Charles Green

Thanks for posting this.

Fractured Hopes had a long and difficult journey coming into existence, and I'm really glad someone has taken the time to read it deeply enough to comment on it at this sort of scale.

"Throw Target" is a new skill, and it's description and game effects are on page 25.

Second question:

If we take a style in Dragon Line, this style merge with all aspects of the monk definition within the classic fantasy?

Thanks in advance for your reply

Charles

That is something I wouldn't even be able to comment on. While a Dragon Lines style doesn't give you anything you can't get under normal circumstances, there is no telling how it would interact with the Monk profession in Classic Fantasy.

It might not be an actual issue during play, but things could get out of hand quickly.

Brawl is divided into punch and kick because it's a way to distinguish different Martial Arts styles from one another. For example, Tae Kwon Do's name literally means "the way of crushing with the feet" i.e. kicking, and all of its major attacks are done with the feet.

To contrast, boxing is done almost exclusively with the fists, and has no attacks made using the feet (unless you're doing Muay Thai kickboxing, but that's another matter).

Using the same skill to represent both types of fighting would be similar to having a single "Fighting" skill that covers everything from weapon attacks to grappling techniques. Melee combat in BRP is already split amongst several skills (Brawl, Dodge, Grapple, various weapons). Splitting Brawl into two attack skills is in keeping with the genre expressed in Dragon Lines, where punching and kicking are very different things.

Of course, you're perfectly welcome to fold them back together and express attacks via roleplaying, but you should realize that not everyone is willing to do that, and having a mechanical support for a particular style is never a bad thing.

If you're interested in doing a review, that's fine by me.

If you're like me, you have a stack of comp copies of your monograph from Chaosium, sitting on your shelf gathering dust.

I am trying to establish myself as a RPG and fiction reviewer, and would love to have some more review credits under my belt. Thus far, I've done one review, for Swansong, a Tarot-based RPG. You can read it here.

To this end, what I'd like to propose is an exchange. If you have an extra copy of a book you've done, and would like someone to give it a deep and read and to post a review online, contact me. In exchange for a review copy, I can post a review here, on RPG.net, and any other place I can think of that might be interested in these products.

And on that note, I have 4 spare copies of Fractured Hopes, and I would be very pleased to send them to people who could promise a thorough reading and an honest review.

Well, let's consider that "unstoppable" comment.

Air elementals are invulnerable to normal attacks, as are fire elementals, and water elementals.

I would say that unstoppable and invulnerable are pretty synonymous in this case. Only a very few select foes will be able to do ANYTHING to either.

The controlling magician, however, is very vulnerable.

As far as I know, there are no Gods of Law specific sheets, though I will be pleasantly surprised to be wrong in that regard.

If you wind up doing one, I'd be quite pleased to see it.

Is your Dragon Empire meant to be a close analogy to mythic China, or is it more of a fantasy-approach?

It's a mix of both, actually. My grasp of actual Chinese Myth is limited to what you can gather from Kung Fu movies. I went with this, and added more fantasy elements to arrive at the final product.

Also, will there be a map of the Empire available sometime?

There is a full-color map of the Empire, and the Forbidden City as well, available at the Alephtar Games website.

I haven't registered yet, but I plan on being there.

Indeed, the Jorune sheet looks very nice.

The PDF is not up yet, and I'm not sure when to expect it.

The Word Document is still in the files section here, and the text doesn't differ from the PDF or monograph. It should be everything you need.

Find it here.

Running DL in RQII shouldn't be too difficult. You may have to adjust some elements to really make it work.

The Martial Arts skill is the core of the system, and it works just like it does in other d100 games. It also allows access to certain powers, which function in one of two ways:1) as a permanent alteration to the character, or 2)a skill-based ability to affect the environment.

This could work in RQII, but I'm not certain a character using this power system would be in balance with other RQII characters.

Each style has three beginning techniques does this mean that a GM can add techniques to that styles list of techniques or is that a max number each style can have?

The starting techniques are just the ones that you know at the start of the game. You can know 1 technique for every full 10% of your Martial Arts skill. The GM is free add new techniques to the styles as play progresses, and working with a player to determine new techniques can be very rewarding.

In game, you will need a teacher to learn a new technique, though.

I was thinking about creating a jujitsu style and was thinking about creating a new skill called break fall. Break fall would be the skill of knowing how to fall to prevent damage from throws and maybe giving the target a chance to avoid the 5 dex rank penalty to get to their feet.

This sounds like a good technique to base off the Dodge skill, and it should be handy for someone who practices a jujitsu style.

I would like to thank you for this BRP supplement. I would like to use the martial arts part of dragon lines with your Fractured Hopes setting. Any advice would be appriciated.

While i don't have specific advice for using Martial Arts in Fractured Hopes, it seems like the sort of thing operatives of the Bastion Temple might study, and I could see members of the Murai Confederacy studying ancient manuscripts to unlock martial secrets.

