Out of curiousity, Christopher, did your players use the Vigilance Pool on any of those initiative rolls? That one resource could have changed the story pretty dramatically....

Quote from: APKlosky;830713Out of curiousity, Christopher, did your players use the Vigilance Pool on any of those initiative rolls? That one resource could have changed the story pretty dramatically....

Yes, but even together the dice didn't get beat the gangers.  It was messy, and brutal, and frankly, for my crew unfun.  They asked me if I could convert the characters to M&M or HERO (and we hate HERO.)  Now, again, I want to reiterate I AM HAPPY WITH MY PURCHASE!  I love New Corinth, and despite that I know how to run investigations, the section in the book gave me more ideas and ways to run them.  The characters, the gangs and various NPCs, all useful!

It's just the system didn't work for my crew.  I wish it did.

I'm strongly tempted to allow Vigilance Dice to reduce damage to make the game a bit more forgiving for the heroes.

I know we've discussed that, APKlosky, but I can't recall what your suggestion was...

No worries, Christopher--not every system works for every group.  I'm glad you still like it.

And Dan, that's an awesome house rule.  If you're going to use it, maybe make it an even split:  1 Vigilance Die removes 1 die of damage.  I would state that you have to use Vigilance dice before rolling the damage dice.

Just in case it was missed earlier. I asked if there was anyway to adjust the lethality level of the system.

Sorry if I missed that, Nexus:

The above house rule would definitely go a long way towards making CSW less lethal.  Alternatively, you may wish to just provide a higher Strain Threshold for PCs.  I probably wouldn't do both, though!

Quote from: APKlosky;830388In related news, I actually received an email today from Angus!  CSW is currently on sale at several stores in the UK and Germany, with a US print set to hit distributors soon.

For those interested, I have confirmation through email from both  Leisure Games and Chronicle City that they have the book in stock and it  comes with a free pdf.

As Chronicle City is the slightly cheaper option for me I'm going to  order it from them. Let's see how long it takes for the book to  arrive.

I'm not really familiar with this game, but from the descriptions here, it sounds like it's exactly the sort of 'superhero' play I'm least interested in.

Quote from: RPGPundit;831337I'm not really familiar with this game, but from the descriptions here, it sounds like it's exactly the sort of 'superhero' play I'm least interested in.

It's a dice pool system. IIRC you're not too fond of those either.

EDITED for misreading RPGPundit's post

Quote from: RPGPundit;831337I'm not really familiar with this game, but from the descriptions here, it sounds like it's exactly the sort of 'superhero' play I'm least interested in.

That's fair.  Different strokes for different folks.  That's why we have so many games out there.

Quote from: RPGPundit;831337I'm not really familiar with this game, but from the descriptions here, it sounds like it's exactly the sort of 'superhero' play I'm least interested in.

I would argue that given the way the game is set up, it's not very superheroic at all.

I mean, take the Punisher for example.  His first outing was against SPIDERMAN.  A being able to bench press multiple tonnes of weight, is agile enough to dodge people shooting at him, not that he needs to, he has an innate sixth sense for danger, and an ability to restrain targets with a wave of his hands, and Frank "The Punisher" Castle was willing to go after him, and feel confident about his chances of survival.  And he had been told that Spiderman was a killer, meaning that Frank figured Spidey would not pull punches.  And he was still confident.  He was either too stupid to know better, or he was much more capable than the average schmoe.

I really wish this game allowed for that sort of play, because I tried to make it work that way.  Now, my players don't want to touch this game anymore.

Quote from: 3rik;831391It's a dice pool system, though. IIRC you're not too fond of those.

Argh! Even worse.

Wasn't the Punisher not meant to be in any way heroic when he first showed up?  Or am I thinking of someone else?

Quote from: RPGPundit;831972Argh! Even worse.

And point-buy on top of that, so no, it's probably not something you'd be interested in.

Quote from: RPGPundit;831981Wasn't the Punisher not meant to be in any way heroic when he first showed up?  Or am I thinking of someone else?

No, you're right.  He was a villain.  But there was something that the writers and readers liked about him that they expanded on him.