rust

It does not even have to be the severe stress of a combat. Back when I was in the military we had a pistol training where we fired one magazine at a target, then ran for ten minutes with full gear at full speed, and immediately afterwards fired the se- cond magazine at the target. While the rounds of the first magazine would surely have killed a human, almost all of the rounds of the second magazine missed the tar- get. In game terms, my skill dropped from about 75 % to less than 10 %.

Yeah, the good old times, when rubber boots were still made of wood ...

While the classical Titans do not really fit well into the Cthulhu Mythos, there are Typhon and Echidna and their children: Typhon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Echidna (mythology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In this setting this would be more a feature than a bug. In Merasan the magic of the priests is "community magic", used for example to bless crops, or to deal with bad weather and other natural (and social) desasters, while Sorcery is somewhat "grey" magic which can be (ab-)used to gain personal power. There are no magic items in this setting, the ability to use magic is a part of the personality of the magic user and cannot be transmitted to an object which has neither the skills to prepare and cast magic nor the POW characteristic to give it magic points. Yes, thank you for a good idea.

My current (and most probably not final) ideas are: There are no "standard spells", each use of magic requires a period of research and preparation. This time is measured in days, with a minimum of one day, and depends on the size of the intended effect. A permanent effect requires at least one additional day of preparation. Each use of magic requires a successful Invocation (for Sorcery) or Exhort (for Theism) skill roll as well a successful skill roll in a relevant other skill, for example a Craft skill if the target is an object or the Insight skill if the targets are humans. A permanent effect increases the difficulty grade of the Invocation or Exhort skill roll by one step.

A while ago I downloaded the RuneQuest 6 PDF, and after reading it I thought that this excellent system might be perfect for my Merasan fantasy setting, a rather old setting which once started as a modification of a part of AD&D's Birthright setting and a part of AD&D's Forgotten Realms setting and later mo- ved through different incarnations and systems. Most of the RuneQuest 6 system indeed fits this setting perfectly well, but I have a minor problem with the magic. In this setting Sorcery and Theism are powerful instruments to influence reality which require a lot of time and effort to work and therefore are never used for "pedestrian" purposes like everyday tasks or single combat. This means that I will have to make Sorcery and Theism more time consuming and "expensive", but also on average more powerful, with more permanent re- sults. While I have a couple of ideas how this could be done, I would like to ask you for your ideas on this before I decide on any modifications. Comments and ideas would be most welcome.

Just a few examples: Improvement Roll Modifier (based on CHA) Ageing (modification of characteristics) Asphyxiation/Suffocation/Drowning (based on CON) Death (minutes equal to CON) Falls (distance based on SIZ) Falling Objects (damage based on SIZ)

I am not sure whether you mean "no characteristics" or "no attributes" ? If you mean characteristics, please keep in mind that they are quite useful to determine a character's abilities whenever the situation is not covered by any skill, and that there are spells which influence characteristics.

Chaosium is not Wizards of the Coast, there is no Hasbro in the background which demands desperate measures to reach a certain level of profit and threatens to otherwise close down Wizards of the Coast, and there has al- so been no extreme turnover of game designers leading to a loss of connec- tion between designers of different versions at Chaosium. Comparing Chao- sium to Wizards of the Coast is much like comparing apples and squirrels.

I do not think so. All the proposed changes would do is to hand over a minor part of the development of the story from the games master, who is currently alone respon- sible for the development of the story, to the players, who would then get some ad- ditional options to influence the development of the story. Some groups would love such "forgie" elements of "player empowerment" and "distribution of narrative rights", probably especially those which are waiting for a kind of Pulp Cthulhu, while others would ignore such options. All in all not a big deal, just a possibility for a slightly dif- ferent way to play the game, a way one can welcome or delete at one's pleasure.

I play the previous German edition - the latest one is almost identical, so I did not see a need to buy it. The edition I use consists of two books, a games master book with 400 pages and a player book with 230 pages. It is not a direct translation of a Chao- sium edition, although in my view it is rather close to the 6th edition. I usually add a couple of house rules and BRP options to make the system fit a specific setting better.

