p_clapham

The majority of zombies I have encountered in the pulps tend to be voodoo zombies.

"Included in this book are new rules for action points, powers, gadgets, resources and mooks."

-From the news page on Astounding Adventures.

There's nothing mentioned about professions at all. That was one of the bits we saw with Pulp Cthulhu, the Reanimator. I rather liked that, and am sad to see it presumably excluded. A Herbert West style character could still be possible depending on what they have for powers. Zombie minions are pretty pulp.

The Upcoming BRP Astounding Adventures might be the solution. I wouldn't be surprised if it's based in some part on the Pulp Cthulhu rules.

Could this rule set be Pulp Cthulhu with the sanity points filed off?

Are we finally seeing the Pulp Cthulhu rules?

http://http://www.chaosium.com/article.php?story_id=521

- My bad, there's an existing thread for Astounding Adventures.

I love flexible magic rules as well. Corum has a similar. Right now my favorite is from Desolation, a fantasy RPG using the Hollow Earth Expedition rules. For D100 Unknown East and Corum are the way to go.

I'm planning on using both the experience check system, as well as the MRQII improvement rolls. The later representing offstage improvements and training by the characters. I figure that should also make increasing attributes a little eaiser. The current system is a little harsh, where a player has to choose between a one point attribute increase vs dozens of skill increases.

Please note that the "One spell, one skill" philosophy works well only with the experience check improvement system. If you use improvement rolls for character development, having each spell as a skill makes sorcerers progress too slowly.

However, as Pete said, the rules explicitly allow to have grimoires that contain one spell. In a low magic world, you can have all grimoires be spell scrolls.

So far I like the changes thus far. The way magic has been done feels more like the older versions of Runequest, and I'm very happy with the changes to divine magic. As well as the inclusion of Spirit Magic. I'm hesitant over the way Sorcery has been redone. Having magnitude merged into one skill made me happy, it' s a good measure of a Sorcerer's skill. I don't like having Grimoires as seperate skills, the old system of having each spell as it's own skill is a personal prefrence of mine.

The rulebook seems very complete with very little tinkering needed, and I'm looking forward to taking it for a Sword & Sorcery test drive this semester.

I'll check out that article, is it in the recent signs and portents?

Thank you for the quick clairfication.

I miss it too.

Two Questions on Combat Styles

1) How flexible are these? For example a character with a Sword and Shield style, could they use a Dagger in place of a sword? Or a character with a Mace and Shield, could they use a club in place of a mace?

2) Under the Profession lists a few of them have a weapon skill listed, rather than a Combat Style. The Noble Starts off with Sword at +10%. Does this mean any combat styles with sword listed in them gain this 10% bonus, or was the profession supposed to start off with a Combat Style at +10%?

Old Scottish Chub.

Thank you, I had missed that.

I had a few more questions on the book. Perhaps I ought to start a new thread, a MRQ II Q&A.

Page 27: Magic Using Characters

'Sorcerers and Witches: Gain a Grimoire appropriate to their cult. If a pre-defined cult is being used then the spells contained... will be already determined. If a Grimoire needs to be developed from scratch, it will contain up to four sorcery spells appropriate to the sorcery order's nature and teachings.'

So going through book, I see the starting number of spells for both common magic and divine magic. However I can't find anything in regards to starting number of Sorcery spells. Anyone have better luck than I on this?

Looks like a chunk of these posts got lost. The book is gorgeous. Still going through the content, but the cover is amazing, the pages are thick and sturdy. The book screams delux.

I've got both Aces High and the Worlds of Cthulhu issues with the Western Rules. I personaly prefer Aces High, it's got more usefull information, and a beastiary full of Indian Folklore. Worlds of Cthulhu does have the Dueling Rules, not sure if Aces has something similar.

I am aware of Aces High and see picking it up in the future. Does anyone have both Aces High and the Western setup in Worlds of Cthulhu magazines? WoC (and Cthulhu by Gaslight) is my current basis for Six-Gun Cthulhu. Does Aces High work better for shifting CoC into the times of the Wild West?

Anyway, I still need a way to get the modules I have from Boot Hill into BRP format for either use in Call of Cthulhu or Aces High. There are some specific adventures I want to take from the Boot Hill modules and use. Hence the need to covert.

How do I sum this up properly....

Well yes the "end times" are scary and all. Destruction on a massive scale, end of civilization and what not. what most people skip over is the pie. Realy good pie, seriously it's the best pie ever, and it's only around for short while.

The Apocalypse, come for the burning end of all you know, stay around for the Pie. :thumb:

In terms of the players receiving a beneifit in game when they act in character. Did the Pendragon character trait rolls give bonuses to a characters action? A lustfull character being given a bonus on seduction rolls, while at the same time suffering a penalty to resist them.

