MatteoN

Yep, Matteo, the crit is its own reward. But do you mean it should be enough with the benefits it already endowes[...]?

Precisely, nothing more complicated than that!

I am thinking of changing that to fumbles instead.

A crit is its own reward!

Actually, Crusaders was originally intended as a sequel for Stupor Mundi...

Prequels are all the rage these days!

I suspect I'm not the only one who knows, has met, plays with, or is acquainted with many folks who enjoy RPGs and play them fairly often but don't buy any new products. [...] I suspect there are many like me who would be more inclined to spend money if we could find the product, there was more variety instead of just Fantasy A and Fantasy B options, and if the product didn't feel like a ripoff.

My experience and preferences match yours.

I too think the death of the RPG industry will not mean that of the hobby. One could perhaps dare to imagine the hobby one day becoming something more similar to chess or even sports, with tournaments and competitions (several groups play a short campaign, then each player votes one of the others as the best player of their group, then the winners of the "campaign phase" assemble and play a short adventure at the end of which each player votes the winner of the competition - something like that). Such "institutionalization" would probably attract new players, perpetuating the hobby.

I'm not sure about this point, but I think most teenage characters are orphans or neglected by their parents because "ordinary" japanese teenagers have very little free time for escapades...

I loved the Giant Robo series, which I have on VHS. Or rather, I love the first few episodes; the ending was too bleak for me. Lots of high-flying action featuring surprisingly fragile superheroes. They could dish out loads of pyrotechnic mayhem but could be killed by bullet or sword just like anyone else. Definitely using BRP's damage system if not its power suite.

No, I don't think combining martial arts action with giant robots is strange at all. Giant Robo did it. Power Rangers did it. Pacific Rim had robot pilots do martial arts maneuvers while driving their vehicles. After all, you can't keep your super robot in your back pocket. It's housed in a hangar miles away, undergoing extensive maintenance and refueling, and the player-characters still have to hold the bad guys at bay -- with or without their high-tech toys.

Edit: I hadn't seen the clip you posted. My version ends with most of the heroes apparently dead, Giant Robo impounded, and the heroine in charge of protecting the young protagonist seemingly giving in to the Dark Side. I'll have to see if I can locate this.

And I hadn't seen the comment you added. Maybe you missed the last episode?

This gallery of characters from some of Yokoyama Mitsuteru's manga explains why the Giant Robot OVA showed high-flying wuxia characters alongside giant robots:

One of the giant robots you see is Gaia, the alien robot that in the finale of Yokoyama's Mars destroys Earth - talking about bleak endings.

I see, thanks. What impressed me badly was only that, saying that a roll of 01 was a critical with a skill of up to 50 and a roll of 01 or 02 was a critical with a skill of 55+, the book didn't make clear what roll was a critical for skills in the 51 to 54 range.

I had just a casual look at an online version of WoW and a tiny particular arouse suspicion on the quality of whole "operation". The original Magic World, IIRC, states that an action is a critical success if the player rolls 01 and their character's skill is 50 or less, or if the player rolls 01 or 02 and their character's skill is 55 or more. Was it just a slip, or the birth of the WW (White Wolf) style of game design, "assemble some nonsenses and publish a new game"?

And maybe the mistranslated ritual or spell still works ... but not as planned.

I stopped buying RPGs translated into Italian many years ago due to the mind-rending ungrammaticality of some translations.

By the way, this fact disproves CoC's implicit rule that an investigator who reads a translation always loses less SAN than if they had read the original.

Will the physical quality of the book match that of the English edition, or will it depend on the success of the crowfunding campaign?

I trust Rosen to produce a professional translation: this would be of paramount importance to me, since I stopped buying RPGs translated into Italian many years ago due to the mind-rending ungrammaticality of some translations. However, I haven't already bought RQ6 because these days I almost have no time for reading RPG books, especially in English...

Not really, no. Those settings are all great but they're not quite the same. The implied setting in RQ3 was this sort of vaguely defined ancient era where picts mixed with near eastern sorcerers and you could take a ship to Taprobane. I always saw it as a sort of 'ancient fantasy' sort of like Hyboria, but different from that setting.

I see, thanks. If the setting was that vague, in what did its specific appeal consist?

I wish the default mythical earth setting that RQ3 hinted at had been developed more (Yes, I'm looking at you, AEONS!)

Isn't that what Alephtar Games and The Design Mechanism are doing for BRP and RQ6 with supplements like Rome, Stupor Mundi, Crusaders of the Amber Coast, The Celestial Empire and the forthcoming Mythic Britain and Mythic Bizantium? (I don't know RQ3 so there might be differences I'm not aware of.)

Thor, last of the Greek (?) gods

No wonder there was a kraken in Clash of the Titans!

