rust

Yep, this is how I handle it, too - the Blast spell's beam of energy does not have any POW to overcome a target's POW with.

I suspect that Status is another one of the more setting specific elements of BRP. Since in my settings I use a currency ro measure the characters' wealth and ability to buy stuff, I use Status as a measure of the characters' credibility, influence and reputation in their specific part of a society, for example with modifiers to their so- cial skills (e.g. bonus when using social skills with those of lower status, malus when using social skills with those of higher status). As I use it, a character's initial Status depends mostly on his profession, and it can only change because of the character's publicly known successes (the more they benefit his peers, the more the Status in- creases) and failures (the more they harm his peers, the more Status he loses). A certain Status can also be a prerequisite for a specific position (e.g. no guild master with a Status of less than 65 %). However, this is only one way to use Status, there are certainly others, too.

Meanwhile I have also done a little more work on the setting's magic system. The basic idea is still that the Anganoka (female shamans) use their skills Spi- rit Lore and Ritual to contact the spirits and ask for their help, and that the spirits - non-player characters - work the actual magic. Whether a spirit deci- des to help the shaman depends on whether the spirit is friendly towards the shaman, understands what the shaman is asking for, has the power to help the shaman, and can be convinced by the shaman to help. The Ancestor Spirits, the spirits of those shamans who decided to live on in the Spirit World Inguanok after death, are usually friendly to the shamans of the material world Asornok, but their powers are rather limited, they can only give knowledge and advice. Their help is also somewhat unreliable, they can tell the shaman only what they consider true knowledge, but they may well be wrong. Friendly Animal Spirits are those most likely to help a shaman. The Asor, who call themselves "the people of Owl and Wolf", have very friendly relations with the Owl Spirit and the Wolf Spirit, but at best neutral relations with the spirits of the animals they hunt, for example the Caribou Spirit or the Seal Spirit. Un- less a shaman's clan has violated the pact with the friendly spirits, for exam- ple by killing a pregnant she-wolf, the spirit will act on a reasonable request for help, within the limits of what animals of its species can do. For example, an owl can lead a hunting party to a herd of caribou, and a wolf can guide a lost hunting party back to the camp, but no animal spirit can make a fire. Nature Spirits, like the spirits of mountains and rivers, are the most powerful of all spirits, but also the most difficult to deal with. Even those who are basi- cally friendly towards the Asor and willing to help rarely comprehend what the humans want from them, and if they comprehend it they are often very slow to act - the needs of humans and the human concept of time are normally be- yond their experience. For example, there is no way to ask a mountain spirit for an avalanche to destroy a band of raiding snow trolls, the spirit would pro- bably not even be aware of the existence of trolls in the first place. To ask the spirit to collapse a cave used by the trolls could work, but perhaps only next year or the year after that.

Ah, I see - thank you. So my setting's Snow Trolls will be the normal daylight incompatible species, bad enough in a region where the sun is above the horizon only a few hours each day in winter, and these Olog-Hai will remain a frightening rumour from the far south.

Working on the stats of the various Shadow Creatures, based upon Fergo's excellent material, I have run into a minor problem with Snow Trolls. Accor- ding to all the Tolkienesque written sources I have found, from the Hobbit onwards, Trolls are turned to stone (or ice in the case of Snow Trolls) by sunlight. However, in Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies the Trolls fight in broad daylight ...

For the characters the war will probably begin with an operation against the realm of an Ice Demon (= Helegrog) in the northeast of the peninsula, and in the case of a success the group, experienced in travelling in the south since their visit to Minas Tirith, will probably be asked to travel to Rhosgobel in Wilderland to learn Yavanna's Blessing and other magic use- ful for the healing of the land from the wizard Radagast. By the way, while looking for nice illustrations for the setting material I also discovered this picture, probably a Hobbit's idea of a walrus:

Well, I actually only design or rework the difficulties for those skills which are likely to become important in a specific setting, which are normally only few. For example, in the case of the Asornok setting it were Drive (Dogsled), Pilot (Boat) and Track plus the new skill Spirit Lore and some notes on Craft skills to determine what can be done with stone and bone, everything else uses my "standard difficulties", more or less improvised experience values.

Perhaps another example how I determine difficulty, from the same Asornok setting, this time for the skill Pilot (Boat). The players had an unpleasant tendency to treat their characters like win- ners of boating competitions of the Olympic Games, with ridiculously high distances covered in ridiculously short times, and so we decided that we needed some rules for this. In order to find out what could be expected of well trained boatsmen, I looked up the famous Canadian Voyageurs in different online sources, and found informations like this one from Wikipedia: The article also mentioned that the boatsmen paused for some minutes of each hour, so 12 hours of actual boating per day seemed an acceptable Average difficulty level for experienced, skilled boatsmen of a comparable culture. Working from there, I decided that more than 16 hours would be Impossible under normal circumstances, 12 to 16 hours would be Difficult, 8 to 12 hours would be Average, 4 to 8 hours would be Easy, and less than 4 hours would not require a skill roll. And by multiplying the known average speed of a boat (in this case an umiak instead of a canoe) with the number of hours I could determine which distan- ces per day were plausible and which difficulty level it would have to try to go further.

