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Al.

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Everything posted by Al.

  1. The rest of our disagreement is merely disagreement and I think we can happily disagree agreeably. (And your first retort was genuinely amusing). But that one: no. It is not standardisation I have issue with. It's the point that standardisation is converging on. (on? to? my literacy fails me).
  2. Caveat: I am a teacher and probably prickly about this. Are you comparing current kids with young you or young everyone else? It's a trap many of my colleagues fall into ('Kids of today have no respect for education/for teachers/for learning/for society/for.... when I was that age I would never have done ......' yes but you are now a professional educator and have successfully navigated compulsory education then at lest three levels of optional education which suggests that you have a view of education and learning which is very different to child y who comes from three+ generations of educational disengagement) You are numerate There are kids today who are numerate (they are your comparison) You had peers who were not numerate There are kids today who are not numerate That said the GERM* is shit, must be resisted and we should all follow the Finnish model (although even Finland has started to fall prey to some of the GERM nonsense sadly) *Global Education 'Reform' Movement. If you are internet savvy enough to use this forum you are internet savvy enough to research this rather than just listen to me rant about it.
  3. My favourite that I haven't played (it's not my turn to run yet and a feature of being in a big group is that it won't be for a while) Read the d100 both ways If it is equal to or under in one direction then you have a partial success (i.e. roll damage) If it is equal to or under in both directions then you have a full success (i.e. maximum rollable damage) If it is a natural double and equal to or under you have a special success (i.e. roll and add maximum rollable) If it is over in both direction it's a failure If it is a natural double and over it's a fumble As to skills over 100%? Pass. Probably something like HeroQuest's Masteries rule.
  4. I've just downloaded and skimmed the free sample <Insert expected positives here> But just in case you have not spotted this or been told already: p17 Characteristics table the CON and DEX columns seem to have been swapped (unless you've deliberately gone really bold in subverting genre stereotypes for Species).
  5. I see this artefact* slightly differently. No less a figure than Steve Perrin mentioned in (one of) the RuneQuest playtest(s) that SIZ was always supposed to model mass not height and that given the chance he'd go back and make SIZ for Dwarfs 3d6 or 2d6+6 just like for humans. If I still used SIZ in my [d100] games I'd make SIZ for Dwarfs 3d6. * a younger, angrier Al would call it a 'problem' now I am happy to be less judgemental.
  6. Dave Morris (of Dragon Warriors and early White Dwarf fame) wrote a really interesting adventure where the 'Orcs' were actually Neanderthal survivors; ostracised, bullied, killed for their Exp and their stuff by humans.
  7. Science Teacher here. Today we were discussing the school's ethos and our part in it. I suggested that a big bit of 'being a Scientist' is not mindlessly swallowing what you're told but looking for evidence, analysing and drawing justifiable conclusions. And that regardless of whether our kids go to be astronomers, biochemists, physicians or office cleaners we want them to take the critical, evidence based attitude with them into adulthood. My colleague responded "They might not ever develop a vaccine but they'll bloody well take it" At which point a third colleague pointed out that three colleagues in Maths (which is a Science for goodness sake) were anti-vaxxers, and the room went silent.
  8. I think CoC also has a Critical on a roll of 01 (regardless of skill) But skimming my copy of (2nd edition) I can't find any mention of said rule, so I may have been swayed by a house rule in a con game without realising.
  9. The only public domain version I'm aware of is on talmeta.net It's described as being 'RQ house rules' by Steve Perrin but I think that it's very similar (and actually in some areas superior) to the bits of SPQR I've seen.
  10. All of the following IMHO of course: Ever since I was told that SIZ specifically determines mass in RQ I made Siz for Dwarfs 3d6 (I hate 2d6+6 for Siz and Int for humans with unreasoning and disproportionate passion, if you don't share that presumably you'd go for 2d6+6) I think that the characteristic scores for Melniboneans in Elric! are a better fit for Old World Elves than those for RQ's 'mini-Ents' (I also think that the rules for Ducks in RQ are a better fit for Old World Halflings than the RQ Halflings are) The simplest rule for armour penetrating Firearms is BRP's rule that they halve the AP of non-ballistic armours The oldest published rule for Firearms is that Muskets in RuneQuest Land of Ninja inflict 3d6 damage, which is a lot of damage but then Firearms do not benefit from a damage bonus
  11. I think that all unarmed 'brawling' attacks inflict 1d3+db
  12. Not quite RAW but from a semi-official source and very old. There was a WD article for Martial Arts in RQ3 which allowed a Martial Arts roll to 'get up quickly' (in DEX SR) and statement along the lines of 'otherwise we assume it takes a whole round'. And that seems to tally nicely with Lord Abdul's find. On a fumble I can see the character floundering, flailing and tangling up their legs, other limbs and gear which will take some time to sort out; whilst if they are just knocked back off their feet and clamber back up (the best case which matches mechanically the best result for the fumble).
  13. When Lockdown 3 started I downloaded the first 6 of these. Having just finished number 6, I'm ridiculously excited by the thought of the rpg.
  14. No apology required Clearly we need to go to an easier system of numbers and smells 😜
  15. Unfortunately lower case l (elle) and upper case I (eye) are the same in the font that most forums use. So there I was thinking that I'd chosen the simplest user name possible (my name) and it's caused confusion ever since. There must be a lesson there somewhere.
