Mugen

4th edition was not very succesful, to say the least, as the only products were the GM screen and an introductory box. Nephilim Legendes opted for a crowdfunding system that worked pretty well, and still works as a CF for a "2d Season" has begun. Well, that's because you only see the best French products, I think...

Other possible leads for a more "historical" approach are Mythic Britain for Mythras (of course) and the french Keltia, which, despite its name, is a game about Arthurian myths, based on Welsh sources. I remember the campaign was horribly railroaded : -Arthur goes somewhere, and the players follow him, -The players can do some unimportant things, -Arthur do something to make the plot advance, -Repeat.

As for myself, I started the GPC using the Boy King, and in my memory it seemed more in line with historical Dark Ages. I remember I had a Roman Knight and a Cymri Warrior in my group. My original intention was to follow the "Arthur" French comic book by Chauvel and Lereculey, which is based on Welsh legends. But I changed my mind afterwards, and played a more traditional GPC.

I have three, only in French, sorry... Wikipedia, of course. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinités The official website is not very informative : "Trinités est une gamme de jeu de rôle contemporain-fantastique." The description of "Trinités- Initiative!" (an intoductory version of Trinités) gives more detail than the description of game itself. https://www.les12singes.com/7-trinites https://www.les12singes.com/jeux-de-roles/238-trinites-initiative-.html And le Grog (Guide du Roliste Galactique). http://www.legrog.org/jeux/trinites You mean 5th edition, "Nephilim Légende"?

Yes, and German speakers would certainly say how annoying it is Pendragon doesn't consider the grail as emerald stone fallen from Lucifer's head, and makes no mention of Lohengrin, son of Parsifal. Note that this "Arthur" candidate (Lucius Artorius Castus) is considered to have lived in the 3rd century, and certainly never faced a Saxon invasion. It's even possible that he never went to Armoric, but in Armenia instead. Yes. Pendragon is a game about Arthurian Myth, and not about Britain Dark Ages. The GPC is in fact a time trip through all the periods during which the Myth was elaborated, from the Dark Ages of the Uther and Anarchy periods, to the 15th century. To reflect that, one could use Welsh or Latin words in the first period, French in the middle, and English in the end.

I never read the US version, but I have no doubt it has better rules than the original one. I doubt the French rules were really properly playtested at all, as there's always been a disdain for mechanisms in my country. Selenim is a work by Tristan L'Homme, which is so famous in France he even had a boxed set released for CoC 6th edition named after him (le Musée de L'Homme, a wordplay with a famous parisian anthropology museum.). And Selenim is IMHO one of his masterpieces. But he's never been a good technician, giving advices like "Don't put more than 75% in a skill, it's useless", or writing rules such as "after falling inconsious, a character remains so fo CON minutes".

This. The need for a specific skill for shields, making these an option more difficult to master than 1 handed combat, would be a perfect fit for a feudal Japan game, for instance, where shields were essentailly abandoned.

I agree. When decision was made to not continue RuneQuest 6, which I understand, I expected something more like a simplified RuneQuest 3. Also, although Greg Stafford designed two real RPG masterpieces (Pendragon and Prince Valiant), which opened new ways for RPG design, he didn't design RuneQuest.

Of course, you won't be as good with that second instrument as you are with guitars, but still you'd be better than if you never practiced any other instrument. And it's the same for every possible human activity. I firmly believe that a model with few broad skills (Melee, Communication, Athletics, ...) and specializations on on top of those is the best (or the least bad) solution both in terms of verisimilitude and playability. Question is : how much should go to skill, and how much to specialization ? My feeling is both should be roughly equal.

Oh, you meant the creature's length, not the jump's length...

