Hedgehobbit

That kinda reminds me of the religious bonuses used in the Pendragon game. I'll have to think about groups of skills (10 sounds like a lot though). I was also thinking about making the skill groupings like Perception and Comminication also increase with experience. So if you rolled particularly well on your Listen advancement roll, you might get a +1 to your Perception bonus. Either that or treat them as mega-skills for either a more simplified game or to gloss over skills that a particular character might not care about. For example, a barbarian-type character might must have one skill called Communication that goes up slowly but applies to all the sub-skills in that category.

I don't have the new book but have been thinking about making some skills more difficult to learn that others. RQ2 had some of this whereby it was more expensive to train some skills other others (rapier v club forex). What I would like to do is make magical or more exotic skills advance slower while ones with more limited usefullness adventure (crafting and other odd thing) go faster. I was thinking of two ways to accomplish this. First is to vary the number of skill points received for each advancement checks. Hard skills go up 1d4, regular 1d6 and easy ones 1d8. Another idea was to give a bonus or penalty to the advancement check itself. Not sure what a good number range would be. Is there anything in the new BRP rules like this? Also, the old game Bushido was similar to RQ in some respects. In that game they had something called Okuden which were "secret" skill. Basically, it was a skill that let you do something that you normally couldn't, like throw a sword. It was a normal skill as far as using it but it would only go as high as the skill it was based on; your "throw sword" skill can't exceed your "sword" skill. I was thinking something like this would be nice for BRP as it would give a method for adding "feats" to the game but without another system or the on-or-off effect of feats or other special powers. Anyone do anything like this? Finally, one of the issues I had with my long running BRP and Stormbringer campaigns was that after a while, all the characters started to look the same. Since the characters lower skills advanced more quickly, they eventually ended up with all their skills in a similar range. So, I was thinking of making each character pick a number of skills that his character specialized in and give him a bonus to his advancement checks for those skills. Aaron

I think it was part of the jousting video because I remember watching it in the jousting room. But those online are just clips. The ones in the museum were pretty long and had voice-overs and stuff. There was another cool on in the Japanese section that went step-by-step in making a Katana. Plus there was one that showed all the different types of crossbows. I learned alot from that vacation. At the time my main interest was acient greece and rome so I didn't pay quite as much attention in the medievil rooms as I should have.

I too would love to see a set of rules where it would make sense for Roman's to use short sword instead of the longer swords of their german opponents (of course they eventually did switch to longer swords but that's another issue). The only thing I could think of would be to make the stabbing damage of a gladius be equal to the stabbing damage of a longer sword (which, in a way, makes sense). That way they aren't punished as they are with most RPG rules.

At the Royal Armories in Leeds, they had a really good video showing a dual between two knights using halberds. It gave a feel for how these weapons were used. Unfortunately, I can't find that video online. Here's a historical text concerning pole axes which give a similar feel for the size and use of these weapons. The pictures aren't of good quality but will work. Notes on Le Jeu de la Hache Talk About Historical Art The difference between a poleaxe and a halberd was mainly the length of the spikey bit on the tip as the halberd was used as a replacement for the pike to defend against cavalry or in "pike & musket" formations where the pikes were used to protect the otherwise vulnerable musketeers. Since "halberd" has been used by gamers for years to represent any large polearm, I'm not sure which weapon you're using in your game. Notice the length of the halberd compared to the similar poleaxe pictures above. Image:Halberdier-corps.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia I'm not sure how to model many of the figthing techniques that involved rapid closing followed by weapon binds or grappling. Close combat was a nasty and dangerous affair. I remember one story (that I can't quote). Two sides of knights were lined up for battle when the French knights sheathed their swords and drew their daggers. Whereupon the other side immediately surrendered! This is because their armor made them relatively immune to swords but daggers where used to jab through the eye and kill. Faced with the prospect of a fight to the death (instead of the usual ransom), they chose to surrender. Aaron

Are halberds really that big? I always thought they were about 5-6 feet long. Kinda like a staff. (isn't a 10' pole standard dungeon delving equipment?) Also, are there rules for half-swording? On dungeons, it always bothered me that they always had nice tall ceilings. Think how nasty goblins or kobolds would be if they're homes only had a 4 foot tall ceiling. Fighting while crawling ... ouch. Aaron

Me too. Although I've never really read it. It looks all typewriter written like other games from that era, such as Champions. I got it long after I stopped playing RQ when Ebay first came out. I think I paid $10 for it. Unlike my unpunched copies of White Bear/Red Moon and Nomad Gods which cost me plenty.

I agree 100%. Too much weirdness makes the weird mundane. If every village in the world has elves and hobbits in them, then elves and hobbits aren't special no matter what the fluff says. I've always felt that be best way to make a setting feel magical is to start it in a plain ol' nothing special human town or village to give the players a baseline to judge the magical by. And enough with the wierd names. I still don't know how to spell or pronouce Eberron*. Remember that the name "Glorantha" never appeared in a product name until third edition. Because of this, I don't see the need for a super detailed mega-setting to make BRP work. Give me some good solid adventures set in a small regional area (like Dragon Pass!). Save the world maps and encyclopediac fluff for years down the road and let the setting grow naturally. Aaron *If I spelled it correctly here, that was just a good guess.

