GothmogIV

Does anyone know how Chasoium determines which books will become available on Roll20 and other platforms? Is there a document or something that lists their upcoming projects with regard to VTT supported stuff? 

Awesome stuff. Thank you!

Greetings, squamous ones. After playing D&D 5e for about six months, I am beginning to transition back to CoC. I just got Harlem Unbound, but haven't cracked it yet. Anyone running this bad boy? Any thoughts? All helpful opinions and suggestions welcome.

So playing online for the past year, I can tell you that a great part of D&D online is how integrated their resources are. Want a monster? Click. Want to roll an attack? Click. Want to see how a spell works? Click. It's so easy, and it is an enormous time saver for the GM. I haven't looked at the BRP stuff on Foundry, but does it have that level of interactivity? Can you roll from the Golden Book?

If Chaosium's BRP system could be supported on Roll20 in the same way that D&D is, it would be a game changer. The BRP system is better than Wizards for sure, but Wizards is easier to run, and easier to design with, in my opinion. 

Yeah, I like the 7e push rolls, and bonus/penalty die, etc. They are a clean rule set. Like many have said (well...some) I find RQ rules a bit too crunchy, but that's a style thing. I wish MW had more products and support, but I really do like it. BPR is infinitely user-friendly, so we can all do what we like and just enjoy playing. 

On 1/24/2021 at 10:04 PM, kross said:

You are certainly NOT the only person in the world who LOVES the game. There are a lot of us out here, myself included. It's just that Magic World is a dead game, abandoned by its publisher when it failed to sell well enough. And it failed for the reasons you stated: lack of support, lackadaisical layout, no promotion. That's just the way Chaosium was in those days, sadly. There were a number of supplements planned, but Moon Design decided to go in another direction (RuneQuest) when they took over the company.

For my part, Magic World is the "sweet spot" for BRP/D100 fantasy. I'm not a fan of hit locations and armor by location, so MW's Major Wounds offers just the amount of pseudo-realistic injury for my tastes. I like the openness of the magic system, though I'd have done a few things differently there. Character creation is nicely streamlined with the "add 60 points to 3 skills, 40 points to 4 more, and 20 points to another 6" (or whatever the exact figure is) -- saves the hassle of computing large quantities of skill points and then having to distribute them among the skills, agonizing of how much to put where, and whether you should put any in this/that skill, etc. Character creation is much more streamlined here, for instance, than in Call of Cthulhu (any edition) or RuneQuest. So I'd agree that Magic World IS near-perfect for a generic fantasy game.

In short, yeah I really wish Magic World had caught on too. Not least because one of those abandoned projects was my big ol' semi-Lovecraftian sword and sorcery setting.

As for the name, it was called that as a tip of the hat to the original Worlds of Wonder box, which offered rulebooks/settings for Super World (superheroes), Future World (science fiction), and Magic World (generic fantasy). It was an affectionate nod, but yes, one that probably didn't help sell copies.

I was saying in a different thread, I think MW would be even better if it were updated to the 7E CoC rules/mechanics. I've been playing  mini-Dreamlands campaign, and I cobbled together a combat flow chart for sword and shield fights, which would easily work with MW. But I love how easy it is to design and play MW compared to 5eD&D. It would be awesome if there was more stuff published. 

Greetings. I am writing a scenario for Down Darker Trails. I want the PCs to be stuck in a blizzard. Any thoughts on how to make environmental damage work, like long term exposure to cold and wind? Someone told me Children of Fear has that mechanic, but I'm not dropping $30 to look at  one page! I was thinking CON save rolls at increasing levels of difficulty as the days go by. 

Runequest is a labyrinth into which I dare not enter. 

I find the 7e rules to be very well-thought out and workable. I've been using a sort of bastardization of Cthulhu: Dark Ages and the 7e CoC core rule book to make sword and shield combat doable in a Dreamlands setting. I do love me some Magic World, though! 

Any general thoughts on updating MU to the 7e rules? 

Parrying a missile weapon with a medium or large shield. Not arrows, but spears and rocks and what not. Makes sense if the PC can see the attack coming. 

I truly appreciate your help. I ended up making a 'sword and shield' combat flow-chart with a bit of 7e/Invictus mishmash. We'll see if it survives contact with my players!

Brethren,

I am using 7e, which I like very much. I am struggling a bit with figuring out how to run a certain kind of combat. I could use your help.

Two warriors face each other. Both have a shield and chain mail. Both have a long sword. 

How does this run with dodge, parry, and shield knock backs? Where can I find the rules to figure this out? 

If someone was really, really, really nice and wanted to narrate a few rounds of this combat for me, using the things I've mentioned above, I would appreciate it.

Helllooooo! I am running a BRP game on Roll20. I used the BRP option when setting my game up, which game me access to Magic World character sheets (which is great). Any other resources or suggestions I can add to my game? I wish oh wish that Yellow Book or the Magic World source book were available on Roll20, but they ain't. 

2 hours ago, Vile Traveller said:

It may just have been our awesome referee, but in 4 or 5 years of 5E our characters were always in fear of their lives. A lot came down to him putting in the effort to understand his "monsters" and their strengths and weaknesses, but I think overwhelmingly it was the environmental rules and "conditions" (e.g. exhaustion) that kept us challenged even at high levels.

