MatteoN

Nevermind...

I missed this announcement: very cool!

Also the damage bonus was a flat modifier?

I did try to complete change the way BRP works with a skill roll variant.

 

What I did was use the 10s die  as the "Effect". That would mean things like damage inflicted, how long an effort could be maintained, how many items juggled, etc. But that was done instead of the usual criticals, specials and fumbles.  A failure  had a zero effect, regardless of what was rolled on the tens die. Higher levels of effect could be achieved by raising the difficulty (i.e a normal difficulty was raised to hard, cutting the success chance in half, but adding something like 5 to the effect if successful). 

I seem to remember that TSR's old, short-lived Amazing Engine added some interesting mechanics to percentile roll-under. IIRC, weapons had a sort of "threat-range" on a decimal scale, to which you had to compare the units of your attack roll to determine what kind and/or amount of damage your attack did.

I like your houserule, but that's more a streamlining of skill categories (as modifiers to skill ratings) than a repurposing of skill categories.

Hm, yes. I see your points, I see the mechanical bits and the pros (and cons) of having defined ability-levels like this, but I still think that Fudge and fudge-dice are better alternatives if you want to play Fudge.

Here you have to roll, flip the roll, compare it to skill, wait for your opponent to do the same, count successes, and finally compare it to a number disguised as a table of adjectives. If you had skill mastery, that would presumably mean that you had to compare and flip the roll to two different values?

 

I am not convinced. Seems like it's jumping through a lot of hoops for the sake of jumping.

Then again, I'm not a huge Fate-fan, so maybe my perceptions are coloured

Yes, the system would definitely be more complex than FUDGE because the modifier to your skill (category) level is determined by a roll of the dice and a comparison of the results to a rating (the specific skill), instead of just a dice roll. (The process actually would be: roll the dice, compare the results to the skill to determine the modifier to the skill category, determine the quality of your success by modifying the skill category, compare the quality of your success to that of your opponent, or to the worst success needed to perform the task according to the GM's judgement).

On the other hand, it would be compatible with BRP's stats and skills and could be developed as an optional alternative resolution method.

But it's also worth mentioning again that, with the progression proposed above, each skill category (except those based on rating of stats rolled with 2d6+6+ instead of 3d6) has a 15% chance of being Inferior, 60% chance of being Fair, and 15% chance of being Superior, so the difference between characters should rarely be extreme.

I agree. If I'm not wrong, ceteris paribus having a better category then your opponent is at least a very remarkable advantage and, compared to the average (N)PC, a character with a Superb skill category is practically superhuman. But as you say high skill* can compensate for the difference: for example, a character with a "mundane" Fair Combat skill category and a weapon skill higher than 99 is still at a disadvantage against a monstrous Superb opponent (since on average s/he scores Great successes), but less notably so. So natural talent potentially plays a much more important role than in BRP, but I think skills can still be paramount if characters are allowed to develop them to very high levels (the +2, +4, +6 etc. bonuses to the quality of success, that you get when your skill exceeds 99, should really be seen as masteries in Heroquest).

* Not to mention spells and Fate points used to move your success rightwards.

I think this FUDGEd BRP would give stats a potentially much higher impact on the game compared to BRP (a Fair attacker hits a Superb defender only if the attacker gets a matched roll under their skill, and the defender a matched roll over their skill), that is however partially offset by the rarity of extremely good or bad descriptors (the chance to have a Fair skill category is almost 60%, that of having a Terrible or Superb skill category is about 0.2%, so out of 500 characters there would be a single superb combatant or communicator and 300 fair ones), and then naturally by skill ratings going over 99.

Possible confusion might perhaps be less likely to arise if the list of descriptors,  instead of vertically as FUDGE's "ladder", was written horizontally:

...  Terrible  Poor  Inferior  Fair  Superior  Great  Superb  ...

so that one could (more clearly?) state that if both results rolled with the dice are equal to or lower than the skill, the quality of the success "moves" one or two steps to the right of the skill category's descriptor, and if both results are higher than the skill, the quality of the success "moves" one or two steps to the left of the skill category's descriptor.

Sorry, I've tried to clarify the text a bit.

I think this might be a bolt-on alternative mechanics for BRP like Monsters and Magic is for oD&D.

I'd say you can tell would-players that if both the results they get with the dice are under a skill's rating, the quality of the success they get is superior to the default quality (corresponding to the skill category's descriptor), if only one result is under the skill's rating, the quality of the success is equal to the default quality, and if none of the results is lower than the rating, the quality of the success is inferior to the default quality.

Then introduce matched rolls and skills over 99.

Has anybody tried to have skill categories play a different role from just giving a bonus to skill ratings?

For example, I'd been mucking around with a very rough idea for a "FUDGEd BRP" (or "BuRPed FUDGE"  ). Let's say your skill category doesn't have a number associated to it, but a descriptor from a fixed ordered list such as this:

...  Terrible  Poor  Inferior  Fair  Superior  Great  Superb  ...

