Harshax

And contribute to this thread!

Did you notice that your post populated the comments section of the page you linked?

After looking at the leaked files, all I'll say on the matter is that D&D is not not an RPG. There aren't any rules that make role playing verboten and no DM guidelines suggesting that players should retire to the drawing room while you clear the table and prepare the next melee battleground. I think it is very cool that you could run it strictly as a skirmish game, without a DM. The DMG has some suggestions about it too. Sorry, I couldn't resist. I so want this horrible thread to die and be replaced with 3 different threads: I hate D&D I like this about D&D and will use it Personality Mechanics and Gaming

Either you fudged those rolls, or vBulletin has a Chaos Table Hack.

this thread has 1d3 chaos features.

Interesting. I prefer the expenditure of POW for narrative control, but this is a very good idea.

On the other hand . . . you have Games+ in Mount Prospect, IL. While they have a significant shelf space of D&D stuff, they still stock tons of other games. RQ Monster Coliseum still commanded rack space there not just a few months ago. They even have HarnMaster supplements. It all depends on the storekeeper

Jason hits it spot on. Who am I? What do I do? Who is opposed to me? Excellent summation of the best settings. If you can answer that in the first couple of paragraphs, you'll know for sure whether you'll like the setting or not. What you've provided is essentially designer notes. Then you wrapped some fiction around it. Not fun. Instead of cataloging the world, focus in on a specific setting within the setting. Consulting your notes, ask yourself, 'What is your best idea for a gaming location?' Concentrate on that, establish a general framework that supports the three ideas behind character, setting, and opposition, then allude to other areas that differ in one way or another from the setting you have presented. Like I've said in other threads, I've always wanted to try Science Fantasy. Make me interested.

The setting sounds really interesting to me.

Self Publishing - Lulu.com It does appear that lulu offers posters. So there you go. The publisher could put there big poster maps on lulu. While the service reduces an already marginal profit (I assume), it is still profit.

Levels of Success I pushed for specials to be any time the 1's die came up 0 or 5. If your skill is 73% A roll of 64% is a success. A roll of 60% is a special success. A roll of 78% is a failure. A roll of 80% is a special failure.

Clever! I've always wanted to try a modern fantasy campaign. I played some mage, but it was a little too angsty, for my taste, and I'm not a big fan of dice pool games. I couldn't get my core group to try Shadowrun, and I was already suffering d20 burnout when I read d20Modern's implied Urban Arcana setting. I guess the closest I've come to this type of gaming is CoC in the roaring 20's. Sure, it lacks black lipstick, but it's definitely gothic in the baroque sense.

I've always taken 100% to be literally, "You succeed all the time at tasks that are nominally difficult." This is when I played RQ3 exclusively. The rest of the rules seemed to support that gritty assumption. What with strike ranks, hit locations, encumbrance and fatigue. When I picked up Dorastor:Land of Doom, I was appalled to see characters with skills above 300%. When I played Elric!, the rules naturally supported skills over 100%, especially when it came to combat and multiple actions. I didn't have a problem that interpretation either. So I guess for me, defining 100% depends on defining the genre of gaming first.

If publishing large maps are expensive, and possibly marginal as far as profits are concerned, I wonder if ondemand printing could benefit publisher and customer alike? You could buy the reprint of Pavis directly from the publisher, and optionally, go to LuLu and purchase the poster maps. (Not sure if LuLu offers that, but I think it's worthwhile to make an inquiry)

Not to expel you from that school, or apply to it, but I'd like to know why you think personality mechanics don't benefit roleplay. Why are personality mechanics different from injury mechanics? How is it, that you can accept 'Taking 14 points of Damage, suffering a major wound and losing 1d3 points of APP', but not 'Try as you might, but you can not overcome your lustiness'? [Pendragon Reference]

I don't know. Using the score that is written on your character sheet isn't really fumbling, is it? For skills, I wouldn't use a d20, because you lose the granularity of experience checks and increases, but for Characteristic tests, I think a d20 is faster than multiplying by five. I wouldn't add anything to the scores, as others have suggesting. Just roll low, but higher than your opponent. If you roll exactly your score, that's a critical. If it is within 1 or 2, it's a special. Or something like that.

Yes, I was making a point about oranges. Scratch that. If you are the only person who gets to decide what your character thinks or feels, you're a wargamer, or powergamer. Yeah, powergamer is probably what I mean. If your character can be influenced to react in the same way that a character can be struck down with a sword, mechanically or no, then you are a role player. I can decide on a label and also decide that I'm not trying to make you believe it, or attempt to alter an opinion held of yourself or your playmates.

I'm not sure that is exactly right. I have never seen a game attempt to force such a thing. CoC is probably the most intrusive of the personality altering game systems, but it limits itself to dictating levels of scared and phobias. Dying Earth however has much broader influences on how a character is affected mentally. A character can be duped to thinking just about anything, regardless of whether the Player is convinced of the NPC's motivation. That to me is a good thing. The game mechanics act like the director in a movie, stating 'Your motivation in this scene is this. . . ' For this reason, I disagree that a role player would have argument with the game system, since the mechanics encourage the method that the Player chooses to portray their character and offers, for anyone who rolls lucky enough, the opportunity to role play surprise twists on a character's personality. The wargame reference, was my shorthand way of speaking only about those who find a character's mental state inviolate of any influence other than their controlling players. This is, in a sense, a wargame approach because it implies that a character, or piece, does exactly what its controller wants it to do. Its attempt carries with it no additional baggage than its player's desire to succeed. This definition, if I'm feeling sharp today, feels very different from a player who wishes to portray a character who can experience both success or failure and is willing to be directed by clever role playing or the cast of a die roll. I'm rambling, and hungover, and my sentences have too many commas. Cheers! Arthur

Criticals and Specials on the Resistance Table? I've never played such a way. But thank you. I now don't feel so dirty, just wrong.

It definitely is up to the players. When I gamed with my brother, he didn't want any part of it. Which fine. I'm just as happy playing wargamer style. I love CoC, because of the mechanical quality of effecting a character's mental state, which actually elevates my desire to get into the role of the character. To each his own, I agree. I wasn't trying to argue with anyone.

If your intention is to play a role playing game, where role, motivation, and mental state is featured, then the game should manipulates those qualities. Emotion and Motivation, for example, replace Hit Points. As a gamist, I feel such a game should treat such things the way other games treat combat. Else why call it a game? Right? Why not just call it acting, and go LARP it up? I love adding bits to games that influence how a character behavings, and reward players for roleplaying.

Assume a creature has a CON 15 HP Factor Colossal 240 16 Gargantuan 120 8 Huge 60 4 Large 30 2 Medium 15 1 Small 11 0.75 Tiny 7 0.5 Diminutive 3 0.25 Fine 1 0.1

BRP could use one less chart. Seriously though, I think you're right. You could also just roll on a 20-sided, and then you wouldn't have to multiple. Which may come in handy when dealing with scores above 20. eg, Strength 14 vs Size 28 rock = Str 6 vs. Size 20. Wow. kind of felt dirty suggesting the use of a d20, but in my defense, I did play Hero Wars. :innocent:

And a flawed one.

I can think of a few already, and my criteria is fairly simple: A ROLE playing game is designed to interact with the mental (both psychological and emotional) state of its characters. eg: CoC, Dying Earth, and Pendragon. All three of these feature mechanics that force players to accept a role in a scene.