I don't see where this is different fom what I said.... Also, the reason why such huge creatures can't jump well is also because they miss the joints to do so, as their skeleton also changed to better support their body weight. The cube, why ? From a pure dynamics point of view, the distance you'll cover with a jump will depend on the gravitational constant g (dependant on planet), your initial speed V, and the original angle A of your trajectory. D = V²*sin(2A)/g (*) Initial Kinetic energy is E = mV²/2. From the previous equation, we can tell V² = gD/sin(2A) Therefore, Energy required to make the jump is E = mDg/(2*sin(2A)) (*) see http://mdevmd.accesmad.org/mediatek/mod/page/view.php?id=5251 if you need an explanation.

My skills in biomechanics are not very good, but I'd be tempted to think that creatures in High Gravity environments tend to not be able to jump very well. Think of Elephants, or Rhinoceroses. Evolution granted those creatures very powerful muscles to be able to move their very heavy bodies, but they have very limited ability to jump. Of course, there are counterexamples, such as whales. But Archimedes helps marine creatures.

So, you think it's a good approximation to say that you retained nothing from your experiences with previous weapons ? That's what I had in mind, and and not actual 0% skill...

What make the subject not easy to handle is the fact SIZ is not linear, and 1 point can either be worth 1 kg or a ton (IIRC). It's not exponential either, which means you can't use subtraction, like in DC Heroes or TORG. Also, SIZ sometimes also means Height, and longer legs mean longer jumps -considering a species that can jump...

But would you say you had to start from 0 each time you used a new weapon combination ?

My solution would be similar to Fighting Styles, and consider a Combat skill is a combination of an attack weapon and a parry weapon. For instance, you could have a Sword and Shield skill or a Sword skill. With the first skill, you'd be able to use your full skill when attacking with your sword and parrying with your shield, but would suffer a malus if you use your sword to parry, or your shield to attack. You could use the full second skill to attack and parry with your sword in main hand. I also think the traditional RQG approach to combat skills is wrong. I don't think a sword fighter should lose all the combat reflexes and experience he learned just because he picked an axe instead of a sword.

I must say I'm amazed that Mr Astier knows RD100. I thought he was an old RPGer, not an active one.

Yes, Sorcery explicitly rewards you for hoarding as many MP as possible.

It never occured in one of my games, but I think I could let a character get inspiration from more tha one Passion, provided he choses different skills. Concerning very high skill play, I think I'd use a rule similar to Masteries from HeroWars/HeroQuest. As a matter of fact, I suspect that rule was originally a fix from Robin Laws when he played Pendragon. So, if a character has skill 35, I'd consider he has 1 Mastery and skill 15. When facing a character with skill 40 (or 1 Mastery and 20), I'd treat it as 15 versus 20. If he faces a character with Skill 42, I'd treat it as 15 versus 2, but then I'd bump the result from second character by 1 step, as he has 2 (virtual) Masteries. I'd also consider that if both fail, the one with the highest roll wins.

Oh, and I just discovered your scenarios on DTRPG... Simply gorgeous...

Anyway, I must say I really like the covers of your books. I think they really stand out in the SF RPG production, as they have high intrinsic artistic value, and they differ from the classical "starship in space with a planet in background". I even like the unusual square format a lot !

It's not very different from using Combat Maneuvers to change range in Mythras.

Also, in a tick system, you need to use a skill, and eventually succeed at it (even though GMs may rule a significant failure is also worth a check) to earn an experience check. As I said earlier, if you've been doing something regularly in an adventure, and no interesting event occurs that need a roll, you won't increase your skill. And if you're in a BRP game that doesn't use training and/or study, you will never learn a new skill at all.

Well, that's how I understand the replacement of CHA by APP in the 80s : POW already covered all the non-intellectual aspects of communication except physical beauty.

Well, my proposal is a middle ground, because it only lets the player chose half the skill checks he receives at the end of the session. The other half will be chosen by the GM, depending on what happened in the session, exactly like in a skill-box system. But the GM could give checks even on skills that were not rolled. For instance, if you spent days in game on saddle or in court, but with no significant event requiring a skill check. Also, I disagree XP systems automatically lead players to chose to always increase the same skills. At least, that's not my experience.