rust

For a simple system, I would use the cannon from the equipment chapter of the rules, divide the hit points of the ship that is hit by two (50 % rigging, 50 % hull), and then decide whether the gunner wants to demobilize the ship, aiming for the rigging, or to sink it, aiming for the hull. Once the rigging has lost half its hit points, the ship loses half its speed, on- ce the rigging has lost all hit points, the ship is dead in the water. Likewise for the hull, but when the hull has lost all hit points, the ship sinks. Each hit, rigging or hull, should have a chance to kill a number of crew mem- bers, too. An easy way to handle it would be to count each hit as 1 % of the crew, so 100 hits would completely eliminate the crew - but you could of course just as well use any other formula.

With a normal failure for the chasing ship, I would expect it to be something with the rigging (a sail is ripped, etc.), and for the ship that is chased it could be something like "stolen wind" (the ship chasing it blocks the wind with its own sails). A critical failure could be the same for both ships, for example the rudder breaks or a major piece of the rigging comes down (potentially hitting some- one). It should not be difficult to find more examples of what can go wrong with a little search on the internet - and you would get the right English termino- logy, which I do not know well.

I am waiting for the monograph to continue with the magic part of my set- ting, so this is good news for me.

Ah, thank you - so it is a kind of online fantasy chess with unusually ugly pieces ... >:->

When you download and open it, you get a game table that looks like this, plus lots and lots of .png images like the two examples. I have not yet found out what exactly to do with this, but I would hesitate to call it a mapping software in the usual sense.

If you do not see it as a problem that BRP is somewhat more on the "simula- tionist" side than on the "gamist" side of roleplaying games (e.g. combat is very deadly, PCs are rarely more powerful than NPCs, etc.), I really would re- commend to take a close look at it - especially since there is only one book you need, and this one is full of most interesting and useful ideas and opti- ons.

Thank you very much. I know, very good rules, which I have already sto ... ah, borrowed ...

Thank you, I have included it in my (frighteningly growing) reading list.

Thank you very much. I think I will also be able to use a couple of basic ideas from Call of Cthulhu, especially the Necronomicon (the German RPG supplement, a book about the background of mythos magic - I have no idea whether there is an English version of this, too). My "role model" for scholarly mages is John Dee, a famous scientist of his age as well as an alchemist and a "magician", for whom magic was just a different kind of science.

I am currently working on the magic system for the divine and scholarly magic of my Malita renaissance setting, and it seems that I have chosen a somewhat unusual approach: - each spell requires some ritual or ceremony and several items specific to that spell (bell, book and candle ...), - most magic is rather weak and unimpressive, truly powerful magic requires a very long preparation time and very unusual items (for example a bone of St Skeleton ...), - the spellcaster needs a certain Allegiance score - amount as yet undeter- mined, but probably 50 - to be attuned to his deity / philosophy well enough to be able to cast any spells at all, - the spellcaster has to succeed with a Knowledge skill roll (theology for di- vine spellcasters, to determine how to fit the magic into their religion's dog- ma, and a similar philosophy roll for the scholars), - there is "dark" (destructive, etc.) and "light" (healing, etc.) magic, and a magic user has to choose a side, but the intention of the magic use (smite those unbelievers ...) can enable a spellcaster to use a spell of the "other" type, - an obvious misuse (smite that grumpy patriarch of the own church...) re- sults in the permanent loss of all spellcasting ability, - all magic only creates events that could just as well occur naturally (e.g. an earthquake), be based upon psychology (e.g. an illusion or a mental ill- ness) or otherwise have naturals causes (it was the mushroom dish, not a spell ...).

Well, I am not really surprised ...

It seems that I am in the happy situation that others write the really difficult parts of my Malita setting for me. Being a science fiction guy, I do not know much about ships and magic in BRP, but Ken Spencer is so kind to publish his pirates supplement just in time, and Byron Alexander helps out with the equally perfectly timed publication of a witchcraft monograph - thank you both very much indeed. :thumb: While two is very good luck, three would be a miracle - nevertheless, there is a third and last part of the material I need and do not feel competent enough to write myself, the scholarly magic of the renaissance: Bell, Book and Candle. Is there any hope that someone will publish something of this kind in the not so far future ? - just asking ...

I somehow missed it before and just now discovered those magical words in your post: Renaissance, dying dark-age tradition. This looks very much like what I am currently working on for my Malita set- ting, a local pagan tradition of the island population that centers around one of the ancient temple ruins, is able to work comparatively weak magic, and is a pain in the neck for the knightly order, because they cannot tole- rate such heathen practices, but also must not alienate the locals. I think I will stop working on that and take a look at your monograph, it could well save me a lot of time ... :thumb:

Thank you very much. :) Since the knights will indeed establish the island's first hospital ever, and since this is very likely to become their most important achievement from the point of view of the islanders, I will use Castelcerusco.

I love that one. If you manage to get both the feeling of the Outlaws of the Water Margin and the Chinese Ghost Story across, you definitely have one more customer.

