Simlasa

I'd favor going with making the smoothbore firearms inaccurate, with bad or no sights... and there's that big plume of smoke to deal with. It's not 'heroic' if you know the bullets won't hurt too bad even if they connect... but half damage seems like a decent compromise.

I tend not to care much about 'balance' and favor plausibility instead. How likely do I think it would be for a black powder firearm to penetrate a steel helmet or cuirass... that's what I'd go by. Such armor (and weapons) might be too expensive for the average person to afford... so might be rare.

Totally bypass all armor? I thought, IRL, there was a historical point where firearms were weaker and armor started being made thicker... including a maker's mark where a gun would be fired into the armor to prove it 'bulletproof'? Till the firearms got more powerful and the armor was getting too thick to wear. Not that I know much about firearms or armor... but I think I'd let the armor retain at least some protection. Also, seeing as magic melee weapons are a common feature of fantasy RPGs I think it would be cool to have some magic firearms... spells cast on ammunition or alchemical widgits in the gunpowder... 'spell guns' of various sorts.

Thanks for all your hard work on this. It is truly appreciated!

Maybe you could mine some adventures for non-mythos games... like NWOD's 'Ghost Stories' and 'Nightmare At Hill Manor' or some of the Chill Adventures like 'Caulfield Place'.

I don't see why it would need such images, the internet is full of GW imagery if you need to show something to the players. Including anything from any of their publications in the BRP document is just going to be asking for trouble.

I generally prefer to run a 'sandbox' style of game... so no plot and no plot armor. Also, as a Player, I don't like games without repercussions/consequences and particularly death on the table. For a while I played in a group where the GM pulled his punches a lot and told us that PC deaths were 'bad for the story'. That really isn't my sort of thing at all.

That made me laugh, thanks! IRL it does seem like you can only get so good at a thing as a generalist but the upper levels of skill require specialization... so I'm inclined to have a limit on some skills that require specialization to get higher levels. But, it depends on the setting and what wants emphasis. If I were running a Medical Center game where Dr. Killdare and his chums were all surgeons I'd break the medical skills into lots of specialties... but there'd be little reason to have anything more than a basic 'handgun' skill. If I were running a cavemen & dinosaurs game I might have a lot of specific crafting and survival skills... but not much refinement to medicine.

I've played a few different campaigns with kids. Cut to basic rules and don't sweat the details too much. One was set in my usual homebrew fantasy setting and the other was for some younger kids and was based on Beatrix Potter. Not a lot of combat in Beatrix Potter but plenty of reasons to sneak around and talk to NPC critters and whatnot. I handled most all the rules stuff, didn't even give them character sheets to obsess over, "Just tell me what you want to do." and all was golden.

What's different between this edition and the previous one?

I consider combat important but I generally don't find it all that interesting compared to stuff I get to do 'in character'... talking to NPCs and other PCs, exploration, investigation, problem solving. Partly because dice rolling isn't all that exciting for me. So calling for MORE dice rolling for social situations (rolling against INT, WIS, CHA, etc. is good enough IMO) feels, to me, like it's taking away, rather than adding, fun. As it is, with combat, I don't like having to make more than a few rolls to discover the outcome. I used to play Earthdawn and we were rolling gobs of dice for every combat action... drove me nuts. Then again, that's a game where results on basket weaving really can be important.

I wasn't intending to insult Pathfinder (I play it every week) but it does seem to have a notion of needing a rule to cover most any game eventuality and put it on the CS... which then becomes a menu of what you can do (and often creates a mindset that if it's not on the CS then it's not an option). Some folks might find that comfortable but it's not my taste. I generally lean toward the OSR 'rulings not rules' thing, which is fairly simple with an intuitive system like BRP.

No, I don't want to punish anyone... but I kindasorta expect people to take part, best they're able. I'm not expecting any great oratory... just make an argument/statement/seductive invitation, in character AND, if applicable and interesting, roll against some stat. What I'm against is turning a visit to the queen into some long complex mechanical sequence where everyone focuses more on their character sheets than the free-form verbal expression of their characters.

In my opinion, first and foremost, for social situations you HAVE to talk it out. It's undesireable, to me, to reduce all interactions to a series of dice rolls, that's some other sort of game. Somewhere in there someone can make a roll against APP or an applicable skill (really, if your APP and/or skill is high there might be no need to roll), but if you're there to roleplay then play the role. We are able to talk to each other, in character, that can happen at the table. A sword fight cannot. So I really don't see social situations requiring the same sort of rules detail.

Yeah, I experienced that one first-hand. Playing with a group where it came across as a skirmish miniatures wargame... and another group where it played the same as any other version of THAT game (we didn't even use minis). As usual, the people at the table had more influence on play than the system being used. I just mean that there are some things that really do require some detailed rules be in place and others that don't. I suppose there are SOME people who will read a rulebook and assume that, since there is no 'speak with barmaid' skill, they should not attempt to speak with the barmaid... but hey! there are rules for swords... let's hit her with a sword! (I know it's not a trendy opinion, but I don't want/need rules to speak with the barmaid).

That's something I really appreciate about the OSR games... there is no attempt to have a 'rule for everything' and to instead rely on the imaginative space... and have the GM make a ruling if necessary. This seems to point the opposite direction and it's not a direction I want to go. I've never gotten along with the idea that just because the most detailed rules in a rulebook (or on a character sheet) are about combat that that means the game is ABOUT combat. It's just a part of the game that requires detailed rules... whereas discussions of the 'Philosophy of the Mind' might not... we could just talk that out, in character... but would rather not go at each other wielding steak knives to depict a street fight. When I first sat down to play Magic World with some kids I know I didn't put character sheets in front of them, because I thought it would free them up to ignore the rules and behave as their characters. Later on, as they learned the rules I introduced the sheets. All seemed to go quite well and they're still playing.

I'm not so sure about this bit: "The RuneQuest percentage skills character sheet elegantly serves non-combat roleplaying through these two important design rules: RPG Design Rule a: "If it's not in the rules, it's not in the gameplay." [ie, player knows it's not an important thing to think about] RPG Design Rule b: "If, in a scenario crisis, a player can't find problem-solving tools on their character sheet, they won't look elsewhere for them." [ie, When players are flummoxed, they look to their character sheets for inspiration. And they won't be inspired to use any tool they don't find there.]" That sounds like the 'design philosophy' behind Pathfinder.

To me a lot of the changes in 7e would better have suited Pulp Cthulhu (or... Whatgamersthinkispulp Cthulhu). Overall they feel like a shift toward more action-oriented games ('cinematic' was the popular term a few weeks back).

Good to see someone speaking up about a great game that didn't get much of a push from its company.

I saw a post the other day about using Snakes & Ladders to run chases in RPGs... if you're looking for 'fun mechanics'. http://tenfootpolemic.blogspot.com/2015/04/snakes-and-ladders-natures-pursuit.html

So it assumes CoC 7 as its base?

So wait, is it ORE-based or BRP-based? Or some third sort of thing?

I'm guessing it doesn't... that it's a mash-up setting. Kinda like some of the old Superworld adventures that had mythos creatures in them. I'm generally against the impulse to turn CoC into an action-adventure game... but adding horror elements to a low-powered superhero game, I'm all for that.

Oh... OK, that was my original assumption... that what's up for sale at the moment is the original, not the re-worked version. I think I'll hold off then, if the rules are going to be the same and it's just graphical improvements.

Oh! I hadn't even heard of that being a thing... excellent!