Tywyll

1 minute ago, Jeff said:

Who says WF 14 hasn't been scanned?

Where can I get PDF versions then? 

15 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

There's one on Amazon for fifty bucks.

LOL! Yeah, no thanks. I don't understand why they have never been scanned. Just for historical preservation if nothing else.

17 hours ago, jajagappa said:

And Wyrms Footnotes #14 where it was first described.

Yeah, you know where I can see a copy of that?

14 minutes ago, metcalph said:

Prehealing.  Left out of the standard Dragon Magic rules and described in the RQ3 edition of Snakepipe Hollow.  

 

Dragon Magic is also described in the Sartar Companion and the RQG Bestiary.

Awesome! Yes, I would never have picked up my Snakepipe Hollow to look for that!

I mentioned RQG Bestiary. Sartar Companion? Is that a Heroquest thing?

So, beyond the Dragonnewt Dragon Magic presented in:
RQ3 Rulebook
RQG Bestiary
Mongoose Draconic Mysticism
Mongoose Dragonewt Book

Are there any other books with Dragon Magic detailed in them? I am looking for a spell I think I read that was Dragon Magic but can't find in any of the above sources. If I recall, it was something like you sacrificed POW and when suffering injury/death it would heal you.

Does that ring any bells?

On 3/29/2019 at 2:33 PM, Atgxtg said:

Certainly. There is nothing wrong with quality items in a Middle Earth settting,  In fact I remember working on crafting rules for my RQ Middle Earth adaptation years back.

 

But MERP didn't really have them. It was RM where they mentioned the idea of non-magical plusses.

They may not be in the rulebook, but they certainly were in the modules.

On 3/29/2019 at 2:33 PM, Atgxtg said:

Yes it is, compared to a typical FRPG like D&D. You have thoise items, pluys the elvish cloaks and ropes, adn the Paletirs showing up over a chrinocle covering 60 years or so. In D&D you'd see more magic in 6 adventures.

Argueably, every dwarven and elven item is enchanted. So, no I don't agree.

On 3/29/2019 at 2:33 PM, Atgxtg said:

Think about it. In a typical D&D campaign, when the PCs find their first treasure there are usually  one or two magic longswords in the pile. Typically not quite enough to outfight every PC who wields a longsword. But nobody is worried because there is a very good chance that they will all have them by second level. High level characters often have to keep a inventory of all their magical items, which are more than they can usually remember.

This probably came about for two reasons. First off the desire to capture the feel for LOTR. The problem is what works great for one of two epic stories can break down when it becomes a routine occurrence. The second reason was that back in D&D and AD&D magic items were really one of the best ways to differentiate one character from another of the same class. 

That assumes you consider it a problem.

On 3/29/2019 at 2:33 PM, Atgxtg said:

First that's much close to Excalibur/Caliburn ('cut-steel") than Strombringer. Tolkien drew of historical legends.

Yeah, he did, as did Moorcock. The sword was cursed to kill friends and was itself intelligent and spoke to its bearer. It is far closer to Stormbringer than Excalibur. 

On 3/29/2019 at 2:33 PM, Atgxtg said:

Secondly the who First Aid has a magical quality to it which is much dioffernt from the late thrid age/early fourth age that most campaigns are set in. The Noldo really used to churn out stuff, although just how long it took them to do it is another thing. 

Tolein makes it clear that the items are in fact magical versus some idea of them simply appearing magical to ignorant people. 

On 3/29/2019 at 2:33 PM, Atgxtg said:

I completely disagree. That doesn't happen in ME. Far from it. The Similarrion is all about caring too much for for magical items, as is the story of the one ring. Even Bilbo cares for his magic items, he just doesn't value them quite to the same extent as one might expect, but that's because he has no need for them in his normal life. He only gets into a handful of fights in the Hobbit and then never has need of his magic items again. 

Yeah, but that's one hobbit who never had access to or exposure to common every day magic. The elves, the Numenoreans, the Dunedin, they all have them as common place. The knives Mary and Pippin carry aren't ascribed any particular emotional significance, and they are clearly magic, so no, I completely disagree with you. As for the Similarrion, that's a whole order of magnitude beyond 'magic items'. No one gets caught up for caring too much for Orcrist. Artifacts =/= magic items. 

10 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

One of the things abort MERP is that while ICE did a fairly good and faithful job description Middle Earth and the peoples therein, they sort of overlaid it with a typical FRPG game system that doesn't fit the setting. You can see it in the character writeups, with all the characters having weapons and armor with magical bonuses and such.In Tolkien String is a rare and wondrous weapon, in the MERP/RM character writeups all the fellowship and other characters mentioned in the stories probably has a magical weapon, or at least one with a good bonus. 