Which adjective is associated to a given skill category depends on the sum of two related attributes (like single skills's starting ratings in RQ6):

  6 -   9   Terrible

10 - 13   Poor

14 - 17   Inferior

18 - 24   Fair 

25 - 28   Superior

29 - 32   Great

33 - 36   Superb

I've just made up this numbers. A character has a 60% chance of having Fair as the descriptor associated to any given skill category.

Skills have fixed starting (fake!) percentile ratings, like in CoC, that as usual can be improved during character creation and during the game.

When making a skill check a player rolls 2d10 and uses them to assemble two two-digit results (for example, if a player rolls 7 and 3, he gets a 73 and a 37) ranging from 00=0 to 99:

- If both results are equal to, or lower than the skill's rating, the check's success "moves" to the quality one step to the right of the skill category's descriptor (in case of a matched roll* under the skill, the quality of the success moves a further step to the right). 

- If only one of the results is equal to, or lower than the skill rating, the success is of the same quality as the skill category. 

- If both results are higher than the skill rating, the success "moves" to the quality one step to the left of the skill category's descriptor (in case of a matched roll over the skill, the quality of the success moves a further step to the left). 

For  example, Blundarr the Barbarian has a Strength of 16 and a Dexterity of 13 (it's when he has to think that things go downhill). This gives him "Great" in the Combat skill category. He has a Battleaxe skill of 55.

Blundarr attacks his own reflection in a pool of water, and the player rolls the dice, getting a 4 and a 7, that is a 47 and a 74. Since only one of the results doesn't exceed his skill rating, Blundarr's attack is Great. And so is his opponent's counterattack!

Afterwards, Blundarr tries to lighten up his comrades singing a happy song. The GM tells the player that Blundarr succeeds if he gets at least a Superior success. Blundarr has "Fair" in the Communication skill category, and his Perform (Sing) skill is rated at 30. The player rolls two 6s, and so gets a matched roll over the skill's rating that makes Blundarr's success move two steps to the left of his Fair Comunication skill category. That is, Blundarr success is Poor: a bad failure, actually!

A skill's minimum rating is 0 and it can be incremented indefinitely, but after reaching 99 it's reset to 0 and the quality of the successes obtained when using that skill gets an automatical fixed increment of +2 steps; so the skill rating progression is:

0, 1, 2, ..., 97, 98, 99, 0 (+2), 1 (+2), 3 (+2), ..., 97 (+2), 98 (+2), 99 (+2), 0 (+4), 1 (+4), 3 (+4), etc.

* Matched rolls are 00, 11, 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88, and 99.

Toon (or maybe BESM) could also be used for the classic children manga and anime Kaibutsu-kun, sort of Doraemon meets Universal monsters.

Chaosium, good job putting out the book "later THIS year" as anticipated! 

Indeed. Yes I can do the modifiers. I've been playing RQ since 1981. I used to GM a long Villains and Vigilantes campaign. I'm currently interested to explore what you can do to replace the calculation of degrees of success and modifiers with dice rolls. It is rather tiring to be told that this means that I didn't pay attention in maths class. I'm also a sucker for shiny dice. Been mulling over MatteoN's posts and thinking it would be fun to have a rune die. A d20 marked with some Gloranthan runes that you roll at the same time. E.g. if you fail your skill test and roll a Disorder rune it's a fumble or if you succeed and roll an infinity rune it's a critical.

Using a third die as you suggest would indeed simplify things a lot, but it would be even more erethical. On the rune die you could also have three faces with a third different rune, for special successes.

The OP never wrote that he has difficulties making divisions or multiplications. And as far as I'm concerned, I've played Rolemaster much more than BRP and have never had any problem whatsoever in doing mental additions and subtractions of  two and three digit numbers. What the OP wrote is that he has a preference for dice tricks over modifiers, and I don't see a point in arguing his or anyone else's preferences.

Today, of course, young girls read Japanese manga that are far more brutal and graphic than Elfquest ever was, but it wasn't necessarily so in the late '70s.

As an aside, I read somewhere that Wendy Pini cited the great old-school mangaka Sanpei Shirato as an influence. Kagemaru, my avatar, is one of Shirato's most famous characters. Shirato's manga are absolutely brutal and utterly awesome, a far cry from today's commercial manga.

Perhaps this would be better:

ten-sided units die: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

ten-sided D50: 00 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 00 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40⁽⁺⁵⁰⁾

ten-sided D100: 00 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 50 | 60 | 70 | 80 | 90

twenty-sided D200: 00 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 50 | 60 | 70 | 80 | 90 | 100 | 110 | 120 | 130 | 140 | 150 | 160 | 170 | 180 | 190^(-100)

If you roll a red number on both the units and the tens die, the check fails automatically. In this case, the check is also a fumble if the result (in case modified by the number in brackets) is within the fumble range of the skill you are using.

