ORtrail

I just got my physical copy of RoH this week. I'm more inclined to house-rule any rule issues, but I appreciate the effort you took to write up your list and look forward to seeing some offical word.

Well, finally my hard cover copy arrived. A bit the worse for wear, as the bottom right corner got crumped a bit somewhere along the way. It still looks nice up on the gaming shelf though. I read through the combat section on the PDF, but look forward to finishing with the book. There is no rush Newt, but a simplified character sheet would complete the package.

I would think they would rely on KickStarter to fund more products. They did for the new Horror on the Orient Express and that has to be a great feeling to have the money upfront while doing a product.

I've run two long term campaigns with Superworld. Very easy system for new RPG players to learn. Superworld is great for the street level or so heroes. Anything at Spider-Man power levels and below works pretty well. My biggest house rule was just using 10% of skill level as the 'critical hit' level. I've always used the WoW version of Superworld, along with the Designer notes from Different Worlds #23 as I found the boxed Superworld just a bit too crunchy of a game system. In the past couple years, I've moved onto super hero gaming with the Supers! RPG, but for most anything else, I'd use some version of BRP.

I picked up WoW during a game auction at a con in Spokane back in 1990. Best $11.50 I ever spent on gaming material! This was so, SO CLOSE to being a universal set of rules. I read somewhere (not sure how valid this info is) that Chaosium was going to do a series of WoW boxed sets. Imagine another boxed set that covered Wild West America/New World Pirates/Cyberpunk followed by a third that did Ancient Greece/Post-Holocaust/Age of the Samurai (just as examples of what could have been done). Yeah, if only. Vile, if you can locate a copy of Different Worlds #23, it has a Designer Notes article for WoW Superworld. I bought the full boxed Superworld later, but always preferred the simpler rules from the WoW set (and magazine article) more.

Thanks Newt. I've read up to the first part of the Skills section. Funny, I've used 10% as the Critical Success chance for 20 years now. I was introducing the BRP system to three newbie gamers and I wanted a simplified approach. It worked so well, I never went back to the RAW. This is my first real look at the OpenQuest system, or is it modified even more for the RoH book? Either way, I'm getting a very familiar feel -which is good. The older I get, the less enthusiasm I have for learning new RPG systems. Oh, and I'll be sure to take the time to do a review on DrivethruRPG once I have read RoH completely. I know I like to read the reviews to see what others liked and disliked about a particular RPG.

I'm liking what I've read so far, feeling very good about getting this in print, so I can show it off to my gaming friends. Newt, would it be possible to get a printer friendly character sheet? That space background will eat up a lot of ink, especially with a two-page character sheet.

Just ordered a hard cover book and downloaded the PDF about ten minutes ago. At $46 with shipping it was not a bad deal (book and PDF should be a standard package anymore). I almost backed a KickStarter for a keyboard waffle maker (for $60) yesterday, but glad I held off and got this instead. Looking forward to reading this over the long weekend. BTW, that was your review, rust? One sentence? Not the most helpful review I've ever read.... Oh, and congrats to Newt, John, and all those involved in bringing this to us.

Can cosmic level heroes be done in Superworld/BRP? Certainly, but the better question is: "Can they be done well?" The BRP system shines when used to represent humans and near-human levels of ability/power. As senechal pointed out, the numbers get rather crazy at cosmic levels. That said, if you are happy with it, and the players are having fun? Then nothing else really matters. Look at this thread as a caution about possible issues when playing at that level.

That version does NOT exist, I was joking with pansophy.

Wow, seems like a exhaustive list. Covering about a 1000 years seems like a very wide net to cast. A lot changed in Britain from when the Romans left to the 16th century for example. That said, I do have some suggestions for your list. Several time travel games have adventures or supplements covering that time span. A BRP derived game from TimeLine LTD (of The Morrow Project fame) called Time & Time Again. There was a module produced for it called Holy Warriors that covers the Crusader period in good detail. Pacesetter had some adventures, such as one about King Arthur, called Clash of Kings. A couple others were set in the 1500s: Sea Dogs of England and Temples of Blood. Finally, a D20 adventure called The Last Days of Constantinople.

