rust

I usually ask for skill rolls when the result of a character's action is important for the plotline and there is a plausible risk of a failure. In a way, you could say that I require skill rolls at the "crossroads" of a plotline, where the results of the rolls make a real difference for how the story will continue. I rarely request skill rolls for simple unimportant routine actions, provided the character knows that it is such an easy task, and I tend to avoid those extremely dangerous skill rolls whe- re a bit of bad luck can kill a character or the entire party outright - in my cam- paigns "Russian Roulette Rolls" only happen when a character made a truly dumb decision and maneuvered himself into such a situation. Another case where I prefer skill rolls are situations where it is impossible for the player (and me) to fully understand and describe an action of the character. My settings are mostly science fiction, and the characters often use science skills where we know what they attempt to achieve, but have no idea how they could do it. So, if the geneticist character wants to modify a creature with genetic en- gineering, the player tells me what is intended, I come up with a difficulty based upon the general technology of the setting, and a skill roll (or a series of rolls) de- cides about the outcome.

Yes, of course.

The way we roleplay, a lazy player who just waited for me to announce a skill roll would almost certainly end up with a dead character. The skill roll is only the end, and in a way the evaluation, of a long process that leads up to this skill roll. In this process the character has to gather informations about the problem he intends to deal with, outfit himself with the best available equipment, plan his approach so that he gets as many tactical and other advan- tages as possible, and so on. The skill roll mirrors the combination of the character's relevant skill and the qua- litiy of his preparations, and in most situations the skill alone, without any prepa- ration, would not enable the character to solve the problem, and would even ca- ry the risk to get the character killed. The way we play it, there is no conflict between roleplaying and skill rolls, the ro- leplaying just happens before the skill roll, not instead of it. The skill roll introdu- ces the element of luck the real life also always has, and it ensures that the ac- tion in question is carried out by the character with the character's abilities, not by the player with his skill at storytelling.

Hmmm ... I am one of those referees who insist on successful skill rolls to de- termine the outcome of a scene or scenario. In fact, I do this because I want to encourage roleplaying, which I understand as playing the role of the charac- ter, not as replacing the abilities of the generated character with a player's abi- lity to tell fancy stories. My game is about the character's skills, not those of the player. No matter how good a player's communication skills are, and how nice the stories he tells me may be, in the end the character's ability to deal with the situation at hand de- cides whether it is a success or a failure, and the way to judge a character's ability to solve a problem is a skill roll. I also like and use personality traits, although never as a straightjacket. They are a good way to support the creation of a character concept during charac- ter generation, and they also help the player to better understand the customs and norms of the setting's cultures during play and to play the character accor- dingly. They also help to determine a society's reactions whenever a character acts against their customs and norms.

As far as I understand it, morale is at least a very important part of it, perhaps even the most important part. To quote Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_(warfare)

True, plus the effect of the mass of his riding animal behind the initial attack. However, real world history shows that charging cavalry was quite often slaugh- tered by steadfast infantry that did not break in the initial impact of the charge, and that even successful charges through enemy lines usually resulted in a num- ber of riderless horses. One of the reasons is that it is far more difficult for the charging rider to hit the footman than it is for the footman to hit the rider or his animal - the rider has to deal with his own movement and a smaller, more mobile target, while the foot- man knows for sure that the rider and his animal will move in a straight line and present a rather big target if their initial attack can be avoided. So the rider is at a huge advantage in the first phase of his charge, but at an al- most equally huge disadvantage if this attack fails to shock, break, disable or kill his opponent, because now he is in the position of someone fleeing, with his back to the enemy and unable to defend against anything coming at him from behind. In a way, the charge consists of a very powerful attack of the rider, followed by a comparatively easy counterattack of those footmen who avoided this attack, kept their cool and have a missile weapon at hand. I am in no way sure how to handle this with BRP rules, I would just want to point out that a charge is in no way an easy affair with few risks for the rider, history shows that prudent commanders who wanted their cavalry to survive the day ra- rely ordered it to charge anything but an already weakened or retreating infantry.

Miniatures provide a bird's eye view of a combat that is highly unrealistic, in the real world each of the characters would be busy to deal with his immediate op- ponents, and would only occasionally have a chance to look around and see how his companion's are doing - the "fog of war" also covers skirmishes, not only the big battles. Take away the miniatures, and you can use this to give combat an entirely dif- ferent and more realistic and grisly "feel", with the characters unsure where the ongoing combat has taken them, where exactly the others are and everything else is, who would need or could provide help, and all that. It is no longer sitting comfortably on a cloud and watching and controlling the events from a safe dis- tance, it is being right there in the midst of confusing chaos. In other words, it is the difference between a miniatures wargame and a roleplay- ing game. You can support this change of "feel" by avoiding overly precise descriptions and calculations (who would have the leisure to measure distances during a combat anyway ?), keeping the action fast and providing input for all of the character's senses (screams, sound of weapons, smell of blood ... you get it). And keep the rules as much as possible in the background, the "flow" of the scene is far more important than perfect adherence to the rules mechanics - it is about experien- ces, not about 1 meter squares. Well, just some thoughts ...