Ah, I see - and thank you very much for your help. I want to stay rather close to the historical role model, so the coat of arms of the order would be a Maltese Cross, and the patron saint would be Saint John. I have no idea concerning a nickname, the only other name that comes to my mind is the earlier name of the order, Knights Hospitaller. Edit.: Oh, and I forgot to mention that it is a port city, the "architect's plan" looks like this:

Thank you very much indeed. Edit.: I really like Mastio dell'Ordine, it sounds good, and the commonly used shortened city name Mastio does so, too.

For my Malita setting I need a name for the future new capital of the island, and I do not want to use the real Malta's Valetta, because the grand mas- ter that city is named for will probably not exist in my alternate timeline. I thought about using the Italian translation of City of the Order or City of Knights, and my translation program delivered: City of the Order = Città dell'Ordine (short name of the city: Ordine) City of Knights = Città dei Cavalieri (short name of the city: Cavalieri) However, my Italian is almost nonexistent, so I have no idea whether these translations are correct and make sense. Perhaps one of the Italian members of the community could help me ? Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I ran into the same problem only a couple of days ago and decided to treat Parry as a subskill of the weapon or shield skill in question, with the same value as that skill (e.g. Rapier 55 % = Rapier Parry 55 %). However, I am not sure whether this is according to the rules, so I am also interested in the answer to this question.

Well, and that's it for now. :cool: The framework of the setting is almost finished (general background, rules, major NPCs, first maps ...), and I now have about 25 pages of material. The next step will be to read through all the reference material, which will not happen before we go on vacation (finding out whether the mountains of Montenegro really are black ...), and afterwards to adapt the framework to my newly gained knowledge about the historical background. Finally there is the "soft" part of the setting (what people call "fluff") to write, together with one or two introductory adventures. Since I do not expect any of this to happen in the near future, this thread will now go to sleep for a while. Thank you for following this first design phase of the setting, and if you ha- ve any comment or idea, just post it here and wake up the thread.

For those of you who use Runequest Empires, this is a first attempt at the stats for Malita: Realm Statistics Cultural Background: Maritime Government: Theocracy Realm Characteristics Military (Mil) 20 Law (Law) 16 Size (Siz) 3 Communication (Com) 17 Religion (Rel) 17 Wealth (Wth) 10 Realm Capabilities Commerce 38 Dogma 43 Espionage 25 Government 48 Warfare 62 Culture 37 Technology 36 Diplomacy 58 Loyalty (Spain) 33 Loyalty (Papal State) 33 Attitude Temperament: Defensive Stance: Open The SIZ is too high, but 3 is the lowest value allowed by the system, so I decided to count the members of the order at its priories all over Europe as inhabitants, too, and leave it at 3. Otherwise, I think the stats are acceptable, although I will probably do some fine tuning. The finances of the order proved to be a minor nightmare, because I had to convert between and juggle with the wealth points of Runequest Empires, the Silver Pieces of Runequest, the other Silver Pieces used for the price list I "borrowed" from 7th Sea, and the Scudi I had started the setting with. Currently the conversion looks like this: 1 Wealth Point = 1.000 RQ-Silver Pieces = 150.000 Scudi

Yes, I know, I am slowly coming to terms with historical reality ... :ohwell: While I can "move" a bit towards galeass / early frigate and chebec, I am still deep within "galley territory", for example the Capitana naval combat system mentioned above has not a single "non-galley" among its ship types. It seems my problem came from a confusion of "Atlantic" ship types and "Me- diterranean" ship types of the period, but after reading more on the subject I have now to accept that using "Atlantic" ships in the Mediterranean instead of galleys would seriously damage the "period flavour" of the setting. So, yes, it will be galleys.

Apart from the rules for mass combat mentioned above, the background of this setting will also require some rules for the development of Malita island. The ability of the order to wage war, the defensive strength of its island ba- se, the options for the missions of the player characters and much more will depend upon the island's economy and the order's finances. For this part of the setting I intend to use the rules from Mongoose's Rune- quest Empires, which seem to fit almost perfectly well. They describe a state almost like a character, with a series of stats and ca- pabilities that enable it to interact with other states and to develop over ti- me, and it also has rules for governing a fief, and even for building stuff like town halls, palaces, churches and fortifications. A first look at the stats and capabilities of Malita shows that this island is almost a "basket case", almost unable to finance itself, and completely un- able to serve as an economic base for the order. This means that the order will have to empty its "war chest" and to rely on its various national priories to keep going and to develop the island up to a point where it produces more money for the order than the order has to spend to keep and develop it - even a few major loans may be necessary to build fortifications, buy ships and thelike. I am not yet sure how to "translate" this background situation into the ad- ventures of the player characters, except that their superiors will answer a lot of their proposals with "Not enough silver in our coffers ...". Apart from that, many thanks to Terry Whisenant for the BRP character crea- tion Excel sheet in the download section ! With the dozens of NPCs this setting will require, the sheet really helps to stat them out without going mad after the first dozen or so.

Well, you could use "Master of ..." as a job title - in my view "Master of Con- coctions and Elixirs" (M.Co.El.) does not sound too bad. And with some more academic effort he could even become a Dr.Co.El. ... Seriously, for a fantastic art in a fantastic setting you could well use some elaborate fantastic title instead of a more pedestrian job description. A "Scholarly Master of the Hidden Arts" or something like that would seem quite appropriate to me.