Chaot

3 minutes ago, MJ Sadique said:

A least, you can have all others articles for RQ2/3 from white dwarf with the link !

GOOD LUCK 😉

I appreciate the links to official articles but Ian Absentia is correct, this is a fan made thing.

I'm now positive that it was written by someone on this board, but on their own website. Maybe about running Forgotten Realms with Runequest? I don't think it was Pete Maranci and I don't see it on Simon Hibbs page.

I seem to remember it taking a race that D&D labels as objectively evil and building a legitimate cult around it to explain the cultural reasons why the race was considered hostile.

Sorry, I should have been more specific. It was on someone's RuneQuest webpage. It was distinctly a fan article taking 'D&D monsters are Evil' and reframing it as religious/cultural conflict.

Hi everyone.

Long ago someone (who probably posts here) wrote this amazing piece taking D&D monsters and giving their culture the RuneQuest treatment. It talked a bit about D&D's objectively evil status and reframed it as cultural relativism.

It was a beautiful piece. For the life of me I can't track it down. Ring any bells?

I think of it more as a spectrum. If a PC is trying to convince a guard to let them through the door and succeed on their convincing roll, the guard isn't necessarily going to let them in, she has a job to do. It will prevent her from becoming actively hostile towards the PCs for trying to get past her. She's likely to talk to them, telling them no instead of just calling for an extra guard to confront them.

On 6/2/2020 at 1:17 AM, Atgxtg said:

Except that ib BRP there is no benefit to Charisma either. 

The x5% score is useful but I agree in general. It's pretty easy to make specific situations where Charisma could be useful, like magic systems or a special Swashbucking skill where damage bonus is determined with Dex+Cha, but tying it into mundane use is tough.

With brings me back to that x5% roll. I lean on that to give Charisma importance. If you really wanted to, you could allow a successful x5% roll to bump up a interpersonal skill roll result by one stop, so a failure becomes a success or a success becomes a critical.

Edit: You can't do that with Appearance though. Makes no sense. 

52 minutes ago, olskool said:

Just change it back to Charisma.  Charisma is a measure of one's ability to influence others [for good or bad] and doesn't rely solely on "looks."  One would be hard-pressed to argue that Winston Churchill, Teddy Roosevelt, or Adolph Hitler were very good looking, BUT YET, they got people to do the things they wanted them to do.   I always use Charisma for just this reason.

 

This is what I do exactly. The Stat is Charisma and the x5% roll is Influence.

Here's the thing, appearance by its nature is fluid. If I spend a fortune on my wardrobe and grooming I will have a higher rating on appearance if I don't. It is also subjective. So I have a highly rated appearance but in what genre? Am I goth, preppy, fashionista, coffee-chic, etc?

It fits terribly with the other stats. As soon as you change App to Cha the stats break down to Strength, Dexterity, Constitution as physical and Intelligence, Power and Charisma as mental. Size is that weirdo stat in the middle that separates them. 

5 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

Fast Talk could work like spell casting. Failure does nothing. Success would enable an APP vs INT save on the resistance table.
Same Intimidate could led to a STR vs STR save (or could be APP vs INT in a social context)

If you go this route I would use Cha vs Int for both with the option of using Str vs Int for certain situations. I don't have to be strong to be intimidation.

I should have mentioned, this is for a human centric game! No giants.

I was not going to have weapons influence damage. The concept would be that damage is determined by how skilled the combatant is.

10 hours ago, hix said:

And thanks for the high praise, @Chaot

I loved your character generation rules. I went full random and the way it was laid out I could see a character developing right in front of me. It was very elegant.

One thing I did stumble on was equipment because I was unsure of what would be useful. Would you consider putting together some basic packs to take some of the guessing out of it? It could be as simple as a colonist, espionage, mercenary, diplomatic, rebel, scout and trade pack with basic tools that one would expect a character of that bent to have? That would have helped me know that I have the basics and could concentrate on the extra fun stuff.

And I still want to play! I've been busy with end of year 'teaching' stuff.

Yeah. He actually has all of his files posted in his discord channel so I don't think he's shy about showing them. Let me drop him a line and see if he'll swing by here.

Oh man, I miss those web rings. Now it only goes to Moorcock's Miscellany. Miscellany used to be a smaller page maintained by Jharey-A-Connell. He used to do interviews with Moorcock and post them to his site and would act as a go between for people who had questions. Then they expanded the site and Moorcock joined to answer his own questions.

One of the few times I've ever cursed out a person online was when one of the Miscellany posters came over here to harass some of our board members.

Humans. I like a human centric world. It's only recently that I've loosened that up a bit.

If I step away from Human centric it becomes Humans, Fey and the weirder stuff.

Right now I'm running two games of DnD so I'm stuck with the generic fantasy bunch.

