I'm taking a break over Yuletide.
The last post for this year goes live tomorrow, Sunday, December 18, at 22:00. There will be no posts on December 24 or December 31.
This blog will come back on the air again on January 7, 2023.
Yuletide Blessings and a Happy 2023 to you all!
This week's blog post looks at combat. Frankly, this is my opportunity to review Mythras Firearms.
Modern Combat
In the modern world, "combat" typically means "armed conflict," which is synonymous with "firefight."
Mythras Firearms
This title was probably the most - coveted Mythras supplement in 2021.
What does Mythras Firearms teach you?
What do you think are the most useful skills in modern combat scenarios? Curiously enough, Combat Styles are
In our previous posts, we've explored Cultures, and checked out Careers. So now it's time to look at the Skills.
The Skills chapter of Mythras Core pretty much covers everything you need to know about using those Skills - difficulty levels, augmentation, trying again, opposing skill checks, and so on. If you want to brush up on the basic rules on rolling skills checks, begin with Mythras Core Rulebook, pages 37-38, then pages 50-52.
New Skill Check
The Skill Value Check is so
This week, following on from our look at modern Cultures, it's time to look at Careers open to player characters.
Job Versus Career
Go to Google. Search for "career" and select Images. You'll get endless rows of pretty, smiling business people sitting behind computers, or shaking hands in meetings. Diverse. Modern. Utterly, spirit-crushingly boring.
Now look for "Adventure." Select Images. You'll typically see people standing atop a mountain, or kayaking in bright lycra.
Mythras set in a modern game can look so different to games set in more traditional fantasy settings. Even contemporary settings such as After The Vampire Wars has elements of urban fantasy, but a modern setting combined with a Mythras engine can incorporate elements of science fiction, horror, or even mysteries.
Let's look at the Cultures available to modern characters - there are Urban, Suburban, and Rural, but these can be divided into subcultures - Urban, into Criminal and Militant, Sub
The cover image this week is of a landmark district in an American coastal town, Cape May, New Jersey.
So let's take a look at the basic unit of any Mythras adventure, the player character.
Since pretty much every sentient being on Earth is going to be human, we can stick to the human template for characteristic and attribute generation as presented in Mythras. No elves, halflings, orcs, goblins or Tolkienesque creatures.
After The Vampire Wars presents rules for Fae, Vampires, We
Let's open up the doors to your imagination, and take a stroll.
- You're a bunch of ex-military types, all surviving members of your unit. You're the squad leader, and you and your buddies are driving along a country lane to the Badger's Drift, the pub in town. Tonight, however, your weekly trip down the pub is interrupted by a brilliant light lancing up into the sky. It's coming from a saucer-shaped vehicle which is sitting in the middle of the road ahead.
- You're a hypnotherapist. Y
I'm going to take a hiatus this week. Next week, I's like to take a look at a setting which needs a setting book.
Mythras Modern.
I'm going to work on looking at adapting Mythras to a bunch of other settings, too, over the next few weeks.
One thing I intend to do, during this time, will be to review Mythras Modern and Mythras Firearms, to showcase how to use these two documents to adapt Mythras to the modern game.
Well, it's been awhile. OK, I'll admit it, I completely forgot I was doing a blog on this. *sigh* I'm not the greatest diarist in the world so this is something of a mental discipline for me. Apologies to those who might have waited for a follow on.
1. What Has Gone Before:
I've introduced my new players to the system using some 'average Jane' characters. These were built to be good at their stated role but average in every other respect. The Hoplite, for example, had 15s in her
So we've been looking at M-Space for so long now, I'd almost forgotten that the core of this blog has been to look at Mythras. I'll get back to the fantasy stuff soon enough. But for right now, let's look at what we've been reviewing these past two months, and see what we can do with it beyond creating more clones of Traveller settings.
After all, this is a setting for science fiction.
As is The Twilight Zone.
Let's open the door, then, to another dimension ... a place of the sens
And so we come to it at last. The final chapter of Frostbyte Books' M-Space, and the Appendices. I'm not going to review the index, merely point out that the index is bookmarked, so if you want to get to a particular place in the PDF in a hurry, go right to the back of the book, locate your bookmark, and click.
So the final chapter of M-Space is devoted to Life Forms - the equivalent of Traveller's Animal Encounters, and Mythras' Bestiary / Creatures / Monsters.