I just listened to the podcast of the seminar. Some of the changes discussed there seem rather interesting, potentially improving the game, while others seemed less convincing, but in my view there was nothing which would completely change or break the game. All in all I see no reason to be either enthusiastic or alarmed.

125 numbered pages plus advertisements and OGL license

A d20 is a poor neutered d100, with 80 % cut off ...

I am very much looking forward to this one ... ... but this makes me slightly sceptical of your proofing.

You could take a look at the Cthulhu End Time setting, if you ignore the Mythos part you get the core of a comparatively low technology hard science fiction system, which is compatible enough with the BRP system to use any additional material from other BRP games: Chaosium Inc.

This download makes it a lot easier to design creatures: Basic Bestiary - Downloads - Basic Roleplaying Central

I think the author of Cthulhu Rising is currently busy working on Rivers of Heaven, an Open Quest science fiction setting without any Mythos elements. Another Cthulhoid science fiction setting with some interesting ideas which could be borrowed for a Cthulhu Rising campaign is Cthulhu End Time.

I think it would depend on a setting's idea of magic, especially whether the spellcaster uses his own physical or mental strength to power a spell or uses his magical skill to draw the energy to power the spell from somewhere else (e.g. the local mana field, a deity's power, or whatever). In the first case the magic points represent his individual reservoir of power, and reducing the magic points could well have the consequences you described, but in the second case the magic points represent only his ability to access a certain amount of power from another source, and this should not necessa- rily lead to physical or mental exhaustion - the spellcaster uses a kind of magic credit card to power his spells, and this credit card works well until it is empty.

I do not know the definitions of the merits you listed, but it seems that some of them (e.g. Alertness) could just as well be handled by bonuses to already existing skills. In such cases I would find it easier to grant an increase of the skill level instead of intro- ducing a merit as an additional game mechanics element. Merits I would prefer to use only for special abilities which cannot be covered by one of the general skills (e.g. Am- bidextrous).

I suspect that the Greek mythology makes it impossible to really kill a deity, no matter what the deity's stats are like. In the worst case a deity would be "killed" temporarily by being sent to the Hades, but it would be no problem for Zeus as the ruler of the deities to tell Pluto to send the deity back to the Olymp - and whoever "killed" the deity would then have to face a very angry god or goddess.

I usually avoid this problem by narrowing the range of possible stats, using the creature's average stats and rolling the die only for a small bonus or malus to these values (max. +2 /-2). Creatures with stats significantly above or below the average values are designed for a specific role or situation in the setting, never randomly created.

Yes, we did it in one of our settings. There Magic is the "Low Magic" which can be learned by everyone with an at least average INT and POW while Sorcery is the "High Magic" which requi- res long years of scholarly studies to learn and master, but includes more powerful and reliable spells and is the necessary foundation for the development of new spells, both Low Magic and High Magic ones.

While I agree with all other points of your post, I somewhat disagree with this one. At least in all advantages / disadvantages systems I know a character can only take an advantage if he also takes a disadvantage "of equal value". If the player wants a spe- cific advantage required by his concept for his character, the system as written for- ces him to also take a certain degree of disadvantage, whether it fits into the charac- ter's concept or not. I think it is a very natural reaction to this enforced "balancing" of the character to choose disadvantages which are basically meaningless and hardly ever come up in play, because these are the disadvantages which least distort the original character concept. The intention is to follow the original character concept, but the result all too often is min/maxing, because it is built into the system - in my view an advantages/disadvantages system is by nature a min/maxing system. So, if I would use any special abilities in one of my campaigns, they would have to be based on a plausible character concept only, and there would be no requirement to in any way "balance" them with disadvantages, flaws or whatever (I find this idea of "ba- lancing" characters rather artificial anyway - there is no balance of that kind in the real world). If the player can tell me a good reason why his character should have the spe- cial ability, the other players have no problem with it and it does not disrupt the inner logic of the setting, he can have it, no strings attached.

Guilty, Your Honour. My defense is that I used to play GURPS and got tired of mute one-eyed albinos with lots of odious habits and a fear of preferably extinct animals who used the character points from their mostly meaningless disadvantages to buy superhuman abilities. I like it that BRP does not support that kind of boring munchkinism and prefer normal human characters anyways.