Lofgeornost

I thought it might be for Renaissance, based on that very interesting review you wrote. You could combine the MRQ approach with the Renaissance ghost-dispelling one, too. The Renaissance system gives you an opposed test of the exorcist's righteousness vs. the ghost's persistence, and different effects for different levels of success. The MRQ system provides a way to make the exorcism cumulative, taking several 'rounds' (or hours, or whatever) to succeed or fail. If I were designing a subsystem for this in a c. 1500 European setting, I think I'd want to include the following: The ability for the exorcist to boost the chance of success by using things like holy water, sacred relics, and/or making the demoniac wear or touch holy items, like a priest's vestments. The place where the ceremony is done could also have an effect--better on sanctified ground, perhaps best near the tomb of a saint credited with exorcism miracles. The possibility that the ceremony leads to physical damage to either the possessed or the exorcist. The demoniac might attack the exorcist physically (though this seems to have been rare), or the exorcist and/or his helpers could be injured trying to restrain the demoniac as he or she thrashed around or (in theory, anyway), levitated. And the possessed might exhibit inhuman strength. Likewise, demoniacs could be unwittingly hurt in fighting against restraints. Some exorcists might intentionally strike the possessed. Dialogue between the exorcist and the demon. Of course, the ritual involves the exorcist speaking to and commanding the demon, but the demon should answer back. We tend to think of exorcism as casting out of demons, but the Greek roots from which the word comes actually imply something like 'forcing to speak under oath.' It was standard to ask the demon what its name was, how it had come into the victim, and how it could be removed. An exorcism was counted partially successful if it forced the demon to answer such questions. And answers to them could increase the chance of success in further rounds of the process. The idea that there are varying degrees of success in exorcism. The goal of course is to remove the demon and have it never return. But some possessed people went through repeated exorcisms, some giving only partial relief, before full freedom from possession was gained. This could be reflected in game terms either by rules that say the demon must leave for a specified period of time (but then must return), or perhaps through a mechanism where, as the exorcism reduces a demon's POW (or whatever) it becomes less able to affect the victim. Push the POW down far enough and the demon is still there, but has little or no influence until it regains POW.

I looked over some D100 games over the weekend with this in mind. Aquelarre does have an exorcism ritual and a very extensive treatment of demons and other such spirits. There isn't much detail about what goes on during the exorcism ritual, which lasts 5 hours, though, so you would have to narrate that yourself and add any elements you wanted. The basic procedure, in game terms, is fairly simple: roll for success of the ritual, using the priest's Theology skill (-40 because it is a 3rd order ritual). Perhaps (this isn't really clear for this ritual) then the targeted demon gets (in effect) a 'saving throw'--if it rolls its Irrationality or under the ritual has no effect. Assuming the ritual did work, you then consult a table to see what the results were. The table depends on comparing the priest's Rationality score with the demon's Irrationality, and results vary from harms of various sorts to the exorcist to expulsion of the demon back to hell. The scores can be modified in various ways. This might be hard to convert to other D100 systems because of its reliance on Rationality/Irrationality scores, which are an integral (and IMO wrong-headed) part of Aquelarre. It also does not really provide much in the way of 'spiritual combat' between the exorcist and demon; you can influence the outcome by preparing well, but it all comes down to a couple of die rolls and comparing some scores and modifiers. Since @StevenGEmsley's original post mentioned a late-medieval setting, I thought the Renaissance system would be a good place to look. The free SRD does not include anything closer to exorcism than the 'dispel elemental' spell for alchemists. Mongoose Runequest, on which Renaissance was based, I makes Exorcism a Divine Spell, magnitude 3. Casting it requires a Lore (Theology) roll, like all Divine Spells; if it is cast successfully, the exorcist and the spirit engage in a series of opposed Persistence tests. The exorcist gets a 30% bonus and either party can spend Magic Points for a 10% bonus per magic point (but for one test only). When the exorcist has accumulated successes equal to the demon's POW, it is cast out of the body and cannot re-enter it for a period equal to the exorcist's POW in days. Presumably, if the exorcist fails one of the Persistence tests, the exorcism ends in failure at that point, though the description isn't entirely clear on that.

