Nick J.

Giving a quick reading of the kinds of spells Undo Sorcery is meant to affect (Mind-affecting, elemental spells, and illusions) then I'd say it's perfectly reasonable to let it have an effect on similar sorts of spells in Advanced Sorcery (and I do). Undo Sorcery is specially called out as countering several Fey Magic spells, so maybe it was an oversight bey Ben Monroe when he compiled the "Advanced Sorcery" spells at the front of the book or it was deliberate, but who knows?

Off-hand I'd include: Break the Will, Close the Gate, Compulsion, Domination, Enthrall, some of the Rune Magic spells that emulate similar effects, and the Fey Magic spells specifically called out.

Magic has without a doubt been the most difficult thing to get right, but after hacking away at things I think I settled on a few beats that should (hopefully) work well. In short this is what I have in mind:

• Fey, and demi-fey will have exclusive access to Fey Magic from Advanced Sorcery
• A modified and somewhat codified version of Deep Magic is the province of the Drune
• Dwarfs don't feature prominently in the zines, but I decided to put in my own version who are more in the vein of Rumpelstiltskin, or dwarfs from Grimm's fairy-tales (7 dwarves, et al.) They are the exclusive users of Rune Magic.
• The Church of the One True God don't have magic, but they can call on divine intervention. I stole the mechanics from Stormbringer 4th edition; the character can call upon their patron saint and they make an Allegiance check, if it fails they lose half of their Light points, otherwise if the roll succeeds, they lose Light Points equal to the die roll. The divine intervention is not limitless, but should be fairly spectacular ("sinful" invocations fail automatically).
• True Deep Mages are wild talents, and are viewed with a lot of suspicion and are frequently the target of Drune kidnapping raids
• Witchcraft uses the BRP Witchcraft supplement.
• Good ol' tried and true sorcery works just like it says on the tin, but is strictly the province of a master-apprentice relationship (so you need the sorcerer or sorcerer's apprentice occupation to use such magic). 

The real fun I had was making up my own versions of Elves (which are basically changelings), grimalkin, and some of the other Dolmenwood denizens like goatmen and I even pulled in firearms from Renaissance and modified them to fit with Magic World a little better.

Anyway, I'm not really sure this is ready for primetime, but if anybody wants to take a look, it might be marginally interesting? It still needs a Magic World version of Woodgrues, and Moss Dwarfs.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hersmtj6dbvt91g/Player Rules %26 Gazetteer(final).pdf?dl=0

P.s. I'm really glad to see you found my character sheet useful. Sláinte.

Very interesting. I'm doing a similar thing, adapting Dolmenwood for Magic World.

I did have one question about your conversion doc: You mention classes like Barbarian, Assassin, etc. How does that work?

12 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Okay, I got a bit of a problem and would love to hear of some possible solutions. My problem is that, since Amberites have high STR scores (Amber level STR is about STR 30 AFAIK) they will also have corresponding high damage bonuses (+2D6 for a STR 30, SIZ 13 PC), which is going to take most of the tension and drama out of swordfights. Instead of an attack nicking an opponent, it will probably end up lopping off a body part. Yes, Amberites have a high CON, but the extra Hit points aren't enough to offset the extra damage. And it gets worse with Elder Amberites.

What I think I need to do is scale back the damage bonus a bit, and possibly limit by the success level somehow, so that someone doesn't get decapitated by a 1 point hit that gets backed up by a high db.

 

Currently, I'm thinking of adding in a marginal success level (over 1/2 success chance, i.e. if someone has Sword 80%, then Crit 0-4, Special 5-16, Sucess 17-40, Marginal Success 41-80) and  not allowing db on marginal hits.

 I couldalso  reduce the damage die for a weapon and combine the db in the weapon damage. Something along the lines of a Sword doing 1D4  on a marginal success, 2D4 on a success, 4D4 on an impale, and 8D4 (or 4D4 maxed or some such)  for a critical. A high damage bonus could shift the damage die from a d4 to a d6 or a d8 and so on. This way, even someone like Corwin (probably around +3d6 db) might have a d12 (2d6) damage die, and on a  bad roll and only do a point or two of damage, instead of virtually automatically taking out a hit location or causing a major wound (1D8+1+3D6 is a minimum of 5 points, and an average of 16) .

 

Anybody got any other ideas of how to handle this in a D100 based game?

 

 

CON+SIZ Hit Points is the easiest remedy I can think of without trying to reinvent the wheel, so to speak.

The Magic World main rule book is much more clearly worded than the Quickstart. I get what it's saying because I grok Magic World (and just about all other BRP games) but I can see why you'd think it was a little too thin. Really about the only noteworthy thing in the Quickstart is the little introductory adventure at the back (which I think is actually pretty good).

