Merak Gren

Nice. Read some Larry Niven books with Puppeteers (aptly named). I've only read the Ringworld books so far. The pupperteers are the most cowardly and yet passive aggressive race in the galaxy. They started a war to eliminate their two biggest threats in the galaxy, effectively controled human and K'zin breeding over generations. Engineered all sorts of events to ensure the advantage to their species. Very interesting. I agree there is more to the Thriddle than meets the eye. A lot can be made of them in a campaign. Here's a challenge now, what else could the Thriddle be responsible for?

Learning dyshas: how about one roll under all the other TN's? Ie roll under your lowest skill. Its back to RQ sorcery but I always envisioned dysha weaving as sorcery done right. With regard to weaving, I'd favour basing it on Moon skills rather than a separate skill for each. Its the bad thing in RQ sorcery again where improvement is painfully slow for each spell. I'd favour a small set of skills that can be mastered and allow for different effects dependong on how you mix them. I imagine that when a maudra gets good with certain Moon skills picking up a completely new dysha will not be a problem.

1987. WFRP was my first gaming experience but I popped my GM cherry with Stormbringer 3ed. Hawkmoon followed. I bought and sold the GW edition of RQ3 as it was overly complicated for me at the time. I later bought the Deluxe box and two of the softbacks before tracking the GW RQ on ebay. Without Chaosium my life would have been very different.

Here are 3. Three Crow Recipes

Yes. Agreed I forgot about explosives. All you need now is some colourful careers, a jungle, biplanes, tribal natives, abox ful of dynamite and some mythos nasties.

I've been looking forward to this for a while now. My suggestions to up the Pulp element in CoC are; 1. Heroic hitpoints. 2. BRP combat 3. Half hit points for the mythos nasties. 4. No armour points for mythos nasties. 5. Mythos nasties vulnarable to gunfire. 6. Mythos nasties suffer double damage from Marquis of Queensbury rules fisticuffs. 7. Hero Points: Shrug off a SAN loss, shrug off Major wounds, Quad damage for D4 combat rounds (this is a nod to Sandy Petersen who wrote an article about giving bonus to players). I haven't play tested it, but should be fun.

Nick, Thanks for that summary. I'll look into it a little deeper. Cheers Damon

Lol just noted the cat in the avatar.

Fair point. I've got Ringworld which although not'space opera' has a little bit of background to run a game in Known Space. I'll compare and contrast the two. Cheers. PS RW has its share of furries too.

Is it just me. The cover just put me off. Those cat people just look to 'cute'? I prefer my sci-fi a little grimmer. Can some one provide a good reason to ignore my irrantinal thoughts and try this game out?

Vampire has never been my cup of tea. However copyright law is complicated but mostly in repect of copying word for word certain things for commercial profit. I'm no lawyer, so do some research on wikipidia.

I run this back in the nineties and although I loved the setting I hated the rules. Now it uses stats in the 5-15 range and skills are ranked from one to ten. Resolution is skill or ability + 2D10. Success is a roll over 11 with criticals on scores over 21. At first glance, it looks like something that should be easy enough to convert. So has anyone tried it? I'd be interested to have you thoughs if you have, or would like to contribute ideas. Thanks Damon

My understanding of SIZ is that it represents Mass. This is corroborated by Ringworld, were SIZ is renamed as MAS. Other sources in SB adventures and supplements include creatures and demons were SIZ is quite high due to density, but apparent SIZ is lower. I have to say I do like SIZ as a stat. It is completely arbitrary, incomprehensible anf ambigous, but I really do like it. I'm looking forward to seeing the stat blocks.

Glad to hear progress is moving along. Looking forward to the first draft.

I haven't read the book, other than to do chargen and skim through it. Its not my book and if not for my budget, would get it in a jiffy. I'll have to let someone else to the review.

