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Dredj

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Posts posted by Dredj

  1. Just a reminder, which has nothing to do with the previous reply but which get on my nerves when I'm watching a sci-fi movie: there is no noise in the intersideral vacuum. Nothing to hear when a vessel explodes (not talking about "pew pews"). I've however never seen a sci-fi movie allowing something exploding silently in the space...X(

    I know, there are much more important things to care about, but stil, I find it quite irritating...:7

    That's because movie effects people don't think a scene will "sell" if there's no sound to go with the action.

  2. The page count of CoC is getting out of hand (or maybe not):

    There are two ways they can go. Either they make another "edition" to the game that is almost identical to the previous with a new cover (and sixty or seventy extra pages), or they can try to integrate it with the BRPBGB and only use the page count as more of a Cthulhu Sourcebook. Neither of these options are all that attractive, but at least with the latter option, you can have page count dedicated to modular systems like the one you suggest to tack on to the core engine. The problem with that approach is (at least) twofold. First, CoC is the flagship. It is why Chaosium is still in business, and is most of the reason BRP/d100/WTF you want to call it survived the 90s. CoC needs to be its own game to drag people in through name recognition. Second (and the reason I have never understood), is that people don't want to essentially pay twice for a game system. 60USD to play an rpg _forever_ seems like a lot of money to people who will drop the same amount of money on a videogame (the vast majority of which have limited replayability), dvds/movie theater visits, concerts/sporting events, alcohol etc.

    So we are left with a book with a huge page count. And now that I am this far in my response, I realize that most people nowadays don't mind a huge page count. Pathfinder, which is arguably the most popular game system currently, clocks in at like 500 pages for the core rules. _And very few people only use the core rules_.

    It just seems to me (without a shred of even anecdotal evidence to back me up) that they should shoot for something smaller and easier to pick up and play. I think that the page count bloat we see now is targeted more at people who are already gamers, and that this is another symptom of the inevitable decline of the pastime.

    In that case, sign me up for a BIG ASS version with a ton of extra stuff like you're asking for, plus why not throw in Pulp CoC as an appendix? I may actually shell out cash for a CoC product if that happened.

    I've used something similar since the mid 90s in my games. People were getting angry at being nickel and dimed out of small amounts of SAN at every turn and I threw in what's called a Composure roll. Composure equals CON+POW/4 and checks are made on a d10. Anything that isn't putting the fear of God(s) into the PC just forces a Comp roll. A critical success gives them a little bonus for a while, a success means they shrug it off, a fail has mostly minor effects, and a fumble means the potential for something really bad, and a lot of times generates a SAN roll. I only have them roll for SAN when it is a big deal, and since there is the Comp cushion giving a kid glove feel to the lesser events, SAN rolls are usually at a penalty and you don't want to have to throw the dice for them.

    I like the suggestion above. I might use it.

    I think the notion of SAN points is a little silly. You are either insane or you are not. Sure, a person can lose SAN over time, but people usually get over the initial shock and get used to the bizarre things that shook them up to begin with. I know that CoC has rules for that as well. People with more SAN get over shocks faster and better. I was trying to come up with something that emulates that.

    I was thinking of something like SANx4 or x5 (typical SAN check) and just going by levels, sort of like what you're doing. However, I downloaded the GORE sanity rules from this site, and I think I will look them over again. If you are going to use SAN points, then the difference in dice rolled might be a great way to do things. You could adjust the level from cinematic to gritty depending on what the PC's SAN level is.

  3. This is the blog post, by Rik the Author, in question

    http://thecompany.d101games.co.uk/2011/03/22/the-great-big-list-of-guns-debate/

    Very early on in the Company's development me and Rik had a big discussion about Guns and how to present them. Did we simply go for a very basic list of weapons - eg 9mm Pistol, .44 Revolver, 9mm SMG, Pump action shotgun, Double barreled shotgun etc. You know "a gun is a gun, I'm here for the action movie". We decided however to do the 'big list of guns'. We knew the games audience would want to say, "My character is using a Colt defender, what's the damage for that". So instead of guns grouped by damage dice, we've got tables grouped by weapon type that are reasonably complete (because I know the gun nuts amoungst you will find omissions). And Rik did do a lot of research....a damned lot of research :)

    Cool! Makes more sense than my suggestion. I was expecting something like the regular rpgs that group them merely as firearms, melee weapons, etc. While that's fine, it's just easier to pick out the badass weapons for the badass protagonists/antagonists if the weapons are grouped by specific categories

    I can't wait for this product's release.

