters aren't limited to being only that. They can have another trick up their sleeves. It's very open.
More please. I've watched this several times now and really appreciate all of the players sharing their experiences.
Consider doing this not just for Symbaroum, but your other games.
Player insight like this is fantastic. Great job.
Last comment, the main campaign (Throne of Thorns) will bring you in Davokar, but not necessarily to search for treasure. It's more varied than that. There is city adventures, faction play, and expeditions.
Colonization. I love that Symbaroum, even the setting alone got you to question your presuppositions about land and who controls it. The setting is so rich and feels so real, it really can explore those nuances find in the real world. It's not as easy as colonization bad, traditional owners good.
Thanks for this discussion. It gave me a lot to think about for my own campaign.
Chris nailed it! Deep setting is the hallmark of Symbaroum. One of the best settings out there IMO.
Good talk. Interesting thoughts. I’ve now followed all your Symbaroum sessions and it’s quite fun. I agree with Mike, the most Symbaric and powerful moment this far was the meating and deal with Xanatha. What is her thoughts on the party not fulfilling their part I wonder ...
But also. What you’ve gone through this far is an apetizer for what comes. The Throne of thorns-campaign is where Symbaroum really comes to it’s best. The world grows, the complexity rises as are the stakes, and the players actually can make some kind of difference.
Looking forward to see how you’ll manage.
Chris, keep pulling the levers! This setting has so much to reveal… :)
Happy to hear happy Symbaroum players talking about a game I love. :)
Starts at 6:34 for those of us with ADHD.
Good talk! Thanks to all!
The tanky Bezerker has clear weakness, such as, how do they get our of Davokar if the rest of thier party is dead? In addition strangulation abilities and many spells can take them out of combat or ignore armour. As well as attribute damage especially to strength. Letting them shine sometimes is great, but you have to let them know they're vulnerable too
This was interesting, I don’t remember seeing a discussion like that about the system and settings. I’d love to see you guys comment on the published adventures as you go through them.
I love the setting and the system is good, even if the combat options are daunting when you first read the books (you can use so many different stats to attack). The corruption rules are still a little bit too harsh and the player's book could be better organized and some rules easier to be found. What comes to the exploration, we once had a game night where we went hunting. Played five hours and never had a dull moment even if our game comprised of finding edible plants and hunting animals 😅 In the end I almost died, because I tried to shoot a huge moose, which then attacked me 😂 But of course when following an adventure, you can't play each rabbit hunt every time, but there are different ways to make the forest feel alive and threatening.
Regarding character motivations to go into Davokar, that is Session 0 material. The adventures throw ideas up in the air that the GM and players can pick up and build upon.
In the GMG they say the design is intended to have offensive powers be more powerful then defensive powers. So risk will always be there, it’s ingrained in the system.
Thanks a lot for this video. I've been intrigued by the setting and this has only increased my interest. I was wondering what your thoughts are on the recent and successful Ruins of Symbaroum Kickstarter? Can that dark and intriguing system make the transition to D&D 5E? Curse of Strahd makes me think there is room for Horror in D&D. But can you preserve that sense of survival at all costs in an unforgiving and scary world? I'm tempted by the conversion because it's often easier to make players enthusiastic for a system they know and love.
Opinion is a little bit split on the team because we have some D&D folk and some not-so-D&D folk but even the latter think it's an absolutely solid step forward from Free League to get a higher level of visibility on the world of Symbaroum. Setting is one of the weaknesses of modern D&D, so providing something fresh for players is a real win.
And for those of us old enough to remember Dark Sun and Ravenloft, I agree there is absolutely room for D&D to be unforgiving and horror-driven. Obviously it's great to have thematic mechanics, but given that Symbaroum has the inverse d20 core roll I don't think it'll lose too much in translation.
I have the Kickstarter books coming (that was actually how I learned about Symbaroum in the first place). They have some great rules in the conversion, like the way hit points are not automatically returned after a long rest, but they should have done even more. We still have the overly magical abilities and the fireballs and raise deads of the D&D, which are not the best fit for this setting. But it still seems better than vanilla D&D and we haven't really playtested yet, so it might be fun! And the books look awesome 😎
@@ShardCollector Yes, I'm looking forward to it. I think a D&D setting that makes players more wary and conscious of where the next safe place will be sounds interesting. And the setting in Symbaroum sounds different enough to make it feel mysterious to those used to the Sword Coast. I'm sure magic related corruption will be useful to tone down the reliance on the big spells too.
I've only quickly gone through the PDFs. I'm waiting for the books. Can't wait to play it!
The dangers of Davokar. Yeah, you really have to utilise the survival and traveling mechanics to understand the threat. Because it's a slow foreboding threat. It doesn't kill you in one go, it wears you down. You run out of resources and slowly start to die and you have to decide if you turn around or keep going. Removing that takes alot away from the game.
Awesome!
Thanks!
Regarding magic, your theurg was adept in Theurgy, wasn’t he? He would then take 1 temporary corruption per casting attempt. Which means he could invoke multiple powers in a single combat scene without issue.
I don't believe he was at the time of this discussion - he is now though!
I would argue there is a kind of “good” faction, but it’s not all good for sure. And yes, I can confirm the designers voluntarily included the themes of colonization and exploitation to make us think about these things. Chris is right there.
Sam is right, Odovakar is dangerous because some barbarians are dangerous, and some wildlife is. But it’s not the horror of deep Davokar.
Elle's right, Davokar becomes Davokar through mystery, exploration, discovery, more than just combat. It’s really a GMing challenge. There isn’t that much guidance in the books on how to GM this horror or this creepy ambience.
Also, would be nice to have Twitter handles for the participants :)
We've got a real mixed group as far as whether folk want their social media stuff made public, but we're thinking about how to handle it!
I say one thing play the campaign books 1-4 and coming book 5-6.
This is the intent! We're taking a short break from Symbaroum at the moment and when we return we will begin Throne Of Thorns.
I believe the group will be starting Throne of Thorns next, after a short break between seasons - I'm looking forward to it!
@@SteveMumford playing book 1 atm and having fun my character is weak and i have to run all the time hehe.
6.15 start time
Interesting thoughts on colonialism. Brings me to this conclusion: Symbaroum is a great game for campaign play, at the table or on VTT, but not as much for RUclips Actual Plays. The themes of colonialism and appropriation are complicated for streamers, but at a private table, actually really interesting to include in the campaign as needed.
It is so easy to pull out a broken character sheet from googling "how to break symbaroum" that you as a dm need to either be ready to let the berserker or x roll over the encounters or risk killing all the weaker players outright by adding more ebemies and more dice.
Thus, the berserker dying was great for the group. The group was much more even and dynamic after.
It is hard to balance characters with 1 dice defense vs chars with 3. The archers cannot target the nonbroken pc as they instantly die if 3 attack them. But to challenge the broken pc you would need alternative damage, mind bend and 2 attack dice which risks oneshotting all the other pcs, each combat.
Nah symbaroum is best on roleplaying. The conbat is onky balanced if you ALSO BUILD FOR RP. if you spend all on increasing offence and defence and rhe other picks flavor you just overshadow them all like we saw here.
4 1/2 minute intro is a bit much
It's not an intro, it's the starting-soon overlay from the stream.