p_clapham

Myself as well. I've been fiddling around with some BRP ritual magic rules. It will be interesting to see what you come up with.

Well I've been wanting to run a Mib / majestic game for a while now. However I also want to do do some sort of spaghetti western...

How on earth will I include Vampires, zombies, hideous mutants and psi powers into the setting.....

So what I'm looking at is a weird historical horror game. In 1898 invaders from the planet mars attacked not only England and Europe but the Americas as well. The most intense battle of the US/Martian war occured in the New Mexico territory of Roswell. A small elite group of Texas Rangers and Civil War Veterans were able to infiltrate a factory stronghold and cripple it with explosives. Shortly afterward the invaders succumbed to earth based bacteria and pathogens.

In the wake of the destruction a strange red weed was found growing near several of the martian factories. In the American west it has proven very hardy and invasive. Efforts have been made to control the weed through chemicals and even burning the very land. It has re-emerged after each such attempt.

The Red Weed has been found to have several strange properties. The first to be discovered was it's teperature. Even on a cold night in the plains the weed remains warm. In fact the "Red Invader" has been found in snowy climates as well. Folks living near large concentrations of the weed come down ill, animals born in effected areas are either changed or stillborn. There are even rumors of folks going loco after trying to eat the weed.

As for the remaining Martians.... they are still there. Hiding, waiting and plotting. Soon the seeds they planted on the earth shall bear twisted and bloody fruit......

Speaking of mulptiple attacks I'm still a little sad the Action rules from Nephilium were not used. :ohwell:

Do the parasites only cause hemorrhaging? I thought their bite injected an egg of sorts that hatches from the victim.

At the moment, I'm running a Chaos themed dark ages game. The players are members of barbarian tribes, trying to topple a Rome-like Empire by making shady deals with the Chaos gods.

Its nice and gritty.

That sounds neat! :happy:

First on my plate is some 1930's Egyptian Adventure gaming. My plan is to use Hollow Earth Expedition, although I'm tempted to fall back on BRP.

The second game of the Semester is going to be a Dark Fantasy game taking place during the Ice age.

The MRQ Lankhmar has black magic rules that work nicely for ritual magic. The ruleset includes how well you know the victim or if you a have a personal effect / body part. How much you hate the person. Finaly how much pain you are willing to undergo to hurt them.

The Thing showed up in that big book of monsters for CoC did it not?

As luck would have it I'm a university student. Also several members of our gaming club work in the Library.

I liked BRP so much, I took my softcover to my local bindery and had it rebound as a (plain black) hardback. Now it lays flat nicely, and it's a lot more durable. Plus, it just looks sweet!

KoOS

I'll have to see if I've got one of those near me. My plan so far was to rebind it myself, something I've not done before.

Is this a fantasy or an extinct earth creature?

SGL.

Both I think.

Another neat Magic Rules set is the Black Magic in Lankhmar. It has variables like How much you hate the target. How well you know them / what kind of link do you have to them. As well as using your own pain to fuel the spell. There's also a corruption chart, a little more limited than the WFB one that charts your physical and spiritual descent.

The Pact System in Elric is quite neat. Flavor wise I don't think it's too far from Sacking Pow for Divine magic. You sacrifice a variable amount of Pow to your otherworldly patron. That portion of your soul is now theirs, you retain it for the purposes of attribute tests or skills. However it now longer generates you MP. In exchange for a bit of your soul you get the following....

A Pact Skill starting at your Pow+Cha, a Number of Gifts and Hindrances depending on your pact score. Gifts could be increased Attributes, Spells and special abilities. Hindrances could be like Geases or detrimental physical changes. For instance the Kraken would give Water Breathing and spells that are water or fear based. While requiring his initiate to drown a sacrifice to him weekly.

Your Pact skill is used for spellcasting gifted to you via your patron. Some Abilities may also use the skill. If Magmo grants you the ability to breath fire in his name, you may likely be using the pact skill.