I will look it over this week and give you my initial impressions.

So true. To be fair, David, like many shepherds of the time had some mad skill with the slingshot. He had already dealt with a lion and a bear while protecting his flock. If you remember that some of those sling stones could be the size of a small orange? A shot to the head, even with a helmet, would be deadly. I think chopping his head off was to leave no doubt to either army that Goliath was dead.

Interesting. There would be a lot of drama to mine from the life of David (going from sheperd boy to elderly king and some adultery/murder along the way). There was some TV show based more-or-less on this idea too, right?

The Future World booklet setting mainly used Gates (transporters between planets more-or-less) to move from planet to planet. No stats for starships. Robots were covered well enough that I think they were an option for use as a PC. Various high tech armors and force fields are covered. Lots of weapons divided into broad categories (Projectile/Laser/Blaster/Missle/Grenade/Melee) along with a Force Sword (light sabre). I would love to see the setting developed more, as it seemed like a combination of Traveller and Fringeworthy. The default character group would probably be a team of ICE (Imperial Corp of Engineers) employees who went through gates to explore new worlds or check on how frontier worlds were doing. Several alien races were also competing for habitable planets. No way I'd pay over $50 for the WoW boxed set but I'm glad I picked one up back in 1989 for about $20. Chaosium was so, SO close to a universal gaming system back in the early 80's, but never quite pulled it off (beyond the adaptability of the D100 system).

Yes, always happy to hear about super hero roleplaying. Especially when your campaign tone is very close to how I prefer to run things.

I like the Hawkman stats. I got to know the character back in the early 90's when Timothy Truman (with various help) did the Hawkworld comics. This is the version I liked the most, as he was totally willing to use a pistol or rifle as needed. Superman still scales too high for Superworld/BRP to handle comfortably, but I like your "original" version.

Speaking of PDFs, DriveThruRPG is having a Black Friday sale today. Runequest 6 PDF for $5, among other deals.

Yes, it was goof timing on the sale for me. I have Astounding Adventures and Atomic-Age Cthulhu on the way, for $40 with shipping. Funny how my RPG buying habits have changed these past couple years. I get about half my stuff in PDF form, and three of my book RPG purchases this year have been through Kickstarters (Army Ants, Sixcess Core, and Supers Revised). I'm not alone in this, right?

Ever since reading the Justice League Antarctica comic (a one-shot or maybe it was a couple issues?) I have had a fondness for B or C level super hero teams. Played a Mutants & Masterminds game at DragonCon where the GM had a group of minor heroes we got to pick from, and the ultimate villain was the Noid. Great change of pace from "normal" heroes. If you had an idea for a monograph along those lines, I'd love to play it.

I'm on vacation in Casper, Wyoming (don't ask) at the moment, but I thought Psionics was covered to some degree in Swords of Cydoria? If you want an unconventional response, I pretty much used the system from Psi-World (the old FGU game) to plug in a psionic rebel character for BRP years ago. It worked okay, though the character was almost a minor super hero in effect.

Thanks for sharing your BRP experience. I'm always interested in reading about how other people are using the various BRP systems to game. I had the chance last year to teach a niece how to play Superworld (and about RPGs in general), and it is fun to see them grasp the system (which is pretty easy and quick to learn).

This has been the subject of fairly recent discussion. You could look at these threads: Help me accept Size as a Statistic The Bigger the Hole, the Harder to Get Through?

