Ian Absentia

13 minutes ago, Raleel said:

one of the forums i'm on has something like 90% of the gamers over the age of 40 and 50% are over the age of 50. I think it is a reasonable thing to expect. nothing below 11 point

As a member of the Grognard Brigade, I think it may ultimately be a matter of contrast, though size is certainly a factor.  Artistic, evocative backdrop shading and design, and font color often render layout difficult to read.  It's like those bot-foiling security codes.

!i!

1 hour ago, sladethesniper said:

nvm, just bitching since I wasted a lot of time. 

Not necessarily.  I think people here appreciate what you're trying to do, but it runs up against the common issue (and joy!) of RPGs -- playing in someone else's sandbox.

I could point you to a number of my favorite commercial RPGs and minis games that make reference to "alien xenomorphs" or "genestealers" that are clearly well-intentioned stand-ins for a more widely known intellectual property.  It can be done, but it has to be circumspect when presenting it to the public.  Once it's in the hands of the players, they can call it whatever they want and proceed at will.

Now, art is another matter.  I still have a copy of the fan-produced Interstellar Colonial Space Marines sourcebook for a far-future Call of Cthulhu project that used all sorts of unauthorised still art from Aliens and Halo.  It was chased off the Internet by the owners of those licenses with extreme prejudice.

If you have a good game that provides players with the tools to slot in their favorite IP in a way that isn't served by other commercial resources, find a way to make a broadly applicable game that's recognisable, but avoids borrowing direct likenesses.  I realise that it may be frustrating, but have faith in your game that belongs to you, not art that belongs to someone else.

!i!

1 hour ago, JonathanQuaife said:

Can we get to see this in some form? It sounds excellent!

It reminds me a lot of an episode from the original Kung Fu.  Some crazy old miner hi-jacks a gold stagecoach to transport his native wife's corpse to her tribal burial ground.  Nobody is happy with his plan, including the tribe at the end of the line.  And -- wait for it -- there's a twist at the end.  It really was an excellent episode.

!i!

12 minutes ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Yucca root!  Remember Prax is modeled on the U.S. Southwest.

At first I thought you were thinking of yuca (one "c") root -- manioc or cassava.  But, no, apparently yucca root can be eaten, though not commonly.  I've dug some up around the yard, and I haven't been impressed with their root mass, though Gloranthan species might differ.

By the way, I'll bear witness that yucca plants are absolute sons of bitches to handle.

!i!

6 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

It was hysterical to play with other theology students when it first came out, so, any news?

About theology students?  Buncha nerds.  But that's hardly news.

Yeah, in my advancing decrepitude, I periodically descend to the basement and try to figure out if I've just misplaced my old wine-stained copy, or if I left it at someone's house and they conveniently neglected to tell me.

Bring it back.

!i!

On 12/22/2023 at 7:16 AM, Mugen said:

@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 have a similar issue when viewing the document in Word - some of the table headers displaying as black on black.  As you noted, I enabled editing, selected the black table cells, then chose a different fill color, which defaulted to light grey.  All is good now.

Now that I think of it, I could've selected the text and chosen white font to match other tables that are displaying correctly.

!i!

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

It didn't happen, though.

I'll have to check again, but it's probably next to another teaser for the forthcoming HeroQuest rules.  And as I wrote above, we've come a long way when it comes to Chaos (and heroquesting), so it may very well be for the best. 

Once you label me, you negate me.

!i!

This is enlightening.  Thank you!  I saw your QW version; have you done one for (albeit slight) variation for the generic BRP rules?

!i!

Not the Lunar Empire proper, much less the empire as a whole, and not even specifically "chaos", but as of 1982 (Wyrm's Footnotes No.14) someone was going this direction.

We've come a long way in defining Chaos, though.

On 12/23/2023 at 9:49 AM, mfbrandi said:

There is an old trope — I can’t remember where it started; it was used in Zot! for Dekko (IIRC)...

Thank you for simply mentioning Zot!  More people need to do so!  You earn a special Christmas Heart pairing today.  💚❤️

!i!

17 hours ago, TrippyHippy said:

It is curious that there hasn’t been many movies that directly refers to Crowley. His life really is ripe for a biopic. 

Crowley was sort of a living Venn diagram of truth, fiction, and straight-up misinformation, much of it self-generated.  So the "topic" of any story about him is going to be fuzzy and ill-defined at best.  Maybe it's only through creating a fictionalised version of him that he becomes manageable in the context of a story.

As long as we're considering fictional versions of Crowley, I have to wonder how much of the early John "Dangerous Charlatan" Constantine was based on him.  An essentially mundane person whose reputation of "evil" and power carries more weight than their real ability.  That's a Crowley I'd like to see in my games.

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[Edit: In the Gaslight era, Crowley would be only in his teens to early 20s, not at his infernal height.]

