Al.

Terrible starting skill percentages are an artefact of RQ2's generation of RPGs. That's neither good nor bad. Plenty of people love the challenge of starting a D&D character with 1 HP and no armour or an RQ character with no skill higher than 25% (and most rather lower), feel that competence is to be earned through time served and that anyone starting with a competent character is missing out on some (or all) of the fun. And they enjoy their experience of the hobby. So I definitely would not say that they are doing it 'wrong'. It's just not for me. I found (find) it weird that people who insist on random rolls for characteristics, starting cash and social status are equally insistent that starting skills will uniformly be low. If you have the time to spare (and/or an app or online random number generator) why not take a leaf out a (throwaway) comment in the SB3 bestiary? Roll 1d100* in turn for starting skill rather than using base chances. It takes bloody ages but can give some surprising results ('out of all those rolls why is my Mostali only sh!t in Crossbow and Weapon making?' or 'why is my Uroxi's highest skill in Sing?') *rounded to the nearest 5% in RQ2 obviously

Absolutely. (All IMG obviously). Curses are not be-all-and-end-all they set the ground state and default settings. PCs are entitled, enabled and allowed to behave however they wish. It's just that their background and choices set up consequences. Yelm's curse sets the default. But faith in and worship of Orlanth allows that to be trumped. But another character's faith in and worship of Yelm allows, encourages (and maybe compels) them to correct the anomaly. In this particular case the Duck's community will no doubt use Cloud Call and/or Shield to protect their comrade from the Evil Emperor and his minions.

Yup. Not surprising since that was the way that it worked in T&T as well. Since it fits with my (incomplete) understanding of probability curves and distribution I've always liked that model. During lockdown I've been reading the various RPGs that mates have lent me over the years and which have just sat on my shelf gathering dust. I really like the bonus chart (for want of a better term) in the D&T Cyclopedia and will look to use that, unfortunately in d100 rulesets the many non-human races have characteristics which fall outside of the 3-18 range.

I tried to resist but my inner pedant won't let me. Plasma is not between Gas and Solid. It's more akin gas with so much internal energy that the electrons disassociate. Hence plasmas will conduct electricity. This next bit might be bias and falling for company propaganda (I used to work for a company that made CNC lasers for sheet metal work). The problem with plasma cutters for sheet metal cutting is the tendency of the beam to 'wander' affecting accuracy and quality. There was a time that lasers could not generate sufficient energy to cut through thick steel and so plasma cutters were the only game in town. But more modern lasers are powerful enough to cut a decent thickness of steel and do so with greater accuracy and repeatability.

As a kid I was Star Wars or nothing. So although I recognise the names of those series I never actually watched them. I did enjoy Monkey though (largely because Dad outright forbad me from watching it, so I watched it at my mate's house instead) Marrying a lady with a borderline obsession with comic books (and three boys who have followed in those footsteps) has led me to be a bit more cosmopolitan. Or maybe the quality of newer TV series has just improved massively. I'll add a vote for Misfts, although I stopped watching at the Time Travel Let's Kill Hitler episode not by any conscious choice but just sort of watched other things. Nu-Who must count as a superhero of the cerebral variety.

Great thinking. Combine a CRWS and MLA weapon in a single device. Constant lower-power CRWS for targeting and ranging, ramped up to ionise a pathway, shoot the gas payload via MLA then ramp up CRWS again to turn the gas to plasma at or just before point of impact. Since the gas is travelling (very fast) and the CRWS has an effective flight time of zero this might even work. Right, that's the Science. Now we just need some clever chaps to do the Engineering and make it happen.

I thought that the latest thinking was that 'brown NOTE' turns out not to be a thing. That's no reason not to use it in a sci-fi game though. No doubt the Minovsky-frequency would do it.

All of the best things in Physics involve magnets (all of the coolest things too, ho ho) So MLA (Magnetic Field Accelerator), Gauss, Coil, Rail guns for physical projectiles. Either with solid slugs for hard targets or flechettes for fleshy ones. Obviously the line in 'Eraser' about accelerating a physical projectile to the speed of light is b0770ck5 (law of conservation of momentum for one thing) but being able constantly accelerate the projectile along the whole length of the barrel will allow for a much higher muzzle velocity. With no chemical explosion to provide the impetus presumably recoil is reduced too. Blasters, Plasma and so on I would suggest also use magnets. A slug of hydrogen gas energised with a laser to cause a state change to plasma and then magnetic field to accelerate it along the gun barrel. The tricky bit I believe is that the lovely conductive hydrogen plasma will then dissipate rapidly once it leaves the magnetic field. If your setting already includes repulser fields (manipulating gravity fields rather than magnetic fields I guess) then you can use those in place of magnetic fields. Directly attacking targets with a repulser field presumably would cause physical trauma. And allow to move things at distance which might be less explodey and sexy but potentially even more useful (good luck using missiles against me when I've already remotely detached key parts of the launching and arming mechanisms). Lasers are of course only one part of Electromagnetic Spectrum (EMS). Radar came about after initial attempts to create a death ray. It turns out using the wrong end of the EMS. The higher the frequency in EMS the more energy per photon and Radio Waves are longest wavelength and lowest frequency. So your CRWS (to steal an acronym from the late, great Iain M Banks - Coherent Radiation Weapon System) could include general purpose optical lasers, anti-personnel short range lower frequency Microwave and IR 'heat rays' and longer range, high penetration, high energy Gamma Ray and X-Ray weapons.