You know, once I'
Remnant of the Devil
Cacodemon is the secret heart of the Devil, the fragment of his spirit which he kept secreted away while he fought the petty gods of man, troll and beast. When the combined forces of the foolish gods crushed the Devil beneath the last piece of law, Cacodemon awoke, and went forth to carry out his father's goal of destroying Glorantha.
As the last remnant of the Devil, Cacodemon was cautious, ever aware that if he was destroyed, then the Devil and his duty would go
In this post, we'll be reviewing the chapters on vehicles and technology.
Vehicle Design
The Vehicle Design chapter, on page 178, follows the same general modular system as the Starship design chapter. You create enough Modules to fit your vehicle's crew, you determine what other Modules you need (weapons, a mobile lab, etc), and from those you can determine the vehicle's Size, Speed, and Handling. Whatever you need, from a zippy little motorcycle to a walker tank or ATV; this is
Greetings, Cosmonauts, and welcome to the next part of my look at M-Space by Frostbyte Books.
This week, we take a look at two disparate chapters - Circles, and Psionics.
Circles
Circles are the M-Space equivalent of the factions of Mythras- its Guilds, Orders, Sodalities, Cults, and so on. Circles can take on the form of extended family, political pressure groups, terrorist organisations, political parties, corporations, and so on.
Circles are defined here by characteri
Saturday, the post continues its look at M-Space with a review of its rules for Circles and Psionics.
Also, would anyone like a complete post detailing the Pelacur species from my previous post? They are turning up, along with some favourites from Castrobancla, in a setting called Terra Quadrant. I'm working on that setting to submit to Frostbyte Books for a possible future sourcebook either for M-Space or for a new project Clarence Redd has been working on, which I can't wait to review for
This week, we will be looking at the aliens of M-Space.
I'm not going to lie; you're going to have to take notes. This chapter deals with the basic biological blueprints for creating real, strange aliens, rather than the bumpy-headed humanoids you know and love from TV and movie science fiction (or fantasy, for that matter).
There's a lot to take in. What is your world's biosphere like? How and where did your alien species evolve, and why did they evolve? What makes your designed speci
Welcome to part 4 of this look through Frostbyte Books' M-Space. Today, it's all about the transport.
Specifically, starships.
Transport
The default mode of transport in M-Space is by ship. Nothing is stopping you from creating a setting which has your guys traipsing between star systems or even universes via a network of portals a la Stargate or the Glen Larson TV series Buck Rogers - or indeed like the original Trippy Stargate sequence from Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. You c
Imagine a compelling game involving your character and a strange, motley crew of ragtag colonists, aliens, criminals on the run, psychics who are trying to kick the habit, and even a cyborg and an android. Maybe even a hologram character ...
Your ship is massive. It's organic, like Tin Man or the Lexx. Its fuel is exotic particles absorbed from the local star. And the occasional asteroid and comet or small planetoid. Your adventures have you dropping in on some solar system, and you remain
Welcome to Part 2 of this review of Frostbyte Books' M-Space. Last week's blog introduced you to the game, and specifically to the core rulebook.
Let's take our first look at the contents, starting with Characters and Game Systems.
Characters
M-SPACE characters can be everything from starship pilots and bounty hunters, to journalists and librarians! All depending on what type of scenarios you want to play.
-- the core rulebook
That's always promising. Characters in
In the beginning was Traveller.
Traveller was not the first science fiction roleplaying game, and it wasn't the last. It's just that Traveller eclipsed practically every other science fiction tabletop roleplaying game on the market; and in terms of its market share, it still does.
I mean, Chaosium wanted to give us a d100 science fiction roleplaying game. It started so well. And we got RIngworld, and the mission failed at takeoff.
Look at some of those names. Ralph McQuarrie
This blog post is best read in the dark. Alone.
I'm going to take you to a calmer, cosier world, where people could walk for miles across lonely moors, down country roads, and along beaches, without meeting a single living soul. A world where the pace of life is slower, but the heart rate is through the roof. A cool world, where your brow occasionally prickles with sweat for no reason.
A cold sweat, to accompany the chills down your spine.
Welcome, reader, to the world of Montague
So, where were we?
Ah, yes, here we go. We were exploring the first 100 or so pages of Weird of Hali. So far, the game has felt pretty much like any other Mythos game, with one exception - the player characters are on the other side, working with the Great Old Ones and possibly calling some of them family, displaying odd traits which become more pronounced as the alien side of the family gradually wins out over the human blood.
And let me point out that, in Weird of Hali, this is a goo