Traits, Conflicts, and Travel

Just a short bevy of questions as I start to consider running a TB game and how I might hack-in and hack-out various components for other games…

Q1: Traits

Are you limited to the Traits listed in the book? Seems like the answer would be “no”; but at the same time TB is much more of a mechanical-narrative game than many other indie games.

Q2: Conflicts

One (more?) of the skills mentions “Battle” conflicts; is this something that is just a euphemism for a fight? Or is this something else entirely? I was wondering if there’s some mass-combat rules or such that I am missing

Q3: Travel

What’s the best way to handle longer distance travel in this game? I don’t think 1 simple Pathfinding check is appropriate; nor do I want to do an endless array of them… is there something better? Here I’m thinking and being inspired by Dungeon World’s “undertake a perilous journey” move where trips are measured in “rations” and the you make 3 simple checks: 1 to scout, 1 to quartermaster, 1 to trailblaze… which can all help the trip out in some capacity.

Traveling is an Adventure Phase! It just takes place in the wilderness instead of in a dungeon.

  1. Make up as many traits as you like, especially during the Winter Phase!

  2. Battle will be for a larger unit action, when the characters are leading troops. You won’t find rules for it in Torchbearer yet (though you could certainly hack them in as a custom conflict).

  3. There are no detailed journey rules for the moment, so feel free to use your best judgment here. Mouse Guard has Journey Conflicts, and you could certainly hack something like that together, though I’m not sure that’s how I’m going to handle it when we release more detailed wilderness rules.