My players seem to think Torchbearer is in a genre of its own. They call it an Elendssimulation, a “misery simulator.”
In related news, I am growing really fond of the House of the Three Squires, which we started playing last sunday. That first drive-off conflict against the rats was, for some reason, much more satisfying than most conflicts I remember from playing Mouse Guard. I guess it’s the little tweaks to the conflict rules. Especially the distributed disposition points acting as “life points”; they make everything much more vivid.
Perhaps it’s just my players. Good players, even if one had never played anything even remotely like any BW game.
At the beginning of the game, when the characters approached the entrance to the house, I described a pool of rather fresh blood on the threshold (some latecomer to the party, I guess). So, one player suspects an ambush in the main room and decides to storm the building, using Wizard’s Aegis as an assault shield. Torchbearer SWAT.
I’d never have thought of that. And, you know, if there had been some bad guys in that room, perhaps with a crossbow, that would have been a really Good Idea.
Most satisfying GM moments of that session: describing the elf crashing down the trapped stairs into a pack of six giant rats, and playing the kobolds slamming the door shut on the party in the wine cellar (with lots of Gremlin laughs and screeching).