Paul_Va

As they are as mall business, they are probably just very understaffed.

Yes indeed. The RuneQuest 3 spirit combat has been reproduced in the Magic Book. It seems to be exactly what you are looking for. Also, there is the summoning ritual magic, which may also be of use.

RuneQuest 6th Edition also have rules for spirit combat with Possession and Exorcism as a subheading. It might be even better than the Magic Book version, depending on your preferences.

OK, I guess it's settled then. I need The Magic Book and maybe the Runequest 6 book. Thank you, again.

I just bought Call of Cthulhu, so I might be getting ready to answer my own question, but I'll ask anyway. Do any of the BRP magic systems allow for extended POW contests between a ghost/spirit and a magic user or group of magic users? I really want to find a mechanic that would allow me to have exorcism rituals that are a battle of POW between a ritual Shinto/Buddhist priest or group of priests and a ghost/demon. Do any of the systems in the Magic book have a mechanic for anything like that?

By the way, if anyone hasn't been over there yet, you should really take a look at soltakss site. It's FULL of fun gaming stories and it's one of the few sites that kept me going in the dark times when there was little talk of BRP.

I had never seen this site, Chaot. Thanks for the tip.

So, to retrieve the priceless memento and prevent the tragic event-o, will the PCs be traveling among the temples of Shinto by foot or by Pinto?

That depends on how they roll on their Status check during character creation, Seneschal.

Sorcery is the best solution for Shinto, as it was developed for the demon-binding magicians of the Young Kingdoms. You should just create a Bind (Kami) spell that the priest uses to exorcise or persuade an unwanted spirit, to complement the Summon (Kami) used to invoke benignant deities.

I have not read Loz's Land of the Samurai, but the old AH "Land of Ninja" has a decent representation of Shinto with the RQ3 rules and "Spirit Communication" used to learn magic from Kami. You will still need to own the Magic Book as these magic systems are not included in the gold book. In LoN, all priests are considered acolytes so the problem of spending POW for one-shot divine magic is bypassed. Moreover, the old divine magic system requires prayer at an appropriate temple to regain use of a cast-out spell, forcing the priest to go on pilgrimages very frequently. This is quite appropriate for Shintoism.

This really answers my question. Thank you Rosen! It looks like I need to get the magic book.

I'm preparing an historical Japanese horror campaign set in the Heian Period, and I'm trying to decide which Power system to use for the Shinto priests. I've already decided to use the Psychic Abilities system for the Buddhist priests/monks, but I envision the Shinto priests a little differently. While Buddhism entails a great deal of mental discipline and meditation, which seems to lend itself naturally to Psychic powers, Shinto is more about the channeling or invoking of Kami (nature spirits/gods). Moreover, I want to run a very low-magic setting. I want my Shinto priests to be able to perform rituals such as exorcisms, and I want them to be able to invoke their guardian Kami in desperate situations as a last ditch effort, but that's about it. At first, I had considered the sorcerer power, but sorcerers don't have anything akin to exorcism. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Since there are no levels in BRP, I assumed that some monsters will just be easier/harder than others. If I give something extraordinary powers, I'll probably think of some way the PCs can defeat it indirectly, however. Maybe a ghost can be banished by destroying its anchor, etc. I too am interested in what others have to say on this topic, however.

You might want to double check on that. I think that it might prove problematic unless you have a BRP license or Permission from Chaosium. It is a Trademark iirc.

SDLeary

Hmm, I hadn't even thought of that, but you could be right.

Ah, the second one is perfect. Thank you, Nakana.

Does anyone know where I could get a banner for BRP to link from a webpage or blog?

Have you checked any of the modern day books for BRP? They might list equipment such as binoculars, etc.

On p. 175 of Basic Roleplaying: The Chaosium Roleplaying System under the heading Critical Success, it says to round fractions using "normal rounding." That means .4 or less rounds down and .5 or more rounds up.

I'm trying to think of a way to give my players some guidance regarding the choosing of clan and family. I've used the Status table on p. 79 of the BGB to create a Status table with the varying positions in Heian society that are listed in Samurai of Legend. I'm going to have my players roll on the table when they first create their characters to determine what professions they can choose. This will also determine their Status skill, which I am going to use in lieu of the On system.

Regarding help I can give them on clan/family decisions, it seems that members of the Imperial family should belong to the Fujiwara, Minamoto, or Taira clans, and they should probably be from a family that is allied to those clans. But after that it's not so clear, particularly if they are of the senmin caste, which means they likely have no family name in the Heian period. My thought is that giving players who have no background in Japanese history the family and clan chart and just asking them to pick will be overwhelming.

I also think I'm going to add a slave caste to the bottom of the Status table. Therefore, if they roll 96-100, they will be part of the royal family; if they roll 01-05, they will be slaves.

Actually perhaps the more correct term for Medicine is Ishinpō, named after early medical manuscripts going by the same name. So perhaps Knowledge: Medicine (Ishinpō) could be a more authentic name for the medical skill

But should it actually confer the benefits of the Medicine skill? I don't think it would have actually done much for the patient back then.

Having read through this, I'm working on converting it to BRP, and I've had some ideas. The campaign I want to run is going to be historical. For a lower magic setting, I had the idea that Buddhist monks should have access to psychic abilities, rather than magic. After looking through the psychic ability list, it seems that many of these abilities would work well with the Buddhist mediation idea, and would be less vulgarly magical than magical spells. Any thoughts?

Also, it doesn't seem to me that the Isha (herbalist/healers) would have access to the Medicine skill, but they would probably have access to First Aid. Maybe I could substitute a Knowledge (Chinese Medicine) skill for Medicine. On that note, I don't think any of the science skills would be available in the Heian Period.

Ah, that could be it. Thank you, Filbanto.

I can't. It won't even let me post a picture. I get an error that says "500IOErrorEventType..., etc."

I made a Special Success Table, but I'm not able to upload it for some reason. Every time I try to upload it in order to attach it, I receive an error message.

And without that column, the third column makes NO sense whatsoever, which explains things. Similarly, the timeline, where it is concerned with those elements that are clearly not fantasy, describes events that actually happened. What was interesting during the research I did for this book, was finding that even some of the fantastic elements noted in the timeline were also noted in historical documents. And there really was an edict outlawing sorcerers on pain of death...

Oh, that's fascinating. I noticed that and I was wondering if that was real. I'm glad you told me that. I wonder what they considered to be sorcery as opposed to Shinto rituals. And thank you for the information on the family names.

First column lists the major clans of Japan. These are groups of families that form influential blocs.

I looked at the chart again, and they omitted this column in the Legend edition. Also, do you know how historically accurate this chart is? Are the names on this chart historical, or were they generated only for the game?

OK, thank you for clearing this up, Lawrence.

That's an idea. I'll do that. Thanks.

I know. It confused me as well. And even if you figure out how to read the table, how are players supposed to use it?

I'm reading through the character creation section, and I'm a little confused regarding how to handle selection of family and caste. The list of families is overwhelming, and I don't see much guidance for selection. Furthermore, it's not clear how one might use the rules from the Legend main book for identifying culture and class in the Heian period. Am I missing something? Is the intention that players will be free to choose their family and caste (either ryomin or senmin) by their preference? This seems unacceptable because there seems to be no reason a player might choose to play the senmin class. Every player will automatically choose the ryomin class.