Mugen

Note there is a sub-forum dedicated to Mythras on this board. 🙂 https://basicroleplaying.org/forum/54-mythras/

IIRC, Symbaroum works like this. Same for french game Brygandyne, which is an evolution of Warhammer. D&D base d20 system is also not very different, with a d20 roll-over logic. And me from RQ3. 🙂

There's also a rule for "Hide and Seek", which IIRC is : roll under (Stealth) skill, if successful subtract your skill from the (Perception) skill. Edit: Resistance Table was, IMHO, a very elegant and efficient mechanism when it was designed. I'm liking the option of using its core concept as a basis for skill opposition more and more. Its drawback is that it lacks the possibility to have different effects with different levels of success. Steve Perrin's Quest Rules used it as one of the 4 success thresholds, which were Skill, Skill/2, Skill/10, Skill/100 (obviously, the last one was only there for very high skills).

Using higher skill is not really a good idea, as it gives a huge advantage to the higher skill even if it's only 1 point superior. Say for instance you oppose a 100% skill versus a 99% one. The chance that the highest skill wins in this case depends on the number of success degrees you use, but it will be closer to 70 or 80% than 50%.

Note Mythras Sorcery already has "traditions" that works like Combat Styles. 🙂 Each Invoke Skill is associated with a list of spells that are suited with a given tradition. If a Sorcerer wants to cast a spell outside its tradition, he needs to learn a new Invoke Skill which has the spell associated with it. As I said above, I prefer a more rigid approach, like in White Wolf's Mage. Life, Mind, Forces, Matter, Spirit, Prime... I don't really like Ars Magica, as I'm not really fond of the Verb/Form divide.

As far as I know, Warhammer 4th edition uses a similar method. And the various versions of French Légendes, too. It works, and is not counter-intuitive, but requires two more subtraction than the "black jack" method, for exactly the same result (providing you don't consider failure versus failure as a tie in Black jack).

I think it also completely missed the mark, as wounds you suffered or what actions you performed in a round didn't have any impact on your Fatigue.

First, I prefer to use the sum of 2 characteristics as a base for skills, instead of a fixed value (or a fixed value plus skill category modifier). For instance, all Melee Weapon skills could start with (STR+DEX), and all Perception skills with INT+POW or INTx2. I also think the game could benefit from a rule similar to Revolution D100, where there are very few skills, and specialties add a bonus to this base skill. That is, a Sword fighter could have a Melee skill of 40 and a Sword specialty of +30, and when he fights with a Sword, his effective skill is 70. BRP is also lacking a good skills opposition rule. Simply comparing levels of success results in too many ties. And a tie, in a lot of situations, is in fact a success for one of the protagonists. For instance, if someone is hiding from another character, that person is alright if nothing happens. Even a solution like the one in Pendragon/Mythras system where you compare the d100/d20 results to break ties have flaws : it's counter-intuitive (as you have to roll low to get better success levels, but have to roll high to break ties) and still produce a lot of ties (as skill failure versus skill failure is not covered). A simple solution is to use the formula behind the Resistance Table : 50+active skill-passive skill.

My opinion is that 1 skill is not enough, but 1 skill per spell is too much. 😄 I prefer systems like Mage (all versions), where there is 1 skill per "domain", and you need different skills for casting a fire ball or reading thoughts, but all fire-based (or even all elemental-based) spells are under he same skill, and all mind-based spells are under the same skill. Edit : a single skill for all "minor/common" magic/cantrips anyone can learn and cast might be enough, though. The removal of Range, Duration and other "metamagic" skills in RQG was a step in the right direction, but I think there was a missed opportunity when Rune Masteries were not designed as skills.

That reminds me of the japanese RuneQuest 90s. Published in Japan only, it used a rather simple BRP system, and was a truly gloranthean game from he start, contrarily to 3rd edition. And despite the very 90s-anime styke cover. The Starter set is not meant to provide a simpler game, but rather an introduction to the whole game where only the rules needed for the scenario are provided. As a result, the Set contains rules (especially concerning combat) that are more complex than Dragonbane or Magic World, even if it's not the whole picture.

As said above, there are actually 2 Basic Roleplaying "Open" licences a available. The SRD is attached to the Basic OGL, which is the older one. The other one being the BRP ORC licence, whose SRD is the "BRP Universal Game Engine" book. The Basic OGL is more restrictive than the other, and although Chaosium has not cancelled it, it's almost dead now. I don't see how the game could work without those, to be honest. That's a good idea. I think a big problem for beginners with Call of Cthulhu is that the skill list doesn't clearly outlines which skills are important and which are for experts.

