Al.

On 20 February 2016 at 7:35 PM, Al. said:

Not worrying about it (And selling suits in complete sets)

Speaking only for myself I'd either use die based armour variability OR Hit Location; I'm far too lazy to use both

EDIT: 

Just looked at my (barely legible) notes and if someone enters combat without their head protection* the AP is 3/4 of the listed (2 not 3 for Boiled Leather, 3 not 4 for Leather-and-rings, 4 not 5 for Ringmaille, 5 not 6 for Plate, 6 not 8 for Full Plate, etc) which I think I stole form a post about Pendragon somewhere

I never had a player (lucky!) enough to own character with the wear no armour on X geas if I did I'd rule losing similarly losing 1/4 AP for an unarmoured trunk, lose 1/4 for one or both unarmored arms, 1/4 for one or both unarmored legs

*foolish or unlucky

EDIT: grrrr clicked QUOTE not EDIT last time, so I've inadvertently become the kind of arse who quotes his own posts

5 hours ago, SDLeary said:

How are you handling armor variability by location? Just not worrying about it, or are you using die based variable armor absorption? 

SDLeary

Not worrying about it (And selling suits in complete sets)

Speaking only for myself I'd either use die based armour variability OR Hit Location; I'm far too lazy to use both

Clever

The 'brand' you have (now that, officially, Glorantha has gone elsewhere) left are prefixed with Mythic

Prefix the game system likewise (and with a pun of just the right level of obviousness that we the audience can feel smug at getting it)

Good job

2 hours ago, TrippyHippy said:

Actually, if there is one design feature I'd like to insist on, it's that we ensure that game play is not based upon tabular reference. So, for example, no Resistance tables or Crit/Fumble tables or the like. What I want is for the game to flow intuitively, without having to crack open the book all the time. 

I'm not sure that I have any power to insist upon anything. But I do agree with that guiding principle

RQ has always been pretty good for 'everything you need is on the character sheet'

One of the reasons (the other being I like to have more special effects i the game) for me moving to Special on a half and Critical on a a tenth's to remove the need to look at the levels of success chart. I know that some people are numerate enough to calculate fifths and twentieths on the fly, and I salute that; but for me easier is better

Hit Locations

On the one hand: many people have played with the RQ2 Hit Locations RAW with no problems whatsoever

On the other hand: I run general HPs, until and unless a Major Wound (1/2 HP a la Stormbringer) is rolled and then we roll for which location is disabled or wiped out

On the gripping hand: one of the cleverest house rules I've seen on t'net was using the RQ3 Missile Hit Location chart for Fists and Thrusting attacks

On 31 January 2016 at 11:12 PM, cjbowser said:

<Snip>

It helps if you can start in media res. That helps eliminate any initial dithering. 

Absolutely

The single best piece of GM advice from the Star Wars D6 going chapter (which is chock full of good advice)

6 hours ago, eyraud said:

did any one consider/try taking away the choice and making special effects a random result?

I like the idea of the combat effects (and similar parallel-evolved house rules floating around on t'net) specifically that I didn't have to take a big skill penalty to try anything other than just hack at my foe's trunk

I just think that there were too many options, and that may have slowed things down

But just as I don't like using Strike Ranks I can see that having a list of Special Effects (effects that happen on a Special) to choose from would not be hard to include

In fact I can forsee two simple bullet points in the new rules along the lines of:

STRIKE RANKS

If you and your group find the concept of Strike Ranks too fiddly then simply let characters act in descending order of DEX

SPECIAL EFFECTS

If you and your group find the Impale/Slash/Crush rules for Special attacks too restrictive simply allow players to choose one from this short list

<Short List>

5 hours ago, Aelwyn said:

I remember reading that two characteristics would be added together for base skills, ala more recent versions of Runequest. That would yield non-multiples of 5. I don't know if that decision has been changed, but it seems unlikely.

It would be possible to square that circle. Example (and only an example and off the top of my head at that)

Manipulate (Dex+Int-15) x5% would give 5% increments, sum of two characteristics, mean score of 25%* and only require one calculation per skill category rather than one per skill**

Whether any of those or priorities for the new/old design team of course I have no idea

* which seems about the level of competence for RQII characters

** which matters to me but probably not to many others

............. Proofread

By someone who hasn't played BRP games for several decades, so will notice little wobbles, typos and inconsistencies that we old and bolds will just subconsciously work around

And

I'd like it to have some kind of unified powers system (like Jason Durrall tried to run out in the BRP play-test but slimmer, better and more all-encompassing)

Skills in 5% chunks

Rules for players making all of the rolls

Laid out like Elric! not everything subsequently published by Chaosium (that I've seen anyway)

Al (ay elle) not A.I. (ay eye), in retrospect using my shortened name as my forum ID on every forum I post on was an error. Seems to be an issue with any and all forum fonts. As I think I'm right in saying (though see above for the accuracy of my posts) that that error has been made on every forum I've ever used.

