Simlasa

I like the idea of the 'familial organisations'... that lends itself to suggesting a lot of legends/stories involving hereditary rot... such as with Lovecraft's Whatelys, Waites, and Martenses. Either with forbidden knowledge passed down through the ages or with the lineage cursed by some ancestor who struck up a pact with an infernal being of some sort... gaining power and a curse... even to the point of the family no longer being completely human.

I wouldn't think they'd be 'hiding' so much as using witchcraft to further the church's cause... fighting fire with fire... sleeping with the enemy... etc. Kind of like the witch hunter character in Warlock... who isn't a witch himself but uses hex signs and various magical techniques/knowledge to combat the warlock who would otherwise be far to powerful for him. Kind of a counter-witchcraft witchcraft. Some write up of a background for such characters... some secret organization barely condoned by the church... or parallel to the church... its member's constantly teetering on the edge of heresy... could be interesting even if it's not historically accurate. Barring that maybe some set up of several covens and their allegiances with/against each other... with some being secretly in league with some mainstream religious organizations.

Ok, cool... can't complain about that.

so... just curious... who won the wrestling match... hero or demon?

I'd be wanting information for playing those old fairy tale witches... the solitary ones who live in stumps and talk to dead things... the Macbeth witches... Baba Yaga and her walking hut... the ones who put children in cages to fatten them up. Wicked and dangerous but not necessarily evil... I picture them having a fairly loose organization... and loose guidelines/hierarchies. Each one a fairly unique character... rather than 'all members of X have Y powers and Z interests' (... meaning NOT like the vampire traditions in the White Wolf games). I guess I'd want write-ups of notable members... past and present... not necessarily the coven leaders but the other witches who might be met in the course of the game because they had specific talents or lived in interesting places... each NPC being something of a plot hook unto themselves. What I'm really not interested in is some New Age/neo-pagan take on the subject that attempts to be 'historically accurate' or 'politically correct'... I want the stereotypes and legends... warts and crooked noses and broomsticks and flying kettles and houses with chicken legs and cannibalism and kissing Beelzebub's backside.

Cool... It sounds like a more serious take on Deadlands territory... that sounds good to me. More 'spaghetti western with voodoo and native curses' than 'Wild Wild West with Manitou and cthonians'. I'm currently in a biweekly Deadlands game and something about the rules just seems to support a default to wacky humor (then again, maybe it's just the varmints I'm playing with...).

I'm not all that up on Voltron or other classic Mecha... short of really liking the look... but I'm wondering if maybe the 'finishing move' tradition could be explained by the opponents having armor/energy sheilds/psychic auras that require a different mode of attack to bring them down... before the killing damage of the uber-weapon can be implemented? IIRC a lot of times Ultra Man would fight fairly impotently until some point when suddenly anything he did would begin to rip off limbs and slice up the bad guy. This might be back to my personal PSB explanation that the monsters aren't purely physical manifestations.

I was just reading over the description of this setting again... I hadn't noticed the potential Scooby Doo angle. Is there some in-game reason for the members of the organization to be kids? Would there be any big difference if someone wanted to play crusty old folks instead?

I've never played under the old Runequest rules so I wasn't absolutely sure whether skill increases might have actually worked along those lines at one time... I've read people making similar comments before though... so it seems like it's not an isolated misconception. I did try to dissuade him... but didn't have the BRP book at hand. ... I'm really hoping that the new Interplanetary book has some eyp-popping/evocative cover art... it might be worth a try to just take it to a game with me and leave it out as bait.

To be fair... I suspect he was being purposely obtuse... and even then I thought that the idea of an assassin who spoke French to his targets before killing them was kind of interesting... ala Pulp Fiction's Bible quoting assassin. His point was that the XP system would encourage players to do odd things like that... which isn't really what I've seen happen in play.

I don't think BRP lacks ANY cool mechanics... It's just this group I'm playing with, they seem to like rolling LOTS of dice and redundancy... and mostly the GM of the alternating Earthdawn game we play... He went on at one point about how much he disliked Runequests XP... how it encouraged everyone to use all their skills in an attempt to raise them (he used an example of an assassin trying to practice his French on a victim he's about to garrote...). Meanwhile his homebrew version of Earthdawn's rules makes me kind of nuts... they seems complex for the sake of complexity... and I can tell he's a bit miffed because I'm still unclear on them. I suspect it's really D&D 4e with alterations (he's a very active WOW player as well). Luckily I get my BRP fix with my intermittent Cthulhu group. Yay!... and congratulations!