My first experience with Pulp gaming was from the March 1981 issue of Dragon magazine. A twenty-odd page mini-RPG by David Cook, called Crimefighters. It was quite amazing how much he packed in to those pages, and I've used parts of the game (Contact Career Table, Experience Types, Vehicle Damage chart) over the years. The basic stats were based on 1D100 rolls. Ran a couple adventures with Crimefighters, but at the time lacked the experience and resources to really to run it properly. It was fun though. I would go on to pick up Justice Inc. which is an excellent resource, but I never cared for the Hero game system all that much. Years later, I ran a tweaked version of Superworld, which I called Pulpworld. Set in the early 1930's it lasted about five adventures. It was very much a minor super hero type of roleplaying, not the detective stuff. I also grabbed a copy of Daredevils and all the modules, that I know of, for it. Actually, I even have a copy of the old FGU Gangsters RPG. There are online resources now, and running a pulp period game would not be all that difficult. It is a harder sell to players if they feel they have to know about the history and historic events versus a modern day setting or fantasy where everything is wide open. I have felt for decades now that I want to run games other than the fantasy stuff, as everyone is doing that. Mildly surprised I am not alone in feeling that way. Of course, I would default to some version of BRP to run most any game, as I can't be bothered to read and learn a new game system. The only recent exception to that being Supers! which is a simple game system. All this reminds me that I need to pick up a copy of Astounding Adventures too.