  4. I just read your blog and you mentioned what a pain the big list of guns debate was and got a somewhat-related idea. How about classifying the guns by the die type you'd use for their damage (and any modifiers)? Such as: d10 damage [list of guns and ammo plus modifiers for each gun and ammo to the die roll]; d12 damage [list of guns and ammo plus modifiers for each gun and ammo to the die roll]; etc. Hopefully this is a worthwhile. At least it would serve as a rather easy to reference comparison chart (so I think). I realize there's a ridiculous amount of research to making any such list as realistic as possible.

  5. The big questions are - what do you gain? And for how much work? And what do you lose?

    For me, if you put humans (and equivalent species) in a 30 - 70 range, how do you account for beings that go well beyond? Using a 1 - 20 range, super strong creatures (giants or giant sized, which can exist in a Sci-Fi campaign) can have STR of 50 or greater. Bumping up to a range of 100 representing extremely strong humans, those creatures now have a STR in the 200 - 300 range to represent something 5x as strong. I can see stat values getting out of hand very quickly. Especially if you tried to use such a scale in the fantasy genre where things already may have stats in the 100+ range, and to maintain the proper ratios, using the new scale, would be in the 500 range.

    .

    Using percentiles for everything might help keep things more down to earth, regardless of whatever weirdness is actually in the game, in some people's minds. It means that PCs have a chance against the zombie, vampire, serial killer, mutant space alien, etc. without it being too powerful. Which is great for most survival horror scenarios. However, It's just as easy to keep the stats for everything no greater than 18 or 20, as well, so you're right in that there is no benefit.

    One possible benefit, as in the Outbreak Undead system, is that everything is estimated from one roll. In OU, the degrees of success (every ten points below your chance to hit) tells you how much damage you do. Such as 5d6 for five levels of success. It also tells you how good you did at a task. Thus the better/lower you roll, the more success you have.

    Admittedly, the benefits are more psychological than anything. I was a degree of success person for a very long time. But I finally realized that there are things easily done in BRP style D100 systems that are difficult for other systems.

  6. Thank you for your reply, Rust. I was leaning more towards GORE for my game as they give damage type by caliber of ammunition instead of just the gun used. Plus, it's free, so I can download it to any computer and print it out, if anything happens to the original print outs.

    I am thinking of doing yet another survival horror campaign. And I think I might put some cyberpunk in it as well. Perhaps I'll use the Eclipse Phase setting for some Dead Space-like action. And maybe I'll just use OpenQuest rules, anyway. Assuming that OpenQuest rules doesn't make damage less brutal/gritty. Btw, does OpenQuest have charts/stats for modern weaponry? I understand it's a fantasy rpg system as of right now.

  7. I was wondering about the deadliness of GORE compared to BRP? There are noticable differences in damage bonuses, as BRP just uses multiples of D6, while GORE uses D6, D8, D10, etc. And the damage some weapons do is different, such as 9mm guns do D10 damage in GORE as opposed to D8 in BRP. Has anyone played both and noticed a difference, or none, in the deadliness of either toward PCs?

  8. In my opinion, piloting a small, nimble spaceship, perhaps a fighter, INT + DEX, piloting a very large, unwieldy spacecraft, perhaps a freighter or liner, INT x 2.

    [EDIT]Oops, you are asking about the skills used in the supplement.[/EDIT]

    Yeah, I was asking about the skills in the supplement, but I'm interested in how others would go about it to make it "realistic". Piloting a spacecraft would be much different than piloting a terrestrial craft. I was also thinking about (INT)2+DEX divided by 2 or 3. While DEX would be important, INT would be moreso.

  9. Try this, it's free: http://perilplanet.com/docs/FUrpg.pdf I suggest this one the most.

    And I just got this and it looks like it might work too, if tweaked. And one of the two main rules: "style over substance" tends to portray politics reasonably well. It's also free. https://www.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=91382

    These are not D100 games. They are geared towards accounting for the resources the PCs have, and use D6 pools.

    Also the Renaissance SRD has a "righteousness" table that can be used as well. http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=97426

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