In general, I prefer d20. But d100 in BRP works well with various degrees of success mechanisms, based on fractions of the chances of success. Critical success on a 1 or a 20 (or your skill value in Pendragon, for skills <20 ) on a d20 means it's just luck, and completely disconnected from your skill. Basically, rolling a d20 under 13 or a d100 under any number between 63 and 67 won't make the game very different. But if you need to roll under 1 or any number between 3 and 7, it's a completely different story. In order to have chances similar to critical success on 1/20th of your skill with a d20, you can ask for a confirmation roll if you roll 1 or 20, like in D&D3, or old French game Légendes. But for some reason this kind of rule is more and more rare. But if you want to do the same with classical "crit under 1/20th and special under 1/5th", "crit under 1/10th" or "crit on a double", you'd find that a d100 is better.

Concerning characters durability, I would simply give PCs skills and characteristics above standard humans. Which is something Elric! did : it was possible to start the game with skills above 100%, and all characteristics were determined using 2d6+6. I don't own Magic World, but I think it works on the same principles. I would also consider that all damage that is not a Major Wound is just exhaustion, which can be recovered with a good night sleep. On he other hand, damage over the MW threshold would reduce the HP maximum until properly treated.

The three most important differences between Legend/Mythras being : The lack of Resistance Table. Though it is not difficult to re-introduce it in the game, as characteristics are still there. The scale of damage and hit points. A typical fighter with a broadsword and STR+SIZ above average deals 1d8+1+1d4 in BRP, and 1d8+1d2 in Mythras. It's a 2 point difference on average, which is a lot. Mythras doesn't have Generic Hit Points, only localized ones.

I don't know if anything exists for BRP, but you can check the Würm RPG from Nocturnal if you want a RPG setting.

Well, what I described above is the rules as written. But, despite what I said earlier, I would certainly not handle weapon skills this way. I'd rather have a broad "Melee" skill that can be used with any melee weapon, and specialties that adds a % to the base skill. I would also treat every skill this way, with -for instance- an Athletics skill with specialties such as Jump, Climb, Swim, etc. Or a Communication skill with specialties such as Command, Seduce, Bargain, Persuade, etc. I've yet to implement an experience system that works well with this variant, though...

If you have a Melee Weapon skill with a Great Sword specialization (base 5%) and use a Short Sword (base 15%), you're supposed to use your Melee Weapon (Great Sword) skill and add 10% (the difference between skills) to your skill. There's an exploit here, as it's easier to gain experience and go over 100% with a skill that has a base of 5% than it is with a skill with a base of 15%. I'd simply use the same base value for all weapon skills, and apply the difference in base skill as a modifier to the skill. For instance, the Melee Weapon (Swords) would have a 10% base, and I'd add 5% when using Short swords and subtract 5% when using Two handed swords.

That, and the fact failed rolls have no impact on the result of the contest whatsoever. But it's also true in Pendragon.

@lawrence.whitakerI have an issue with the SRD I downloaded from DTRPG. The tables' top rows and leftmost columns have black text on a black background. It's easily solved by changing the format, though. Note I use I use LibreOffice and not Word, which may be the source of my problem.

I assume it's the 7 core + EDU ? And same success level is a tie, as in these games ? That's too many ties for me.

ElfQuest comes to my mind. In this game, every PC is a member of a Wolf Riders tribe of elves, and has a unique bond with one wolf. However, I don't remember if there's any mechanism to build this bond, as both the wolf and his rider have been raised together since they were born, and the narural telepathic ability of those elves helps a lot...

Err... No, I just didn't check what I wrote... You can ignore one of those "all"... What I meant is that all PCs should have at least a couple of skills at 90+, an at least 65+ in some others.

It's possible that paragraph was influenced by two different versions of BRP. The improvement roll with a maximum of 21 is from RuneQuest. But most other games (StormBringer, CoC, for instance) have no POW improvement roll and no such maximum.

The RPG systems that have the most "pulp" feel for me are FATE, Qin:The Warring States, D6 and 7th Seas 1st edition. There's no reason a BRP derived game can't be "PULP", but IMHO it needs to change at least two things that are common in BRP games : Wounds should be rare, and most Hit Points loss should be bruises or exhaustion, that can be quickly recovered. Skilled characters should be able to do much more things in a round than mundane characters. And all PCs should all have high skills.

No, and I didn't read Space Opera either. 🙂