Simlasa

I've seen lots of people say this and I still think it's a load of crap. Soldiers come home all the time mentally unhinged because of what they've experienced at war. They see things that are completely outside of normal experience and I really doubt watching several hours of war movies before setting out would have spared them. Seeing a rubber/cgi monster on some SciFi Channel crapfest is NOT going to put your mind at ease when you come across a deep one rooting through your garbage at 3am. Maybe you won't go insane... but it will sure as hell shake you up. Lovecraft's style isn't to everyone's taste, no... but then neither is Henry James or Stephen King or JK Rowling or James Joyce. I was talking to a high school kid the other day who was complaining how 'To Kill A Mockingbird' is complete garbage... So by those loose guidelines it's ALL bad in somebody's opinion. Whatever, there's a reason Lovecraft keeps getting republished... and people keep imitating him. I kinda doubt there's gonna be a lot of JK Rowling stuff on the shelves 80 years from now.

I'm thinking of the recent film 'No Country For Old Men'... not a story with 'heroes', not a story that unfolds according to a 'heroic' scheme... mostly because of the focus. A few of the 'protagonists' die in that in ways that would seem to throw the story off kilter... but doesn't... unless you are locked into it being a certain sort of story... traditional, heroic... something. Well, I've never played in a game that had people being fed into a wood chipper one after another... the presence of real and present danger usually serves to make them act cautiously... which tends to reduce the likelihood of them dying in droves. Of course, but in the sense of it being 'literature' the GM doesn't (usually) try to guide the PCs along a carefully crafted dramatic storyline he/she has worked out... instead the story unfolds according to the actions/choices of the characters... both success and failure. Some games, like COC, might require more upfront structure... to carry off that onion-skin of mystery... but from what I've seen/played... there is usually more than one solution and any particular failure may be a setback but nothing than can 'ruin' the game. Especially with horror games... a total party kill and triumph of evil might very well be the correct outcome to capture the spirit of the genre. That's generally how I like to play, but I think a LOT of people play them in more of a 'win or lose' sort of way... more like a wargame... or a video game. Even COC... much as I love it, is often less about character development and more about stopping the cultists... a definite win or lose situation. But like I said... a story is going to come out of it, one way or another... failure is just as much a story as success is. A new character can always be started with extra points/abilities if balance is really that big of a concern. Total agreement there... though if the guy has obviously been stupid up to that point I'd have to question why they continued to be around him... standing next to 'stupid' could be seen as a stupid action unto itself. There are lots of real life consequences to hanging out with stupid, violent people. I'd agree... but 'narrative' of an RPG sort... not necessarily literature or film or video game... if I want to have great dramatic story with tight plotting and well defined characters I'll read a book... watch a film. If I want lots of cool action I'll play a video game... An RPG should be able to exist as it's own form... without trying to reign in the conventions of some other medium. (I realize that's not what you were saying, I'm must babbling) Really, I'm just trying to say that games that allow for character death, even absurd character death... are not better or worse than the purely cinematic kind where the hero is defined from the first and is obviously going to come to no real harm. It's a matter of taste. BRP allows for both sorts, and all shades in between... and I'm happy about that. If I wanna play a Lensman game I can... if I want to play something nihilistic and deadly... I can do that too.

If you WANT them to... otherwise no, they don't. Not everyone plays RPGs to tell a 'story'... a lot of people play them for the immersive experience of being in a different place or time... sure, there's still a story to tell when you look back on it, but it's being written as it moves along without the overarching authorial care that goes into a written novel. The hero, if there is one, might not be apparent until the end of the tale. This whole idea of a roleplaying campaign telling some grand story with epic heros and memorable characterization is just one approach to it. It's not inherent to the game, it's a matter of taste. That being said I've played in games that did all those things and had loads of fun... but to say a game group is in any way 'less' if it doesn't aim to carry that off... meh, I don't agree.

I don't know... we always played games with 'campaigns'... I don't remember ever playing a series of sessions of unconnected dungeon-bashing (that came much later... more as a wargame than an RPG)... and we always had character deaths (though usually with some hope for resurrection... maybe). Probably a lot of my preferences and memories are owed to the great GM we had back in the day. He always made is game world seem so full of possibility for exporation and adventure. None of use were 'master thespians' though and I don't recall much emphasis on character development... it happened, but most of us just started off with some stereotype and kept playing it that way.

That reminds me of a description I saw somewhere of the way one group uses fate points... to represent an exceptional effort... 'I know this is really important so I'm gonna put my all into it'. Spending the point before hand to influence, but not insure, the roll about to be made. Kind of like betting... making that final exertion at the end of the race. Using them that way appeals to me somewhat... for some sorts of games (Raymond Chandler is only borderline noir for me... my idea of 'Film Noir' is much more along the lines of 'Blast Of Silence' or 'Out Of The Past'... and not much of anybody lived through those.).

