martedì 29 novembre 2022

What's the difference between Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland?

Into the Odd was designed to simplify D&D and making it a bit more scifi, but still similar enough that you could play D&D/OSR modules. To differentiate it from D&D, a 19th century industrial vibe was chosen instead of the usual sort-of-medieval fantasy.


Chargen gives you equipment based on your stats roll. Worse stats give you better equipment and vice-versa. Equipment can tell you something about your character.


There are no classes. There are "magical" objects called Arcana sprinkled around the world


Characters progress through milestones, at first based on the number of expedition they undertake, then based on taking an apprentice. When you reach a milestone you roll additional hp and sometimes raise your stats.


There are rules for starting and managing an enterprise and large groups of followers, 'warbands'.

There's a GM section and an introductory dungeon , the Iron Coral

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Electric Bastionland basically uses the same system but now fleshes out the setting that was mentioned in Into the Odd. Bastion is now more 1920s. It's a huge, chaotic city that has 'everything in it'. Deep Country, the land surrounding Bastion that has any biome if you go looking for it. Weirdly, the more you travel away from Bastion, the more technology recedes, like going back in time. You could even find dinosaurs. And then, beyond the Polar Ocean, the Golden Lands get even weirder. Then there's the Underground, populated by machines that like to test adventurers.


These aren't fixed settings. They are merely containers for your ideas. They allow you to come up with any idea without breaking any 'canon' of the world, since you can fit anything you can think of in one of the regions described. Idea for a dungeon? put it in the Underground. Bronze age adventures? Put it in Deep Country. Heist in a big city? Bastion


Oddities take the place of Arcana. The line between what's an oddity and whats mundane is more blurred. Anything out of the ordinary, from a Hic-gun that sometimes fires random shots to a Genie in a Lightbulb with Fenomenal Cosmic Powers can be an Oddity.


At chargen you roll for one of 100 failed careers of your character, each with its own dedicated spread. These, along with the illustrations and random tables sparsed throughout the book, are meant to convey Bastionland's atmosphere and spark ideas for your own gaming content.


Character progression is mainly based on what your character does in the world. The GM is encouraged to create scenarios that will leave the PCs transformed: connections, mutations, assets... that are many ways to achieve this. I'm thinking about writing a blog post about it.

There is also a Scar system that modifies your statistics when you take damage under certain conditions

There's a GM section and some example adventure locations


If you're still indecisive, the designer's pitch is that you should get Into the Odd if you mainly want to run other people's modules, and Electric Bastionland if you want to make your own.


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