Count me in that group as well. I'm a fan of 3e. My recent 3e campaign was the only game in the last 20 years to last longer my original 2e Runequest campaign from back in the early 80s. As soon as I heard what was being "fixed" in 4e, I started looking for alternative. That's why I'm here and why I'm waiting for the new BRP. So, in a way its not too late but just in time. Aaron [still doesn't like what they did to Glorantha]

Pendragon has both a reward and "punish" aspect. If a character gets several of his personality traits to match his religious or knightly virtues (I forget the proper terminology) then he gains a bonus. Thus most players have a goal as to which traits should be high and which should be low. The "punish" aspect is used to prevent the player from convieniently ignore certain this he alledgedly dedicated his life to because of player knowledge. I see Personality mechanics serving four purposes: 1) Reward a player for either playing his character consistantly. 2) Preventing a player from basing his character's action on player knowledge. 3) Give a character an in-game benefit for actions that may be detremental to that character. 4) Allow (or force) a player to play a character that he would normally not play*. The systems in Pendragon are good at #1-3. The religious and knightly bonuses do #1, the Trait checks do #2 and the Passion system does #3. Often mixed in with these types of rules is a way to integrate a particular character into the plot or gameworld. These are things like Destiny or Fate type mechanics. Aaron * This is especially helpful for groups that have played together for a long time. It can get old when Player C plays either an overly cautious knight or an overly cautious Jedi or an overly cautious Cthulhu investigator, etc. Burning Wheel is good at this (although its crap for pretty much everything else). Since this can be good for some situations, I'm not directly opposed to "straightjacket" types of rules.

There is a book called "Vampires: Burial and Death" which explores vampires legends and relates them to how a real human body decomposes. While its interesting (especially where it relates how "staking" started), its disappointing to learn how silly early vampire legends were and little the real vampire stories relate to modern vampire. The author talks a bit about Bram Stoker and speculates on why he changed various things. Because of that book, all my vampire knowledge is pretty jumbled up and its hard to remember where I first heard of various bits of vampire lore. Aaron

I've played Dragon Pass and I have White Bear/Red Moon and Nomad Gods but haven't played them (cause I bought them unpunched). I don't remember Runes having much effect in that game except for the Movement Rune giving a stack double movement. Can you elaborate please? Aaron

There are a couple of vampire related powers that seem to have been forgotten in recent movies. They might be usable to change the feel of a vampire-centric campaign. 1-Vampires are utterly powerless during the day. And they need to sleep on dirt from where they were buried. Those old vampire movies have vampires lying helpless in their coffins during the day; Van Helsing even uses holy water to ruin Dracula's resting place, forcing him to return to his castle before dawn (no idea on what would happen to him if he didn't make it). This would help reduce the super-man effect since any shmoe can just walk up and stake a vamp during the day. Plus it will require a Vamp to have plenty of human servants (familiars) to protect them during the day. Each one a potential turn-coat. 2-Vampires are slaves of the vampire that turned them. This essentially gives the GM a way to prevent the PC vampires from getting too far away from his campaign intentions. Maybe by using a VAM vs VAM resistance roll. 3-Killing a Vamp also destroys all vamp he turned. This was always the reason Van Helsing was so into killing Drac as he was the projenitor (sp) of all other vamps. This is another way to force PC vamps to help their NPC creator. It also prevents them from wandering off too much as they need to keep an eye out for their boss. Also, different "nests" of vampires will have its own boss vampire who will, in turn, be loyal to some other vampire whose identity will be a secret to most of the hive to keep enemies from moving up the food chain. Of course, you might want to change the rules a bit to keep all the PCs from just dieing at once. I like the idea that if a Vamp kills his master (pretty tough considering rule #2) then that vamp takes the place of his old master. This is a good way to explain why a Vamp doesn't turn hundreds of people since each one is a potential threat. One way I can see to run a vamp game would be as if it were a gangster game. Each gang is a group of vampires whose boss is loyal to some other more powerful but unknown vampire. The gangs are fighting other gang who are loyal to yet another vampires. But, all of the gangs are eventually loyal to Dracula who trying to keep all these cold-blooded killers under control and working on some evil master plan. Meanwhile the PCs are working for their gang while secretly plotting to kill their way up the Vampire food chain, eventually killing Dracula himself and taking over the whole show. Aaron PS-I'm going to have to step up my plans to watch Dark Shadows.