5E is a very carefully designed game, and there is nothing out of whack about any of it. Los of D&D (especially AD&D) players ripped it apart based on reading only, and simple comparison of numbers. Hence the shock at high hit point values, or cantrips that cause 1d10 damage. But you have to play the RAW for a while to understand how it all works together. The options in the DMG show you what can be done in terms of modifications, so it's not like you'll break the system by houseruling, either.

It's not my favourite game by a long shot, nor even my favourite iteration of D&D (that's Holmes!), but it is unarguably a very well-put together RPG system.

Lloyd Dupont, you may have been playing AD&D 2E in 1995.

That's a totally fair point. I definitely didn't do my monster HW as a DM, and probably underutilized them. 

I played 3.0 twenty years ago. It was fine. Never touched 4th.

3 hours ago, Simlasa said:

People can be overzealous in their demands, sure, but outside of that... why does it bother you so much? Since you have the option of just ignoring those rules if you don't want to use them.

I think it is, literally, that. By expressing an opinion--orcs are, in fact, not some racist trope--you are suddenly the enemy. Anyhow, I appreciate your comments. Like I said, I turned it all off. It was just too irritating. I am not a people person.

I hear you 100%. I think what bugs me is bringing real world social pathologies into an escapist fantasy game. To me, complaining that fantasy monsters in a fantasy game played with fantasy characters are racist--in the same way that real world racism is a horrid, cancerous evil-- is a waste of time and energy. 

With regard to the wheelchair: Professor X is great! Do you think there needs to be specific rules in D&D 5e dealing with characters who are disabled? Like, 'turn to appendix 8 in the DMs Guide to see how to run a handicapped character?" I don't. If that's a part of someone's game, go for it! But to imply, or state, that leaving out that rule set is somehow exclusive of real-world people who struggle with disabilities is moral masturbation, in my mind. 

Like I said, there are real world horrors enough to go around. Let's not drag it into our games, too. One man's opinion, respectfully offered. 

Brethren, I began playing Dungeons&Dragons many, many decades ago--forty years! I have great affection for the game and its history. We played all throughout the 80s and early 90s, then again in the early 'oughts before life (wives, children, jobs) got in the way. Adulthood is not all that fun. Last year, my group of friends and I decided to carve out a weekend day per month to play. We all instantly gravitated to 5e which was new and flashy and (shockingly) popular. We played a campaign based loosely on Hoard of the Dragon Queen, and the PCs ended up at about level 9. 

I hated it.While the materials Wizards produces are well made, the actual gaming system is broken. By 4th level, the PCs were like superheroes. It is an incredibly unbalanced, overly-"playercentric" game. By "playercentric" I mean that the PCs are simply too powerful. The skills, and subskills, and class skills, and advantages make them into some kind of a cross between Captain America and Dr. Strange. It was very frustrating, not only for me as a DM, but for them. We abandoned the project.

Also--and I don't mean to offer offense to anyone here, but I'm still going to say it--the Wokeness of D&D is a freaking joke. Orcs are racist? Really? Not enough canonical rules for players with physical handicaps? Wizards in wheelchairs? What. The. Actual. Fuck. The online community on Twitter and Discord is like a pack of PC Jacobites wheeling around a guillotine looking for heads to lop off. It is pathetic, and for those who try and scratch out some kind of income from gaming, dangerous. One poor bastard--Sly Flourish, who wrote a great book called The Lazy DM--suggested that a recent published campaign had a few technical issues. This guy is a freaking game designer, and noted a few places in the actual game that were a bit goofy. BUT, because this supplement was created by "THE MOST DIVERSE AUTHORS EVER!" he just got freaking piled on. Threats of boycotts. Hashtags. Harassment Etc. The Awokening came for him, and he--quite understandably--walked it all back. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa...

These people are a fucking mob. It's sickening. It's a perpetual social media Inquisition. I turned it all off. 

So we switched to BRP, and I have been utterly overjoyed to reconnect with Chaosium. I've played CoC for just as long as D&D, and I have been thrilled to play with this system and all of its parts again. Magic World, Runequest, Stormbringer, Blood Tide, and on and on and on. I find the actual system to be basically fungible: you can play iterations of the same characters in multiple worlds. And: it's challenging! No Tiny Hut to escape into. No freaking "shaped: fireballs. No uncanny dodges. No "but my AC is 28 and I have 200 HP at level 2" characters (that's a bit of an exaggeration, but you get my drift). Chaosium, and BPR, are pure imagination. I love it all. I am happy to be home.

In conclusion, I know I sound like a grouchy old man, and maybe I am, but RPGs are important to me. So much is shitty in this world. So much sucks. RPGs are my escape, my outlet, and the way my friends and I connect in creative acts of shared storytelling. I guess this is a long way way of saying thank you to Chaosium for keeping this part of my life going strong. I will always have a great affection for D&D, but I find this gaming system, and this company, far superior to...the other guy.

Bummer, man. 

My favorite podcast! Looking forward to it!

I am going to add a bit of time travel to the campaign, so I'm going to drop them in the 50s for a bit of fun. 

So...is this a thing or not? BRP science fiction game? Any updates?

Thanks, y'all. 

So...I'm thinking I'm on my own, then. How can I turn "Happy Days," Ike, and car hops into something horrible...I have it, people! Chaugnar Fonz!