Jaeger

On 11/24/2023 at 12:44 AM, Ravenheart87 said:

I am torn on some of their "frialiganisms" though - especially the monster mechanics and some of the heroic abilities.

Their "frialiganisms" are what basically unsold me on Dragonsbane after I took a look at the quickstart rules.

On 11/25/2023 at 1:28 PM, Jakob said:

I know that it has been stated a dozen times that Chaosium has made the experience that "generic fantasy RPG's don't sell; we need a great and original setting attached to our RPGs", and I absolutely believe them.

They keep saying that, but they have yet to put half the effort into a fantasy setting that they have into Glorantha and tune the BRP system to ti.

And no, RQIII's "Mythic Earth" doesn't count...

On 4/30/2021 at 7:04 PM, svensson said:

- a] Don't become fixated on one role in the party. If you want to be a tank who can pick locks, BRP/RQ has rules that'll let you.

- b] Magic is common, being GOOD at magic is uncommon

- c] Face every single fight like it might be your last. There is no such thing as a 'warm up fight' and the lowest trollkin still has a 1% chance to spike your ass to a wall if you're not careful.

- d] 'Adventurer' is not a job in RQ. Characters are part of a community, often several communities [clan, cult, military unit maybe]

Most of This is not exclusive to any particular setting game. It is a function of setting tropes and the level of verisimilitude that a GM is willing to enforce.

The one thing that is prevalent in class and level a.k.a. D&D systems is the Hit Point bloat. This is the #1 thing that usually around levels 3-6 starts breaking verisimilitude for some people and leads them to look for other systems. This tends to be the #1 turn off for most people.

I think the first d20 fantasy game to break from this sacred paradigm that is well designed, with a good setting can attract its share of players.

On 5/4/2021 at 1:38 AM, Mugen said:

...

IMHO, multi-class is a vestige of older d&d games, which didn't have the flexibility of skills. The only game in which it works well is the japanese game Sword World, but classes are in fact more akin to very broad skills in this game. It's not very different from Barbarians of Lemuria, but with a very limited seletction of professions.

Backgrounds/careers as "skills" are one of the mechanics that have yet to really catch on, and they really should. They are so much more suited to class and level based games than a standard skill lists; they broaden what characters can do within their class without adding any additional complexity, and in most cases reducing it.

That being said, even in skill based games I have gotten to the point that I no longer see a need for more than 20 broad based skills depending on the genre. Let specializations take care of any edge cases.

21 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

so what is even the point to roll D20 instead of a D%?

Others have since answered this well enough that the question could easily be reversed.

On 4/28/2021 at 11:10 PM, Questbird said:

The same is true in chess competitions between grandmasters. For masters the one to make a mistake first is the loser.

There is a very famous quote in chess circles: "The winner is the one who makes the next to last mistake..."

Which is usually prefaced with the saying about the starting position in chess: "The mistakes are all there, ready to be made."

21 hours ago, svensson said:

- Utility in WotC milieux? Well, if you want to put the work into it, you could adapt BRP to the Forgotten Realms I suppose.

For D&D with BRP people, it is about the genre and setting IMHO.

The D&D system induces a very specific play style. And with its constant HP inflation you are essentially playing through 2-3 different heroic genres with the same PC.

People like themselves their Forgotten Realms setting!   But they dislike the direction the game takes around levels 7-10. Hence BRP. A system that keeps things in a much narrower power band than RAW D&D. And BRP has the pre-packaged material to do this without much work.

Yes you could Mod D&D to do this... But not one published d20 game does!

They all have HP inflation! 5e, TSR, OSR, you name it. Show me a d20 based game, and we can flip right to the part in the book that has HP increasing every level.

It's like there is this permanent mental block that happens when people sit down to make d20 OGL based games; they turn into game design robots: "Must have HP increase with level!"  Absolutely unbelievable.

Especially when there is no inherent reason to.

On 4/28/2021 at 5:30 PM, Lloyd Dupont said:

If we simply roll under.. I don't see the point of converting to D20... I am kind of traumatised by D&D and getting the D20 out makes me sad.. 😞 
The one good point about D20 conversion would be, I believe, to do D20 + bonus vs 10 + bonus / D20 + bonus

Mechanically, there is no real reason to not be d20 roll-under for most "d100" games.

23 hours ago, svensson said:

I've looked at Classic Fantasy and several other DnD morphs of the BRP system and they just come across as 'neither fish nor fowl'. Worse, they miss the essential point of BRP... the adaptability of the system.

Because they cling to much to the standard BRP paradigm of doing things instead of re-evaluating legacy systems and changing them to make them more closely match the genre they are trying to emulate in play.

23 hours ago, svensson said:

AFAIC, d20 and BRP are opposite ends of the gaming of a spectrum. You can try and moosh them together, but it'll end up gobbletigook.

There is nothing inherent about the d20 roll high mechanic that was introduced in 3e D&D that keeps it from being used in a skill based game.

One is roll high, one is roll under. They do some things differently enough mechanically that they have a different feel at the table.

But neither is inherently tied to levels, HP inflation, skill lists, raising skills by using them, insanity points, etc. All those things are add-ons that can be changed.

16 hours ago, Simlasa said:

Wasn't Call of Cthulhu big in Japan before 7e came along?
...

CoC in general had a decent presence in Japan. I believe it was with 6th edition that it started to really take off and put fantasy games like Sword World firmly in the rear view.

I am no expert as I have never been to Japan or speak the language - but I found a few place that track things over there, and I Like to read up on it because I find it fascinating how some RPG's can sometimes beat out D&D in different countries.

