Ask and ye shall receive:

BROKEN, WEAVE-TOUCHED BEAR
Standing 14’ tall, this huge, hulking bear possesses wings resembling that of a bat. With unnatural blue glowing eyes that crackle with the power of the Weave it can sustain flight despite its mass. This unpredictible beast seems to hunger for the taste of human and elf flesh.

HEA: 13 DEF: 7

BOD: 7(5) DEX: 2 STR: 7(5) CHA: 0 INT: 0 WIL: 4(3)
SIZE: 2 MOV: 9/4 PER: 4 INIT: 2 STUN: 7
(original attributes are in parenthesis)

SKILLS
Brawl: 10, Breath: 8, Stealth: 2, Survival: 6

ATTACKS
Claws 12L/(6L)
Fire Breath 10L/(5L)

TALENTS
Increased Size: +1 SIZE
Increased Attribute: +2 STR, +2 BOD, +1 WIL
Special Movement: Flight (1/2 move)
Deadly Attack: +2 claws
Weave-Touched: Fire Breathing; At Will; Base Difficulty 4; Range: 15’ cone

FLAWS
Bestial: Cannot communicate
Deranged: Do not act predictably

Hey everyone. I thought that I should come and introduce myself. I saw an ad for the Desolation RPG at a site that I visit and the premise of the game intrigued me, although I must admit that I don't know anything about the Ubiquity system. This was a first for me. I have a group of friends that I game with and I would like to see if this would be something that they would go for. I noticed that it seems to be a fairly simple system to pick up. Right now the only thing that we seem to be playing is 3rd Edition Forgotten Realms. I had a question that I was going to ask, but now I can't remember what it was. Anyway, I'm happy to be here.

Welcome to the forums and to Ubiquity, Brian. I think you'll enjoy both. We'd be happy to answer any questions about Desolation and/or the Ubiquity Roleplaying System. It's very easy to pick up.

Welcome Welcome Brian...and John for that matter. Forgot to say hey to John cuz we were tripping over each other getting into the door.

Well, there was something that I was wondering about in regards to the Ubiquity system. Will I need to get different dice to use it, or can I use it with dice that I already have?

The Ubiquity dice are nice, but certainly not a requirement. They are mostly time savers, IMO.

If you don't have Ubiquity dice, here's how it would work - let's say you have a Larceny of 9. You can roll 2d20, 4d10, 2d8, and 1d4. Or you can just roll 9d6. It doesn't really matter. Just roll the necessary number of dice and count up how many even numbers are rolled and that's your number of successes.

Let me know if you haven't seen the Ubiquity dice in action or haven't heard how they work.

I can't say that I have. I would be interested in finding out how they work. I saw a picture of what the dice look like, and they sort of reminded me of special d4's or d10's.

I can help with that.

The key is the fact that each die (as defined in the game) has a 50% chance of success. That's why you could use any regular dice. Just define evens or odds (traditionally we use evens) to indicate a success.

Ubiquity dice (which are eight-sided in case it matters) come in three colors: white, red and blue.

The white dice have 0's and 1's evenly distributed on the faces; it's equivalent to rolling one normal die.

The red dice have 0's, 1's and 2's distributed to give you the same results as rolling two normal dice.

The blue dice have, you guessed it, 0's, 1's, 2's and 3's and give you the same results as rolling three dice.

So, if during the game you have to roll 10 dice, you could grab three blues and a white, two blues and two reds, five reds, ten whites, or any combination that adds up to ten dice. Roll them and add the numbers. It's that simple.

Hope that helps.

Hullo, Matt,



Terrific stuff, Matt! Definitely a creature I will add to my beastie arsenal!

However, since I don't have Global moderator ability, any chance you can take the posts about the bear, and put them over in a new thread in the Pass It Along section, where it belongs? Thanks.

Hullo, Brian,



Welcome to the DESOLATION forums, new guy! You'll find that we're really a good bunch of folks here, and have a lot of fun discussing the game and all that stuff. Just watch out for the bolt of weave lightning that's...oops, too late? (Wonder what you just mutated into? )

When you remember the question, please ask it. We all seem to like answering questions around here!

Well, I was wondering about something else. Are Gnomes the smallest playable character race that is available, or do you have plans to introduce other small races later?

That brought on a Spelljammer moment. Fire-breathing phase doppleganger giant space hamsters!

Hi Brian,

On average gnomes are the shortest. However, the Loranthians (aka the island folk) are close to them in height -- close enough that a short islander could be shorter than an average-sized gnome.

Hi folks! Found the Desolation RPG, Ubiquity, and this forum after a great podcast of The Games the Thing.

Been gaming for a long, long time. Looking forward to spending some time here and getting acquainted with this new rpg in my library.

Thanks for having me aboard,

Arthur

Oops. I didn't see this thread to start with, so started my own introduction thread. Sorry about that.

I am an old rpg gamer, having started in the 70s. I like fantasy, and simple fast systems, so was attracted to this game from the first time I saw the banner and checked out Ubiquity. In the past I have avoided dice pool games, preferring percentile games like BRP. However, the special dice and 50/50 arrangement may make a big difference. The mechanic reminds me of Risk on a basic level. I never saw the attraction to rolling 10-15+ D10s and sorting through them for all the 7+ results for a simple test, or variations thereof like roll and keep x dice.

As for the setting, as I said previously I am doing my own post apocalyptic fantasy homebrew so Desolation interests me for ideas. Hopefully I'll get to play it sometimes too.

This looks like a civilized forum, and I look forward to lots of *pleasant* discussion here.