u/TheChiarra

So I'm redoing my first combat with the advice given and this is the results using lonelog. Please let me know if I made any mistakes:

@ Enter the Fray
d: Action+2=7, Challenge=8,4
-> Weak Hit
=> Khyra prepares to act, aiming her bow and taking initiative.

@ Strike
d: Action+3=6, Challenge=9,3
-> Weak Hit
=> The arrow flies, striking her enemy. He engages her before she even has a time to react.

@ Clash
d: d6+3=5, 2d10=1,5
-> Weak Hit
=> Khyra is able to inflict damage, but doesn't gain the upperhand
@ Pay the Price: Endure Harm
d: 1d6+2=5, 2d10=8,1
-> Khyra presses on

@ Face Danger
d: 1d6+3=7, 2d10=8,1
-> Weak Hit
=> Khyra manages to just barely dodge his next attack and starting to think she may be in over her head. -1 spirit

@ Face Danger
d: 1d6+3=6, 2d10=7,3
-> Miss
=> He attacks to quick for her to be able to dodge again and she gets slashed at her side.

She is down to 1 health and 4 spirit. I'm not sure if I want to keep trying or have her yield. If I have her yield, how exactly do I do that? If I choose yield, I might change the slashing her side to punching her gut to knock the wind out of her and knock her to the ground, still enduring the harm.

I'm enjoying everything else (except maybe the vows) about ironsworn but absolutely hate the combat system. It's overly convoluted and just makes no sense to me coming from a dnd background. I want combat rolls to be quick, crunchy, simple.

Like I mean really dumb down, like I’m 5. I come from fnd and just can’t wrap my head around it. Like whats up with initiative? Why can’t my cat attack on top of me attacking? Whats the difference between strike and clash because the only difference I see is initiative and they’re just different names. Why do I have to pay the price on a failed face danger, isn’t taking harm price enough? I’m just extremely tempted to make my own rules up for the combat. For example:

Enter the fray will strictly be initiative.

Attack will just be that, no strike or clash but you’d still roll edge or iron depending on ranged or melee. On a strong hit you do full harm, weak is half, miss is none.

Face danger, or, in case of combat block, on a strong hit full block, weak hit, half damage, on a miss, full damage.

As for my cat also attacking, I feel like this would balance out the small amount of health players get, especially against epic foes.

As for the second skill of the cat where if you choose to attack with them, on a hit you gain 2 momentum, this can be balanced out by saying strong hit you get momentum.

I really don’t understand why it wasn’t this simple to begin with.

I am getting beyond frustrated. To get straight to the point, I can't theater of mind, I have aphantasia. Methods I've tried:

• Hex Crawling - I can't find a table or generator that generates natural looking terrain. A lot of them don't generate coasts, a lot of them don't generate rivers and paths (talking about tables here) and the ones that do it makes no sense.
• Hex Map Generating with programs- using things like donjon world generator, watabou perilous shores, azgaar's world generator. I hate all of these. Donjon might be the closest I'm okay with, but I don't like how Pangea the world is. Watabou because it's terrain generation is limiting (it only does temperate) and I just hate how the terrain generates on the map no matter what settings you use. Azgaar, I hate the names it comes up with for places, the maps are so huge which is great, but you still don't know terrain or anything like that cause it's just flat colors.
• Point Crawling - Something I think I would like to use but have no idea how to get started and I would still like an actual map to look at that's not just nodes. I would like to also be able to incorporate ironsworn's location oracles from the lodestar expanded book.

Please help me, this is the only thing keeping me from being able to continue.

So I'm using a binder so I can have rules, oracle tables, actual play all in one thing. My question is, what do I do with the loose leaf paper when the binder starts to fill up? I don't want to just toss it, because what if something in session 50 brings up something that happened in session 1? For instance a npc I met in session 1 shows back up in 50? Or am I overthinking this?

So I'm at a part in my story where she found who she thought was the killer, but it turns out he wasn't and is actually working with/for someone. However, I don't know what table I would use to generate this. I'm thinking more like a group of people like cultists or something due to the trophies the killer was taking was a black stone carved into the shape of a rabbit and I'm envisioning it meaning they were fertility charms given to the couples that were murdered years ago to help with conceiving and now that their children are adults they're being murdered for some reason. My character's parents were also murdered.

However, the story might go somewhere different if it's another group of people he's working with. Also a plot twist that came up was he was a childhood friend and she has a crush on him.

https://preview.redd.it/tqf2dkn6r39h1.png?width=1613&format=png&auto=webp&s=1c8d3232439fa158651beec21f59b4c6d5197867

Okay so my first question is the combat boxes. I don't understand why there's a slash between 2 blanks like there is for the hp. Shouldn't melee, ranged, and armor just be 1 number?

Second question, I understand backpack, free to carry, and stored, but what about sack? What itmes would you put in that section?

I'm noticing the encounter tables are missing a couple of monsters from the bestiary, Jaguars and Toyols (actually shuddered at their description) for instance. So if I'm rolling for encounters, how do I know if I run into one of these?

Another question is some of the monsters attack says weapon or a dice roll. What does weapon mean?

Also on at least one of them, the creepers, it says their damage is weapon -1?