FWIW - Evidently in Japan they play CoC a bit differently than is common in the US. A strong bombastic Anime-esqe vibe with black humor seem to be the norm. But that is natural as their frame of references for certain things is different than ours.

16 hours ago, Simlasa said:

...Treat Magic World like CoC for a year... graphics, support, adventures... and see if it doesn't grab a lot more attention and online chatter.

In my opinion:

I don't think Chaosium really wants to do a fantasy RPG that could compete with RQ or PD for sales and fans. (I have an opinion on that, but I don't want to derail the whole thread just yet...)

Aligning the game rules with the popular C7e to promote seamless player transition is the only reason to make a non RQ or PD Fantasy RPG and treat it like CoC.

Yes, MW would still be close system wise, but as we have seen recently with 5e conversions of other game systems - the closer to the marquee IP, the better it is for sales.

13 hours ago, Mankcam said:

I'm glad that someone else thought I was onto something here 😀

Well, it is a bit of common sense IMHO.

The RPG and fantasy novel world is rife with utterly fantastical settings with magic everywhere and the mystical around every corner. Even the D&D mainstay Forgotten Realms has gotten more and more fantastical with every new edition. And it started out High Fantasy!

So what to do to have a relatable setting that is not just a clone of the typical kitchen-sink high fantasy D&D world?

IMHO we look at what works on the non RPG playing, non fantasy book reading normies.

So we have Three* fantasy settings that within recent years reached a decent degree of mainstream popularity. (Film/Tv)

The Lord of the Rings, A Game of Thrones, The Witcher.

All of which are very toned-down fantasy compared to any current D&D setting.

It just seems natural to me to go in that direction if you still want to retain all the relatable bits that come with a medieval western Fantasy setting, and yet be different in tone to how people typically play D&D.

* But, but, but... Harry Potter!!!    LOLZ yeah. That was targeted at Kids from the beginning and plays by different rules.

On 2/4/2021 at 7:44 AM, Zenith Comics Presents... said:

I know Pendragon does, and certainly the math is easy to adjust for that, it does reduce the granularity to be sure, but ultimately has anyone changed the d100 primary mechanic to a d20 one?

I see potential with in it, and certainly as I like to call my house engine "Bastard Sword", there is a certain amount of not puritan nature to my view of games, but I am curious if anyone has done this and if there are any pitfalls or triumphs to be shared from that experience?

There is really no reason not to in most BRP based games.

I recently did another read-through of my CoC7th rulebook. There is no reason not to divide by 5 and make it a d20 roll under game.

Insanity and advancement would have to tweaked a bit to work - but it is doable. Everything else could just be put on the 1-20 scale and no one at the table new to the game would notice the difference.

On 2/4/2021 at 11:03 AM, Hteph said:

In the Swedish (old,old,old) version of BRP - Drakar och Demoner, they did this between 1st and 2nd edition, so this was the how I learned to play it from the start.  The two reason for keeping the % scale is better granularity for skill increase, and that people coming new to the hobby have it a bit easier to start with with percentage skill it seems.

Aside for that I saw little differences in actual play.

This.

The granularity loss is theoretical at best. Concerns about crit rolls are theoretical at best.

In actual play, with the action flowing, nobody will notice.

You can even change the way advancement works to an XP points system that "levels" or allows you to buy points advancements. 

If converting to a d20 was that big of a deal when it comes to loss of granularity, then we would see lots of posts on the Pendragon forum asking to "improve" the game but upgrading it to a proper d100 scale. 

I looked. Couldn't find one.

On 1/26/2021 at 9:44 AM, GothmogIV said:

Any general thoughts on updating MU to the 7e rules? 

If Chaosium is ever going to do a not RQ or Pendragon Fantasy RPG they need a reason to get behind it.

One based off of the successful CoC 7e is one of the few reasons to do so.

I think that there are two ways to go here:

First:

From this thread: https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/13532-why-magic-world-failed/

"Mankcam
I'm thinking of a setting like Dolemwood, WFRP's Old World, and The Witcher. I would prefer it a bit whimsical, fable-like, with dark woods, supernatural threats, kind of a dark Red Riding Hood kind of place. Full of evil child-eating hags, shadowy villains off the roads etc. Grimm Tales meets The Witcher sounds cool to me."

Have something that has a different take on things than typical high fantasy Forgotten Realms D&D. But is still a very relatable Fantasy setting. 

The second would be a whole lotta pie in the sky...

Second: CoC7e is huge in Japan. Sword World is Japan's #1 Fantasy RPG.

Sword World powered by CoC7e!

How they could get that license, or if they would come to a deal with the Sword World guys - I have no Idea. Probably totally unviable.

But with a good English translation of the Lore, it would be a unique hook to get attention for the game stateside. (Japan's #1 Fantasy RPG setting brought to you by Chaosium!)

Either way, a Japanese translation should be made immediately available as possible for either version to leverage CoC7e's market leader position in that country.

But the truth is that both of those are highly unlikely because of the investment required to grab Fantasy RPG market share. 

 A CoC7e powered "Eldritch Fantasy" Rpg in the US would be effectively "competing" against D&D twice. 5e and PF2e.

It is not just enough to release a good game – it will need to be supported; I.e. Modules, Adventure Paths, the periodic “Tome of everything equivalent”, VTT support, oh and a setting that doesn’t suck to go with it all.

A minimum of four quality releases a year, every year. With production values equal to the big two to boot.

The cost of real competition is high.

A third way might be for Chaosium to team up with a trusted partner in Japan to make the game as part of leveraging their market position over there. That might be a way to spread the risk/cost to make it a more viable option. But I have no idea how that would work, and I am not privy to Chaosium financials; so this is all just hot air with other people's money.