I'm kind of envisioning this as an add on. Not too unlike the tags or traits from Spirit of the Century. Characters would have one major trait and one to two minor ones. The former would start at 25%, the former at 10%. Each time the player roleplays a situation in game, they can petition the GM to let them use the trait. It would then be added to the relevant rolls for that round. Major traits would be broad and powerfull, like "HardBoiled' or "Behold the Power of Science!".

Hardboiled could be added to the Con roll to keep a character concious. Seduce, or give a bonus to seduce a Femme Fatal. Or when the character is at half hitpoints, it gives him a bonus to his attack rolls for the remainder of the fight.

I didn't get too much of a Kill Things and Take their stuff vibe from the rules. Although they do appear strongly steeped in AD&D and Second Addition. I don't really see the book as a complete supplement, it's more of an expansion on the toolkit options from BRP.

The game could devolve into a hack slash fest, but that would be rely on the GM and the Players. With the BRP's and by extension CF's reliance on skill use and allegiance for character advancement, killing npcs for eps is much less of an issue.

I've played quite a bit of Exalted at this point, as well as it's Pulp Predecessor Adventure! I terms of adapting their cinematic rules, it's a bit problematic. At the core are the stunting rules, giving a character additional dice to roll (1-3), depending on how entertaining and descriptive their action is. Adventure! contained the rules for Dramatic Editing, which would work quite nicely in BRP. You would spend a certain number of fortune dice to alter the story, the more drastic the change, the more fortune points spent. Stunting could be represented by a reduction of difficulty to the task, but that doesn't sit well with me.

Understand that I have never played Exalted - but for a seriously cinematic / pulp action game I'd consider either extending the Fate Point mechanics or adding a "Fortune" system where by for actions strongly in character / genre the character gets a fortune award which they can spend later to alter the outcome of a die roll by one step, affect a wound etc. The key thing would be to give game mechanical benefits for acting strongly in character / in genre.

Cheers,

Nick

Two things.

1) A Class last Semester where I compared a couple of the battles in the Peloponnesian War, to the Battle at Helms Deep.

2) There isn't a spellchecker on my laptop browser, did I spell Penelopesian right? :confused:

I wonder what you were really thinking of when you wrote this ...

BRP God of War for the Win.

In all seriousness, Mythic and Classical Greece are two of my favorite historical settings to mess around in. The mythological struggles that shaped the land (war vrs the Titans, Giants and Centaurs) and the historical wars, such as the Pelopenisian War.

Does anyone else enjoy using either homebrewed or "borrowed" Cinimatic rules for Basic Roleplaying. I tend to run mostly Pulp inspired games, usualy an adaptation of the Call of Cthulhu Rules. These are the tweaks I've used in the past, and the originaly scources for them. The mechanic of "named" and "un-named" characters is a bit I swiped from Atlas Games Feng Shui. In esscence the cinimatic rules only apply to characters with names, with the idea that the un-named npcs are largly window dressing or mooks for the story.

1) Multiple Actions from Nephilim: When I first played this game, I wondered why Call of Cthulhu didn't use these rules. While CoC is a simplified version of Runquest, the Multiple Actions of Nephillium didn't seem as complicated as the RQ strike ranks. I ended up using these rules for the Player characters, and named NPCs.

2) Action Points/ Fate Points / Hero Points: I got the system for these from the Conan rpg put out by Mongoose, although I was initialy inspired by the rules found in White Wolf's Adventure! RPG. They seemed to fit nicely in a high action / adventure setting. Allowing the player characters to escape certain death, and deal a telling blow when needed.

3) Total Hit points: Prior to the release of the Zero edition BRP book I was allready using this rule. Again applying it only to important characters, I.E. named ones. Recently I've been re-reading worlds of Cthulhu, and in issue #2 they have rules for Westerns. In it there is an interesting variant on the total hitpoint rules.

Characters calculated hit points using Con+Size divided by two. However they have a three strikes and you're out sytem. When you fist hit zero hit points an injury is rolled for your character, and then the hitpoints reset to full. This happens a second time, you get another wound. A third time and there's a chance the character will die.

Not unlike the named / un-named character rules, Npcs fall under three tiers in the rules. First are the important NPCs, the primary villians and antagonists. Like a Player character they have fully fleshed out characteristics, traits and the three wound system. Underneath them are the head flunkies and mid boss types, they perish on their second wound. Finally there are the henchmen and mooks who perish on their very first wound. It's an interesting variant I intend to try out.

Anyone else care to share their own rules for making BRP a more cinimatic and pulpy game?

Technically I've only been playing Roleplaying games since the early 90's. Starting with the D&D red box and later in HS AD&D second edition. However... in the late 70's when I was still in the crib, my folks would play a recording of J.R.R. Tolkien's the Hobbit to lull me to sleep. So while I didn't play a tabletop rpg untill the 4th grade, the Tolkein inspired fantasy rpgs have been in my blood since birth.

Sounds great! I'm just starting to explore Edgar Rice Burroughs sci-fi, and would be keenly interested in a BRP supplement for interplanetary adventure / romance.