Yeah... and you can scoot BRP towards heroic/cinematic with various tweaks... I was just referring to what seem to be the default assumptions... design goals... whatever. I'm in a bi-weekly Deadlands game these days and it's quite enjoyable... but the rules definitely push a more 'gonzo' style of play than I usually go for. As usual though, in the end the most important factor is who you are playing with... (and I don't stand a chance of EVER getting these guys to play BRP... it just doesn't have enough 'cool' game mechanics for their tastes).

I guess I don't see this sort of thing as 'spectacular'... or heroic... just trying to make a less specific/accurate attack into a more specific/accurate one... where taking time to aim won't really help because of the chaotic motion. It seems like a matter-of-fact sort of Film Noir thing to do... and harder than just aiming into the fight and shooting. So two actions seems appropriate to me

I think a big part of why Savage Worlds is such a popular generic system is because its default play style is more cinematic... it's heroic and is probably a better fit for what a lot of people are looking for when they move on from their 'entry' games of AD&D... That compared to GURPS and BRP which both default to a more deadly style of game where the PCs aren't necessarily action-movie heroes. I prefer the grittier street-level stuff... but I can see by a LOT of the rpg.net threads that mine is more of a 'niche' taste compared to the majority of players who wanna be 'The Awsome' in their games.

If I think of real-life fights I've seen... lots of rolling around, twirling, ducking... it would be tricky to get in close and accurately target one of the participants... unless I also entered the fray by attempting to grapple my target. Seems like getting that close I'd have a good chance of getting hit by an errant blow. So... yeah, it does seem like it's a combination of a melee type move... getting the gun in there... similar to stabbing the creature or punching it... then shooting it. Punch or stab for a pistol... spear/fencing/polearm for a rifle.

Oooo... I like that idea. I always toyed with the notion that the DaiKaiju and giant mecha were not purely physical manifestations... that they were as much psychic emanations... ectoplasm... ether... as they were mechanical/biological... kind of like the Wraithbone of the Eldar in Warhammer 40K.

Somehow I missed this thread the first time it came to town... Cool stuff! So... any ideas where Ultraman would fit in against these towering mechs? I'm thinking he's not entirely mechanical... but I'm not sure what the 'official' fluff has to say about that. I'm not even clear on what his powers are... just that he looks cool fighting off 60s era Kaiju. EDIT: of course Wikepedia has a nice breakdown of Ultraman's various powers and the equipment of the Science Patrol...

Which would lead to a sort of 'dependency' on the cursed weapon... 'precioussssssss'

Sorry for the confusion... the discussion just had me remembering something I'd read about a French RPG where the PCs played as the god-weapons... like Stormbringer and Mournblade. But for a moment I couldn't remember the name... A non-sequitur... off topic... thread digression...

What was that RPG where you actually played the sword? (not Stormbringer precisely but somesuch demon-in-weapon's-clothing). EDIT: I was thinking of Bloodlust http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodlust_(role-playing_game)

Since Dragonnewt did necromancy on this thread... Has anyone done anything more with BRP mechas? I was just looking at the sample one on pg. 276 of the BRP book... That seems to be along the Battletech lines of mecha... walking gun platform. I'm thinking that a fight between a couple of those would be like dueling artillery... a chase scene with tanks. Maybe with 'Heat' as an inverted form of Fatigue? Personally I'm kind of curious how to do the wackier (sillier)... more fantastical... Kaiju level stuff... like Mazinger, Grandizer, Ultraman. I'm guessing that when it comes to fighting such things against each other it crosses over into a different level... like battles between spaceships... and there's no real point in stating them out for interactions with regular PCs. But maybe for superhero PCs...

First thing that pops to mind for me... though it's not specifically European... is GURPS Steampunk and GURPS Castle Falkenstein.

That's so cool! Gosh I'd have loved to have played in one of his games... I'm sure I wouldn't be disappointed.

Actually it was a comment by Shaira about geomorphology in another thread that got me started on feeling inadequate... Thanks for the links!

Coolness! MORE good news!