There are possession and exorcism rules, though not very extensive, in Mythic Babylon for Mythras. Given the cultural distance from Late Medieval Europe these likely wouldn't be particularly helpful. I'm not sure if Deus Vult included such rules, but it might well have done, given its focus.

I would second this. Although I played a little of Runequest II, I only really became deeply interested in B.R.P. with Runequest III, which switched the default setting to 'Fantasy Earth.' I really liked the mechanics for pseudo-historical games. I guess I'm more interested in depicting interesting and complex societies in games rather than in depicting their mythologies. I was also attracted to B.R.P. because in the 1980s Chaosium was producing games set in fictional universes I already was interested in--those of Moorcock's Elric and Runestaff series, Larry Niven's Ringworld, and Arthurian literature.

Apologies in advance if this is the wrong place to ask this, but I've noticed that a fair number of posters on this site also post sometimes at the RPGPub. Today I find that I cannot access that site and that the main page (all that is visible) lists no posts from later than about 9 p.m. last night. But I can't find anything like a 'we're offline currently' statement on the RPGPub's Facebook page or Twitter feed. Those don't seem to have been updated in a long time, though. Anyway, I was wondering if others were having the same problem. Edit: As of now, it seems to be back online.

Thanks for the very full and helpful review. The HRE and Central/Eastern Europe in the Early Modern period seem to be getting more attention in gaming these days, though most of the recent-ish material I know for them is not D100-based: things like some of the LotFP adventures, or Codex Integrum's Medieval Baltic sourcebooks and Road to Monsterberg adventures.

Looking forward to your review; I wasn't aware of this supplement. It looks like the author has done a 2D6 version as well.

It's separate, I think, though the Shores of Korantia supplement has some suggestions of how to fit Meeros into it.

I'd be interested; there isn't a BRP game that does this exactly, to my knowledge. I recently stumbled on a D100 game that is based on the author's re-imagining of Bronze Age/Homeric Greece, Fragments of the Past. The Quickstart, which is fairly extensive, is available for free on Drivethru. I've wondered about adapting it to BRP, Mythras, or OpenQuest.

Thanks very much for the answers! I appreciate the time you have put into composing them.

Thanks a lot to the answers to these questions. I have posted a few more queries since d(sqrt(-1)) emailed the list. It would be great if you could post answers at your leisure--I'm sure you have other more pressing things to do.

Jackals has some interesting systems for non-adventure downtime in its seasonal actions, including mechanisms for attracting a patron and for establishing a home in a community. I’ve not looked at the patronal mechanics as closely as I should, but in a cursory read-through one thing befuddles me. Each possible patron has a ‘sphere of influence’; the only role this plays in the rules, as far as I can see, is that a character seeking a patron can increases his or her chance of getting one by 5% for every 150 ss donated to the patron’s sphere of influence. But the actual ‘spheres’ listed are strangely abstract. In some cases, it is pretty clear how one would make the donation. For example, on possible patron is the chief Hasheer (magician-scribe) of the Scriptorium in Ameena Nori. Her sphere of influence is Lore, and presumably a character could donate the money to Scriptorium, or give them rare texts of equivalent value, etc. But in other cases it is more opaque. Ba-En Nafar, for instance, is the first possible patron listed. He is the right-hand man of the de-facto ruler of Sentem, and his sphere of influence is ‘combat.’ How do you donate money to ‘combat’? Provide money for the city guard or walls? The rules on houses, which I have looked at more closely, also have some contradictions or unclear patches. According to the Establish Home seasonal action in chapter 8, “A home has two statistics, quality and level.” But the rest of the rules for homes speak only of levels of quality—there is no indication of how a character would, for instance, increase the quality of a home without increasing its level. They seem to be the same thing, and there is only one chart for them, labeled “Home Quality.” The chart itself is a bit confusing, since the description for quality level 3 is “Larger and far nicer than generally available, with a specific feature (such as room for a foundry, a dry cellar for a scriptorium, or a defensive wall).” But according to the rules, a character can start adding additional features to a home (like a foundry) the first time they raise its level. So one could have a foundry in a level 2 home, or perhaps even a level 1 home, since houses start at level 0. Two of the features a character can add to a home also provide followers: a barracks and a ritual space, which could be temple, scriptorium, or (alchemical) workshop. There the rules state how many new followers one will attract each year, but not how many total one could have for a feature of a given quality level. That doesn’t make sense; presumably at a certain point there would be no more room for additional soldiers or acolytes, especially if the warriors are living in the home, which is what barracks implies. For the barracks this problem is somewhat offset by the fact that a certain number of recruits will die yearly (and there are rules for how many), but that isn’t the case for acolytes. There, even with a minimal setup (quality 1 house) the character will be gaining 1D4 acolytes a year and apparently never losing any.