I played this the other night and was impressed with how well it captures the genre. Westerns as a genre is not something I have played very often, but I found it very easily (accents aside) to get into the spirit of it. It's very accessible and the plots are simple enough. We went for heroic hit points in the end, because it wouldn't be a western without a gunfight. Well worth a purchase for a campaign, or one off. Definitelly one that could be easily run at a convention.

Hi, I don't suppose that you have a character sheet kicking around? I don't recall seeing one in the download section.

I'm very impressed with the content. Very atmospheric. I'm looking forward to the rest of the other chapters. Particularly 'Magic'. Although saying that, Creature's and Free peoples are enough to run a pretty decent campaign.

Cheers. PM sent.

OpenQuest uses the Mongoose OGL to replicate a RQ2 feel game.

It would be for me. Lol The game will allow a choice between confict or task resolution as the players want. I want it compatible with all RQ 2-3, BRP and HW / HQ1 stats with little effort. I'll post some notes up when I'm done and playtested a bit, but it won't be for a time. As with all things BRP, the character sheet is a problem in terms of building one specific to what I want.

HeroQuest has a D20 roll under mechanic. 1 is a critical and 20 a fumble. As such its pretty easy to convert the mechanic to D100. Once a skill or ability goes above 20 it is described as having reached Mastery represented by the Gloranthan Matery Rune and wriiten as W for simplicity. So someone with a skill of 25 would be listed as 5W ( ie 5 + Mastery). Some one with a skill of 65 would have 5W3 (ie 5 + 3 levels of mastery 20 + 20 + 20 = 60). You always ever have to roll under the number under your mastery, except that your materies will then bump your level of success. So say in an example with an ability of 2W you roll 12. This would be a failure, but because you have a Mastery, gets bumped up to success. So with a 1 Mastery advantage, you never fumble, with 2 you never fail, with 3. You always critical! Finally, HQ is a conflict resolution system as opposed to a task resolution system. I am working on a hybrid system which based on HQ will include the RQ stats and attributes, HP and combat mechanics. I'll also inclue the Pendragon Traits and Passions from PenDragonPass I think it will allow a good gloranthan game with griity combat and with a comunity feel.

Ripostes: Yes Couter attacks. From early Stormbringer. A master with a weapon (91% or higher) can make a riposte after every successful parry. This is normally at-20% from their previous attack. There is a culumative -20% penalty for each attack after the first in a round. Additionally, I house rule that a critical parry allows a riposte. These allow a skilled swordsman to fight against 2-4 lesser skilled opponents and do some serious damage to them. Stormbringer 5th / Elric! Is slightly different. Beliefs: Yes. It can be done that way too. The Pendragon mechanic is easier to port to BRP, but the idea is used in many games. I'm all for freeform skills and abilities in BRP as in HeroQuest etc. Certainly, I now try to inject social / psychological 'skills' to my games. Another way, is to use the personality Traits.

Any version of Stormbringer is a good start but I prefer the earlier ones. Things I would change. Full HP (CON + SIZ) Skills over 100%. Attribute Skill modifiers. Starting skill percentages: not a BRP option, but I would allow players to start new skills at 40 - 50% at lowest. Conan was forever picking up new skills and mastering them fairly easily. Additionally I'd be fairly generous with skill improvement rolls. The curve flattens out, so its good to get them up to a level were they can split attacks and do ripostes. BTW Ripostes are one of the BRP options that never made it to the BRP book. Magic will be evil and dangerous and will probably invole lots of blood sacrifice in order to generate Magic points. I would also add Hero Points as used in HeroQuest / MRQ in order to turn a failure to a success or success to critical. Finally, I would also add a Pendragon Passion or two. One would be the Characters main driving ambition. List it as a % based on a relevant attribute X 3. When in a situation where the PCs main ambition is at stake, make them roll. On a success they get +50% to any skill they use. On a critical give them. +100% to anyskill used during the time the passion is active. A second passion may be a GM derived cultural or professional one. Between these two, it will help drive the story and allow for moments of character glory.

Never thought of it like that, but it seems like a much better use of time.