rust

Meanwhile I have used Mythras Imperative to move my Meridiana campaign to the Mythras system, which turned out to be surprisingly easy, I only had to tinker somewhat with the cultural skills and the skills assigned to my campaign's careers. All I have left to do now is to wait for the full Mythras rules and their "modern" supplements for some more hopefully minor changes. 

4 minutes ago, clarence said:

With BRP Space getting closer to publication ...

Now this is excellent news !    

As for your question, I am one of those people who prefer PDFs (a matter of storage space in a small apartment ...), so I leave the answer to the potential customers of the printed version.

Very well done, I think I have found the right system for my Meridiana campaign now. 

By the way, there are two minor layout problems on page 13, one with the first line of the Merchant career in the left column and another one with the first line of the Sailor career in the middle column.

Really a great idea. 

10 hours ago, Archivist said:

I can believe declaration style mechanics work for some people, just not me or anyone I play with. it's not that we don't get it, it's that it doesn't work for us, which is why we like stuff like BRP, savage worlds, etc.

The only time I like it is when we play what we call a Monty Python game, where the most outrageous declarations are welcome. I fondly remember one where the villain got killed by a racehorse falling onto him from a cargo airliner with a damaged cargo door, just after he had defeated a herd of trained combat crocodiles in unarmed combat. But in our real campaigns - never, thank you. 

26 minutes ago, g33k said:

1. "But in reality, the Prince is actually -- ta-da!!! -- my BROTHER!"

GM. "Oh ... of course he is. And he is afraid that you want to 'neutralize' him in order to become the heir to the throne. Therefore he has secretly hired the Grimdeath Clan of assassins to 'neutralize' you first." 

8 minutes ago, Archivist said:

What is the "Expendables RPG"?

Here is a review of it:

https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13117.phtml

5 hours ago, K Peterson said:

In this case, the player agency results from what has been defined, not by something that is pulled out of thin air, IMO. The player has invested their skill points (or pursued training) in a Blacksmith skill to give them an advantage in play. They could have spent those skill points elsewhere to reinforce another aspect of the character's culture or his general capabilities. But, he or she made a conscious decision to emphasize this capability and can reap the rewards by leveraging it in play, creatively.

This is why I adopted the modified Competence rule from the Expendables RPG. When in my Thalassa science fiction campaign a player gives his character a Profession skill which has no general use in the campaign (e.g. "Profession: Aquafarmer" or "Profession: Dolphineer") with a skill value of 50+ %, this character is Competent in the field covered by this skill and in normal situations will always succeed in its use. And the player can also use this Competence to define the character's profession and professional knowledge within the framework of the setting. My intention with this rule was to give the players one more reason to think about the background of their characters and how their occupations could influence their lives and their approach to problem solving ("Your character is an aquafarmer, so he will think like one and try to use his professional knowledge to deal with a problem ..."), but it has also become a tool of "player empowerment", for example when the player of  a "Profession: Engineer / Aquatic Vehicles" character uses his character's Competence to decide what the campaign's next generation of watercraft will look like.

1 hour ago, RosenMcStern said:

However, giving the players some agency at lower levels of narrative authority ... 

Yes, I have no problem with this, in fact I am quite happy whenever players contribute to the campaign and enrich the campaign with their own ideas in this way. 

For my purposes a campaign needs three main elements, the setting,the rules and the tools. The setting describes the physical and social background of the campaign, things like geography, history or culture. The rules define and limit both what kind of events can happen against this background, and how they can happen. The tools, like the characters' skills or equipment, define and limit how the activities of the characters can influence these events and how this develops the characters' stories. These three elements have to fit together rather well in order to create and sustain the plausibility and verisimilitude of the campaign.

With this in mind I am deeply sceptical of tools which could enable the characters to unbalance the campaign by going beyond the limits I carefully designed into my campaign's rules and character tools. I am quite willing to give to the players any and all "narrative" tools that remain within the framework I designed, but I would not agree to introduce the freedom to shape the campaign's story in a way which could endanger its plausibility and verisimilitude.

In my view BRP as it is provides a good balance between the ability to define a campaign and is still open enough to add the specific degree of "narrative player empowerment" required by different types of campaigns, up to and including purely cinematic and Pulp campaigns. I would certainly not welcome any changes which would move BRP towards a more "narrative" system.

1 hour ago, mvincent said:

BtMoM has been hands down the most challenging campaign for me to run (and least enjoyed by my players, despite a lot of work on my part). I cannot recommend it as is. 

The same here. The campaign suffered from a badly structured information overload, the players either became confused and bored or decided to ignore most of the information completely, concentrating on the action at hand (the little action there actually was). In my opinion half the background material density of the original campaign together with more focus on opportunities for character activities would be better.