As it gets higher you get more gifts and hindrances. When the Pact skill reaches 100% your GM will have a decision to make. A Demon Lord will likely either have you dragged screaming to Hell. Or possibly put at the head of some army of the damned. Less questionable Patrons may let the character be for the most part, although they are quite likely to be sent quests for the good more often than not. If you like the characters can just simply disappear, called to fulfill their debts.

As you might tell, I'm somewhat biased towards this Ruleset.

Sorry, I didn't have enough time to translate all I've written (and I'm working on my BRP adaptation of Star Wars). I will try this week..

Nice, I ran a Star Wars game last semester using the BRP Zero edition.

Agreed, one of the more enjoyable supplements / settings I've read. The random Demon Description table still makes me chuckle.

While I was at my old FLGS the other week I noticed some of the new MRQ books. To my surprise and delight it appears they are going the softcover route now. While I do prefer hardbacks, the issues with the Mongoose books pushed me from buying further books.

I still have the RPG kicking around somewhere....

How about just going for Super Speed and an Extra Actions power then?

Looks like this has already been suggested. I'll just be one more fella supporting the use of Superspeed to mimic Time control.

Well this was a good excuse to buy the updated BRP book, as well as some pulpy CoC adventures.

I've been tossing an idea for a wuxia inspired BRP game for a while. I know it's something I'll de eventually, but it's not beyond the research phase at the moment.

The Ki powers from Runequest: Japan could work quite nicely.

"Is this A Dagger I see before me on the weapons table? Or is it a dirk? Wherefore are thou a Dagger? Does it hath a lower STR min? Is it nobler in the mind of the GM for PCs to sufferer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or spent POW points..."

:thumb:

Great Young One just doesn't have the same ring to it.

I end to prefer characters that are less random. It always frustrated me in Call of Cthulhu when I came up with a character concept.... like say a professor. Then end up with an Int of 9 and a Edu of 11. I prefer the point buy system for putting all the players on an even playing field as well giving them more flexibility in characters.

I'd keep that little Grimoire out of the players hands. There's a few very unbalencing spells in that book. There are some prett neat ones too. The Rune section (inscribed spells that go off when read or triggered) is particularly neat and the Necromancy Fumble table particularly amusing.

Thanks everyone for the really helpful comments. I'd love to get hold of a copy of the Bronze Grimoire - I may need to lurk around Ebay a bit and see what I can find.

So I've been making a few sample Characters and noticed some bits about the attribute point buy system.

To illistrate I've made two sets of Characters, with no EDU stat and a Size of 10. All four characters have their attributes evenly spread among Str, Con, Cha, Int, Pow and Dex.

Here's the two Heroic characters. The first one uses the 3 to 1 ratio for Dex, Int and Pow. The second uses a 2 to 1 ratio.

Character 1

ST 13 Con 13 App 13 Int 13 Pow 13 Dex 13

Character 2

ST 14 Con 14 App 14 Int 14 Pow 14 Dex 14

Here's the other two built using Epic levels of attributes. Once again the first one is built with the 3 to 1 ration and the second 2 to 1.

Character 1

Str 14 Con 14 App 14 Int 14 Pow 14 Dex 14

Character 2

Str 16 Con 15 App 15 Int 16 Pow 15 Dex 15

My point in all of this? The 2 to 1 ratio seems a better fit to me. The example 1st Heroic and Epic characters didn't strike me as particularly Heroic or Epic. Of course my games tend to be more action oriented and player driven. It's an otherwise minor tweak, but I like it.

**Idea deleted for insolence**

As far as characteristics and mechanics... I'm of the less is more school of thought. Despite being an old hand at CoC I'm glad to see Edu become optional. It wasn't even considered in the pulp version of the rules I wrote up years ago. Heck sometimes I even wonder about the usefulness of the Size attribute.

Some of your attributes could be represented by skills instead. Despite some of issues I have with MRQ... I like the skills Resilience and Persistence. A person who doesn't get sick much but can't take a punch? Low Con coupled with a high Persistence score. Sure it's not too cost effective but it is do-able.