Trespasser: Old School Fantasy Tactics (With Homemade Foundry Support)

 

Trespasser

As my current campaign is on a short hiatus, I've had ample opportunity to peek around and see what other folks are doing in the indie TTRPG arena.

One work of heart that I've come across is called "Trespasser", available on itch here. It's written by Tundalus, and is an excellent Old-school system inspired by 4th Edition D&D's tactical combat.

A few highlights from the rules include:

• The "Potency Die" a scaling dice used for all kinds of abilities, especially magical damage.
• Tight grid-based tactical combat.
• "Recovery Dice" which fuel healing and are regained via long rests.
• Slow/quick initiative, determining whether characters act before or after foes.
• "Main Action / Minor Action / Move" Action Economy, with well thought out options for Main and Minor Actions.
• Special moves are granted by combat "themes". Which determine how characters act in combat. Characters start with 1 theme chosen from their class, but can take more themes as they progress.
• An "Effort" system, which allows characters to spend "effort" to perform more powerful moves. Effort is regained through actions and if you deal no damage.
• Well defined conditions, which count down each turn and have an effect based on the amount of remaining turns.
• Weapons apply varied conditions on a "Solid" hit (even roll on the dice).
• Armor not only increases AC, but can be used as a reaction to absorb a die of damage. There are several "slots" for armor, such as body, head, legs, gloves, etc.
• Rules to run a peasant funnel.
• A complete first adventure.
• A developed "Stronghold" system with constructible features. (Including secret tunnels!)
• Plus loads more.

Honestly, if you're into old school rules and tactical combat, it's a fantastic ruleset worth a read. The stronghold rules alone could easily be pulled into any game, and I may do that with my current party in my campaign of Shadow & Fae.

Bonus: Foundry VTT System

Because I haven't had much to do in recent days, I've made up a system using Sandbox System Builder to run Trespasser on Foundry VTT.

It's all manual entry, but there's some automation available. I recommend installing the following modules to make it flow smoother:

• Dice so Nice (Visual Dice help with distinguishing Solid Hits from normal hits.)
• Dice Tray (Quickly roll dice from the chat menu without typing /r commands.)
• PopOut! (Allows a secondary window for character sheets.)
• Quick Insert (Personal favorite, very handy for finding Conditions and dragging them into character sheets)

Character Sheets are manual entry, but character creation is fairly easy if you follow the instructions on page 45 & 54. (Roll a peasant then upgrade to adventurer).

The Combat Page looks intimidating at first, but it's not too bad.

• A. is all your general combat info.
• B. is your armor, here you can set the name, slot, weight, AC bonus, Armor Die, and State. You can also click the dice to roll the armor die when you use your reaction to negate damage.
• C is where all your Conditions are kept. Conditions are all stored in the items directory and can be dragged onto the sheet. They all have a note that explains what they do.
• D is for weapons, including their weight, base damage, range & other notes, and Solid Hit effects.
• Last but not least is E, where all your actions are stored. The "Detail" button opens up a notebook where info can be copied and pasted straight from the PDF (hit the lock first, then lock it back up after you've edited it.) You can select the ability the roll will use, make a note about what it targets, and right any roll formulas or notes in the Hit and Solid boxes. If you put a roll formula in there, hitting the dice to the right of the formula will roll it. 

Some important notes for those roll formulas, you can reference any ability by writing @{ability}, such as @{STR} or @{KNW}, you can also reference your potency dice by writing @{POT}. If you need to roll multiple potency dice you can write 2@{POT}, for instance, to roll 2 potency dice.

There's also a sheet for Monsters that works nearly identically. The only difference is that their moves also have a "Peril" score, which is noted.

All in all, my goal is that giving Trespasser a rough Foundry sheet like this will allow more folks to be able to play it. It's a worthy system. 

Download the Sandbox.json here. For instructions on getting it working, and how Sandbox works in general, see my article here and follow the exact same 6 steps at the front of the article.

Happy rolling!