Well, I loved the Amber novels (well almost all of them) so I'm curious to see how people adapt some of my favorite fiction to make it game-able. I suppose a lot of the success or failure comes down to what kind of game your player's like to be involved in; but it sounds like they lean towards characters that are more on the heroic side of the scale, so they should hopefully enjoy that aspect of it, even if they don't grok that you're running them through an Amber game. In some ways it's probably better, because they won't have any preconceived notions or meta-knowledge and will just have to figure it out for themselves.

Good luck!

8 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Oh, and if anybody in still interested in how this is coming along:

The PCs will be wards at Abalus Manor, and Elizabethan style manor house that overlooks a port city on the sea. The PC will have been raised here since they survived a shipwreck that occurred when they were children (or infants), when their parents went off to fight in some great war. The PCs were raised by some family retainers, and taught the things that young gentlemen and/or ladies would be expected to know. Horsemanship, Fencing, Courtesy, Sailing, etc. 

I plan to flesh out some of the retainers, who know a bit more than they have revealed to the PCs, as they have been instructed to conceal the PCs Amberite heritage in or to protect them from enemies and relatives.

I am seriously considering using Ganelon as one of the PCs Guardians. I was thinking that Oberlon is the one who spirited the children away, and lied to Corwin about Ganelon death in order to discourage Crowin from ever seeking him out and possibly stumbling upon Abalus. This also gives me the option of "pulling a Roger" and have Ganelon be Oberon in disguise. 

Abalus (google it) is an island and a shadow of Amber, so it will mirror several aspect of Amber. The idea will be that wen the PCs finally get to Amber, it will all seem eerily familiar-even their rooms in the castle will be in the same place as at Abalus Manor. There will even be a copy (or two) of the Pattern at Abalus.

Ablasus is a prosperous trading port, and the PCs will have a small ship of their own, the Pathfinder (sorry, too good a pun), which was one of the ships that they supposedly arrived her on. The ship can travel though shadow (a double pun) and can even fly, although the PCs are unaware of either of those powers.

I'm thinking that the PCs were brought here by Oberon, along with a powerful item that Oberon used to try and repair the Pattern. The item was brought back to this shadow after Oberon's "death" in a manner similar to how the Jewel of Judgment was brought to Corwin. The item has a strong stabilizing effect on shadow and helps to make the area around it more "real" in an Amber sense. It's also blocks most of the "powers" , much like how the Pattern does near Amber, and what is strengthening the barrier that is keeping others from getting into the shadow.

The item is powerful, dangerous, and wanted quite badly by some people from the Courts of Chaos, who sent their minions off to find it during the Patternfall War. When some of these minions finally get to Abalus that will be the catalyst that starts the PCs towards a larger Universe (Amberverse?). Oh, and since I don't want the PCs to find out everything all at once, and to keep the elder Amberites from spilling the beans, the item is going to be (or wind up) on the Pathfinder, so that when the PCs finally set off on the Pathfinder, pursued by Chaos creatures, it will keep them isolated.

 

The item will have been brought here by Oberon's bloodbird after he attempted (successfully) to repair the Pattern. The bird willhang around the manor house (and the PCs) and will be called Greyhawk. 

 

Any thoughts?

 

 

 

My thoughts? Sounds like a fun premise for the start of a game. I'll watch this thread with interest to see how it progresses.

19 hours ago, Jakob said:

Thanks! I'll guess I'll go with the pdf than and print it out ... it doesn't have to be perfect, I just want the version that has the least mistakes!

16 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Another alternative would be to hunt down a new print copy. Amazon and a few other sites still have some hardcopies of Magic World, available. You'd still have to deal with some corrections, but it's a possibility. 

Yeah I didn't mean to imply you shouldn't buy the print copy. Definitely buy it! But if you wanted a definitive version without referring to a separate sheet or file, there's a couple of ways around that.

There was only one revision that cleaned up quite a bit of errata, but there are still some mistakes scattered throughout. The bestiary and the weapons table/class list still have some errors. 

On the other hand, the PDF from Chaosium is unencrypted, so if you wanted to write up your own corrections and append it, or directly edit the document, then use a POD service, it'd be a way to get a clean copy customized to your tastes. I can't advise you as to the legality of that, but I would say it'd be bad form to try and distribute or sell such a thing.

H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith would like a word . . .

Interesting. Do you envision making this a publicly available, web-based front end, or will this be some sort of stand-alone application (or is this just for your own personal use)?

Small bug-fix release: The Evaluate and Nature skill-total boxes were bugged (probably from copy-pasting a script and forgetting to change one digit). If you have Foxit reader, you can export all of the data from one sheet and import it into a clean sheet if necessary. Sorry for any inconvenience.

3 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

You might just want to swipe the weapons table from SB5. It has the right weapon classes and the prices seem better (Quarterstaff 50bz, Falchion 230bz, Greatsword 750bz, Cestus 200bz, Trident 100bz, Lance 175bz).