  16. Captain Obvious here: hobby forums are a bad place for making bold statements purporting to be objective truth (give me some credit: I am aware of the irony of me just making a bold statement of objective truth on a hobby forum stating that ...... but work with me). Readers and posters on rpg forums (fora?) tend to be opinionated, bright and calling upon their (our) experience of the rule or setting under discussion. The likelihood of those experiences and opinions aligning and there being agreement seems pretty low. That doesn't IMO mean that anyone is wrong though. One of the best bits of advice that I received on said subject was: just read every post as if it begins with the words 'In My Opinion' because; a) typing that in front of every statement would be boring and expecting anyone to do that would be unreasonable b) reading that in front of every statement would get dull quickly and expecting anyone to do that would be unreasonable c) of course we're all stating our personal opinions, it's not like there's some controlling intelligence telling us what to type d) it makes it much easier to assume that fellow posters are going out of their way to say something hurtful or hateful if one just assumes that they are stating their personal opinion and are acknowledging it as such. That said in response to OP: I love all of the names for RQ/Glorantha/d100 spells Although I tinker with game mechanics I'm a bit crap at them (mine and others) TBH I've long since given up trying to keep on top of the multitude of cult spells and have no chance of working out which is the optimum choice in any encounter So: When I play in someone else's game I just pick a Cult that I think understand and like the look of and hence some Cult spells which seem interesting to me and marvel at a GM who can keep a track of what all the spells that their NPCs and our PCs are using When I run a game I use a more freeform/stripped down set of magic rules (think 'roll table' from Elric! and you're 90% of the way there) but insist that the players give the spell/charm/enchantment they're using a suitable name; most of the time the name chosen will either come directly from or sound very similar to an RQ spellname.
  17. My copy arrived yesterday Annoyingly Osprey's website wouldn't work for me (Firefox on OSX) so I had to swallow my principles and order via Amazon; hopefully this won't mean that author loses out financially. It's a beautiful book and I love the size (WHEN face-to-face RPGs return it's a much easier size in slip into my bag and cycle to venue than a standard A4, letter or legal) The illustrations are great (not sure that I'd describe all of them as 'beautiful') I really like the changes made to the rules (not necessarily better or worse than OQ, but they all make sense) I'm in two minds about it being sort of made up, in that I've got to get my head around (and in theory learn) a whole bunch of new names. But it sidesteps offending anyone with a connection to the realworld analogues and will save me the embarrassment of finding out that I actually I don't know anywhere near as much about Ancient Greece as I thought I did. Two thumbs up.
  18. Ironically MW took the guts and substance of the Elric! rules and tweaked and improved them (from adding Crossbows and Fantasy staples to streamlining character generation and adding wonderfully whimsical rules for intelligent talking animals) but didn't take the presentation and fluff (broken record time: layout and presentation of Elric! is still THE BEST I've ever seen even if I don't personally like some of the bigger illustrations). And by not doing the 'soft' stuff so well wasn't taken seriously for the hard 'stuff'. By concentrating on Content over Style the Content was lost. I thought it was going to sell like hotcakes because frankly I was the target market. Unfortunately there weren't enough people like me to make a big enough target market. IF IF IF IF the publisher had enough resources at the time for a sustained release schedule, and the layout had been the same as Elric! and more people wanted the same things as me and the zeigeist had been different, who knows?
  19. I believe that I'm correct in saying that these are two explanations of the same system. (Apologies if not). I fully agree that this (these) set of mechanics is by far the most flexible I've seen for BRP/d100. There are a set of houserules (by Charlie Serjios I think, although I'm sure that I have mangled the spelling even if I have managed to remember the name) which used to be hosted on Tom Zunder's webpage for improving them which make them even better. The ki rules from RQ LoN and/or Arete rules from Magic World Advanced Sorcery are also really flexible with a more low key flavour.
  20. A chap would have to be a complete killjoy and pedant to point out that current thinking amongst biblical scholars is that the number of the Beast is 616 not 666 (some kind of translation error). So I won't mention it. I do however like the more recent translation that Moses parted 'the Reed Sea' rather than the 'Red Sea' not as impressive for Charlton Heston to perform but more believable.
  21. The Demon ability rules from Elric! make a great basis for a generic powers system (not a huge surprise, they are an evolution of the Demon powers and CV system from SB4 which were themselves an evolution and improvement of the superpowers from Superworld) The roll table in particular does a brilliant job of correlating effect with cost (although being an inveterate rule fiddler I went for using dice of a more similar size 1d8+1d6 not 1d10+1d4 and so on, I'd struggle to say that such a change is needed as such though). I personally find it necessary to cap the effect of any power (no power can more than double the mundane item it is boosting so Stormbringer would do 2d8+2d8 damage for example), you may not.
  22. g33k beat me to it! It would be easier for ME (and I suspect a few others) if Chaosium just published its OGL under exactly the same terms that WOTC did. But I don't own the IP. So what is easiest for me ain't the point. The Chaosium chaps have obviously seen some downsides with that model (and it's not hard to think of a few, Pathfinder for one) and have decided to go another route. Now either my desires are an edge case which Chaosium will need to rule on (with due consideration of will this set a precedent which they don't want to be bothered with in the future) or it's simply so far outside of (as Bilharzia so clearly and succinctly put it) the first two pages of the BRP OGL and the answer comes back no or it's so trivial that the answer comes back yes Since it has already been several months since the BRP OGL was released and I personally have written the square-root of naff-all using it; I'm happy to sit and wait for the response (it's not like THIS is the thing holding me up!)
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