While it might go overboard with actual magical items, I think items with bonuses is entirely fitting within Middle Earth. A great deal is made about craftsmanship and special weapons, and having 'elven blades/cloaks/etc'. It's clear these items are better than mundane so them having bonuses fits ME quite well I would say.

That said, is ME really that low on magic items? I mean, in the Hobbit, we see 3 magic weapons found in one encounter. Then we get the Ring (which originally wasn't special beyond being one of many magic rings in the world, until he retconned it). The Arkenstone is clearly magic, though maybe not in a FRP sort of way. Black Arrow seems to be magical. Then in LOTR, we get the Numenorean knives (and if the knives were that magical, who knows what the proper weapons would have been like), we get Aragorn's Sword (which arguably is merely symbolic buuuut Narsil was forged first by a famed dwarven smith and then reforged by the elves...if that isn't a pedigree for a magic weapon, I don't know what is.

Not to mention Stormbringer, er I mean Gurthang wielded by Truin, which literally talks and can cleave any armor.

In some ways, I think ME may be the setting that is most like RPGs when it comes to magic items, i.e. the characters get them and then, in most cases, they stop caring or treating them special! 

10 hours ago, svensson said:

Well, just like with RQ, we have multiple interpretations to work with. We have the core books and appendices as hard, fast Canon, we have the various interpretations from games, the LOTRO game etc. But for sake of this discussion we'll keep it to JRRT's work.

Several races craft magic items... Elves, Dwarves, the Dunedain and their successors are all capable of it. All three seem to be capable of ritual magics like divination and concealment /illusions.

As to the Necromancer, that was Sauron and he is of the same class and power as the Istari [Gandalf, Saruman, and company]. All of them are Maiar, lesser spirits present at Creation who are in service to greater spirits, the Valar. The Valar hold roles similar to gods and goddesses, while the great[est] being is Eru, the One, the source of the spark of creation. Eru is not worshiped much, at least not directly. Only the Numenoreans are mentioned in worshiping him by name and even then it was only the Crown who did so once a year.

But all this does not fit into the spell-slinging tropes of the classic DnD or RQ game.

Well, actually not entirely. Galadrial tore down the 'Walls of Dol Guldur' so I imagine that was some high level magic there, though it is debatable since its mentioned in passing and not described. 

5 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I think that was me. I've done a lot of conversion.

 

You have a few choices here. The simplest is to give spells a fixed duration. Next would be to tie the duration to something to take take the place of level. Skill % with the spell (or list) seems the most obvious analogue. Something like level = 1/10% skill might work. Or if you want to you could adapt the sorcery rules and it's duration spell. 

3

Skill/5%=caster level maybe? 

5 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

 

Something else that could be tied to spell%. Something like 1D(spell%/10, nearest die). So someone with a 40% skill does 1D4, someone with a 60% skill does 1D6 and so forth. You would probably want to cap it at some point, and/or bump certian types up spells up or down a step.

This makes the spells incredibly weak from a damage perspective. They'd need to cost little to no mp to make it worthwhile. 

5 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I'd suggest dumping the critical tables and go with RQs critical hit rules. 

But, I'd look at the Spell Law lists to try and work out Special Success bonuses for the various lists. You could catch on fire from fire spells, cold spells might affect your DEX SR and move, and so on.

 

I'm not talking about using the crit tables. There is a class of spells that bypass inflicting damage and simply 'Save or Suffer a C Impact Critical' or 'Enchant a weapon to inflict a bonus B Flame Critical' whatever. That's what I'm looking for ideas on how to convert. 

5 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Yeah, that was my suggestion and I think it probably holds up well. Characters in RM have a lot more hits than characters in RQ, and a lot of RM healing comes in lots of d10s. 

You've got several possibilities. 

For AT (Armor Type): Bonuses I suggest adapting it as the Protection Spell or even Damage Resistance. The reason why ius in RM AT does reduce the max damage one can take from an attack. 

2

Should it map to 2 AT=1 point of BRP protection? So AT20 (the max) in RM equals 10 points of Protection in BRP (which would be about right, as Iron Plate in RQ). 

5 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

For Defense Bonus it depends. If the spell just increases someone's DB then  I'd convert that as the Shimmer spell. 1 point of shimmer per 5% DB. Or, if you want bring back Defence from RQ2 you could have it add to Defense. If it is a DB bonus to a weapon or shield I'd consider adapting it as extra armor or as a bonus to parry instead. 

2

Sounds good. 

5 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Depends on what you want. If you want RM spell lists then you could group the spells into lists as in RM and have the more powerful spells become available when skill reaches a certain threshold. 

 

That's probably what I'd do. If you are going to capture the feel of the lists, you'd want to keep them as lists!

17 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

What aspect of Spell LIsts are you trying to adapt?