That's great news. Thanks for reaching out to him. I will continue to post some queries and problems in the hopes that we will get answers eventually. One thing that puzzles me is how a character learns new rites. Since currently a ritualist begins the game knowing all 4 rites for his or her tradition, it is maybe a mostly moot point, but if more rites become available--or if the character wants to learn rites of other traditions--then it becomes important. The rules as written are a bit obscure. In chapter 6, Advancements, the Active Advancements chart has two entries which bear on this: "Learn a new rite. The rite starts at [Dev + Wis]%." This costs 1 active advancement. "Gain access to a magical tradition of the Jackal's culture. They gain 9 Devotion and learn a rite of the chosen tradition, which starts at [Dev + Wis]%." This costs 3 advancements. Now, it's fairly clear that the second of these only applies to characters who are not already ritualists. If not, then any ritualist could gain another 9 Devotion--no small potatoes--at relatively little cost, as well as learning a new rite. But what isn't clear to me is whether the first also applies only to character who were not created as ritualists, but have now become so, and therefore do not yet know all 4 rites of their tradition? Or could any ritualist use it to learn a new rite of his or her tradition (assuming there are someday more than 4 available)? This is made more murky by some of the advanced skill talents, listed a few pages later in the chapter, in the section for Knowledge Skill Talents. This lists two relevant to learning new rites: Does a character need these advanced talents as pre-requisites before he or she can start learning rites? If so, they seem to operate differently--Steeped in Secrets seems to be a 'once-for-all' talent; once you have it, you can buy rites from a given alternative tradition, while Learn Rite allows you to learn only one rite from a magical tradition of your culture, and therefore presumably needs to be achieved again before you can learn another (which makes little sense). I assume the phrase 'opening the Devotion attribute' in Learn Rite refers to the process of spending 3 active advancements to "gain access to a magical tradition of the Jackal's culture." Finally learning new rites comes up in the seasonal actions described in chapter 8, Running the Game. One of these seasonal actions is Research, which the rules state can be used to "learn a new Rite from a teacher on a different part of the War Road." Using the action requires a survival roll (for the journey), success at either a Culture or Lore check, and a payment of 300 ss to learn a rite. There is no mention of needing to spend active advancements or of Steeped in Secrets or Learn Rites talents as a prerequisite for this seasonal action. So is this yet another route to learning rites? If so, what are its limitations--can it be used to learn rites of another culture or tradition?

I think it means the Devotion attribute, not Devotion points--so in effect the maximum Devotion of the caster. It's unfortunate that these two statistics have nearly identical names.

Thanks for the reply. I guess then 'banditry' would only apply to raids on people of a character's culture or political unit? It seems to me that heroes of the mold of Achilles, etc. spend a fair amount of time attacking outsiders and taking their stuff. Even doing that would entail corruption gain, since 'violence against a lawful being' still brings a character two corruption points per act. And 4 such acts--say attacking 4 individuals? Or 4 different combats?--would bring a character to 8 corruption, enough to gain mental and physical effects. The corruption rules do not seem to be designed for a heroic society of the sort you find in the Iliad or Odyssey. (Another minor problem is that the rules don't define 'lawful being' or even use the phrase except in the Corruptive Actions table, as far as I can see.) On Imbue Lesser Elements, I was wondering if it was needed for other Gerwa rites--the statement in the rules that "this is the basic rite used to prepare items for use in rites..." So would you need to invoke it for the powder used in the Powder of Ibn al-Hanef, for instance, as well as invoking that rite? Thanks for the link to the playthroughs. I hope there will be a list of errata or rules corrections at some point, since it is not very convenient to have to watch videos and take notes on them. Is Travelers on the War Road another name for the campaign that has just been published (Fall of the Children of Bronze), or something else?