Difficult, without major spoilers. Its a combination of sandbox and campaign, with individual scenarios resembling missions to help (or possibly hinder) Constantinople's struggle against the growing Ottoman hordes. In the parts we played, the characters were engaged as emissaries by the Emperor to attend the Ottoman court, and then travel through the Adriatic and Mediterranean in a bid to persuade the various Italianate City States (Milan, Venice, Rome and Genoa) to provide more aid as the siege began to intensify. We had to learn how to use Greek Fire, equip a ship, and then run the Ottoman naval blockade. So it's a vast sweep with a lot to do - and lots of it grounded in history.

Thank you!

Mythic Constantinople

At the recent Petecon in Sweden, Michael 'MOB' O'Brien ran a whole evening's worth of Byzantine goodness. The campaign takes you into an Ottoman-besieged Constantinople, across to the Ottoman heartlands, over the seas to medieval Italy and Greece, through huge naval battles, intimate court intrigues and more. This will be a terrific campaign - with large parts based on real events of 1453 and that period. Very excited about this book.

My group might be particularly interested in this one. I understand from what you wrote that this is not just a sandbox, right? Can you give us a hint of what the campaign is about, and how big will it be?

Perhaps a superpower's rating might be modified (halved or doubled) not depending on the difficulty of what's being attempted, but also on the applicability of the superpower. The attempt to use the same superpower to bring about a modest and "thematically coherent" effect might be an automatic success, whereas any attempt to do anything for which the power is either insufficient or totally inadequate might be an automatic failure.

Dragon Lines + BGB Super Powers = anime mayhem!

One of my wet dreams is combining Dragon Lines with BRP Mecha. I realize it may seem an odd mix to anyone who hasn't seen the Giant Robot OAVs from the '90s, that combined characters from various manga by Yokoyama Mitsuteru, specifically the eponymous robotic manga as well as his adaptations of the chinese Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin:

SPOILER: this is the series' finale

They use flip-flop rolls in Unnown Armies, albeit only for selected 'obsession' skills. I think it adds about 10% or so to the odds of success.

The increment to the chance of success is indirectly proportional to its base value, for example it's +80% (of the rating) with a rating of 10 (actual chance of success is 18), +48% with a rating of 50 (actual chance of success is 74), and +9% with a rating of 90 (actual chance of success is 98%).

carldot34, if I'm not wrong this flip-flop mechanics is not easily compatible with skill ratings going over 100.

I'm going to start playing in a CoC campaign using Pelgrane's Eternal Lies (for ToC; the master says it's very good). On Pelgrane's site there's a document with the conversion of Eternal Lies' NPCs etc. to CoC. It'd make sense if the bestiary had critters statted also for BRP.

The Reebok comment was for humor. Sorry.

D'oh, sorry for not having gotten the drift.

Your complaint of course makes sense, in fact old-school simulationist RPGs like the earlier editions of Runequest or Rolemaster or GURPS have long lists of very specific skills. I think the authors of the latest editions of RQ wanted to make a game that was more tightly focused on what characters in fantasy novels comics and movies actually spend most of their time doing. If (I haven't bought it yet) RQ6 has a single "athletics" skill covering all kinds of (dry land) physical feats, it might be not enough if, for example, you wanted your bronze age heoes to take part in the Olympics. Adding skills to a BRP based game, however, has always been a trivial task. And if it's the name that bothers you, just change it to one that you think is more evocative, like... I don't now, English is not my first language.

I don't get why you have to think "Reebok" when you read "athletics": http://listverse.com/2013/04/14/10-greatest-ancient-athletes/

So anyone else want to chime in with a 'Lost World'. We also have some ruins that are apparently hiding a secret.

They might be linked. The seemingly abandoned ruins actually are still inhabited by the people that built them, and are the doorway to a big hidden city. The city might be an underground complex, or the ruins might be the way the still lively city appears to those who don't possess the right gizmo, haven't solved an ancient riddle, or aren't allowed to see it having failed a test. Mmh, maybe this is too similar to a couple Indiana Jones's movies.

Perhaps the ancient civilization has succeeded in hiding itself from the world by means of a "mystic shroud" only the initiates (e.g. those who have a high enough Occult rating and/or fail a Sanity check) can see through. The veil possibly works both ways, and also the "hidden" natives cannot normally perceive the exterior world. So a focus of the adventure might be on establishing a contact with the right "hidden" natives, and avoiding it with the wrong ones (à la Kult).

If the "hidden" natives live underground, they might possess a powerful artifact that let them control earthquakes. Perhaps the members of a sect of "common" natives of the country have intruded the hidden city, trying to get to use the artifact to provoke earthquakes that might destabilize the colonial government, no matter what (the ruins would be equidistant from all the epicentres).

looking at it "as a rating" above 99%, and "as a probability" below 100%, clears it up for me.

Personally, I prefer to just consider it an open-ended rating, ignoring the misleading percent signs on the character sheets. I think of the chance of success as equal to the lowest number between the rating times 1/2, 1 or 2 (± any modifier) and 99.