As mentioned in the other thread about [superworld] Build These Heroes Contest I have converted over the Superworld heroes to the Supers! RPG system. Since the conversion, we have completed two small adventures using Supers!, and I am now converting over stats for The New Atlanteans adventure, which was completed with Superworld in mind. The gaming group has been pretty much impossible to get together over the summer months, so it has been just 1-2 players per adventure. I'll copy and paste my adventure notes from another forum (supporting Supers!). The Mother's Milk adventure: I've run two long term super hero campaigns over the years with Superworld, but after getting a PDF copy of Supers! I really wanted to try it out. I have converted over the player's heroes to the Supers! sytem, but only had a chance to run part of a solo adventure with one player. The reaction was rather positive. He really liked throwing around all the dice, and the verbal element to combat. He also has some ideas for a new character or two to build with this new game system. Being uncertain that they may all want to switch systems, I took the easy path for making an adventure and converted over a free PDF I had, "Mother's Milk". It was made for the D6 version of Godsend Agenda. I tweaked the details, but the basic plot is an alien shapeshifter called a Chimera is using tainted milk products to mentally enslave the population of a small dairy farming community. I set the adventure in the fictional town of Ashford, Washington in the Yakima Valley. Which is in fact a big dairy area and the campaign is set out of Seattle/Portland most of the time. I added a group of super villians to the mix, recruited by the alien ("Mother" as she calls herself). There are two basic parts to this adventure, getting into town and seeing strange behavior and stopping the tainted ice cream from being handled out, then going to the dairy farm and stopping Mother herself. Details to follow later, as I am writing this during a lunch break. The adventure began with a phone call from a private investigator named Brandy Lee. She was hired to find the missing husband of one Julie King. Her husband was a farm equipment salesman and had gone missing three days ago near Ashford, WA. Concerned she was getting a runaround from the local Sheriff, Julie hired a Brandy to look around. Brandy was calling from her cell phone, contacting one of the heroes who did part time work as a bouncer/private security (that would be "Gunslinger"). He was busy so he told Brandy to contact Collider. Brandy had seem some strange behavior, people walking around drinking from milk containers and eating ice cream while wearing blank stares. Several cows were wandering around freely, and one seemed to have watched her since she got into town. "Oh, here comes the sheriff," said Brandy, "I'll call you back after I talk with him." There was no call back, and any calls to her went straight to voicemail. Collider and the newly created Supers! character the player had just made, "Destruction" (a speedster with a whirlwind lower body and armed with a scythe and whip) headed to Ashford. I had planned the adventure for 3-4 players, so let the one I actually had play TWO characters. Less than ideal circumstances when learning a new system, but so it goes. The heroes actually drove into town, in normal attire,and noticed the banners and signs proclaiming "20th Annual Milkfest!". Stopping at the farmers market, they asked around about Brandy. They saw some blank stares and noticed clowns with ice cream bikes handing out free ice cream. They refused to eat it and then headed into town to check the police station. A deputy was outside, no one was allowed inside. Most everyone was heading to the farmers market to hear the mayor speak and officially begin the Milkfest festivities. Collider knocked out the deputy and went in to find Brandy and a half dozen other people who refused to eat/drink the milk products and got arrested. Brandy had relented a few hours earlier and was glassy eyed after a couple glasses of milk. Taking her with them they went back and confronted one of the clowns who said they had been hired by a jester named Killjoy who was driving an ice cream van and was currently at the Holstein Park across town handing out ice cream bars. They rushed to the park, found Killjoy handing out ice cream while juggling and performing acrobatic stunts to entertain the campers. Collider used his gravity power to crush down the top half of the ice cream truck and the battle was on. Bullfrog, a powerfully built frog-like man, leaped out the nearby pond to attack them. With the wild die, it was a fairly one-sided battle for the player. He rolled 4-5 sixes during the entire battle and beat down both villains. Having Regeneration is a HUGE bonus in combat and I will be adjusting the cost or the way it works -maybe both. It was fun, if a bit stop-and-start as both of us looked over character sheets and pondered what Resistances/Atributes/Powers to use to attack/defend. BTW, I am using full character sheets for each villain, but having one that would list 2-4 villains per page would be nice. Fewer papers to keep track of and all that. That concluded the first part of this adventure, the second will be them visiting the Legend Dairy Farm where all these milk products are coming from. There they will face Mother and at least two more villains, Rodeo (a minotaur-like guy who also uses a lasso) and Jack O Lantern (a clone of the Green Goblin for the most part). They will need to burn the alien plants she is feeding to the cows to restore the people of Ashford to normal. I will probably have a hundred or so Ashford "zombies" helping to guard the dairy, so the mook rules will get used too. I am eager to see how the other players like the Supers! system, and I have nearly finished the next adventure using Supers!. It will be a recycled Dragon Magazine adventure for Top Secret from November 1983. Seriously, an almost 30 year old adventure! I have used it before for Superwold about 15 years ago. The adventure takes place at a theme park called "Wacko World". Back in the day the adventure