'Don't thtart thomething that I'll have to finith'

If you have an interest in (for want of a better term) the genre then using PenDragon for a Saborai game is the proverbial piece of piss. That's not to belittle the work that the authors of the official PenDragon Samurai game ('Daimyo' surely?) are doing. Presenting that application in a readable manner, covering game secific cultural expectations and scenario suggestions is not the proverbial.

Richard Herring has a (foul mouthed, obviously) routine about the relative evils perpetrated upon children by JK Rowling and some members of the Catholic Church.

I honestly thought that this was going to be a plan to mix RingWorld and Glorantha when I read the title.

I'm really glad that MW includes all of the old classics. And using the RQ3 scores rather than re-writing was probably better than sowing potential confusion by remodelling them all. Personally I grew up on Moorcock and Vance rather than Tolkien so 'Halfling' means something different to me than a renamed Hobbit. Even if I cared about Hobbits. I've only run a couple of games with nuMW and I used the following Goblins (small Ork stats, I'd have used Ducks but they're not in MW!) Trolls (Earth Elemental stats) Fey (Air Elemental stats) Haflings (Elf stats) The only other change I made was to cap the random bit of Bestiary Characteristics to 3d6 (keeping the static bonus).

I would guess that anyone who has played for a significant length of time (most of us here I reckon) has tried all manner of methods. I remember when Elric! first came out thinking that 2d6+6 for all characteristics was inspired brilliance. And all I (still) tinker on generation method for specific games I still gravitate back to that as my default. (I really like 3d6 in order but any roll of a '1' is replaced either by a '2' in gritty campaigns or a '7' in a more gonzo game; I'd struggle to say that this method is somehow objectively better than 2d6+6 though)

I'm boringly on the same hymnsheet as you chaps. 1) Prefer Characteristics to have an influence on skill level But not entirely happy with the way that MW or Mythras do it 2) Much prefer more degrees of success But not entirely happy with the fiddly RQ2-era MW way of calculating them

I always liked the personality type or outlook skills in Elric! I think that they're a very good (re)addition to MW. Fully agree that a +5 bonus isn't worth the effort.

Thanks for clarifying You and I may have different ideas of long lists And quite possibly use of imagination I have no doubt that you are right and that practice makes easier. You have found a published set of rules which suit you down to the ground, there's no real value for you in looking at alternatives to those.

I don't understand that either. But as with most things in life I don't understand* I just ignore it. *honestly; 26 dimensions wtf?** I understand the first 5 and assume that the rest are nonsense ** what's that for?

My fave is the way that PenDragon Pass deals with it: FEATS You can attempt a Feat with any combat skill or physical statistic, except Riding, by rolling under half the skill or statistic's value. Success = critical hit; double damage or game effect and possible added Status. Failure = fumble, with automatic Knockdown in addition to other fumble effects. Always name and describe the Feat you are about to enact. Anyone can try. It's incredibly flexible (I'm not limited to the list of feats that someone else has written*) It's high risk but high potentially reward. (It allows me to use my beloved double feint from older versions of PenDragon in all but name). My only reservation is that the choice is made before the dice are rolled. *which is my only real grizzle with Mythras Combat Effects. The idea is very clever. Picking the result after having seen the die result appeals to me more but looking through a big long list slows things down and the big long list constrains imagination at the table and these two are in conflict; longer list more possibilities but longer list more dead time.

Magic World includes rules for 'things' associated with a classic quasi-medievel setting i.e. Crossbows and Chainmail/Ringmaille/Maille/Call it what you will It also has (as mentioned) rules for non-human characters which fit the 'classic' RPG setting (i.e. RQ3 Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Orcs rather than Moorcock's Melniboneans and Myrryhns)

Yes it is. Even down to the art. A couple of the larger illustrations are not to my tastes but many/most of the small pieces are beautiful. There is so much great stuff crammed into such a small book, some of that is down to the small font size for sure but deliberate decisions like listing stats for natural foes on a single page for all of them are brilliant. Doctor Who for me. And Moorcock even wrote a Dr Who novel. So maybe the good Dr is an eternal champion - no (s)he isn't - yes (s)he is which seems appropriately Moorcockian. SB3 and Elric! both have their flaws (SB3 - seriously Tower Shields do more damage than most one-handed weapons? Elric! - general consensus is that d100 games are at their best at the 60-70% skill range and Elric! seems to go out of its way to ensure that nobody has skills at this level, they're either really low or stupidly high. To name but two) but I still love both of them to bits.

I think that if you're going to railroad then be honest. And then offer the chance for players to narrate what happens (your bunch seem to be imaginative so why not make use of that and enjoy it?) I've seen this done really well, and by open and honest you avoid the player's feeling of being cheated when they find out that they cannot actually do anything they want as the rpg-blurb told them they could. Extreme example, Witch The Road to Lindisfarne - the final scene relies on Eloise being in the cage when the group arrive at Lindisfarne, nothing can change that. But the players (let's be honest Eloise's player) can have all kinds of fun and influence in the intervening stages More normal example, "chaps at the end of the battle your Vikingrs are going to captured by the Christians, the fun bit of this section is finding how and what kind of havoc they cause in the meantime"

Having just spend several days producing DIY PPE for frontline workers and spoken to some of the same. They might (if one could stop them falling off) be at least as effective as the mouth masks. Apparently it's eye membranes which are the biggsest source of fear at the moment.

Thanks all, very useful comments. I think that Soltakss' observation is the most helpful: BRP (or the one I'm looking at not changing too much) use skills for skill resolution. The characteristics (in this version) don't affect skills. Therefore they don't affect skills!

Which floor? '12a' presumably?