Chaot

Sadly, I think it would. The caveat is, what version of Stormbringer bothers you? Elroc!/Stormbringer 5 is a much different beast than Stormbringer 1-3. Personally, I love the pdf and just kicked off a Ravenloft game based around it.

You know, that's very true. Also it occurs to me that the traits in question are geared to social interaction, which my brief test run wasn't. There was also a lot going on and I really didn't concentrate on the Traits aspect myself until the game was over. Happily, the Madness Meter worked really well. I'm wondering if I might need to tailor the traits to the given character? Make it something the Player already associates with the character to keep it firmly in their mind? Alternatively, I might have actually been aiming for was a system to rate how altruistic/self interested the characters are. I have to rethink this because I don't think I'm going about it in the most elegant way. Oooh, I had to run over and check that thread out. I don't have a whole lot of experience with Kult, but from what I've read it looks really fun. I'm confident that traits work well for Pendragon, though I've only read and not played it. It feels like such an integral part to the setting. I think it's more my fault. I am trying to use them more as an Allegiance system rather than a character guide. I think there's a lot of truth to this. The session revolved much more on reaction to circumstance than social interaction. No opposed traits test, the player decides which they use, which adds to the trait tally. Negative traits add to Dark Powers points. Positive traits give the bonus without consequences. They are a pretty even minded group and I largely trust them to make the call depending on their concept of character. I hold right of veto and the power to assign negative traits if I think they are needed, of course.

Are the knights specialized? Are there courtly knights and wilderness knights? Are there knights that rescue kittens exclusively while others are stuck with the jabberwock?

I had a brief run through, about an hour and a half game. I'm leaning towards dropping Traits for something else, but I don't know what. Granted it was a short session and there was a lot going on, but nobody thought to touch traits, including myself. I think part of the reason why is the Traits that I selected feel disconnected from play. Something that in more dear to the individual character, like the rage, fear and noble passions.

Rock on!

Howdy Nakana. Welcome to the forums! I heartily agree! Another thing that keeps me playing BRP is that it is fairly transparent rules wise. The character sheet really informs the player of what they can and can't do. Another thing that I really like is how fast the game moves. No being bogged down in hours long combat!

That's my mantra right there. Whatever feels right for your game. I like the 30 step and actually don't use the doubling rule. Might I suggest for those who don't like doubling or halving and also don't like the 30 step consider bonuses and penalties of 20? It would probably work best for those who keep skill levels around 100% and below.

Howdy All. I'm posting this here for your eyes. Tell me if you see anything obviously unfair or breaking in it? Tomorrow I'm running a Ravenloft game and I am keen on using both the Madness Meter and Traits, because I think they both feed well into the concepts of Ravenloft. So MM works much like it does in Unknown Armies. I've narrowed the Categories to Violence, Supernatural, and Self. When making a check, instead of rolling against the UA Mind stat I've decided to use something I'm calling Stress for now. Inspired by Ben and Nick's article in Uncounted Worlds, Stress is determined by averaging Intelligence and Constitution. Failed notches and hardened notches work the same. Twelve hardened notches or ten notches in one single category means that the character is now a sociopath. I've narrowed the Traits down to three categories too; Generous/Selfish, Honest/Deceitful, Merciful/Cruel. They work a bit more like Allegiance does, in that they are a point tally system, rather than a point on a scale between 1 and 100. Characters will slowly increase their point totals in the traits through play. To start, characters begin by distributing ten points in the positive traits and five in the negative. This next part is inspired by Uncounted Worlds too, but from Sarah's article. If appropriate in play, the character can call on their trait to augment their roll. If the character is using Fast Talk, for example, they are being completely honest with their information, they can add whatever is in their Honest Trait to their roll. If they have Fast Talk 80% and Traits 10 Honest/Deceitful 12 their effective Fast Talk roll is 90%. Should they tap the Deceitful Trait while using Fast Talk their roll would be 92%. This holds unless the character has become a sociopath. If they've hardened themselves too much, they lose their connection to humanity and can no longer invoke those traits until they get some mental help. This will all feed into Dark Powers points, as this is Ravenloft we're talking about. I can go into that a bit more later if there is interest.

That's seriously retro!

