Tywyll

Speaking along the horror lines, I'd personally not mind a supernatural/horror/urban fantasy style game involving playable vampires, werewolves etc. I think that NWoD has moved too far away from where most modern media have taken the vampire mythos. Anne Rice stuff was great, in her day, and I love characters with tragedy and pathos... but the more modern depiction of vampires in media are in things like Blade and Underworld, or TV shows like Moonlight and Blood Ties and Angel are essentially ACTION shows. NWoD has done everything it can to kill the 'vampires are cool' which was part of the great attraction of Masquerade. I don't know how viable that market is, but I do know that WW lost a /huge/ amount of customers with the shift. I suppose the question would be creating something unique enough to stand on its own.

Personally? I think it looks great. I look forward to taking it for a spin. :thumb:

Thanks for the info. Actually, that was the address I tried already (its the one given on the site). I guess I'll wait till he's back home.

This is probably a strange place to ask, but... Does anyone know how to get in touch with Rick Meints? I'm really interested in buying the Cult Compendium reprint book, but I've tried the email on the website (Empire of the Wyrm Friends) and not heard anything back for some time. Any suggestions?

I totally agree! I personally think its simply an artifact from RQ1&2 being written in an era where all new PC's were supposed to be absolute crap at start. Lacking situational modifiers didn't help at all. That was something good that Rolemaster brought to the table with their skill system, and percentile games in general.

Hey Nick, Do you mean the 'anti-parry' rules that RL got, or were there other abilities detailed somewhere else? If so, where were those rules detailed? Cheers!

Honestly, I'm far more interested in generic material to a static world. I think the anime idea is great, a book about running different kinds of Anime would appeal to many more gamers than one about a specific kind of anime, which would then mostly appeal to specific fans of that show. Some of my favorite gaming books have been the generic Hero supplements (specifically Ninja Hero and Ultimate Martial Artist, with Fantasy Hero a close second). Yes, specific settings can be great, but they are very dicey in my opinion and frankly I wouldn't pick up a specific setting unless there were mechanics in it I could yank for my own setting/campaign.

Ok, so I've been kicking this idea around for a bit, and at first I was going to discard it, but then I came back to it. I'm thinking I can make it work for my world setting. First off, I'm using the variant idea of college magic (single skill for all the spells in a group) as that fits the feel of 'Sorcery' in my home brew. Here is what I've come up with so far- INNATE MAGIC Innate Magic, otherwise known as Sorcery, is a potent magic that derives from the power of a being’s nature. Otherworldy beings, or those with such beings in their ancestry, can manipulate Mana on a subconscious level, their body acting as a filter, tuning the mana into a specific kind or effect. New Skill: Sorcery <type>(0%)-characters choose from a specific kind of Sorcery, based around their mystical ancestry. Typically this would represent their nature, so an Iron Blooded Tryshallan would possess ‘Green Sorcery’, while a Kharic-Dun probably wields ‘Earth Sorcery’ (though don’t call it magic to his face). Sorcery is an exceptionally difficult skill to learn and master. At character creation it can be no higher than 40/50/75/90 (depending on the power level of the game). Each percentile in Sorcery costs 2 skill points. A Sorcerer can potentially attempt any spell within their field of magic. Each spell they attempt is rolled against their Sorcery skill, with a -5% penalty for every prerequisite spell that it would normally require (per Gurps list). Spells cost a number of MP equal to the normal fatigue cost . Effects cost an additional 1 MP for every 2 full prerequisite spells they possess that the caster lacks skill in. Each spell the character has currently operating is an additional -5% to their casting skill. For example-Elith the Green Sorcerer wants to cast walk through Plants. He has no spell skills, just Sorcery at 40%. Walk through Plants has 6 Prerequisite spells, meaning it will be cast a -30% and cost an additional 3 MP. Even using Ceremony, he can only raise his chance to double, or 20%. Good luck! If he knew Hide Path and Heal Plant, that would reduce his penalty by 10% to a -20%. Using Ceremony he could then increase his 20% to a 40%. A bit better of a chance. Sorcery cannot be improved with experience, and it takes twice the normal time of study or training to increase (so a character with a 30% in Sorcery would have to spend 60 hours in training before they would see a potential benefit). Sorcerers can choose to learn spells. Learning a spell takes 50 hours of research/contemplation x the number of prerequisite spells (so the Walk through Plants spell would require 300 hours of research). If trained by someone or something that knows the spell, this study time can be reduced by ½. Alternatively, a Sorcerer could manifest a spell spontaneously, though this is costly (in Hero Points-it costs one HP per Prerequisite spell). Once a character has learned the spell through whatever means, it begins at a level equal to their chance of casting the spell (i.e. their Sorcery skill -5% per prerequisite spell, Elith could learn Walk through Plants at a base 10% chance, or 20% if he knew the other two prerequisite spells). The advantages of spending the effort to master the effect are that Spells can be improved with experience, training time on spells is normal, and the cost in MP is reduced to whatever it would normally be. If a Sorcerer’s Sorcery skill improves after developing a spell, it has no effect on the spell. Starting Sorcerers can buy spells at a 1 for 1 in skill points, based off their final Sorcery Skill. Other Casting Modifiers: Gestures with only one hand: -10 percentiles no hand gestures at all: -20 percentiles Softly spoken incantations: -10 percentiles no incantation: -20 percentiles When a Sorcerer’s skill reaches 75%, all costs to cast and maintain effects are reduced by 1. At 100%, and every 25% additional skill, they are reduced again. This can reduce the cost of a spell, or its maintenance, to 0. Remember, however, that there is a progressive penalty for every spell you maintain. Skill Effects- Fumble: The caster loses their next action and all the MP the effect would have cost. Failure: The caster loses a single MP. Success: The spell takes effect as normal, and the caster spends the normal amount of MP. Special: The spell takes effect. Temporal spells have their base duration changed to multiplied by 5. The spell costs ½ MP. Critical: The spell takes effect at a cost of 1 MP. Temporal spells have their base duration multiplied by 10.