I can't afford physical editions and I don't have access to a printer at home, but would like to have a physical version. I also kind of want to make a master pdf with a reference sheet of the rules to the system I'm playing, and then just the oracles and tables I roll on from different systems. Sort of like mish mashing them. I do have a pdf editor that lets me add and remove pages, but again, no access to a printer without going to either my parents house or husbands parents.

Edit: Thanks for the encouragement guys, I don't feel so silly about it now. I'm going to get to writing.

I am wanting to play this game to make a map for Scarlet Heroes. I would like to hopefully make a full continent but that's besides the point rn. My question is, I need jungles for Scarlet Heroes and Cartograph doesn't seem to have jungles. I also have the 1st edition. Can't really afford the 2e right now, even though it's not much, funds are tight.

Another question is, the themes you roll for civilizations in Cartograph don't really seem to match the ones for Scarlet Heroes, so if you have any ideas on how to get around that, that would be great.

First of all, I'm really enjoying Scarlet Heroes. However, I'm a bit confused when it comes to the damage. I'm new to osr's and I am playing solo, but I don't get why even if you hit, there's still a chance of not doing any damage effectively making it a miss. Why not just roll a 1d2/1d4 according to the weapon/class you are using and just use that. This way, if you hit, you actually hit? I'm thinking about maybe doing this myself, and it will also help with not having to memorize the chart, but idk if there's a reason for this.

Edit: Oh and another question, if I roll for Urban Encounters and get Tong Hatchetmen, I don't see a stat block for that anywhere in the book. So how would I know what to use?

I'm using hex maps, but curious as to how some of you guys theater of mind the exploration? Like, do you just "fast travel"? Or do you have some form of tracking that isn't hex maps and still allow yourself discoveries and encounters in the wild? Just genuinely curious. Theater of the mind is something I've always struggled with. I have aphantasia.

Any idea on tables I can roll on for this? I need to roll for a clue but I don’t think an adjective table is enough. Mainly because I need a concrete item of some kind, but something maybe a bit mundane?

This is a fantasy setting. So my characters parent's were murdered by a serial killer, she's been investigating. A couple of people thought she was the killer and jumped her. They thought she was the killer because they saw her investigating but thought she was looting the body. Another murder happened and now she's investigating that. I rolled to see if she found something and it said yes but, then I rolled for the but which said something she thought she knew was wrong. Then I rolled the words accident and panic. I can't figure out how to make this make sense narratively so I thought I would come on here and see if anyone had any ideas. If not, I'll just take the but off or go with a different but or something. I just want to try to make this work first.

Edit: Thank you guys so much you’ve all really inspired me.

For instance your npc and location tags. Do you have a separate book you log them in and keep track? Are there other types of tags you've come up with that you keep track of that are important for long term play?

I'm probably overthinking this, but I'm asking because what if 500 sessions in, an NPC that was mentioned around session 200 becomes important again, but you forgot who they are. Or, you haven't played in a month or two and come back and don't remember. Do you have notes you used to keep track of or do you just flip through the book?

I'm in combat. My character is hunting down a serial killer and gets attacked by some people that are mistaken thinking she's the killer. This is my first combat scene and I'm not sure if I should use my sword or go barehanded to knock them out instead of killing. Or if it's even possible to knock out in this game. Also she doesn't know they are mistaking her for the killer yet. I'm picturing they just jumped her, but idk. There's no narrative yet lol.

So I have my system, Scarlet Heroes. I have the actual way I want to notate with Lonelog Notation. Here comes my issue, mapping and the actual place to take the notes and journal, and organization.

I have tried Obsidian, absolutely love the plugins, especially the hex maps one, and having folders and being able to organize them. My issue, is even though there's a way to sync between devices for free, I can't really do it. Also I don't have an apple pencil and don't want to type in everything on a phone/tablet on screen keyboard.

Also, what if I travel somewhere. Sure, I can just type what I wrote down in the notebook into the computer, but this had me thinking going the analogue route, or partially anyways. My books are pdfs. Now my issue here is, the mapping and organization. For instance, if I have a whole second book to keep track of my tags, I can't just insert a paragraph above another paragraph and have the old paragraph move down like on a computer. I know this is probably so stupid and I'm either being, too picky, overthinking, or whatever you want to call it.

For the mapping, I'm torn between either just using a hex generating tool like the sandbox tool generating book, or using a solo ttrpg like Cartographer to make the map as well. Either way, I would want to be using hex paper, and it seems like eventually, it's going to get unwieldy if I keep taping hex graph paper to each other to make the map bigger and bigger.

Feel free to laugh at me too.

I just thought of the best math class in the world. The teacher teaches the concept at the beginning of the week. Each homework assignment is actually a "quest" They higher your score the more xp you get for leveling up your character. Every Friday, a mini boss with hitpoints is drawn on the board with an equation wrote next to it, and when a student solves it correctly they get to roll a dice to see how many hitpoints the damage the mini boss with. Actual tests are the real boss with the score relating to your xp. At the end of the year, the highest level students get a pizza party.

I can either retcon events and have a guard on the inside to feed us information, or sneak into the guard tower/house myself but idk how to go about it. System is scarlet heroes.

Context, characters parents were murdered and she learned from a guard there’s a serial killer on the loose. Later that evening she gets a mysterious letter to meet someone at the inn. Introducing himself as “Red”, who also had murdered family, my character finds out that the guard is corrupt.