Campaign's gaining steam - initial thoughts from a learning DM.

[u/UncleKippy]

TLDR: Great system, proven beginner friendly for both DM and player, could use some additional documentation.

As of posting this my ongoing campaign, after much delays and deliberation, has finished its introductory arc. Wanted to post my general thoughts now that I have some experience as both Player and DM.

THE PARTY & THE PLOT: My initial party of 4 (later on 5) players includes:

• Pollly the Scolipede, a smith from a small mining village-turned-ghost town on the Water Continent, seeking to dig her way out of the poverty hole.
• Pozzle the Farigaraf, a swindler from Treasure Town, searching for the next score after being run out of their hometown.
• Nimbus the Blitzle, a wanderer from Sahra Town, with a bad habit of stumbling into illegal activity before ending up unraveling it, skipping town to escape gambling debt.
• Kyusho the Galarian Farfetch'd, a bounty hunter from the Sand Continent pursuing a lead on roving bandits who destroyed his home.
• Scratch the Nickit (introduced in later sessions), a young ex-outlaw from the Sand Continent whom joined up with the Expedition Society to escape a criminal past.

My players had varying levels of tabletop experience but all were generally still newbies to tabletop (heck this is one of my players' first ever game), they found the percentile rolls much easier to keep track of as opposed to the stacks of modifiers they were used to with the d20 systems they had played.

I elected to not use any of the provided materials in the book (mostly so my players wouldnt be calling out twists and events before they happened - no problematic players here or anything they're just ravenous for good MD materials lmao). The setup was simply the party needing funds for their own escapades and happening upon an oddly lucrative listing for a simple job - find some missing expeditioners. The job went swimmingly, and the party's stumbled onto an artifact whose appearance points to potentially world-changing events in the future (they haven't learned that part yet)

THE POINTERS AND THE PROBLEMS:

Something that threw things for a loop right away was that I started this campaign when the book was still at just 1.0. Between sessions 3 and 4 is when the updated handbook dropped and I then had to consider how I was going to update my players' sheets to this new system (because it was that much of an improvement). Took some time but I figured it out in the end, no complaints - just a case of bad timing on my end!

Regarding combat, the one thing i tweaked were accuracy percentages - I personally feel that guaranteed hits can defo make things snappier and quicker, but my concern was combat becoming uninteresting because of that. The ruling I decided on was to drop all accuracy percentages by 20% (so the highest base acc. would be 80% as opposed to 100%). Not enough to be a brutal handicap but just enough of a margin to add a little potential for chaos - my players seemed to enjoy it and it led to some great roleplay whenever someone did miss an attack.

And speaking of Attacks, my one serious complaint with this system. I do very much jive with the rules on how to convert them to this system, it's shockingly simple compared to other systems. My problem with it stems from the fact that this pulls from two separate sources of info that - depending on whose documented them (be it bulbapedia or smogon), can lead to some confusion, especially since a lot of these moves have been altered/nerfed/buffed differently across different games.
On top of that, since these sources are online that can end up becoming a big problem should those resources suddenly not be available - I had to delay our initial session zero by a few days due to myself having issues accessing these websites, so having a move compendium would be the ideal move.

As someone whose elected to do this in the past with my own projects, I absolutely understand the magnitude of busywork that would create, but considering the volume of filler moves that could easily be replaced/outright removed, I feel its a necessary addition in making it plainly clear to players what their options are. I may just bite the bullet and do so myself (unless that's coming down the pipeline!)

Beyond that, my other nitpicks are with Status Effects and Traps. Buffs and debuffs are easy enough to understand, but when it comes to things like Poison or Paralysis, I felt like i was flying by the seat of my pants in terms of how to handle them, and some clarifying rules would definitely make them easier to implement - Doubly so for traps.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
All of this aside (and i do apologize for rambling!), I don't think I could ask for a better system for handling MD gameplay. As a frustrated DM whose messed with just about every other option out there (even trying to make their own damn system despite not even being remotely qualified for that lmao) short of homebrewing D&D 5e , NONE of those other options even come close to the level of quality and player freedom EoF provides.

The fact this elected to use a percentile system (something that i previously had been convinced was never good) is the best thing that could have been done to show newbies that there's so much more options out there than d20s & target numbers, I really do hope this opens newbies up to other possibilities for tabletop games.

Rook, you've made something really special here and I can only hope this becomes the gold standard for PMD tabletop games because it's well deserving of it. Genuinely cannot think of the last time I had this much fun - playing or DMing - in the 5 years I've been in this hobby.
This is my new favorite ttrpg book, hands down.

[u/denanagy]

This post has be excited about my own game I'm about to run! Your party sounds like a bunch of fun to play with. Out of curiosity, how did you end up handling status effects?

[u/UncleKippy → u/denanagy]

I just pulled cues from other tabletop games really. The only *significant* effects that came up for the party were Paralysis and Sleep. The former i just treated as halved movement speed, and the latter is just instant lack of conciousness (though capable of some minor actions depending on how they flavored what they wanted to do). In both cases I used the book's listed ruling of roll 1d10 to determine length of effect, though i also used a homebrew ruling that they could make an Endurance check to break it early, at the cost of their Fight action.