Someone had referenced converting them and I really liked the idea, but there are several questions it raises. Because MERP/RM is % based, a lot of the things work fine, but things that don't include:
1) Level based duration/effect
2) Damage from attack spells
3) Damage from Crit inflicting spells (or break bone style spells)
4) Healing (though that's probably just 1die=1point)
5) Armor Class/Defence Bonus boosts. 
6) Learning Spells/Spell Lists 

On 3/21/2019 at 2:18 PM, Baron said:

No, all three that I mentioned have magic that's based on BRP, but tweaked. None of them do the RM Spell Lists by magic "type."

Ah, bummer. Thanks though!

4 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I'm not debating or anything, just trying to figure out how to keep the bookkeeping from becoming overwhelming, and the GM having to view every single action in terms of what every single god is going to think about it. Plus you have to figure that they miss a lot of the minor stuff. There must be people out there more interesting to watch than the PCs at least some of the time. 

Yeah, that's the key point and one of the problems I've always had with the Allegiance system, tracking all the bits! This idea makes it a bit worse, having the God's be individual.

Though I do think there's something to lumping other gods into the general pool, unless you want to dedicate to multiple gods, in which case you choose to keep track of that stuff. That's not a bad idea at all. 

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

That works, it just a question of how many gods do you want to be bother tracking bonus scores for. Depending on how many gods there are and ways there are to earn/lose allegiance points it could get complicated. 

Maybe you could make the gods jealous of each other so a PK can only have favor with one at a time?

It's tracking all the gods that's a problem. But I think you will only have to track within your pantheon. The opposing forces won't grant you anything but the base Allegiance ability, as you won't have points in the specific God(s) of the pantheon, but the tempation is there.

So, mulling it over as I lay in bed, recovering from having my gallbladder removed, I thought, what if we keep the L/B/C score as is. These earn points as normal.

In addition, you have a bonus score in Gods you dedicate actions to. So you might have Law 25, Dakanan +25 (so for Dakanan you were considered to have a 50). I think the generic abilities of the Allegiance would go off your generic score, with the special abilities being off your God score. So this character could call on Law to grant them +25% to any skill, and +25% to Communication Skills, 1H Spear, Lore: Science which are the Dakanan skills...or whatever). Talia, the lawful goddess of Marriage, Motherhood, Harth and Magic could probably be called upon to grant bonus MP just like Chaos. Etc, etc.

I think that your opposite alignment always tempts you, without dedicating acts to any God. You earn checks against general antagonistic faith for performing any of the antagonistic acts...though I want to be careful with Balance characters as that seem punitive for them to constantly get checks in both Law and Chaos. Maybe if Balance is your highest, when you succeed in an Alliegance check for an opposing act you only gain 1d3 or 1d4 points, instead of the normal amount. 

So, I am considering tacking on Allegiance to the game I'm going to run. In my world there is the usual Law/Balance/Chaos divide (long ago Moorcock influence). And I really like the idea from Mythic Iceland of different gods granting abilities based on your Allegiance scores. 

So my question is, how to handle it? Do they keep a Law v Balance v Chaos score? Do they have individual scores for the Nine Gods (there are 3 of each Pantheon)? 

Mythic Iceland gets around the issue by only having dedicated activities count for Allegiance purposes. But then that doesn't have the benefit/drawback of you getting points in your opposing camp with misdeeds (yeah, I know there is the loki score, but that doesn't work in an opposed system like this). 

I guess it feels weird that someone's score in the Lawful Wargod's Allegiance could also impact the Healer God's rewards.

Any suggestions on how to rationalize these elements? 

38 minutes ago, yojimbo said:

From what I can tell it is a streamlined version of DoD: 4 characteristics, 6 skills.

Right or wrong, I presume that RiotMinds felt that there wasn’t a market for DoD as is (presumably because of all the RuneQuest and Cthulhu clones) so they’ve produced a new game based on DoD.

Ah...interesting.

How does the new magic system work?

On 2/21/2019 at 2:46 PM, Baron said:

Tywyll, while I don't recall where that specific link led, there was Fergo's adaptation hosted here on BRP Central, plus one more by an author I referred here; I think he may have uploaded his file here after that, as well. Finally I also recommend Age of Shadow. It's a monograph edition. If you need me to refresh my memory, I have all three works sitting around, so I can get more specific.

Thanks for the info!

Do any of them do a conversion of RM/MERP style magic to BRP?