On 5/23/2020 at 3:55 PM, Nick J. said:

I know absolutely nothing about the history of Glorantha's development, but always sort of assumed ducks were a riff on Howard the Duck?

I think it has more to do with the history of Four Color Comics and Carl Banks.

Phil Stroud is playtesting a game he calls Space Cowboys right now based on the BGB. It's really well done. I was supposed to play in a group with him to test it out but things fell through. Space Cowboys is living proof that BRP does sci-fi well.

Let's assume that combat is split into Brawn ((Str+Siz)/2)and Finesse ((Dex+Int)/2). Let's assume that Brawn combat skills defaulted to Brawn x 5% and did 1d4 points of damage and that Finesse combat skills defaulted to Finesse x 5% and also did 1d4 points of damage (plus whatever damage bonuses apply). This represents basic unskilled combat ability.

Then let's say that there is a dedicated combat skill that you can develop. I'm just going to call it Style here because it can be multiple weapons together.

Style 01-30% = 1d6 damage and +10 to combat skill
Style 31-60% = 1d8 damage and +20 to combat skill
Style 61-90 = 1d10 damage and +30 to combat skill

The goal is to provide a base damage type while making room for characters who are skilled in combat as well. Is this too fiddly?

My feeling is it might be. Can someone think of a simple alternative that does roughly the same thing?

Above is the current mock up of the character sheet. I don't even have a section here for Background/Career skills yet. Still really up in the air.

3 hours ago, Mugen said:

I quite like Revolution D100 approach : 12 to 16 skills, and "Traits" to help differentiate an expert climber from an expert jumper, which would give +30% to one or another.

I backed Revolution and I agree there are some cool things in there but at the time I felt it was a little too fiddly for what I wanted. I should do a reread though. It was a good book. 

9 hours ago, SDLeary said:

Abilities based upon Keywords,  with specializations based on breakouts. All on D100 rolls using BRP Levels of Success. Characteristic could modify things, or function as fallbacks should no appropriate ability exist (normal x5, though I'm more partial to x3).

8 hours ago, Vile said:

Perhaps along the lines of competencies rather than backgrounds. Sort of a halfway-house between skills and occupations. A hunter might have 3 competencies such as "hunting" (incorporating relevant weapons, tracking, butchering, skinning, stalking)

Can these be put under Arts and Crafts though?

Said Hunter would automatically be proficient in hunting, tracking and survival but if he was someone like Aragorn who easily spent extremely long timeframes in the wild he might have a Craft [Survival] skill. If he was able to track creatures like Gollum all across Middle Earth he might have a Craft [Tracking] skill. 

10 hours ago, el_octogono said:

Hey! Don't forget characteristics! Maybe both have Minor Noble at 57% but one of the characters has a higher CHA, and more suitable for social interaction, and the other a higher DEX, and more suitable for Dancing and other physical aspects of the "occupation".

That's also something I could use... I go back and forth on the Stat rolls. Right now I only have Idea and Influence from Intelligence and Charisma. I almost took those out too. I found that they become a crutch for players at my table. They are constantly asking to make those rolls. Maybe if I kept them in but made the % a  x3% instead of a x5%...

Let me step back for a minute and expand on some thoughts, and frame what skills do. First, the assumption of competency. My favorite BRP is Elric! so I take some basic skill assumptions from there. Skills over 100 are encouraged for PCs. What do the NPCs look like though and what does a skill % really mean.

This is my basic guideline.  

20 competent. This is basic for being able to get by in doing something. 
40 fluent. You can handle expert issues, troubleshooting as you go.
60 veteran. You are very experienced and can handle dramatically shifting situations as you perform the skill.
80 mastery. Everything above this is just shades of genius.

The second part is the current skill list I have does have room for breakout specialty skills. I wish I had thought to say this in an early reply, but let’s go back to Stefan and Aleksandra for a second. They are both Minor Nobles at 57%. They both have the basic skills that a Minor Noble might have.

But there are also the presence of an Art skill and a Craft skill that can be broken down into more specific specialties. Say Stefan picks up Art [Performance]. In situations where Aleksandra and Stefan are competing in either music or dance, Stefan will outshine Aleksandra. If Aleksandra picks Art {Courtly Manners], she can navigate social intrigue much easier than Stefan can. If neither of the characters pick up those specialties then they are roughly equivalent to each other in the basic Minor Noble abilities.

Additionally, say Yelena joins them. She is also a Minor Noble 57% however she has picked up Art [Fortepiano]. It’s a very specific skill, more so than Stefan’s Performance. Yelena is able to play the fortepiano much better than Stefan would be, although Stefan will still be able to muddle through a piece.

