Sorloc

I'm not really sure about the SANity thing... having a timebomb on your character fits 'Call', but not much else. I've always used a Fear Resistance in addition to other Resistance attributes, that could be improved. I believe that perhaps SAN could be used in other settings, if you simply get a mental disadvantage at 0, severity based on how long you're at 0 before being able to recuperate. I had a player whose character, Juliette, almost drowned. The player elected to take a phobia of water after that. Very sensible, and great roleplaying. The GM shouldn't have to *inflict* such things upon PCs; the player should step up and treat their character like a real person and take appropriate action. But sci-fi just doesn't sell like fantasy, unfortunately.

I don't know that HERO would be in the shape it's in without Champions. Surely MERP had a little something to do with it also. I'm betting that the situation there is much like here; There are two or three well-known settings, and a handful of minor, even obscure ones.

Yes, thanks! I thought that there were a lot more... it certainly seemed that way, but still, that is rather a lot.

Will the original poster please be kind enough to go through, collect the titles (and people who made the claim) and edit the original post? This will make it easier for people who are just coming in to keep up... please?

Yeah, but how fun is that to play? Not that I haven't narrated a few rounds of firefight in the past; the PCs run down the corridor while laser blasts splatter all around them; they dive around the corner, and two of them point their guns around the corner and unleash some suppression fire. I roll a few dice, and if someone is way out in the open and I roll really high for the opposing side, then I resolve an attack, like so: "One of the bad guys takes a hit and goes down," or "As you pause in the hallway to lay down some fire, you take one in the..." (roll, roll) Running gun battles are more exciting when you don't roll every single bullet, you've got to do something to keep it moving, or the excitement goes away. So I guess the answer to my question is, plenty fun, if handled properly. Which leads into another topic - mass combat... :eek:

For my Gunslingers game, I created the following house rules dealing with rate of fire for firearms. I was not thinking about modern firearms (perhaps I should have been), so there is no ruling on semiautomatic, automatic, or burst fire capable weapons. No one has brought up 'fanning' their pistol yet, I'm sure the negative to hit mod will keep most from trying it. Looking at it, and considering semiauto and full auto, I might just adjudicate all full auto to be an area effect attack... semi auto and burst fire- obviously a semi auto pistol should tale 0 SR to ready a new shot, but if you try to use burst fire that fast... hm, but you wait your DEX SR to regain control, then fire again... 0 SR to ready will work fine, because you always have your DEX SR in between. So, Semiauto pistol: 0 SR '3-round' burst: 0 SR full auto: either area-effect for the round, or fires every SR at -20/SR cumulative.

what have you got?

I watched this once, and experienced it once. A few years ago, I was getting back from getting the mail when a woman ran up to me and forced her way into my apartment, begging me to lock the door. When I did, she started to wander around and I noticed blood dripping all over. As I was calling 911, I found she had been shot three times, apparantly with a .38, once in the wrist, once in the side of her face (cheek and tongue were damaged), and once in the chest below her left breast. She was up and active for a while, but as she calmed down, she kept starting to fall asleep. The 911 operator was encouraging me to keep her talking, so I tried. A few months later, she came by to thank me for helping. That was very nice of her, and I was glad to see that she had recovered. My personal experience was not with a bullet wound, but a fair gash on my head. A metal storage box had come loose off the top of my work van, and was hanging down over the windshield. As I was getting it down, it struck my head pretty hard. There was blood on my hand, but I knew that head wounds bleed like mad, even when they're not serious, so I wasn't too worried. I got the box down (which was full of about 350 lbs of metal pipe and stuff, which I never knew was in there), drove a few miles down the road, then drove back to wait for someone to come pick up the box, helped them load it on the flatbed, then drove to the doctor's, filled out about 20 pages of forms, took a drug test, got x-rays, got a b.p. reading of 145/126 (!), then finally saw the actual doctor and then they finally began treating the wound. This is three and a half hours after the incident, and I began to get nauseous as they were cleaning the wound. They offered me some water, and I accepted. While they were getting it, I complained of greyed vision and dizziness. The next thing I knew, they were shaking me awake. I had to rest a while, but was able to leave after about half an hour. I didn't even need stitches, only had a minor concussion, and was perfectly fine until I knew it was all over and the adrenaline rush had worn off. My b.p. had dropped to 120/80, which is where it normally is. How do you adjudicate the effects of adrenaline and shock in a game? I really don't know. It does affect different people differently...