Very true, and despite the impression probably created by my example above, I usually try to work with as few rules as possible. I only design detailed rules when the players want them to be able to better understand and calculate the chances and risks of their characters' actions - in the case of the arctic hun- ters they wanted details because a character's decision which animal to track and hunt can be a decision about an entire clan's life or death ("You only have a chance of 20 % to get this caribou, and it will take you at least three days to try, so you better go to the coast and look for seals ...").

Okay, it was a few hours after midnight when I made my last post, perhaps I can express what I mean a bit better after some sleep ... When you look at the description of the Track skill in the BRP core rules, the degree of success with the skill determines how fast the character can fol- low the creature, for example 1/2 normal movement with a Success and 75 % of normal movement with a Special. The way I handle it (there are certainly other ways), the Difficulty additional- ly determines what kind of traces (how old, size of the animal, etc.) the cha- racter can follow under normal circumstances (other circumstances have mo- difiers), and how good his chance to do so is. Using the example of the arctic hunter and the caribou: Automatic - fresh or less than one day old Easy - one day to two days old Average - three days to four days old Difficult - five days to seven days old Impossible - more than seven days old These times are based upon what I could research about the hunter of a com- parable real world culture, they would be different for other cultures. A beginning character with a Track skill of 20 % would have a 40 % chance to follow Easy traces (success in 4 of 10 hunts), a 20 % chance to follow Avera- ge traces (success in 1 of 5 hunts) and only a 10 % chance to follow Difficult traces (success in 1 of 10 hunts). A highly skilled character with a Track skill of 100 % would have an Automatic success with Easy traces and Average traces, too, but only a 50 % chance to follow Difficult traces (success in every second hunt). A higher skill than 100 % would not influence this, a 50 % chance to follow Dif- ficult traces is the best one can get, and traces more than seven days old re- main Impossible. It is a matter of plausibility / reality check, I do not have su- perhuman or superhumanly skilled characters in my setting. So, the way I handle it, the Skill roll determines how fast the character can fol- low the traces, and the Difficulty independently determines what his chance of success with his skill is, with a ceiling based upon real world data. I hope this is easier to understand now. And please consider that this is just my way of doing it for my settings, not in any way an official method.

You could handle it this way, but it tends to run into the problem that the upper limit of the characters is different. To use the Track exam- ple, I would see the upper limit / 100 % success of the arctic hunter at the task to follow traces which are one week old, but the upper li- mit / 100 % success of the noble at the task to follow traces which are five days old. For the hunter Easy ends on day two and Impossi- ble begins on day eight, for the noble Easy ends on day one and Im- possible begins on day six. Under average conditions no skill value en- ables the hunter to follow traces more than seven days old or the no- ble to follow traces more than five days old.

An example could be the Track skill. While it is an Easy task for a member of a hunter culture under average conditions to spot the two days old tra- ces of a caribou, the noble from Florence with the same skill value would find it a Difficult task. Another example could be the Bow skill. While it is an Average task for a Mongolian horse archer to hit a man sized target at a distance of 100 meters from the back of a galloping horse, his European contemporary counterpart would see this as an at least Difficult task.

I doubt it, in my experience I get the more plausible results when I design different difficulty scales for the different settings, based upon what I can research about the people of comparable real world cultures.

I have not yet seen one, and in my view the difficulty levels of many skills would be too setting specific to create a general table for all settings anyway. For ex- ample, the difficulty scale from automatic success to impossible task in Survival for the arctic hunters of my Asornok setting would be different from the one for the Renaissance nobles of my Malita setting, what would be an easy task for an arctic hunter could be a difficult task for the noble from the Mediterranean.

I guess you better begin to improve your Dodge skill ...

Well, I am a perfectly non-scary grandfatherly guy ...

Yep, now that you mention it - they did indeed.

Is there any specific reason why BRP Central wants to provide me with opportunities to date exotic women in remote places I cannot afford to visit ?

Being a grumpy old man, I need only the Hate function ...

The problem I see with this approach is that the mountain cliff becomes impossible to climb for someone with a skill of 19 %, no matter how hard and how often he tries. With such a system the characters with low skill values often do not have a lower chance of success than their comrades with high skill values, they have no chance at all. Instead of taking a higher risk of failure and gaining the experience of a hard won success, all they can do is stand back and watch Mr Highskill do his thing. This is not just a problem of game mechanics, it is also a problem of roleplaying cha- racters with low skill values, and almost every character has some low skill values. I very much prefer my characters to be "heroic" in the sense that they attempt to solve problems which would normally be "just a bit too big" for them, and therefore would not like any system which creates situations where tasks become absolutely impossible because the character lacks only a few skill points - as with the charac- ter with Climbing skill 19 % who faces a -20 % cliff.