I’m worried that adding subsystems on top of skills will work to complicate a system that I’m trying to simplify. Part of this comes from my days of playing with the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, when basic questions came up the answer was, sure you can do that, you’re a fighter or nah, you really need some thief skills to pull that off. This was further cemented when I say how Barbarians of Lemuria tied in their Careers (though I admit it’s been years since I’ve read BoL and I might need to check and see if my memory is in any way accurate).

If you think of the Career/Background/Whatever skills as generic proficiency that are superseded by the skills in the Skill List, does this go a ways in answering issues of specialization?

2 hours ago, Vile said:

At the moment I'm still leaning towards the "fewer, broader" skills list as my preferred option.

I'm currently wondering if there's a way to combine the broad skills with a vague 'background/occupation/identy' skill? The background skills as a supplement to the broad skill list?

1 hour ago, g33k said:

Someone who -- for example -- dances well, but isn't particularly skilled at the whole "formal court etiquette" schtick, could well be a "Minor Noble 57%" and really very popular at social gatherings ("My, doesn't s/he dance divinely!") and have a lot of consequent social "clout," but no real political clout because their political counterpart (with 2 left feet, but also "Minor Noble 57%") has the attention and respect of all the people at court who lean in that direction.

 

Well, let's look at Stefan again. He's got Minor Noble and Artist very high. He's also got a low Thug. Maybe this indicates that he is skilled is some of the finer points of being a minor noble but less skilled in hunting, light weapons and the more [physical aspects? I don't know.

Sure does help. It all helps.

I'm using Acrobatics and Athletics are kind of a place holder for 'things that you basically need to be strong for' and 'things that you basically need to be agile for'. Both of them incorporate some aspect of strength, sadly both terms I'm using also tend to be defined as games/sports competitive activities which is not quite what I'm going for. Unfortunately, no other overarching terms come to mind. I do that you for pointing out the issue though. I'm going to have to think about it more to see if I can find more accurate terms. The goal was to have two skills that take the place of the Climb, Jump, Ride, Swim and Throw skills.

___

Professions as skill
It's odd but after I posted the original post I picked up the latest Unknown Armies book. It just came in the mail today and it's the first time I've ever looked at the rules. There's a section about Identities. They are tied pretty tightly into the UA rules but the general structure is pretty cool. The concept revolves around the phrase "Of course I can _______, I'm a ________". You have the identity and then a few sentences on what that means. Then it also calls out some specific basic rolls you can adjust because of the Identity. Not exactly what we're talking about but at least it's a way of defining the occupation/skill group, which might be bridging on what you're referring to with the HQ keywords.

So maybe when the player picks the occupation they list a couple of key words that they specialize in. Alternatively, maybe Stefan and Aleksandra are both basically equal? It doesn't mean that they will always have an equal outcome. Sometimes Stefan will perform better then Aleksandra and vice versa just because of die rolls.

I'm digging into my BRP Ravenloft notes again and reorganizing a bunch of stuff. My goal is to simplify and one of the things I'm hacking away at is the Skill list.I've looked at it too much and need new eyes on it. I know I haven't been around much lately but this is definitely the best place to go for everything BRP.

Basic Skills
Acrobatics, Athletics, Art [varies], Craft [varies], Domain Lore [varies], Evaluate, Fast Talk, Handle Animal, Insight, Natural World, Persuade, Physik, Scribe, Search, Skulduggery, Stealth

Advanced Skills
Alchemy, Folk Lore, Herbalism, Mesmerism, Sorcery, Spiritualism, The Mists, Wizardry

Only 16 basic skills, 3 of them can be expanded by into specific categories. I tried to keep them as minimal as possible while still offering multiple avenues of tackling a problem and upholding character flavor. Is there anything that jumps out as you as redundant or as missing?

Alternatively...

I am also thinking about getting rid of the basic skills altogether and tying it to an Occupation Roll. A character could have multiple occupation skills.

Stefan Moldoveanu of Dementlieu
Minor Noble 57%
Artist 40%
Thug 25%

Skills: Mesmerism

Any of his basic skills can be folded into one of the occupation skills. Anything advanced or very specific to the character can be listed under skills. It's a bit more hand wavy but it's certainly simpler. The challenge I see is making sure that the occupations available both have the right flavor and offer a wide enough variety to be worth it.

I'm stuck and would welcome ideas and feedback!

Thing is, I think when you're going to go this abstract with Supers you might want to start using Call of Cthulhu stats and create your own superhero skills. At some point 20d6 damage becomes 1d10 adventurers.

Superworld was messed up because whatever stat gave you energy dominated the game (not interested enough to look it up). Get rid of that right off the bat. Start assigning skills and powers based on the character's individual ability scores. Someone is really strong? They get skills of strength. Someone is really fast? they get skills and abilities based on Dexterity.