Heh... I though I was the only one who took being banned from a forums (or a game) as a badge of honor... Got banned from one particular game 3 times... Wouldn't go back because I wouldn't promise to not make a clone of the GM's pet player's character (who got to take advantage of every nasty house rule that came along).

They've already made a RuneQuest to try to suit everybody... "I don't know the secret to success, but the secret to failure is trying to please everybody" -- Bill Cosby ==================================== Rolemaster has a neat mechanic where the fumble range is based on the weapon. Short, fixed weapons like clubs and shortswords have fumble ranges of 3%-5%, longer weapons have ranges of 3%-7%, depending on how many hands you have on it and its awkwardness, flexible weapons like flails and whips have ranges of 6%-9%. Natural weapons and really short weapons have a 2% fumble. It does make sense to me that some weapons are more susceptible to fumbling than others - even for firearms, some are less reliable than others. I would support a fumble range based on the weapon or weapon type, or a modifier due to the weapon. ============================= We use subdual damage for certain attacks - one of 2 methods - 1) as in Champions, a max result on any die is 1 point of damage, but the total counts against your total HP and CON (for stun). 2) if damage exceeds 2x location HP (1x location HP for head, 2x total HP), you're knocked out, but not dead or maimed. I never thought about the damage modifier, but I'm not much for 'monster mayhem'... I do see the point, though. Perhaps damage from the damage mod roll over weapon AP goes against the weapon as damage to the weapon, but the total damage should still be used when calculating knockback.

Yeah, my character sheet has the crit, special, and fumble % all written right next to the Attack %... So I guess if I didn't write it down the first time I calculated it, or the second, or the third, or the fourth, I would probably get tired of doing that math (or maybe I'd memorize it by then). L.W - any time you want, call me up and I'll figure it for you (OK, I'm lying - actually, I'll most likely look it up on the 'Game Aids' booklet that came with RQ3). I will do this as often as you like for a low low $10 US weekly. I take PayPal. If you prepay 22 weeks, I will give you four for free - That's six months for the price of five!

It would be Self-Discipline to continue, not CON. Some very non-physical people have survived debilitating wounds and continued to act as was needed in the circumstances, only to succumb from those wounds once the crisis was past. It's called shock, and it can take hours to set in, and it can be fatal.

Marvelous. I am happy. And I will offer my services as math tutor to all those who can't divide by ten and halve or double the result.

So much for just about any action movie ever... James Bond does 15-20 stupid things per movie - and survives Indiana Jones, The Man With No Name, even Luke Skywalker are all dead as Ceasar within the first half hour of your game... I'm not saying it always has to be cinematic, but is the story about 'YOUR GAME', or is it about the heroes in the story?

Yes, I have twice seen a 'bidding war' occur, but it rarely goes far; and never with Hero Points - they're too hard to get in my game. With Fate points, however, players tend to be willing to burn them because they're effectively free (I've got some great players, when we play). That's also the down side; my players aren't abusive, and there's no adversarial relationship between the GM and players, no matter who's GMing, so I don't really know what might happen using this method with, shall we say, 'more typical' players. And yes, I give them to the villains. Maybe the big bad villain doesn't WANT to die from your thrown rock in your first encounter just because you rolled an '01'. Maybe he wants to see you roll again with your 12% thrown rock skill and get a more realistic result. In my game, I try to make sure that the 'villain' is the hero of his story. Any decent villain should have a reason for doing what they do; and it's much better if that reason kind of makes sense - or is even a noble cause, just implemented in an 'evil' way.

Just a thought here... perhaps one should consider basing the damage on the size of the round, and the RANGE on the velocity / barrel length. really, a pistol and rifle of the same calibre do much the same amount of damage, the rifle just does that damage farther away. most pistols aren't using rifle ammo, even if the calibre is the same, I know this; it's because having a powerful round is useless if you're not sure where it's going to go - the limited range of pistols puts a cap on the useful power of the round. but, comparing apples to apples, the same round will go further fired from a rifle than from a pistol, and more accurately. the damage done by the projectile decreases with distance, and that decrease is less with a longer barrel. I don't think a 'perfect' method will ever come by - and even if it did, it would probably be unplayable - but it seems that damage would be determined by calibre and muzzle velocity, and range (and damage reduction) would be determined by muzzle velocity and barrel length (and rifling, of course) I'm not as concerned with bullets as I am with shrapnel and burst fire. Shotguns, grenades, and automatic weapons are hard for me to deal with (perhaps I need Cthulhu NOW), I just treat them as area effect attacks.