Fun! That's great! Magic World finally coming out was the impetus I needed to start up a group again as well. We'll be using it as a base to run Ravenloft for a while. I like it. I've actually been using point distribution in a similar way that Magic World does for a while. For characters starting with 250 points it's 60, 40, 40, 30, 30, 20, 20, 10 and for characters starting at 300 points it's 60, 60, 40, 40, 30, 30, 20, 20.

Also, it's a nifty way to make Power less of an uberstat. Now I'm wondering what Sorcery would look like if there was one skill to cover Sorcery spells and an Arts and a Craft skill to cover Summonings. Another stat that needs deflated is Siz, which is why I houserule Damage Bonus into two categories; Brawn and Finesse. Brawn is Str+Siz and covers big heavy weapons and Finesse is Str+Dex and covers smaller, lighter weapons. If you want to add a saint worship or polytheistic vibe I recommend taking a look at the Virtues system in Gods of Law. Also, though Classic Fantasy is a great book in it's own right, it is worth it's weight in gold for the way that it expanded the BGB's Magic system. Worth taking a look at, definitely. Anyway, I'm enjoying this thread and I do hope that you continue to update it as you further design your Southern Reaches!

Indeed. Not as a file, but a thread. I see you've already found them. For anyone else looking, they are right over here.

Plus the best Goblin write up ever. And agreed. Some great stuff here in this thread.

If you decide that you want to add Familiars in addition to the Sorcerer's Staff, I suggest snagging the cat write up from whatever Dreamlands book it is in. Once again, poor keetoms are shafted while dogs get all the glory. Interestingly, I think the Toad and the Hawk write up mention using them as familiars.

Welcome to the forums, Rob! This isn't an area that I've thought a lot about, so I'm not much use in the conversation except to say that when tooling around with the rules I like to first figure out what I want the end result to be, then run the numbers to try to find a good middle ground. After that, I look at the extremes to see where it breaks and what the special circumstances are. Now, the Resistance Table is pretty straight forward so I'd think it depends on where you consider your average Constitution score. If you've got a venom at POT 8 it's going to have a much greater effect on PCs who's Con averages 11 and PCs who's Con averages 13. But that all ties in to how you like to generate characters. Words do not express how much I love this. Consider it yoinked.

A Sorcerer who has a long game can do pretty well for themselves, MP wise with Brazier of Power, Witch Sight and Curse of Sorcery (or any other POW : POW spell). Say the Sorcerer has POW 17. Casts Brazier of Power for a reservoir of 16 mp and a new POW of 16. Sorcerer uses Witch Sight to find victims of appropriate POW and inflicts Curse of Sorcery on them, eventually raising her POW up to 17 again. Casts Brazier of Power for another battery, rinse, repeat. Now, if I were a player who wanted a demon entourage I would talk with the GM about it, just as I hope a player in my game would inform me if their plans were potentially game breaking...

I think one of the strengths of the Madness Meter does is in being a great equalizer. A puritan preacher is likely to freak out a little bit when experiencing an authentic minor miracle for the first time just as a witch is likely to freak at her first prophecy. It's a sort of induction to the reality of the invisible world. Now, the puritan is going to have a certain relationship with his god and the witch with their spirits. A puritan who has experienced a miracle will be more prepared to deal with a witches prophecy because they are slightly hardened to the supernatural. This exists separate from how they react to the other's world view. They are still going to be adversaries for a puritan shalt not suffer a witch to live. The more holy mysteries the preacher is exposed to though, the more hardened he is against the supernatural and the more collected he is when facing evidence of witchery. The cool thing is, if the puritan steps it up and starts some sort of judgment and purification ritual on the witch or if the puritan is presented with or subject to a hex, it's a step up on the meter and the puritan may freak out more until hardened. Just like a witch would if situations are reversed. The puritan's hatred of the witch is divorced from their reaction to the supernatural. The puritan is going to kill the witch because that's what puritans do. If their not hardened first, their going to go a bit crazy. If they are hardened, their going to be a bit sociopathic.

Stresses themselves as skill checks... very interesting...