was about a super villain group using the park as a hideout and took place in Florida. For the updated version it will be a newly constructed Wacko World (following the standard construction plan, so the park map is the same)in Seattle. The owner ran into financing issues with construction costs and had to take a loan from a criminal organization. Now indebted, he is allowing them to conduct business there. It will be a grand opening weekend of course, so add in another super group called The Fraternity who are at best neutral supers looking to recruit new members. There is a cosplay event planned so there will be lots of people in costumes of all sorts (think DragonCon or a Comic Con if you've been there or seen photos). Another event will be the attempted robbery of the cash sales from the park by a super villain duo named "Cat N Mouse". They will try to make off with the money when the armored bank truck shows up to collect it in the early afternoon. None of these super groups are working with the others and much will depend on how the players react to events. Yes, I tend to grab/convert old adventures from other games when I need an adventure quickly. Following this, I have a four part Superworld adventure I had COMPLETELY done and ready to go, but didn't want to "waste it" by converting it to Supers! if the players decide they don't like the game system. After these first two adventures it should be pretty clear what the group will want to do going forward. Mother's Milk part two: Well, after a text from the Collider/Destruction player wanting to finish up the "Mother's Milk" adventure we managed to get together this evening and do just that. After the battle in the park with Killjoy and Bullfrog the heroes headed back into town to see what happened with the offical kickoff of the Milkfest festival. Mayor Bradwell gave a rousing speech to the crowd with a lot of bullet points I got from a quick Google search. -Washington State was 10th in milk production last year. -Washington State was 4th in milk production per cow with an average per cow of 2,760 gallons. -The Yakima Valley has 91 dairy farms with over 110,000 cows. -The first cows came to Washington State in 1838. All seven of the major dairy cow breeds can be found in Washington. Mayor Bradwell also announced that a new city ordinance made it illegal to refuse to eat/drink a dairy product over the next 48 hours and eager volunteers began handing out samples. Both heroes refused to even take a bite/drink and Sheriff Hook promptly put them in handcuffs and begin driving them to the station. Once into the nearly empty town, they easily escaped, knocking out the Sheriff and putting him in the trunk. It was time to check out the "Legend Dairy Farm" and see what was going on. Collider decided to put on the Sheriffs uniform and use his car to get onto the dairy farm. They quickly noted the crowds of zombie like people wandering around in groups of 10-12 and then noticed a minotaur-like humaniod directing the loading of even more trucks with milk products. The villain was named "Rodeo", which they learned later. In a mild surprise, the player took a subtle approach and used Composure to bluff past Rodeo. Yes, they pretended to be "milk zombies" and pulled it off. Rodeo pointed out that "Mother" was out in a nearby field full of strange looking pod plants, grazing cows, and a couple giant dirt mounds that looked like gopher holes (if gophers were the size of small cars). They walked out, felt Mother reach out to them and probe their minds. She was annoyed that supers had shown up to disrupt her plans and erupted out of the ground! The fight was on! As well as the player did in rolling the last time? He sucked it up pretty bad for most of this game session. Easily 5-6 "ones" on the Wild Die. Mother had Mind Blast, Claws, Electrical bolts from her snout, and Super Strength along with 5D in Fortitude. I had planned her to battle mostly alone, so she was tough for our 20D heroes. At one point she clawed Destruction with a 35 pt hit (Wild Die twice! so 7D total)and he took 3D in damage. He regenerated some of it of course, but under the new Regeneration rules that treat it more like Healing. Collider was down to the next Mental Blast taking him out when they finally got in some good shots and took Mother down. I had her using her Super Strength quite often to throw large amounts of dirt/rocks at them and the battle was a dusty mess with Destruction and his whirlwind Speed. As the smoke cleared Rodeo and his other villain buddy, Jack O' Lantern took off when they saw Mother had been beaten. Yeah, I went easy on the player and assumed the villains were busy enough to not join the battle and if they did notice, they just assumed that in that dusty cloud Mother was kicking butt and taking names. Plus I get to use these mercenary villains again without the "they broke out of super prison" excuse. The heroes torched the field, and most of the buildings too, to destroy the tainted milk. They didn't slaughte the cows, assuming they would return to normal once they had stopped eating the alien plants/pods. They also found PI Brandy Lee among the recovering zombie crowd. Despite his poor dice rolling, it was fun for both the player and myself. Even more eager to get the other players together for the "Wacko World" adventure. Best guess is two weeks from now. The second adventure was Wacko World: Seattle Yes, we got in some gaming over this long weekend. Was hoping to get at least three players, ended up with two (my wife and the friend who has been playing Collider/Destruction). I introduced their characters to the Wacko World adventure by having Trinity Prime (wife's character who can duplicate herself and fights with a sword, SMG, and Martial Arts) win a free ticket from an online review website called "Mystery Guest", like the online "Secret Shopper" ones the person goes to the event and then blogs about it later. Collider, having been around Seattle for a half dozen adventures and a year or so of character time was invited to the grand opening as a VIP guest. He was supposed to be signing autographs along with Jumping Jack and Raccoon-Man