EDIT: this solution however fails to account for the fact that doubling or halving a skill rating  affects its fumble range.

zip

Now that I think about, there's also the problem of the fixed 5% chance of failure (on a roll of 96 - 100 on the D100). Perhaps a way to account for both "automatic failures" and fumbles might be resorting to color-coded dice:

ten-sided units die: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

ten-sided D50: 00 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 00 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40

ten-sided D100: 00 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 50 | 60 | 70 | 80 | 90

twenty-sided D200: 00 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 50 | 60 | 70 | 80 | 90 | 100 | 110 | 120 | 130 | 140 | 150 | 160 | 170 | 180 | 190

If you roll a red number on both the units and the tens die, the check fails automatically. In this case, the check is also a fumble if the sum of the number rolled on the units die and 90 (D10+90) is within the fixed fumble range of the skill you're using. Or if the number rolled on the units die is within the fixed fumble range minus 90.

A thing I would very much like to have is special dice (a special d10 numbered 00, 10, 20, 30, 40 twice, and a special d20 numbered 00, 10, 20 ... 170, 180, 190) to use instead of the tens die when making respectively easy and hard checks. By using these dice one could use the base skill ratings (for normal, special and crit. success) all the time, without the need of doubling or halving them when making checks. 

 

To use all the dice consistently one would just need to always read the result of skill rolls as the SUM of the results rolled on the tens and the units dice (e.g. 00 and (1)0 as 0+10=10, and 90 and (1)0 as 90+10=100). Fumbles would have to be rethought, though.

There would be no need to modify the way fumbles work if it were possible to print two sets of numbers on the sides of the special dice, as follows:

ten-sided D50: 00/00 | 10/10 | 20/20 | 30/30 | 40/40 | 00/50 | 10/60 | 20/70 | 30/80 | 40/90 

twenty-sided D200: 00/00 | 10/10 | 20/20 | 30/30 | 40/40 | 50/50 | 60/60 | 70/70 | 80/80 | 90/90 | 100/00 | 110/10 | 120/20 | 130/30 | 140/40 | 150/50 | 160/60 | 170/70 | 180/80 | 190/90

One would simply have to:

- add the result of the unit die to that on the left of the "/", to determine if the check is successful, and if it's a normal, special or crit. success; and, if the check is unsuccessful,

- add the result of the unit die to that on the right of the "/", to determine if the result is a failure or a fumble.

The problem is, would the special dice, in particular the twenty-sided D200, be hard to read?

On the positive side, having two sets of numbers on the two special dice, which would in turn be intuitively distinguishable because of their different shapes, would prevent any confusion between the D50, D100, and D200 tens dice.

In order to avoid mistaking it with the "normal" tens die, the first one might even be a d20 numbered 00 - 40 four times; the two special tens dice might be color-coded, for example the "d50" being green and the "d200" being red.

 

 

I'be happy if I could buy a tube containing a standard d20 (numbered 1 to 20, for hit locations), a 20-sided units die (numbered 1 to 10 - not 0 to 9 - twice), a 20-sided yellow tens die (numbered 00 to 90 twice), a 20-sided green die numbered 00 to 40 four times, and a 20-sided red die numbered 000 to 190.

A thing I would very much like to have is special dice (a special d10 numbered 00, 10, 20, 30, 40 twice, and a special d20 numbered 00, 10, 20 ... 170, 180, 190) to use instead of the tens die when making respectively easy and hard checks. By using these dice one could use the base skill ratings (for normal, special and crit. success) all the time, without the need of doubling or halving them when making checks. In order to avoid mistaking it with the "normal" tens die, the first one might even be a d20 numbered 00 - 40 four times; the two special tens dice might be color-coded, for example the "d50" being green and the "d200" being red.

To use all the dice consistently one would just need to always read the result of skill rolls as the SUM of the results rolled on the tens and the units dice (e.g. 00 and (1)0 as 0+10=10, and 90 and (1)0 as 90+10=100). Fumbles would have to be rethought, though.

I might back a kickstarter to produce them.

(One could even roll a d20 in the case of "trivial" tasks, and another special d10, numbered 000, 100, 200, 300, 400 twice, alongside an ordinary tens die and the units die, for "titanic" tasks.)

For purely aesthetic reasons, I don't like the idea of rolling one unit's die and several ten's dice. So I looked for variations on this theme; what I came up, however, is pretty far from BRP: http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=702558&postcount=13

I too appreciated the show very much and without reserve. Visually, for some reason it reminded me of Dave McKean's work for DC/Vertigo in the '90s (maybe because of the colors and all those little sprigs). In fact, the whole show might have been a graphic novel from Vertigo!

Comparisons of INT, POW, and EDU are left as an exercise for the reader.

RQ6 is woefully lacking any EDUcation!