I do both. Or is it all three? I have no problem with fudging rolls as a GM. After all, I'm setting the stage, aren't I? I'm the one who decides if there are 4 muggers in the alley or only 3, right? I decide what their chance to hit is don't I? I decide if they have daggers or battleaxes, right? So what if I fudge a roll? Hell, if I want the character dead, <pouf> you're dead. No, you don't know why - you're frikkin dead, and no longer care about the realm of mortals. NEXT! OK, you choked on your tongue. You got hit by a meteorite. You contracted a fatal disease a week ago, and it has just now taken effect. I have this power, but I can't use it on a die roll? Shit, OK, I'll just assign a special GM modifier of, oh, hm, whateverthehellifeellike to the roll... The only reason someone would fudge a roll is becuase they want the story to go a certain way; so you have to have faith in your GM that they are telling a story that will ultimately be satisfying to you. We use Fate Points and Hero Points in our games (although we usually don't in RQ, we developed the system for RoleMaster, which gives more power to the dice than RQ does). Fate Points are awarded for roleplaying, for showing up, for helping advance the plot, for other out-of-game or metagame activities. A player will receive 0-3 Fate points per session, and they can only hold a maximum of 3. A Fate Point forces a re-roll of the last roll. A Fate point may be spent to block a Fate Point; and important NPCs may possess Fate Points. Hero Points are awarded for truly heroic in-game actions - that is, selfless, 'heroic' acts. It has to be something the character either would not normally do, or would be detrimental to the character, or contrary to the character's best interests, yet is still the 'right thing to do'. They are extremely hard to earn, and must be. PCs will start the game with 1, there is no limit to how many they may bank. A Hero Point may be spent to change the last roll made to either an '01' or '00'. example: Juliette's player learns that one of her students has contracted the plague and has failed their RR, and will die from the plague. Juliette spens a Hero Point, and the student recovers after a lengthy illness. A Hero Point may be spent to block a Hero Point spent by someone else; and Villains possess 'Villain Points' for this purpose, and to use as Hero Points themselves. Hero Points may also be spent to affect non-rolled events. example: Juliette needs to find a certain herb, she checks all the stores, but no one seems to have any. Her player spends a Hero Point, and someone remembers that a local wizard bought a bunch of it recently, and here's his address. Obviously, it is crucial that these points are handed out sparingly, but having NPCs possess them levels the field, should I wish to exert that effort.

Well, they DID say, "the Orcs have a charismatic new leader"... :D In my world, paladins are not Arthurian chevaliers, they are the fighting force of a religion. Hence, they for the most part mirror the attributes of the deity and the deity's moral codes of cunduct. The paladins of the Night / Moon / Dreams deity go out primarily at night. They have an elitist attitude, for they feel that they alone have the fortitude to go forth and hunt evil in its own element - the night. They are primarity stealthy; they are the ones responsible when you hear a noise at night, but by the time you get a light and go check, there's nothing there... they have already done their work. Other paladins have other descriptions, other methods, but all are a martial aspect of their deity made manifest on earth.

Thanks! My players sure seem to like it; probably because I add all their ideas in there somewhere - ok, not ALL, but it's been built upon bit by bit... Truthfully, I didn't give Orcs a lot of thought in the first continent - they weren't encountered, ever. On the next continent, where the story moved to... (backstory: in another game (dnd ), the GM was trying to get us out of the city and back into the hole in the ground. We didn't want to go, but the NPCs were telling us rumors that the Orcs had gotten a charismatic new leader... We left the game soon after (or I got kicked out, I forget), but I always wanted to use that hook...) ...I actually had a PC paladin (read: holy warrior) of the night / moon / dreams deity who stumbled upon an Orc tribe who reacted with some hostility. She and the other PC (a mentalist) found that the Orcs were suffering repeated attacks by adventuring parties. The paladin managed to defeat the Orc Chieftain in single combat, and thereby became Chief, getting all his stuff, leadership of the tribe, and rights to his three wives. When the adventuring party returned, the Orcs were ready. The surviving members of the adventuring party said that they were told about the Orcs having a charismatic new leader... also they were led to believe the Orcs had seized this location with a holy temple and untold riches, both stories completely untrue. The truth was, as the PCs learned after sallying forth, that the Elves had been using adventuring parties in an attempt to stamp out their nearby enemies. The paladin PC was trying to figure a way to extricate herself from leadership of an Orc tribe, a situation I chose to complicate by having several Orcs express a desire to convert. :eek: Sub-species was something I touched on a bit, but not much. Elves I have divided up into Fair, Gray, Dark, Aquatic, and Rustic. One important thing in my world is interbreeding; half-elves cannot produce children between themselves. if they mate with either an elf or a human, the children will be of the race of the pruebred parent. I created this rule after realizing that after a few millenia, there would be more half-elves than pure elves. This ruling made half-elves self-terminating.