Erm yes. You are quite correct it was published. It even says so in the pdf and on the website.

How embarassing  

The (unpublished but available on the web legally posted by the author) Virgin Dr Who game has a section for doing this.

The Rating there is different (1 to 6 I think) but could be translated fairly easily

I think it was things like most people have Willpower 3 if you are a notorious coward or have failed to quit smoking for more than two days it is 2, if you work in a dangerous profession like bomb disposal 4 

Any already written guidelines is externally moderated and seems fairer than

 hmmmm Al you're butt ugly have App 6

Even if really they're not any fairer in reality

Al

Likewise I'm afraid in Chrome, TenFourFox, Safari and Firefox

Part of me: no......! then my fellow players will see where I've nicked my ideas from

 Another part of me: An Affronter, an SC Drone, a 'normal' Drone, an Avatar, a GCU, an ROU, An Idiran, E-Dust

There's a similar post in the RQIII sub forum

My suggestions in particular are brilliant

Clean, clear layout (broken record: like Elric!)

Reduced skill list with the opportunity for specialisation/concentration (like Shadowrun not like MRQ) for those who actually care

Combat styles not individual weapon skills

Plotpoint adventures (like Savage Worlds) rather than haunted mansion dungeon crawls

Success chances reduced in granularity to 5% not 1%

Characteristics have an effect on skills

Skills go into categories rather than each getting their own calculation

Players make all the dice rolls

Remove stats for the biggest, nastiest critters

Magic on the originalmagicworld model rather than RQ battle/spirit magic model

Casting magic always costs some characteristic points

Removal of langauges as skills

Ruthless editing and pruning of the insanities section

Decent chase rules

Very explicit guidance in bold about what it means to make a Perception/Spot Hidden roll and how to make this exciting rather than blocking

I would think they would rely on KickStarter to fund more products.  They did for the new Horror on the Orient Express and that has to be a great feeling to have the money upfront while doing a product. 

Absolutely

The first kickstart RPG project I can remember was HeroWars (with the opportunity to be an Initiate, an Acolyte, etc) being advertised in TOTRM

So it has a fine tradition in the family of Glorantha/d100 (yes I know that HW and HQ use a d20 but my meaning is I think obvious)

I cannot see why one would fund such a niche product in any other way (not only is the money up front but an involved market has been created and the publisher will have a much better idea of likely market size than with other methods)

Al

Straight RQ3 without magic works fine. If differently from with

CoC is testament to that. Whilst in RQIII you know that a fight could well lose you limbs and that surrendering, running and missiles are all good options a fight in CoC probably means that you CoCd up somewhere (no apology) and the decision to enter a dust up is a significant and heroic story point (or plain stoopid mistake)

Using heroic Hit Points (con+siz and don't divide by 2)

Ruling that 0 HP means unconscious and death is when reach negative score equal to full unfounded positive

Both work well (possibly a bit extreme to use both)

Allowing multiple parries (at cumulative -30% penalty for each additional parry)

Allowing Dodges against multiple attackers (at cumulative -30% penalty for each additional attacker, remembering that RAW Dodge allows you to Dodge all attacks from the same attacker)

Can increase survivability

I tone down unarmed combat (including monsters and animals) with the following 3 rules:

Metal armour provides double AP against unarmed attacks (including teeth and tentacles)

Damage inflicted is the highest of attack type OR damage bonus

if you survive a combat then half of the unarmed damage heals immediately (as you realise that the pain was not that bad after all ) if you are killed or unconscious from unarmed damage you have still been beaten to a pulp and heal normally

That might fit with your plan

In terms of extra skills for peeps without magic a chum of mine had a simple rule that you can "raise to max" one skill for each spell you forgo

I.e. If your character was 'entitled' to 3 spirit spells you can raise 'any' 3 skills to 75% each (or 100% if they have no experience check box)

If you still want to allow some magic set a threshold POW for magicians a la Elric (which says 16 in the YK I recommended 21 for a friend's game set in Middle Earth

in summary:

RQIII with no magic?

No reason why not

Plays differently (but not broken or unfun in any way)

There are some options for tuning the danger

Al

For what it's worth (a clack at most I suspect) I have 4 GW era RQIII books and I find the art in Advanced to be the least inspiring* and the tone is bit more dull and limiting than the others

There's a French chap (name escapes me includes a Luc and I am sure that someone else can provide more helpful info than that he even has an online gallery somewhere) who did some illustrations for RQ, Stormbringer and PenDragon whose work I find very inspirational for ideas

*not entirely useless though; my sons love looking at the portraits of the generic gods in the Divine Magic and deciding which of their beard styles I should adopt!

EDIT: the artist I was thinking of is Jean Luc Sala http://online.portfolio.pagesperso-orange.fr/Casax.html
 

Referensing between two books will not ne a problem for me, mostly wants them for the art.. Will Probably do a couple of characters just for fun...