10 hours ago, Joerg said:

What I expect is a good set of rules and other handles for a simulation of the background of a character and their environment, in the good tradition e.g. of RQ3 Gamemasters Book(let). Rules for off-screen activities, like pursuing a craft, trade, or managing a farm, for maintaining a social position in mundane and cultic hierarchy, etc. Defining and managing dependents, patrons, ... - in the simulationist approach typical for RuneQuest, with a dose of Pendragon (Pass) mechanisms for "the rest of the year/season".

Yes, this is what I would like to see, too. 

5 hours ago, davecake said:

I think of 13th Age as almost two games in one. A loose, improvisational, simple and very collaborative narrativist game for everything but combat. And an almost pure gamist (shorn of any irritating pretence at simulationism) complicated and GM driven combat system that is the core of the game. Essentially, you could run a very narrativist game in it, but its the core of the game is about having big fights with a lot of detailed tactical choices. 

And this is almost exactly the opposite of what I would like to have for my settings, where combat is extremely rare and could well be handled in a narrative way, while - see above - a good set of rules for handling everything else would be most welcome.

11 minutes ago, aknaton said:

I'm curious to know if people in this forum consider 13th Age too narrative (and lacking in mechanics)? 

Well, you know, it is certainly a matter of taste, and all that, but in my case ... sorry, yes, very much so. 

1 hour ago, dce said:

He is one of a handful of famous Aussie disappearances so it would be a shame not to weave him into the Mythos backdrop somehow.

Sorry for nitpicking, but he was actually a famous Prussian disappearance (too) ...  

3 hours ago, Sid Vicarious said:

The first CoC book l ever bought was Cthulhu Now, almost 30 years ago.THAT definitely could use an update. 

The German publisher of Call of Cthulhu published an updated Cthulhu Now in 2006. There are a couple of nice articles and descriptions of modern occupations and skills, but overall there is little one could not design in a short time without this or a similar book. Therefore I doubt that an updated Cthulhu Now would really be worth the designers' effort or that it would sell well enough to justify that effort.

13 hours ago, lawrence.whitaker said:

We’ve made Mythras Imperative generic. Skills cover the ancient, modern and futuristic worlds, and the weapons include firearms. So Mythras Imperative gives you the starting point for adventuring in any time period you want. Other supplements, and the core Mythras rules themselves, expand on things like magic, vehicles, psionic powers and so on.

Well, I certainly have to get Mythras Imperative. 

Any ideas when the Mythras core rules and the supplements might become available (yesterday would be fine ...) ?

Yep, Congratulations !   

3 hours ago, lawrence.whitaker said:

It's actually generic, and has modern/SF elements already built into it.

Now I am very interested in it. 

I think the community has to thank you for your rescue of the source of our favourite games.

Well, at least the Pulp Cthulhu character sheet is already up at Chaosium's website ... 

1 hour ago, styopa said:

You probably meant to reverse those comparisons, respectively?  

This must have been some kind of "Freudian Slip", with my subconscious self elevating RQ to the relative dimension of China ...

Comparing D&D and RQ is a bit like comparing the Princedom of Liechtenstein and the People's Republic of China. Instead of looking at D&D and for ways to bring RQ to a similar status by winning over players of other games to RQ we should probably concentrate on the expectations and wishes of the current RQ community.In the end we are the ones who have to like the game enough to support it, and if we are very lucky our enthusiasm will lure some other players into our community.

21 minutes ago, Etepete said:

To me, the point of the Clan is to establish NPCs and to create plot points and motivation for the PCs. You could quite easily run a campaign just on the dynamics and challenges facing your Clan - and this is indeed how the game is set up. In this way it's rather different from f.ex. Cults and Brotherhoods etc from other BRP iterations.

I see - and I have to admit that the only use I ever made of meta-character organizations with attributes and skills, etc., was in solo play.

46 minutes ago, Krister Sundelin said:

There are two hit point pools, Guard and Health. Guard measures energy, momentum, defensive posture, balance, breath etc, and Health is, well, your health.

First of all, welcome to the forum.

This seems somewhat similar to the German roleplaying game Midgard, where characters have AP ("Ausdauerpunkte" = "Endurance Points") and LP ("Lebenspunkte" = "Life Points"). A loss of AP basically means that the character is getting fatigued, while a loss of LP shows that the character's health is seriously reduced and that he will need some healing (time or spell). I think this is how Guard and Health work in Järn, too ?

A very interesting feature of Järn is the Clan element. There are similar elements in other games, and they are often treated like a kind of meta-character, with their own attributes and skills and their own range of possible actions. Are the Clans in Järn also meta-characters or purely social networks ?

It is of course a matter of taste, and with this in mind I would recommend Monster Island. It contains so many good adventure opportunities that it should be easy to find one to your and your players' taste:

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/116267/Monster-Island