I don't see the anime thing as anymore than one section of the gaming market. None of the games I've read recently seemed to have much anime influence... but then anime is a pretty wide open field. Most of what we play is really open ended... there has been meta-plot stuff that has shown up... back ground events the PCs might get swept up in for a while that will most likely resolve regardless of their actions... but not much of that. I don't think there are any big changes there that I can see. As for character death... I think there has been more emphasis on games as 'stories'... narrative... consensual realities... whatever. Seems mostly to be hokum for the loftier reaches of RPG.net... and not much on the mind of the kids playing D20 down at the game club. Even when I was in high school there were RPG groups I knew of that were all about magic and power and leveling... where no PCs died... or if they died they didn't stay dead for long. That was probably more about adolescent power fantasies... rather than narrative splendor. I think there has been more emphasis lately on mechanics recreating genre... stuff like Spirit Of The Century, though not my cup of cocoa, seems pretty popular, and seems less lethal by design. My friends were more of the sort that wanted a believable world, with believable consequences... we avoided violence as much as possible because it would get us killed. We didn't have any concerns about the PCs being the 'protagonists' and needing to succeed for the sake of the story... Since then I've gravitated towards those same sorts of groups... I don't care for cinematic games... I like knowing my character can die... even for ridiculous, meaningless reasons (though none of my characters have ever been killed by a car as they walked out of their house!). I'm fine with that... but I know a lot of people aren't, and never have been. I don't see newer games going all that much one way or the other, rather they seem to go 'every which way'... BRP is certainly on the sharper end of the deadly-stick... it's got 'fate points' as an option, but I for one am glad they are 'only' an option.

I dunno... it's all tied up in how I imagine it... I see a 'miss' as that swing/attack that never would have connected, part of the dance and shuffle of combat... but I see the 'hit' as a successful swing/attack... that remains successful if parried... just that it got blocked. It otherwise would have connected and done damage... you saw it was coming and knew you had to do something to stop it. It doesn't 'feel' like a reversal of the success of the attack. Fate points... at least the way I've seen them used... seem to turn that 'hit' into a 'miss' for no in game reason at all. I don't like that reversal. If he were to spend from the 'luck pool' to boost his chance of a successful parry... I'd be fine with that idea. It's a personal gripe... a fine line... I don't claim to be logical. I wouldn't ordinarily spring a death trap like that on a PC without some chance to spot the sniper or otherwise suspect and make some sort of 'spot hidden' roll... which, accordingly, the 'luck pool' could be used to boost. I'm mostly thinking of the big dramatic moments, when you go up against the arch-villain you've been tracking for a whole campaign... you KNOW you don't want to fail at that point... for the good of the story and the other PCs. If it's the first day out and you get into some dumb fight with a street vendor and you fall on your sword... it's comic relief... that character was a red herring in the story... never meant to be the 'big cheese'... write him off and make up a new one. Kind of joking there... just kinda. Like I said, totally fine with that sort of thing... Pretty much okay with that sort of thing as well... though I think I'd want the 'economy' of such points to discourage relying on them too heavily... depending on the type of game we were in (more for James Bond, less for gritty fantasy, none for film noir). I think the main thing I wanna keep is the feeling of danger... If I've got a pool of points that I KNOW allows me to do any dumb thing, see what happens, then reverse the outcome... I lose that sense of risk. If I've got a pool of points that increase my chances of succeeding/surviving... but still with a leaves potential for disaster danger... then I still keep the feeling of risk.

How would you determine when something was 'significant'? That's one reason I've been resistant towards the idea of fate/hero points... specifically when they involved revisionist re-rolls. It's too 'meta game' feeling for my taste... to have something happen and then reverse it. I'm much more favorably inclined towards some sort of proactive 'luck pool' that can be used (and used up) prior to an important roll... 'I'm about to jump my sailboard off this cliff into the raging sea to escape the villainous hoodlums... I'll dump three luck points into that to help me pull it off' Kind of knowing a head of time what moves are bombastic and likely to fail, as well as which ones are of dramatic import and will look really dumb if you miss and trip over your sword. Tying it to Power somehow makes intuitive sense to me... I'd think that James Bond and Captain Blood were characters with high Power stats.

I agree, but for different reasons... Games that try to 're-enact' cinematic genres... Superhero comics... have the burden of trying to quantify and normalize a set of rules for something that inherently has no rules... the rules of those books/movies/comics has always been that the protaganist will have whatever power/resource/knowledge/skills he needs at the moment to make the plot progress how the author wants it too. The only reason any hero in those sources gets defeated is because he was meant to for dramatic purposes. Trying to mimic such stories, and still have the game be unpredictable/exciting can be a bit of a tall order and seems to often fall into just letting players live out their power-geek fantasies... basically being bullies.

I still dip into that well of ideas... Arduin has been just about the biggest influence on my gaming... in one way or another... since I first got those little books long long ago. We never used all or most of the books at any one time... never played by those particular rules... but the flavor of them, and the ideas... there was no way to keep those out of our games. If there was a way to do 'official' Arduin with BRP I'd jump right on it... Are those new books for it in the same vein as the originals? Do they keep that same wacky cosmic-sink sense of recombinant adventure? Or did someone sit down and try to lay it out so it all made 'sense'?