I've done a bit of thinking on Dwarves and Dwarven culture... and Elves too. And the thing is, that I can't think of any good reason why all members of a given species would all have the same culture everywhere in the world. In my game, I have a particular continent with 3 different Dwarven societies, 5 different elven societies, 8 different human societies, 1 halfling, 1 centaur, and 1 idiyva (feline) society. The Dwarven societies are totally hostile to each other due to religious differences. They are separated by human lands, and occasionally clash with them as they travel to annihilate each other. To outward appearance, the cultures are the same, the languages are slightly different, and the religion seems the same. They differ on particular points of dogma, much like Catholics and Protestants, which is nearly incomprehensible to those not well-versed in the culture. They are not based upon Viking culture; they do live underground, so do not use axes (what do you chop underground, anyway?), they use hammers and picks. Farmers are the most respected members of their community, for they would quickly die out if the farmers of the high surface did not supply them with needed food. Clothing is difficult to manufacture using underground resources, so one of the cultures eschews it completely. One of the other cultures believes clothing is required by holy writ, and the third uses it on occasion. The elves are separated into four nations. One, extremely hostile to humans due to the human tendency to rape the land for resources, builds stone cities in their forest, 'stealing' that forest from the more primitive elves living there. They herd these elves into controlled areas that are safe for them, so they can retain their culture and lifestyle while allowing this elven nation access to all the resources of the forest. (somewhat like 19th century USA) Another, of lordly appearance, build the classic natural cities in the heights of the trees. More accurately, they force their slaves to construct them. The more primitive elven race here is used as a labor force to allow the elven nation to focus on arts and trade and magical pursuits, but the society has instead sunk into decadence, and is on the decline. (like the late Roman Empire) A third is comprised of dark-skinned elves in and under a huge mountain range. Their god is money and power, and they are extremely industrious. They trade with the dwarves in their mountains, and are allied with them against invasion, but do not support their assaults. They have enslaved orcs and humans and some other races in the area, using them as miners and serf farmers in the high reaches. They pursue magical and scientific study, they have bred a new race ideally suited for mining operations, they are consummate merchants - everything is for sale in their society, for the right price, everything is legal, if you have the right permits and licenses. There is a nation of centaurs and halflings who coexist in a hilly region, defending their territory competently using halfling missile troops mounted on centaur cavalry. I always felt that it was important that nonhumans were treated with the same amount of thought as humans; their societies should not be simplistic, cookie-cutter things, copied from Tolkien or not. Our historical cultures always followed linguistic and religious lines before racial ones (sometimes 'race' is determined by language rather than ancestry - see Europe for examples of this).

Except this one, because it's about pie.

Nor are Aldryami or Mostali anything like Tolkien elves and dwarfs... At least RoleMaster had over a dozen Fey races, but only one was playable... the standard Tolkien elves with loads of special abilities, far superior to any human and especially dwarf.

How pathetic is Gimli? I actually started to feel sorry for him. He got upstaged by Legolas at every turn...

Resource Masters - a play by post forum friendly to all non-dnd, non-d20 games. There is a section specifically for RuneQuest and another for Call of Cthulhu (these are discussion forums, running games are all together in the Games section)

For 10%, you simply move the decimal point one place to the left, correct? Easy enough for everyone? For 5%, you halve the 10% result, for 20%, you double it. Is everyone capable of multiplying and dividing by 2? My 7-year old is... guess RQ math isn't beyond him yet; he will have to play dnd for a few years to get that bad at math. 62 - 10% = 6.2 5% = 3.1 20% = 12.4 33 - 10% = 3.3 5% = 1.65 20% = 6.6 89 - 10% = 8.9 5% = 4.45 20% = 17.8 It's not rocket science; even Americans should be able to do that much math.