While the first phase of the campaign is designed to take the characters all the way from their arctic homeland to Minas Tirith in order to give them an impression of Middle Earth and the developments there at the beginning of the Fourth Age, the next phase will probably cover events closer to ho- me. When the Asor migrated to the Asornok peninsula during the Second Age, the land was inhabited by Morgoth's Shadow Creatures. The Asor fought a series of campaigns to cleanse their new land of those creatures, and managed to free the southern coast, the western coast and most of the islands off the coast from the Shadow's influence. However, Shadow Crea- tures, like Ice Demons, Ice Worms and Snow Trolls, still inhabit the moun- tains and hills of the interior, the northern coast, some of the islands and the border region in the east. During the reign of the Witch King of Angmar the Asor needed all of their strength to defend their lands against the hordes of Shadow Creatures sent north from Angmar to destroy them. Many Asor hunters who served with the border guards were killed, and for a while it seemed likely that the Asor would be wiped out by the Witch King's armies. After the fall of the Witch King the Asor have slowly rebuilt their realm, but they did not have the strength to fight the remaining Shadow Cre- atures, there was an uneasy stalemate between the Asor in the south of the peninsula and the Shadow Creatures in the north. The only place truly free of any Shadow influence remained the small island of Nuk Hu- rom, the seat of the High Anganoka of the Asor and the location of their only temple, once blessed by the wizard Radagast when he visited the Asor. Now, after the fall of Sauron, the Asor are strong again, and the Shadow Creatures have lost the source of their power. The anganoka have there- fore decided that the time to cleanse all of Asornok and to heal the land from Morgoth's and Sauron's curses has come. When the characters re- turn from Minas Tirith, the plans have been made, and the Asor's last war against the remnants of the Shadow will begin ... By the way, this is a little map of Asornok:

Vikings of Legend is basically identical with the Mongoose Runequest 2 Vikings supplement.

As mentioned in this thread, one of the settings I am working on is my old Asornok setting moved to Middle Earth: http://basicroleplaying.com/openquest/d100-system-setting-2650/ At the moment I am working on an introductory adventure which should in- troduce the players to the rules (modified Call of Cthulhu Dark Ages) and their characters to the game world and give both players and characters an idea of the direction of the campaign. While I normally prefer a sandbox, my introductory adventures usually have a degree of railroading, mainly because I assume that the players do not yet know the setting well enough to decide what their characters want to do without a little guidance. Since the campaign will start at the beginning of the Fourth Age of Middle Earth, the introductory adventure should also link the events at the end of the Lord of the Rings to the setting, so the campaign can build upon the la- test part of the book's story. The idea I have at the moment is that Saruman got an important message before he left Isengard for the Shire: The Lossoth have found the two Pa- lantiri that were lost a long time ago when King Arvedui's ship sank in the Ice Bay. Well aware how valuable these two Palantiri could be for him, Saruman deci- des to send some of his human henchmen to the Lossoth camp at the Ice Bay with orders to get the Palantiri by any means necessary and to deliver them to him at the Shire. The henchmen easily overpower the surprised Lossoth and steal the Palan- tiri. The surviving Lossoth flee to a nearby camp of an Asor hunting party, where they tell their story and ask the Asor for help. Since the two arctic people have an old pact to help each other against the creatures of the Shadow, the Asor send a small group - the characters - to pursue the rob- bers and take the Palantiri. Assumed that the characters succeed, the Lossoth decide to give the for them useless and obviously dangerous Palantiri to the Asor as a reward for their help, and the Asor take the Palantiri to their settlement Nan Asor on their northern peninsula Asornok. - here I will need a short adventure or two, for example a walrus hunt to introduce the combat and hunting rules, to pass the time A while later the Asor are visited by emissaries of King Elessar, who has re- ceived news about the Palantiri by Dunedain Rangers who met the Lossoth, and who wants to negotiate a return of the Palantiri to his newly refounded Kingdom of Arnor and Gondor. Through his emissaries the previously almost completely isolated Asor learn of the last years' events and the end of the Shadow, and the negotiations about the future ownership of the Palantiri open the way for a small group of Asor - again the characters, of course - to travel all the way to Minas Tirith to deliver the Palantiri and receive the negotiated reward. With this the actual campaign can start.

A little more granularity in the task difficulties could make the game a little more flexible and dynamic, but in my view there is a risk to go over the top with this and to spend too much time on determining the game mechanics of tasks instead of roleplaying the characters' actions. One way to handle the problem would be to continue the game's approach by adding two more difficulty stages: Automatic: no roll Simple: 2/1 skill, e.g. a skill of 36 % becomes 72 % Easy: 5/4 skill, 36 % becomes 45 % Routine: 1/1 skill Difficult: 1/2 skill, 36 % becomes 18 % Formidable:1/4 skill, 36 % becomes 9 % Impossible: no roll Add to this the various situational modifiers, and the degree of granularity should be sufficient for all purposes. Beyond that one would enter the re- alm of treating each task as an individual one with an individual difficulty, too complicated and time consuming for my taste.

It is actually more often used for pushing the pudding, it is normally only used for pulling it when enough elks or reindeers can be recrui- ted for this job.