Anyway, the Void's energy could be an analog for the high-chi environment of the Dragon Empire. And, there's nothing stopping you from having the Empire be a sizable Fragment somewhere in the Void, and have some sages and spirits find a Void-ship and use it to travel the world.

In another thread, you said that the Chi = Power Points equivlency was explicit in the rules. Where? I can't find it and I'd like to read that section.

I'm not sure where exactly it is stated in the book, but Chi definitely are Power Points renamed, and follow all the normal rules for Power Points.

Also, I have a question about Techniques of the various martial arts styles: Are these essentially used as attacks, so I get the bonus when I invoke that technique during a melee? Or are they permanent adds to skills and probabilities. I assume the former, but I'm hoping for a little clarification.

Techniques are a bonus you can use in melee, so your first assertion is correct. Recall that they all cost Chi to use, and the bonus to the specific skill isn't involved in making experience checks with said skill.

ARe there any plans to expand upon this setting?

I have a campaign/player's guide in the works, but it's on the back-burner until my writing schedule clears up somewhat. I've also got some ideas for fiction set in the setting, but that will also have to wait for a bit.

I have just started reading 'Fractured Hopes', Mr. Green, and my initial impressions are very favourable. I'll review it when I have read through it all, but what has stood out to me most of all is how high you have raised the bar in terms of quality of writing. Content aside (not a positive or negative inference, I just want to focus on your writing), your writing style is really nice to read-through, imparting a feel for the world in a very engaging style. Kudos, Mr. Green, kudos.

Thanks. I'm glad you found the writing so clear. I should hope that my writing degree is good for something!

I'd be interested to hear what you think of the contents as you get further into the text.

I'd be interested. Necromancy is always a useful magic system to have in place, either for players in a darker game, or in the hands of the GM for NPC use.

It's taken a while, but the nudge seems to have worked. I have copies of the Word files for Gods of Law. In preparation for the eventual reposting of the new PDF to Stormbringerrpg.com, I'll be posting the word file in the files section here.

If you get a copy, let me know what you think.

EDIT: Also, I have illustrations that go with the text, but didn't add them in due to file size. If you want them, please PM me your e-mail address.

Thanks for the offer, Nick, but I've managed to get in touch with Marcus, and he has provided me the Word file and illustrations for the book. It looks like the PDF is gone, but he plans to re-lay it out and put it up in a couple of days.

So, I find myself in a bit of a quandary.

As some of you know, a few years ago, I wrote two monographs for Stormbringer, called Gods of Chaos and Gods of Law respectively. Sine Chaosium no longer possesses the license for the line, these books are out of print, and will never see publication gain.

However, since I wrote the material, I still own it, even though I don't have a license to print them for money. For Gods of Chaos, this has been gotten around by making a PDF of the book available online.

I'd like to do the same thing for Gods of Law. The problem is that Marcus Bone has the PDF he made doing the layout, and I haven't been able to get in touch with him in months. (Marcus, if you're reading this, contact me.) The ideal solution would be to get the PDF from him, and have it hosted somewhere.

Since I can't do that, if I'm going to make Gods of Law available again, I need to do something myself.

I have a single bound copy of the manuscript. Sadly, I lost the .doc files in a hard drive crash, so I can't simply post them. If I take my bound copy to someplace like Kinkos and ask for a scan and re-binding, am I going to get turned away at the door, even though I'm the author and have permission to post it?

Are there other options here that I'm not considering?

As the title says, what is out there for post apocalypse and military games?

Fractured Hopes is a post-apocalyptic setting, and two of the bad guys are expansionistic empires.

I wouldn't call it a military game, really, but the post-apoc label certainly fits.

I don't buy the "adventures don't sell" argument.

It's not so much that adventures don't sell. it's that adventures only sell to the GM in a group, but rule material sells to everyone n the group, player and GM both.

As a GM, I don't want my players to buy and read prepared adventures before I run, but i wold love it if they bought and read the rules and didn't just rely on my explaining things to them.

I haven't contacted him yet. Honestly, I've been too busy with other projects (and getting sick) to have much interest in this right now.

Snip awesome scenario idea.

What you've listed would indeed make a decent scenario or short campaign, provided it was written in such a way that the act of preparing the performing the counter-ritual was set up in such a way that it was filled with tension, conflict and all the other stuff good stories are made out of.

It wouldn't need a full-blown ritual magic system, since both the initial ritual and the counter-ritual would be out of the player's hands, since the rituals would have to be designed by the scenario author so that they would work against each other.

A case could be made for allowing the players the option of designing the counter-ritual themselves. In this instance, I think having rules support for the GM to make on-the-fly ritual scenes fun and interesting would be more helpful than rules for determining what you can do with a ritual.