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Nerval

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Posts posted by Nerval

  1. Charisma rolls are good for first impressions. One's Etiquette roll might succeed handily, but if the Prince doesn't like you for some reason, no amount of using the right fork is going to sway him to back your faction. On the other hand, if your Charisma roll was a critical, the Prince might be willing to laugh off breaches of Etiquette as harmless eccentricities.

    I've used POW vs. POW on the resistance table for a police interrogation. The PC was being obstinate, but hadn't been accused of anything. The detective wanted her to reveal what she did know, and she was trying to get the detective to give her clues for her own private investigation. It wasn't so much Persuasion as sheer bloody mindedness, so I used attributes instead of skills. 

  2. I use simple multiplication. If the die roll x5 is less than or equal to the skill %, it's a Special success. Even as maths-averse as I am, years of figuring Idea, Know, and Luck rolls for CoC characters have taught me the x5 table up to 20). 

    For Criticals, just multiply the roll by 20 (or count 2,4,6,8 and compare to the 10s digit of the skill).

    I do Fumbles on 99-00 if the skill is 50 or lower, otherwise just 00. 

    • Like 1
  3. If I roll low I multiply the result of the dice by 5 to see if it's at or under the skill level for a Special. If I roll less than 5 I multiply by 20 to see if it's a critical.

    After years of calculating Luck and Idea rolls, I barely have to think of my x5 tables. 

    • Like 4
  4. D&D characters are expected to have a pile of magic items, so giving them ways of making their own is perfectly fitting. They could also just go down the market and buy them. The items themselves seem a bit regimented, and a lot of players who've played D&D for a long time get bored of them.

    There's a marked difference in tone between discovering the Mirror of Suasions after months of questing and finding another +2 sword that no one in the party has any use for (but keeping anyways in case you can trade it for +3 armour in the next village).

    If I wanted PCs in Magic World to craft magic items, I'd use the RQIII magic book rules -- probably with an Enchanting skill (Base 0%, INT modifier).

    • Like 2
  5. I found an old article published by the Penn Museum that talks about ancient maps in general: https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/ancient-cartography/

    Check out the Egyptian map of gold mines especially.

     

    I also found a doctoral thesis: Terrestrial Cartography in Ancient Mesopotamia

    It contains (inter alia) numerous plans of canals, city quarters, houses, and temples, so it's perfect for your next foray into Pavis and/or the Big Rubble. There's also a chapter on the Babylonian world map that @Hijabg mentioned above, including complete translations of the text, front and back.

    • Like 1
  6. Here's a 3rd century BC Roman itinerary engraved on silver cups (and a modern, flat re-creation to get a sense of the whole thing). I always envisoned the Lunars using something like this (though usually on a papyrus or linen scroll).

     

    itinerarium1.JPG

    itinerarium2.JPG

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  7. I had a go at translitterating with a sign-list, but it didn't seem to make a lot of sene after the first few words (unlike the cuneiform text on Mythras Imperative, which had a few wrong phonemes due to, I presume, key-mapping on the font they used, but was entirely comprehensible).

    ka-m-ba-t i-n ru-n-(e)-ku-(e)-s-t s vi-sa-ra-l = combat in Runequest is(?) visceral(?)

    But after that...

     

    RQtablet.jpg

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  8. I adore stuff like this.

    My favourite ever Runequest 6 game was supposed to be about exploring a grim world of dark and ancient magic, but took a decidedly Austen-y turn when the PC had to flee the hapless suitor her eldest brother had contracted for her to marry. I decided that I had accidently created a new genre, 'sword-and-sensibility'.

    • Like 3
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  9. Hi all,

    I mostly just lurk on the forum, but I made some 3x3 combat tracker sheets recently for Magic World that I thought I ought to share with the group.

    They were inspired by the Affiliations, Beasts and Otherworldly Beings records on the back page of the character sheet which I did use for a while as NPC records, but ultimately thought could be better organised (like some of the RQ ones).

    Version 1 is essentially generic mini-character sheets. Version 2 is more combat-focussed, and has a small selection of skills pre-printed, being the ones I always end up needing to know for fights and ambushes.

    I'm not 100% happy with either of them yet, but they're both serviceable. V2 in particular could have the attribute section condensed and/or something else added in that space, but I'm not sure what would be best. Allegiance, maybe?

    Anyways, I though I would present them to the group and see if anyone cold use them or had any suggestions. There's PDFs, and also Word docs in case anyone wants to adapt them for their own campaigns.

    PDF:

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/wk4b76e79lxi24t/MW 9x combat tracker V1.pdf?dl=0

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/y9zqk1u4ws3tfb7/MW 9x combat tracker V2.pdf?dl=0


    .docx:

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/k6y6kuqmtvpcsz1/MW 9x combat tracker V1.docx?dl=0

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/z63gxgw7co9vz2q/MW 9x combat tracker V2.docx?dl=0

    • Like 4
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  10. I have to confess I've never seen eugepae in medieval Latin, but then most of my medieval reading is either philosophy or grimoires, so it wasn't likely to have come up. Generally when I write in Latin, I try to avoid medievalisms (and early-modernisms). The few times I've tried to write a faux-medieval text, I've written it out normally then used find-and-replace to change each AE to E, and made a few other changes if I can remember them. Hec fraus michi sufficit.

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