rust

From experience I prefer players not to become to reliant on dice rolls, as it makes them lazy because they are waiting for you as the GM to say "make that roll" to resolve the situation.

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.

The biggest problem with BRP is GMs relying on a successful skill rolls to determine the out come of a scene or a scenario itself.

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.

Hmmm, sounds like, rather than giving much of a combat advantage, in reality cavalry has more effect on morale...

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:

Historians such as John Keegan have shown that when correctly prepared

against (such as by improvising fortifications) and, especially, by standing

firm in face of the onslaught, cavalry charges often failed against infantry,

with horses refusing to gallop into the dense mass of enemies, or the char-

ging unit itself breaking up. However, when cavalry charges succeeded, it

was usually due to the defending formation breaking up (often in fear) and

scattering, to be hunted down by the enemy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_(warfare)

The mounted has the advantage of superior position and speed.

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 ...

I take issue with this point. At the moment that the mount is passing next to the target at full charge, I would allow one action possible to the footman given how quickly everything is happening.

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.

SO...let's say they don't kill the foe they just charged-now what??

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.

What is IPs?

Most probably Improvement Rolls ?

http://www.metamythos.net/wiki/RPG_Rules_Systems/RuneQuest/SRD/Improving_Adventurers#Improvement_Rolls

I thought that the issues raised, such as shgould the GM protect the PCs from the actions of other PCs are worth discussing, but I'll drop it if that is what people want.

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 ...

And yet, somehow, I'm betting it was the GM deciding what those traits applied to and what they didn't. Not the players.

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.

But to have pity on us?

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 ?

I would have no problem ordering these and sending them to anyone in Europe that wants them, so long as they cover the expense. PM me if interested.

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.

They are a ripoff when you can buy a printed, perfect bound copy for ten more dollars.

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 ...

If you don't have dead tree versions of these or the originals, these are worth picking up.

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

Others, as I said, basically added up to not feeling it should be the GM telling people how is proper to play their characters; that that's the one thing a player controls in the game, and that having the GM get into it is tantamount to turning the players into just actors following the GM's script to one degree or another.

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.

What about RuneQuest Vikings? Is that any better?

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 ...

Does it have anything about Buddhism/Shintoism, or Japanese mythology or fantasy?

You could take a look at the preview:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=55776&filters=0_0_40050_0

I'm thinking about a quick campaign to do with my group that can be finished in a couple sessions. I was watching akira kurosawa's 7 samurai and I want to do that with my group. I'm debating whether or not to pick up runequest land of the samurai for the additional content. Would it be worth picking up?

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/

Mythic Iceland is going to be published as a BRP supplement, and not as a monograph.

Congratulations.

As I said, its just a complex of some kind. It really doesn't have a rational basis most of the time.

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

any experience system.

Thinking about it, could it be that there are any reasons that could make this "check-hunting"

more common in fantasy campaigns than in science fiction campaigns ?

I doubt that "my" players really are in any way exceptional, so the fact that they do not try to

go "check hunting" should have another reason, and the only one I can think of at the moment

is the genre - although this is also where my Latin ends.

Perhaps combat with futuristic weapons is so deadly that a character is encouraged to always

use the weapon he is most skilled with, because another weapon with a lower skill would sig-

nificantly reduce his chances to survive the combat ?

Perhaps the "skill set" of a science fiction profession, like starship pilot or scientist, makes it in

some way reasonable to concentrate on the commonly used skills instead of trying to improve

only rarely used skills ?

Just wild guesses, I am afraid ...

Lets say you have two ways of dealing with a problem, the more straightforward, and safer way, and the more risky way that doesn't really have much else to recommend it--but it does provide more skill rolls. Some people will take the latter just for that reason.

I seem to be a lucky guy, because I have never had a player whose character knowingly took

a higher risk than he considered necessary to solve a problem. I suspect this is because our

general style is rather simulationist, and someone actively looking for unnecessary risks to ta-

ke just is not a very plausible character - at least not one any party would tolerate as a mem-

ber.