Two other sites of interest not listed Simon's Some-Frills Website: Glorantha River of Cradles and Dragonlance RuneQuest conversion. Quest Bird's Nehwon Campaign: Lankhmar using Elric!/Stormbringer5 as rules base.

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You can totally do that. I would have it fall under a Self stress check, which deals with social norms, constructs, self image and one's place in the scheme of things. Note of clarification, when I said I would let them distribute 3 hardened points, that didn't mean one each. A PC could put 2 in Violence and 1 in Self or 3 in Unnatural or whatever. Thought I would clarify, as when I reread it it read wrong. Also, there's a short thread about stress checks over at RPGNet and I only bring it up because I think Tancred has a good description of how failed stress checks can play in games and I like Garlick's idea of skill penalties.

So, somewhere I have a notebook with mad scrawlings about Ravenloft and adapting the Madness Meter. Not sure where it is htough, so I pulled out my UA book. Exactly. In a fantasy setting, if I'm making a warrior type, I may not have killed someone but I'm weathered enough that I know my way around a fight. I'm nearly 100% positive that what I ended up doing is allowing players to distribute three hardened notches between Violence, Unnatural and Self (I condensed Isolation, Helplessness and Self down to Self). Thanks. It only took about three years for me to compose the question. I've blocked out the next seven to come up wiht the answer! So I think it's a good idea to look at checks 1-5. Six through ten are really extreme circumstances that can be built upon after establishing the foundation. Also, again, I combined Isolation and Helplessness together with Self. I did this because I didn't think those checks would come up as much and because I already had so much going on with my rules hack that I wanted to cut whatever chaff I could. In Violence, stress checks range from being attacked (1) to killing someone (5). Helplessness ranges from unintentionally embarrassing yourself in public (1) to spending a month in jail (5). Isolation ranges from spending a day without seeing anyone you know (1) to spending a week in solitary confinement (5). Self ranges from breaking a minor promise (1) to going against something you strongly believe in because you are afraid that it is dangerous (5). Now, Unnatural ranges from strong deja vu (1) to being attacked with magic (5), which seems a bit too low for a fantasy game where magic is more out in the open. If you remove/combine every other stress, beginning with the first one I think you're closer to something workable. 1 See creature or object that is supernatural in origin. 2 See/perform minor magic (2+2 does not = 4). Illusions, blessings, simple spells like Make Whole or Rat Vision. 3 Attack, be attacked or see someone else attacked with magic. Magic having a significant and dangerous affect on the world around the character. Major flashy magic. 4 Kills someone with magic. 5 Be present in major magical event or entity. Being in the company of a magus, lich or dragon. After that you need to figure out what the magical equivalent of 'watching someone you love tortured to death' is and set that at ten. Six through nine should fall into place. Then take a look at failed notches and decide what you want there. Pretty sure I moved nightmares to 3 and obsessive, ritualized personal and ineffective wards and rituals to 4. I think that's pretty representative of what I came up with and hopefully it's along the lines of what you were thinking, or at least useful enough that you can riff on it.

Howdy and Welcome! There is an ongoing thread down in the tavern, but it's easily missed. CoC's a great game, but not one that I've had much opportunity to play. Guitar is a great deal of fun and I heartily recommend it. When picking out a guitar, it is important to bring someone who plays along with you. My first guitar had all the action of a cello and was an absolute bear to play until we cranked the neck and filed down the bridge. Once you get a couple of chords under you it's great fun to bang on.

I have the same issue! I was thinking about adapting the Madness Meter for an Elric! game and absolutely decided to adapt it for a BRP Ravenloft game. How do you scale Unnatural when the supernatural is a semi-known quantity? The best I've come to an answer is to set anything of supernatural or magical origin at 1 and to rate higher depending upon how dangerous that unnatural event is to the character, using Violence as a guide. Or how far away it strays from understood norms. An obvious portent or omen might be worth 1, where as a visitation might be worth 2. A violent omen might be worth 2 while a visitation from an angry spirit might be worth 3. It's been a while, honestly, since I have pondered this. I have some notes someplace that I'll pull up but I've not really found my happy medium yet. I look forward to discussion on this topic.

Just to make sure I'm reading right, currently the store is only offering RQ6, right? (and holy hell, old RQ stuff is going $1 a pop?)