That's almost exactly what I did.

On 7/1/2018 at 7:01 AM, jagerfury said:

Is there any error in the listing of weapon class numbers in the Magic World rulebook. The reason I ask specifically is I see the Dagger/Dirk lumped in with mace and warhammer, WC 5 I believe?

Since you asked (and I'm on vacation this week):

• On the weapons table on page 72, the Cavalry Lance is listed as weapon class 11 (spear), when it should be 12 (lance).
• On page 74, the harpoon is listed as weapon class 12 (lance), when it should be 13 (harpoon). Net should also be 14, instead of 13.
• On page 79, there's a formatting error for javelins, and spears; they should have a carriage return and be weapon class 23, which bumps every weapon class after that up by one number.

There's also some really wacky prices in the list that don't match up with Elric!/Stormbringer or even make sense: The metal-shod quarterstaff costing 400 bronzes is nuts. A falchion being 750 bp, while the greatsword is 400 bp is also clearly broken. Likewise, a longbow costing 750 bronzes is bananas, a cestus 400 bp, trident has no cost, lance is "earned," etc.

2 hours ago, jagerfury said:

Is there any error in the listing of weapon class numbers in the Magic World rulebook. The reason I ask specifically is I see the Dagger/Dirk lumped in with mace and warhammer, WC 5 I believe?

There are definitely a couple of errors. I'll have to go through my copy later when I can and compare it to the PDF that edited on my own to clean it up.

Big update:

Every creature in the bestiary (plus the abomination and Jack-in-the-green from Advanced Sorcery) are coded into the characteristic roller. Just select the creature from the drop-down menu and hit the button. Also included is a virtual 1d100, and a Chaotic Features button (all buttons are invisible during printing).

Next up: Some kind of wealth/equipment generator. I'm still debating how to implement it, so if anybody has any suggestions let me know. My first thought is to allow somebody to select a relative wealth-level then click a button that randomly generates some money and some appropriate equipment/hoard for the creature.

I think it's incredibly helpful to have a couple of excellent adventures that show-off a game's strengths, or that do a good job of capturing the tone or quintessence of a setting, but I'm not sure if that means it's "iconic."

Off-hand, I'm thinking of the Book of Quests or Monster Island for Mythras as exemplars of good design that are useful for more than just playing in a given setting (or even with Mythras for that matter).

But yes, having some good adventures or an interesting setting to go along with a set of rules is helpful for selling a game and getting buy-in.

If it exists, I've never seen it. Sounds like a Herculean transcription effort, unless you could somehow build some kind of program to use OCR and strip out the data in some kind of systematic way. I'll watch this thread with keen interest.

The best I've managed is about half of the Magic World bestiary stats (which will be complete in another week or two) in javascript format for my NPC-builder, PDF-thingie. 

Maybe bump them from "total hit pionts" to "heroic hit points" once they reach some threshold of skills, like 2 @ 101+; you can hand-wave it away as though they are waking up latent power or something?

I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't work. If your players haven't read the books that might actually better, because then they won't have any preconceived notions. 

Work proceeds.

Progress Report: Half of the critters in the bestiary are now coded into the dice roller/characteristic generator, plus I added a chaotic features button that you can play around with.

If you want access to the work-in progress version you can download it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rk1nubjjr7fmrf3/MagicWorld_CS_NPC.pdf?dl=0

At the current pace, I should hopefully have this done in a week or so. Post any bugs here if you find them and if you think of a feature, that would be helpful or useful, post it below as a comment and I'll see if I can embed it somehow.

(if you have a pdf editor like Adobe or Foxit Phantom that supports Adobe's Javascript implementation, the sheet is unlocked, so you can edit the scripts that control everything if you are so inclined).

Sheet is really and truly final (unless somebody reports a show-stopping bug).

See update notes attached to the file(s). There's a no-frills version, and a fancy-border version (identical, except for file-size).

Sláinte.

P.s. FYI, if you like this sheet, I'm still hacking away at my form-fillable NPC sheet, which is really turning into more of a monster-generator at this point: Pick a species, click the dice button, and it automagically fills out attacks, lays out some notes, and will even have a chaotic features button you can use to generate features, and a virtual d100 you can click on in a pinch (buttons don't print). I've got 25 out of the 80 or so species done. I'll upload it in a few days once I'm done coding it.

On 6/19/2018 at 5:30 AM, Archivist said:

I bought magic world + advanced sorcerer/

I think you'll really like them both. Advanced Sorcery in particular can really open up some opportunities to expand and mold the game to your tastes.

Coming from the Shameless Plugs Division (TM), you might find the following helpful for character creation. (Latest beta version is available in the last post) Final version available now.

1 minute ago, Thot said:

Surprisingly many are not, or so it seems.

Point taken.