the Seattle Sentinels Alternate Team (read: never good enough to be "real" heroes). The disdain from the player characters for those two was,uh, poorly hidden. As part of the VIP 500, they got in early (9AM)to Wacko World and the regular visitors started into the park at noon. I layed out the map and legend for it and let them explore as they wanted. They first took a ride on the elevated cable cars, where Trinity Prime soon noticed a figure in a black and white costume racing around the "Road Rage Racetrack" (miniature formula 1 race cars) at super speed. Then a woman in a similar costume flew by the cable cars, waving at the passengers. Who were these super powered beings? The heroes hurried over to the race track and found a group called "The Fraternity" handing out flyers (I stoled this group from an old British supers RPG called Golden Heroes). The group was looking for new members and Fleetfoot the speedster encouraged anyone in the crowd to apply online at The Fraternity website. The group was soon asked to leave by Wacko World management, while Collider and Trinity Prime stayed hidden among the crowd just watching. I just wanted this to be an "encounter" incident, and will have them meet The Fraternity during some other adventure where there is some direct conflict. I tried to play the group as elitist, willing to take only the best even among super powered people and clearly interested in looking out for themselves above all else. Both players thought the Fraternity would be back to cause trouble. In the meantime, they went around the park checking out the attractions, and even showed up to chat at the "hero" autograph singing by Jumping Jack and Raccoon-Man. There is a cosplay costume contest later in the day too, so Wacko World looks a lot like being at a DragonCon or Comic Con. Trinity Prime had quickly filled out the form on the Fraternity webpage on her smartphone and asked the two "alternate heroes" if they knew anything about the group or how long it might take to get an interview with them. It was a funny moment, as I had Raccoon-Man say: "Don't expect a quick response, I filled out that online form and I never heard -uh, I mean a FRIEND OF MINE filled it out and never heard back from them." After that the player characters went over to the food court located at King Arthur's Castle (yeah, they laughed at that too) and were eating lunch up on a tower when they saw an armored bank van pulling up to the Wacko World employee entrance. They knew, just KNEW there would be trouble and headed over there. Yes, they are veteran super hero gamers. They arrived in time to find "Cat N" and her partner "Maus" robbing the money sacks from the security guards. The fight was on! It took about 2 minutes to explain to the wife how Supers! combat goes. Very easy system and she loved the idea of being able to "verbally justify" using skills and powers or Resistances. She also rolled very well with the "wild die" which made the experience that much better. Cat N ripped off a door from the overturned armored car and threw it at Trinity Prime, who let her Armor absorb the hit. Trinity responded with a long burst from her submachine gun (and Armor Piercing too). She had Shooting 3D6 but got TWO sixes and ended up at 26 pts total. Cat N was staggered, hurting badly. Maus leaped at Collider and managed to wrap his tail around the hero and slam him down to the ground (Stretching 3D, tail only). Trinity created her two Duplicates (Past and Future) and finished off Cat N with only a minor wound from her claws. I really need to tweak the modifed Duplicate power I am using. Having three characters,even if two are fairly weak, is an even bigger advantage than in most games. I might cap her at ONE duplicate at a time? We'll see. Seeing how badly things had gone, Maus pulled open a manhole cover and went down into the sewer, Collider in hot pursuit. I had mentioned how one of the security guards had yelled for them to keep the villains busy while he got the money to safety. Trinity noticed the guard running into the crowd and changing form. Yes, it was Copy-Cat, who started out disguised as a guard and then trying to get away using her Shapechange power (human form only). With three sets of eyes on her and a telepathic link between them (Trinty Prime, Past, and Future) Copy-Cat took another big hit (24 pt plasma ball blast from Future) after more great dice rolling and was quickly finished off. Collider was rolling average to poor, but still bested Maus with his Gravity powers. Well, fine, the next set of villains are more powerful and this battle made for a good introduction to Supers! for the wife. Why not feel like you are kicking butt and taking names, especially in a supers game? As noted, there is ONE more big battle to this adventure once the heroes find out the two villain groups C.L.A.W. and P.E.S.T. are working on a business deal in Wacko World. Two villains from each group are there, but depending on how many players I have, the villains may not help each other out, but flee away from the meeting. That will let the heroes choose whom to pursue and not get smacked by superior numbers. We finished the Wacko World adventure yesterday evening. Almost by accident, we ending up using Skype. Gaming at the house of the Collider player, and his wife was chatting with mine on Skype. She didn't feel up to leaving our home, so it was just going to be a single player session. Well, why not let her game through Skype with us? I had her dice with me (kept in a backpack most of the time) and she was fine with Heath rolling dice for her character(s) (which I also had with me). It went surprising well, and I need to get the players copies of their character sheets (I keep them between game sessions in a player character binder in that same backpack) so they can game from home if they can't be there in person (which is still the best way to game). If there are no trust issues with the players in regards to rolling dice (and I have none with those I currently game with) then Skype is really all you need. When I write up the conclusion of the Wacko World Seattle adventure I will add it to this thread.