Just use the formula behind resistance table : 50+ attacker's skill - defender's skill

I did this in my last gasp effort to use MRQ

Basically (personal preference only) I like players to succeed more oftenn than fail so to boost chances I (effectively) added 50 percentiles to all skills unless facing serious oppostion

20% Perception becomes 70% (if opponent has no skill) or 70% minus their skill (if they do)

Inspired by Luke and Leia's shootout in the Death Star missile combat mapped quite well to opposed skill rolls as when the character is shooting they are doing two things; engaging the foe and stopping them shooting effectively AND trying to hit them and take them out of the fight

It also means that I can let players make all the rolls

Fumble - baddy criticals you

Fail - baddy succeeds against you

Exactly equal - stalemate

Success - you succeed against baddy

Critical - you critical baddy

Tis quicker and bloodier (as only one roll per exchange and almost every result ends up in someone getting hurt or suffering a  consequence for non combat)

I like the hack master principle that very point of characteristic is important. That led me to cobble together my favourite aftermarket damage modifier chart for BRP. I quite enjoyed the handful of episodes of the comic I read. But the game itself has too many different rules for my liking.

What is different is the time taken to reach this velocity, which is offset by drag and buoyancy. But once it is reached, terminal velocity is the same no matter what your size,

Ummm no

Otherwise we would not use parachutes.

Human without parachute approx 50m/s

Human with parachute approx 8m/s

A skydiver hits their terminal velocity and then not wanting to impact the ground at 50m/s deploys chute which increases drag. Drag now larger than weight. Resultant force acts in opposite direction to motion so skydiver decelerates. Carries on decelerating until reaches new terminal velocity (when drag and weight balance).

Edit: should have read to end of thread and seen that this had already been stated and acknowledged. Move along. Nothing to see here.

In GURPS (which is where I am trying to port a mechanic from) NPC reactions are judged in grades: Excellent, Very Good, Good, Neutral, Poor, Bad and Very Bad. Is there a built in mechanic like that in Legend (or other d100 games) that I'm missing seeing or am I going to need to find another way to generate 7 different degrees of success rather than the standard 4 in d100 (Critical Success, Success, Failure and Fumble)

What you COULD do (never tried it meself) is port the PenDragon style idea of the so-called Blackjack system. i.e. the higher you roll the better as long as it is not over the skill to be tested

Take the tens digit as the 'reaction roll'

With lower being worserer

And higher being betterer

10s Very Bad

20s Bad

30s Poor

40s Neutral

50s Good

60s Very Good

70s Excellent (dude)

But that does throw up some artefacts ('our best Diplomat has got Fast Talk/Influence/Persuade 50% we ain't never gonna do better than neutral reaction' and it being a different system to all the task resolutions in d100 games; although from memory I think that GURPS' Reaction Roll uses a totally different system to normal GURPS task resolution anyway so that may not concern you. Possibly a Critical always gives an Excellent (bro) result? Or reverse it to keep lower is better?)

Simplest (to my mind) Is that there is a sort of default reaction that you as GM expect from an NPC to the PCs and they can move that up 2 stages better or 1 stage worse by the roll.

(EDIT: Woot! my posts count has finally surpassed my downloads count!)

Hoorah

A random thought just occurred to me, you could probably portray a "realistic" version without prep by using a d100 roll and using a bell curve to see how good a random NPC is at something. Most of the time you'd get the stereotypical "average", but every once and a while you'll have some deadly bandits and some hilariously incompetent guards.

I have done similar a couple of times in Stormbringer games for PCs. (Inspired by a comment in the bestiary which recommends just rolling d100 for skill of a new creature if unsure)

It is quite fun and fitting for the bonkers nature of early Stormbringer but it does not half take a long time (if I were adopting it seriously as a mechanic I would obviously automate)

Something I can't grasp at the moment (among many other things), is how a GM knows how strong/powerful to make an NPC or group of NPC's in order to challenge the

This may not quite answer or question or be of use, apologies if not.

Players like to roll dice. It is exciting.

Players like to be agents of their own success or failure.

Rarely (not never but rarely) is it exciting for them to watch the GM roll dice.

So I now get my players to make all rolls.

Does player hit foe? Roll against against Weapon/Attack.

Does player block foe? Roll against Weapon/Parry

Does player spot foe? Roll against Perception/see/spot hidden

Does player sneak past guard? Roll against Stealth/Sneak/Move Quietly

All I do is decide what the default is.

Goons default Fail - so if player fails no big problem, but fumbling a parry for example means they get hit badly

EDIT: or they succeed minimally (I.e. hit for minimum rollable damage) by default so that there is a reason for players to attempt a roll, this is all much clearer in play than it is reading in my post

Significant NPCs default Success - so player failing is bad

Al