Give the footman a shield to protect him from the rider's weapon and a weapon with a sufficient reach to hit either the riding animal or the rider, and I see no problem why he should not be able to defend and attack at the same time - left arm with the shield to defend, right arm with a weapon to attack.

Based upon real world logic ... Since a charge usually happens at the riding animal's full speed, and the animal cannot simply reduce its speed to zero immediately after the charge, animal and rider will continue in a straight line and end up almost certainly behind their ene- my after the charge, and now have to turn around and move back if they intend to attack again. If the charge did not kill the enemy outright, he can counterattack the charging rider or his animal while they pass by, and if he has a missile weapon he could al- so target the rider's back once he has passed by and before he can turn the ani- mal around - one of the serious disadvantages of a charge is the possibility to be hit in the back by an arrow or crossbow bolt.

Most probably Improvement Rolls ? http://www.metamythos.net/wiki/RPG_Rules_Systems/RuneQuest/SRD/Improving_Adventurers#Improvement_Rolls

In my view you and Nightshade have so very different styles of roleplaying that you are most unlikely to find a common ground concerning the topic at hand, and therefore can only repeat the same points over and over again, without convincing or even really understanding each other - what Stanislaw Lem described as a discussion between a squirrel and a snail ...

You should stop betting, at least when our group is involved ... Since the traits were designed to mirror the opinions and expectations of the society, it was of course the other characters' (= the players') task to decide what exactly the traits meant and when they applied. This is not an "objective" mechanism, but a society does also not form its opinions in any "ob- jective" way, it uses a rather (inter-) subjective consensus, just as the players do, so I see no problem there. In general, I try to leave as many decisions as possible to the players. Running the rest of the setting is just enough effort for my taste, there is no need to grab more responsibilities than are unavoidable, or to provide fuel for more debates than absolutely necessary. So, whatever has to do with the characters is the players' job, never mine. I only get involved in these things as final arbiter of the rules the players have decided upon, and only if they are unable or unwilling to make the relevant decisions themselves - which is very rare. The only problem this causes is that the players are often a lot more strict than I would have been, they rarely look the other way when it comes to the rules they agreed upon, while I would often be more "soft" and would be more willing to bend a rule in favour of a charac- ter.

Ah, just the usual streak of arrogance of people who think that they know better what is univer- sally good than those dumb others who do not share their opinion ...

Ah ... I do not want to interrupt your friendly chat, gentlemen, but has this not reached a point where it would be better if you would snarl at each other by PM ?

Thank you very much for your offer, but I do already have the material I want. However, there may well be others who might be most interested in your friendly offer.

Just take a look at this, especially the shipping cost to Europe (14 USD ), from the HeroQuest website, and you are likely to see the point ...

Indeed. Griffin Mountain was at the top of my list of best roleplaying supplements for many years, and if someone asks me today what a good supplement should be like, I still tell him to take a look at Griffin Mountain or Pavis & Big Rubble.

Issaries has now published some Gloranthan Classics as PDFs on Drive Thru RPG: Vol. 1: Pavis & Big Rubble Vol. 2: Griffin Mountain Vol. 3: Cult Compendium Vol. 4: Borderlands & Beyond and also Stafford Library: Heortling Mythology. http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/index.php?manufacturers_id=79

Well, but the Pendragon traits were not a GM thing, they mirrored the rules and expectations of the different societies of the setting and highlighted the differences between the rules and ex- pectations of these societies. The players were free to change the traits of their characters, but the more they did this, the more their society was likely to punish the unwelcome behaviour of the characters. This is not the GM telling players how to roleplay their characters, this is the setting reacting to character actions.

In my opinion it is one of the best RuneQuest supplements ever.

Hello rustorod, and welcome to the forum. I wonder whether our forum names are distant relatives ...

You could take a look at the preview: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=55776&filters=0_0_40050_0

In my view, not really. If you want to use the Seven Samurai as the model for a short campaign, all the characters of the setting are ronin (masterless samurai), almost as much outside of the Japanese society as the bandits they fight, so you do not need much information about the Japanese society. The weapons used, sword, bow and musket, also do not need additional information. I think you could save the money for the supplement and visit your local library instead, looking for a book or two about the Sengoku period, and some potentially interesting and useful infor- mation can also be found here: http://www.samurai-archives.com/

Congratulations.

Indeed. Well, perhaps it is just because our other system is Traveller, which does not have any experience system.