Yeah, I'm referencing the new BRP Magic system. A character with Blast does 1d6 damage per MP (no hit locations). A character with fire/cold does 1d6 over an area, and each MP either increases that by d6 or increases the area. I won't be playing with Hit locations, personally, so the BRP method (as well as the possible Gurps conversion) works just fine with the slightly higher damage.

Which still leaves the problems of figuring out how a new character 'buys' spells with his starting points.

Yes, I've been struggling with that actually. I disagree. 1 Fat in Gurps = 1d6 damage or 1 pt of armor. This is the same as it is now in BRP, at least in the Wizardry system. They are pretty much dead on equal.

I'm not certain how those abilities will help create balanced PC style effects. Maybe I'm just being slow? Ah, not exactly the easiest thing to get one's hands on. And don't thos emechanics still tie back to the cults, with little connection between the person learning the ability and their actual skill?

which supplement detailed those rules?

I'll be using those as well.

That's cool, and I'd have similar 'magical' abilities for great heroes to find/develop in my campaign, though since I don't run Glorantha, they would have nothing to do with 'Heroquesting'. But what I'm looking for are abilities that transcend simply the mundane pass/fail that skills currently represent, and allow for a non-caster, non-religious characters to excel.

I don't really think that Chaos Features = 'Feats'. Growing Wings :eek: is a bit different from learning to better disarm a foe. Gifts and Geases works if you have the rules for them, which I don't believe I do. What book are they in? The other flaw with that is that they are tied to religions and if you are playing in a world where god's are not so omni-present, or in which a warrior can master greater abilities without divine influence (say a martial arts heavy campaign) that simply isn't going to work.

I'm not sure why the chart has to follow the same progression forever. Having one progression at the bottom for differentiating PCs, then having it increase in spread as it goes up, seems to make more sense to me.

Has anyone ever come up with a system for 'Bardic' style magic? Involving music and possibly instruments for spell casting?

I think that is where I am... which is to say I've always assumed a 'glancing blow' is one that doesn't actually do damage (since the pool of 'life force' i.e. HP is so small, even 2 or 3 damage can be a full 5th or quarter of someone's HP... not really a glance, I'd say). So yeah, if someone successfully dodged, I might describe that as them pulling aside at the last second and only getting 'nicked' by the sword they were avoiding.

Ok, before I go and reinvent the wheel, has anyone converted Legendary Abilities from MRQ to BRP/RQ2-3? I know a lot of people don't like them, and I don't like all of them, but some I do and I was thinking of trying to bring their mechanics inline with BRP for my own game. But, if someone's already done that, I'd love to see what they came up with. Cheers!

Of course, but to say someone else's discussion has 'little practical value', comes across as saying, "I'm bored of talking/have nothing left to say about this, so this conversation should end now."

Perhaps not to you, but to others it does. I'm interested in hearing other people's ideas on the subject, as well as their personal experiences, either with the random damage bonus or with a flat one.

Yeah, that's another problem with converting the levels straight to level by 5%, or a -1 being simply a -5%, since those modifiers and skill levels are on a bell curve, and a flat -1 can quite easily equate to a heck of a lot more than 5%! But, from a play perspective, it would probably be the easiest modifier to apply.

Definitely agree with that. Sounds reasonable. I think that if the duration is staying to a minute (on average) especially if you allow other magic systems in the same game, you'd have to allow high skills to eventually drop the cost to 0, as you can in Gurps. There are still penalties for casting spells while maintaining others (-1 per spell you have active, so I'd guess that would be a -5%), I think there is still a self correcting element to it.

Actually, it's a bit wonky since technically skills that are a 0% are just that, and you have to buy them from there. Spells would, assumedly, start at 0 unless you bought them, at which they become 30% or whatever the new base is. You could perhaps do something like the MRQ version, wherein you spend 10 skill points at which you gain the skill at INT+POW, and VHard Spells at (Int+Pow)/2. Then add Magery perhaps? At what point would you become immune to those penalties though? As I understand it, you simply can't cast those spells without doing those gestures and rituals, until a certain level of skill at which point you lose those requirements, but you aren't able to cast without the rituals. Or would you simply use the limitations instead? Lower casting cost? The spells cost seems about the same between the two systems. Sometimes mush more (Protection costing 2xpt of protection and only lasting a minute!). That doesn't seem particularly fair to the casters, unless you are keeping the rules that at a certain level of skill you can reduce the maintenance cost of a spell (15 or higher in gurps reduces the maintenance by 1 per round, allowing many protective spells to be maintained for free, ). When would that kick in? 75% for -1(15)? 100% for -2(20)? 125% for -3(25)?