Bushido has some rules which might help in this situation. You character gets to pick a certain number of skills (1 per Int point for example). These skills advance as normal. Every other skill has a penalty when trying to learn them. So, in BRP, you might have a character pick a certain number of skills (these might be the skills that the character regularly practices at if you need an in-game rational for the rules). A successful advancement check might give 1d6 point to a "practiced" skill but only 1d3 to a "non-practiced skill". That way fighters can learn magic or magic-users can learn fighting but they will each be hindered in the other's specialty. It would work for rogue-type characters as well, keeping them from outdoing the regular fighter guys in combat. BTW-I'm not very familiar with the new BRP rules. Are there options for some skills being more difficult to learn that others? Aaron

From a business point of view, GW should have just considered the RPG as advertisement for the novels and mini-game. I'm actually surprised that they let Green Ronin change the RPG to make it less compatible with the mini-game. In any event, GW should have known when they went into this what the costs were going to be. Maybe the market's changed significantly since a year ago.

Why is that?

I know most of you won't like this but I'm tempted to add James Bond-like levels of success to BRP. Rolling below your skill gives you 1 success, below 1/2 your skill = 2 successes, below 1/4 = 3 successes, below 1/10th = 4 successes, etc. These numbers can be precalculated and put on the character sheet (of course this precludes the use of -X% type penalties for difficulty but I don't like those much anyway; more difficult tests will require more than 1 success to succeed.) There will still be ties but they will be less likely. Plus this will scales ok with very high skills (200% skills will always get at least 2 successes but only have a 50% chance to get 3) One this I also like about the James Bond game is that damage is a function of the success roll rather than as a seperate damage roll. This will allow you to make a weapon, such as a dagger, that does only superficial damage on a normal hit but does lethal damage on a good hit. Whereas a larger weapon would do more significant damage on a normal hit while still doing lethal damage on a good hit. So daggers and the like can still kill characters in one stab but it is much more difficult.

Thieves Guild was a D&D-like game where every player was a thief. The list of possible PC races included Orcs, Goblins, Kobolds and Pixies along with the usual suspects. While the game rules themselves were uninspired, they released lots of adventures that were very different from the usual stuff coming out at the time. For example, one of the adventures took place during the Duke's fancy dress ball. You had to infiltrate and steal this necklace from the duchess.

I remember reading a game a few years back that had Hero points but when you used them, you got this kind of negative Hero point in return. Kinda like Doom points. These points the GM could use to cause you trouble later on down the line. Anyone seen anything like this?

Looks like I'm the only one who played Thieves Guild. Go Pixies!

The primary change that I've seen is a move away from the game being about challenging the players to being about challenging the characters. When D&D was new, there was a definate sense that playing the game required a "skill" of the players. That good players could succeed where poor players would fail, regardless of the characters they were using. Tomb Of Horrors was designed to demonstrate this very fact. This is one of the reason that early D&D seems so random and hodge podge with oodles of monsters who exists for no reason than to screw characters over: rust monster, gelatinous cubes, lurker above etc. While this stuff seems silly and random to modern eyes, they existed simply to provide a series of different challenges for the players to overcome. Heck, back in those days we didn't bother naming our characters; they were simply an extension of ourselves. That's another reason why you don't see rules about spotting things or diplomacy in those games. The DM ruled based on how the players acted rather than on the skill of the character. Naturally, as players got more experienced some began to look for more variety is the abilities of their characters which lead to AD&D's over abundance of classes as well as skill based games like RQ, Bushido etc. I think that the narativist element is an outgrowth of this as the seperation between the abilities of the players and their characters grew eventually leading to games such as Pendragon where the character is no longer 100% under the control of the player. I see this change having an impact of PC death as well. When the game is focused on challenging the player, the survival of a PC is the hallmark of successful play. Since your character is just an entension of yourself, rolling up a new character just means your a little less powerful the next time you play; its no different from taking hit point damage in a sense since you haven't really lost anything because your ability is your own personal game-playing skill. The move toward focusing the game on the character's abilities means that you lose all that you have gained which is significantly more of a loss. Hence the gradual reluctance to have PCs die. Of course, all this began well before 1985

I know this is pretty late in the thread for this type of stuff but I would recommend anyone interested in a western game to listen to the old Gunsmoke Radio Drama. Its a bit more adult than the TV show and, as a plus, you can pretty much guarantee that your players won't recognize any of the plots that you steal. Great for listening to at work. Index of /~trademarksnet.com/GUNSMOKE/GunsmokeTGAW/Marks-Stuff/MP3/Gunsmoke 1952-54a

I'm not making that up. The TV series really did take place on the west coast. I wouldn't reduce the INT of humans because it takes most of the kick out of the setting. Its one thing for apes to hunt, murder and enslave a degenerate sub-human primate but its quite another for them to enslave and murder real humans like you, me and (hopefully) your players.

I wouldn't give the humans from the movies a penalty to INT, they just lacked any education whatsoever since Dr. Zaius was pretty serious about keeping them in their place. The humans from the TV show were on the west coast of the US where the apes must have been a bit less strict about following Ape Law and, thus, human retained some basic level of civilization such as speaking. Either that or the forbidden zone completely isolated the east coast apes and they had a different set of laws and codes to follow.