On 2/20/2019 at 2:37 PM, Chorpa said:

No. Nothing have so far have gotten translated to English and I doubt it will in the foreseeable future. To be honest the game was very disappointing. It is still usable but they removed and added new things that made no sense at all and very poorly proofread texts that makes you think they rushed the product. BUT THE ART WAS GORGEOUS!. Many others in Sweden are of similar opinion as me, but I do know of several groups that despite the rules are running successful and entertaining games with Drakar och Demoner 2016 as it is called nowadays. But the company RiotMinds who released Drakar & Demoner 2016 have released their other games in English. Especially Trudvang Chronicles is a very nice setting and the game is distantly related to DoD and BRP with tons of gorgeous art (as most of their products are). Even though I don't like the rules in Trudvang Chronicles to much. The rules are not bad but they just don't cater to my taste so I usually use another ruleset of my own taste in the setting. Been thinking about using Mythras for it next time. But have to sit down and see if I can capture the feel of the magic and religions of the Trudvang world (shouldn't be to hard by creating Cults and Brotherhoods for the setting).

Would you mind talking a bit more about the disappointment? I'm looking at the English translation kickstarter and thinking of jumping onboard, but I would like to know what went wrong.

Also, is this the actual system? In their breakdown, they list 4 stats (for example). Is that how DoD worked instead of the classic 7?

What about magic? How does it work? Is a mage superior to a warrior (ala DND issues) or are they fairly 'balanced'?

10 hours ago, yojimbo said:

It appears that RiotMinds have kickstarted an English Language translation: Ruin Master

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1256540796/ruin-masters?ref=user_menu

 

Thanks for the heads up!!!

10 hours ago, Oracle said:

 

You are aware, that this is not a typo, but the Glorantha equivalent to "My two pence, for what it's worth:", right? 😉

Ah...yeah, I missed that.

2 hours ago, Revilo Divad Of Dyoll said:

My two bolgs, for what it's worth:

The RQ6 mysticism rules are the best ones I've seen mechanically, but they suffer a bit from the effort to make all the magic systems balanced.

I agree with everyone else that the Hero Wars mysticism rules were a flop.  I do think that there is "mystic magic," draconic mysticism being an example of this.

I wouldn't have thought of the Land of Ninja rules as mysticism, but it's great box set, and if you get a chance you should certainly pick it up.

Thanks,

David. 

Oh, you've written about mysticism on blogs? Can you give some links?

I do like the RQ6 Mystic rules and Sandy's rules. Land of the Ninja is interesting but very 'High Level' for sure. 

21 hours ago, Julian Lord said:

My understanding of Greg's concern with these things is that he had a bit of a blind spot on the matter of the "low mysticism" of the less purist practice of it.

Most likely because in his personal life, compromise in these things was simply unthinkable.

 

I...have no idea what you mean? Could you expound on this a bit more please?

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

RQ6/Mythras inherits from MRQ and Robin Laws-inspired martial arts and cool dragon-bone singing for EWF "mystics", which in turn inherit from Hero Wars and HQ1 concepts (also by Robin). If you manage to put aside some of the major flaws in the original MRQ presentation of the EWF, some of the game mechanics there might be interesting for your game. On the whole, most of the martial arts stuff is actually some other source of Three Worlds magic approached on an indirect, slightly mystical path, but the dragonbone-singing comes across as an imitation of what dragonewts would do to arrive at their material culture. Not sure the dragonewts would bother starting with a material piece of dragonbone, though - they might as likely begin with a bony protrusion on their hide and meditate on that in a cocoon, and emerge with the weapon and minus a bony knob on their skin (for all future re-incarnations).

If you can access the MRQ stuff for little money (like back in the time the 20$ bundle sale), it is definitely worth the money for access to ideas that may be used in your game.

If I understood Jeff correctly, there aren't going to be RQG rules mechanics for mysticism as a magic system alongside spirit magic, divine rune magic and sorcerous rune magic spells.

I have Magic of Glorantha (one of the few MRQ books I didn't ditch years ago) so I have access to that stuff.

Any idea why no RQG rules?

Where in HQ would I look if I wanted to see their take on Mysticism?

For what its worth, I really like Sandy's version. 

Other than Sandy's Mysticism rules and the RQ6 rules for Mysticism, were there any other variations on mysticism published?

On 3/11/2019 at 10:44 PM, Bill the barbarian said:

Good question

I was just thinking about this as related to another matter when I saw your question. That is, The rules as written or what makes for a good fun story (the closer these are the better the rules imo). But there is another set of factors: The players and the referee  (I will use this name for the example). Though the rules do not state it, what if the tax overseer was crooked (as if) just a little and decided to include that silver and pile of baubles in the taxable income.

"Your lordship, how could such as these, have such riches. They say they killed a giant but... I say they sold some cattle and forgot to pay the just taxes."

The rules say he can not but, the story would benefit from a plot twist thrown in by an enterprising referee, and the players have an excuse to have an conflict with an evil bureaucrat (and maybe win).
Now that's high adventure <gr>!

Nothing is perfect but a good referee with a set of patient (as if<gr>) players and a well written set of rules should help create a fun evening.

I always assumed failing to pay your tithes resulted in visits from Spirits of Reprisal, so clearly if you aren't being hounded by a demon, you must have filled out your tax forms correctly!