I was joking... mostly. But the 'Phantom Empire' idea is awfully intriguing...

'If bound correctly' being the problematic variable.

So we might as well dump zombies and werewolves and evil medicine men into it... to liven it up a bit!

Why do people prefer hardback for gaming books so often? It seems like a lot of the ones I've seen have fallen apart significantly faster than the softcover versions. If it were a good solid hardback, like a textbook quality, I'd go for it... but if it's anything like those old Games Workshop hardcovers... I'd avoid it like... like I avoided those old Games Workshop hardcovers...

The main draw of Planet Of The Apes, for me, is merely that the protaganists are not part of the dominant race/species... it could easily be Planet Of The Orcs or Planet Of The Kroot... anything where you are perpetually behind enemy lines. I'm not sure if most players would enjoy a game where they couldn't aspire to being top dog... because they'd always be having to keep a low profile to avoid the attention of the REAL masters.

Maybe something anime/manga... like a mix of Bubblegum Crisis/Appleseed/Ghost In The Shell... with bits of Zeiram and the Guyver and Nirasawa's Phantomcore tossed in. Mixed teams of human/mecha vs. insane supernatural superpowered shapechangers. Some crazy fantasy steampunk like Final Fantasy (mostly the mixing of airships and mecha with 'exotic fantasy'). The weird uber-ninja from Basilisk in a psuedo-Asian/Victorian setting with automatons, technomancers, homunculi, and airborne pre-dreadnought styled battleships. Mystical wardens sniffing out intrigues and clockwork menaces against a background of technomagical warfare.

Yeah, I'd take a hardcopy... with nice binding and evocative art... AND a PDF... all tricked out for easy cross-referencing (and without the artwork or other flourishes). For supplements I'd want the same but for scenarios I'd really prefer PDFs that I can quickly read through with maybe an outline page and a NPC page for printing.

Sounds like a good reason to carry a knife... Those historical notes are interesting... but I don't think they'd come up in a game all that much unless you chose to focus on them. I wasn't just referring to old West supplements though... That kind of detail about guns, or other weapons, starts to remind me of Phoenix Command and my eyes begin to glaze over with the thought of keeping track of it all. Mind you, I was into getting all the PC books, 'back in the day', and reading through them (even playing games a few times)... but nowadays the stuff I want to play just doesn't care about that level of 'realism' or 'historical accuracy' in regards to the weapons. I think Leading Edge tried to some of the same detail work with melee weapons in the Morningstar Missions book... and I don't really care enough any more to need a bunch of minute variations on swords either. Just a matter of taste though...

I'd rather have a good bestiary... or several... with viable ecosystems for the fantasy/SF critters... than a BIG BOOK O' GUNS... Interesting critters support/promote story (IMHO) a lot more than nitpicky descriptions of why one 9mm handgun differs from another.

Would multiple wounds add up to decrease competence though? More distraction, more limited movement, more blood loss leading to more dizzyness?

I'll have to run some test battles with this later today... it looks pretty straightforward and reasonable... though I think, in practice, it might slow things down just a tad, since I'm likely to use it in conjunction with HP and hit locations. I didn't notice anything regarding multiple wounds... If I were using just the chart, without HP, how would the wounds add up?

I like the ranges too. In my mind it's not just a measure of quality but of location and local economy... I like the idea of characters travelling to a 'boomtown' like Goldfield or Rhyolite and suddenly having to pay several times the price for the same stuff they bought back in 'the city'.

I think you can still buy SB5 from Chaosium's site... $29.95. I'm not sure why it's selling on Amazon for $42.50... What was Moorcock's big gripe with the game anyway? I mean, at one time he must have approved of it and made a contract... and written a favorable blurb for it. I read some online forums where the locals seemed to think buying or even playing the game was tantamount to taking a squat on Moorcock's head. Much as I've enjoyed his books (most of them) it's hardly high-art... didn't he write a lot of them in one sitting? He's got some great ideas but can also slip into hackery. I'm figuring that his main complaint is about money... that Chaosium wasn't supporting the game heavily enough to generate a lot of royalty checks or whatever... Elric is his laurel to rest on, surely, but I can't say as I'm too worried about 'dishonoring' his wishes... and I can't see the MRQ version succeeding where Chaosium's version 'failed'...

Interesting how the women-folk seem to always get kidnapped early in these storis and don't show up again until close to the end... leaving plenty of time for the male characters to hang out together shirtless and admire each others 'thews'... inevitably getting into wrestling matches and flexing contests.

yeah, the number of instant kills for guns (outside of assasination/execution type situations) oughtta be low... with an aftermath of having to deal with the non-deadly wounds that might turn deadly if not tended to. I'm cool with hit locations for helping that along... rather than blocking the blows with fate points.