p_clapham

I have been looking into running a one shot sword & sorcery game at Necronomicon 2019. Originally I was going with Desolation, a Ubiquity system rpg that is out of print. OpenQuest strikes me as the next best thing. While it does not have the spontaneous magic system from Desolation, OpenQuest magic can be tweaked to make it a little darker. Plus I would like to support an available product that utilizes the Open Game License. 

I blame my new glasses on the triple post. 

Sorry about the triple post. I image most of those rules could be ported over. Did the Design Mechanism doing anything with them?

For psionics there is always the unofficial Space Opera rules they came up with for Runequest 6th edition. 

8 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Yes the original intent was  to revising a flagging RPG (D&D), and kill off a bunch of competing products by allowing third party companies to produce D&D products at only a modest fee.  Where it went wrong was that WotC thought that once D&D locked up the market they'd maintain control over D&D, and then just kill off the OGL with 4th edition. It backfired when 4E didn't go over so well with 3E players, and Panthfinder came out and continued developing the OGL format D&D.

I think MRQ went OGL because it came out before the 4E fiasco, and because Mongoose specializes in putting out a lot of product fast. They don't really care who control the development of the game as long as they can make money by producing lots of supplements. Had open MRQ took off, and a RQ equivalent of Pathfinder came out, then I suspect Mongoose would be content producing supplements for it. 

Atgxtg,

You wouldn't happen to have a source on the OGL being a Trojan horse? I am doing a school project on the OGL and digitized games, and would like to include that perspective.

I looked up Triplanetary to see the legal status of that novel. It should have passed into the public domain, but there was a later revised and copyright version in the early 50's.

I always wanted to do a monograph madam Corelli's Romance of Two Worlds. Edison's Conquest of Mars is definitely in the public domain.

If you are looking for more modern day professions I have a file in the downloads section for pulp era professions.  I also have a couple of files for "edges"  essentially a blending of common magic and legendary abilities.

Magic World sorcery rules?  

It's okay.  I was a little disappointed with their psychic powers.  They just took a bunch of Common Magic and called them psionic powers. 

How is the witchraft monograph?

I've uploaded a new file with more edges.

I was thinking the first one takes too much of a penalty.  While +5 to damage is nice, a starting character would only have 10% or 20% to hit.  Feels a bit unusable to me, unless you are attacking a helpless foe.  Taking a -20% to increase the weapon die by one step feels like a better option.  It also makes the edge similar to back stab, where a edge has a situational requirement for the edge to function.

I've got a couple of ideas on how I want to do the Power Attack edge, and was looking for some feedback on it.  I've got two ideas, which more or less do the same thing (trading accuracy for power), but go about it in different ways.

 Power attack

Any Close Combat Style or Unarmed 50%

Self, Instant

The character is able to sacrifice accuracy for power in close combat. As a free action the character can activate this edge as part of a close combat attack. For every -10% the character takes in penalty to hit, they add +1 to the weapon damage, to a maximum of -50% to hit. The power attack weapon damage cannot exceed the maximum damage die of the weapon. So a short sword with +3 points of power attack damage will deal 4-6 points of damage.

This edge may be taken a second time when the character reaches 100% in their relevant skill. The bonus damage from this edge may now exceed the damage die of the weapon. So a short sword with +3 points of power attack damage will deal 4-9 points of damage. This upgrade costs five advancement points.

Power attack

Any Close Combat Style or Unarmed 50%

Self, Instant

The character is able to sacrifice accuracy for power in close combat. As a free action the character can activate this edge as part of a close combat attack. The character takes -20% to hit on this attack, but if they succeed they increase their damage die for their weapon by one step.  So a short sword Power Attack would deal 1D8 damage.

This edge may be taken a second time when the character reaches 100% in their relevant skill. The character now increases the damage die of both their weapon and damage bonus by one step.  So if a character with a D2 damage bonus wielding a short sword uses this edge they would be dealing 1D8+1D4 on each successful hit.  This upgrade costs five advancement points.

Can my LGS order the hardcover, or is it only available direct from you?  

I've finished my collection of Fantasy edges.  It is an expansion on my original edge file, with feats converted from Dungeons and Dragons.

Thinking very strongly of running some of the Spider God's Bride this Summer.

I went to check it out after reading about it in the psionics thread.  The link is still down.  

Not sure why the "powers that be" would provide an escape route at all; much easier if  it is  a one-way trip for your other-wise unwanted riff-raff.

 

Now if it is some kind of martial contest, like some gladiatorial version of  'Survivor',  than yes, there would have to be  some possibility of getting off the island.

The island is designed to be both a prison and a arena.  The "powers that be" will be monitoring the characters from afar via magical means, and they'd prefer to be entertained.

 ^{Just because the Powers say there a}

 

Just because the powers tell you there a way off the island does not mean they are telling the truth

That is very true.  I'm considering throwing in some false teleportation gates, but that might frustrate players.

I was going to go with the idea that the gods are on more or less even footing, it's just the Bible was written by the winners, and they portray their god as all powerful, above even the other gods.  I may try to include pagan points of view into the supplement, at the very least I'm going to include rules that allow you to make foreign miracle workers/ sorcerers.

This project is going to be revised at a later date.  I decided to make the class project more inclusive, and appealing to the professor I'm instead doing a Old Testament of the Flux card game.

The red/black world is obviously not going to be nice. I can probably work something out with the blue/green world. That realy leaves the black/green shard. I want to make it spooky, but not evil. I'm thinking of a world that is one massive forest dotted with villages.

What do folks think, should I go with giving them one weapon of their choice and nothing else, or at least let them have the starting equipment normally available to new characters.

I wasn't planning on having bounty hunters, the island is going to hold enough threats to keep them busy.  At some point I may introduce a rival group of "players" they must compete with to win some prize, or find the location of the portal.  

I was definitely going to have scyrth next to therion. My girlfriend complained I didn't have many "nice" worlds. Solace is nice, but it is hard to be a adventurer from there. That only really leaves Thane.

I figured out one of my summer games. I'm going to run monster island, or a varient of it. Basically the island is a prison/ arena used for political dissidents, criminals, and prisoners of war. The poor souls are transported there through magical means, as the island is surrounded by a series of deadly reefs that make boating imposible. The "gladiators" are told that somewhere deep within the island lies a magic portal that leads to freedom. In addition the island contains a number of dungeons stocked with gear, monsters, and deadly traps. This is very useful as the characters are only allowed to bring one weapon of their choice to the island. They are otherwise unarmed, and unarmored.