2 hours ago, Ian_W said:

Arms vendors are very aware that the guns you sell today can be turned against you tomorrow, and that won't change in the far future.

In a megacorp-dominated universe, expect them to keep the best stuff for themselves - after all, your professional rivals will absolutely be buying samples of what you make for testing, and you need to keep some carrots for your best, and therefore most trusted, customers.

Or perhaps in the far future they'll take a page from current-day Monsanto with their "terminator seeds", and sell single- or selective-use products that can be used only within a specific theater of engagement.  They automatically brick themselves if applied more broadly or against unauthorised targets.  A prospective user may find themselves up against a paywall to extend the licensing agreement of that crate of arms they've just shipped in.

!i!

In that case, you might even treat it like a dragonewt per Wyrm's Footnotes No.14.  You have wild instincts on either end of the spectrum, but a "trained" range in the middle that expresses both mastery over the beast and its willingness to work with and for the trainer.

That's a bit of a deep cut, though, and not readily supported in the current BRP rules.

!i!

The "follower" sheets at the back of the book are basically auxiliary NPCs to the main one at the head of the sheet.  A primary and their underlings.

But if you want something formal for player characters, have a look at the Sidekick power on p.103.  It's different from a typical NPC in that the player is explicitly in control.

!i!

18 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

Dang, what's the recent game I'm trying to think of where players can "buy" a stroke of luck by kicking a failed roll down the road to a later scene? 

Ah, I found it.  And it is BRP-adjacent.  It's from The Comae Engine, which is, at it's heart, a very streamlined d100 game.  The rule is "Negative Luck" (p.20 of the most recent version), where a player can use up to 2 extra Luck Points that their character doesn't actually have in a present scene as long as they agree to forfeit a successful roll in a future scene.

I gather the idea isn't unique, but it definitely suits the "pulp" genre.  For all the talk of how incredibly competent Indiana Jones is, he's an awful stumble-bum from scene to scene.  Even James Bond has to pay off his over-extended fortune from time to time.

!i!

Dang, what's the recent game I'm trying to think of where players can "buy" a stroke of luck by kicking a failed roll down the road to a later scene?  Because that's definitely a trope of pulp adventure.  Is that in the recent BRP Fate Point rules?

!i!

3 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

When it comes to d100 mechanics, I believe Pulp Cthulhu does pulp best...

Pulp Cthulhu is the closest thing I've seen to the default house-rule system that I've been using for pick-up games and extended campaigns for ages.  It allows player and character roleplaying agency without undermining the challenge of the game.

!i!

I think the over-arching question, relative to Call of Cthulhu, is: Where does the inspiration for "weird science" come from?

In the first scenario on the old Shadows of Yog-Sothoth campaign, that inspiration was...

So, in my opinion, yes to all of the above.  It's "weird" in the classic sense of being not just strange, but uncanny or supernatural.  The ego of the scientist may lead them to believe that it was their own genius that led to their discoveries, but there's something lurking in the corner of the laboratory.

!i!

I imagine Argrath and the Whitebull Brotherhood as something between the portrayal of Robin Hood and his merry men in the film Time Bandits and Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore and his air cavalry from Apocalypse Now.  Bulletproof, pure, eyes on the horizon, filled with conviction and mission, while turmoil spins outward from him like a cyclone.

"Jar-Eel don't surf, wot?"

!I!

30 minutes ago, Gray Mouser said:

Hello all. The art of this new book is gorgeous! Where can i see a list of labeled deities, as in the earth or storm cults books? Thanks!

You mean other than the Catalogue of the Gods lineage tree?

!i!

5 hours ago, ChrisWentWhere said:

I'm assuming that the main reason for limiting it to the ride skill is because the person in chance is having to control the mount. The passenger is just a passenger after all. But it is also not a completely stable platform to fire from.

I believe the challenge is almost as much a matter of remaining mounted as it is guiding the mount.  Being a passenger on a horse isn't a passive affair.  I'd apply the same limitation for somewhat different reasons, but for functionally the same abstract effect.

You're also onto something with the stability of the firing platform, though I'd underscore how crowded it is, chest-to-back or even back-to-back.  Lots of elbows busy with competing tasks.

!i!

18 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

...the two are not properly joined...

This seems to be the real heart of the matter, the transition to a disjointed state.  The body, and possibly the mind, persist in an unnatural state where the spirit is no longer a motivating or sustaining element*.  It's as much or more of a thing as it is a person.

Regarding the Jolanti, people may have strong and resentful feelings about the naturalness of its absence of spirit, but it simply is what it was made to be, and wasn't hi-jacked to become something else.

!i!

[*Or radically altered in the case of vampires as described in RQ2.]

Movement/Change ≠ Disorder ≠ Chaos ≠ Movement/Change

!i!

6 hours ago, Orlanthatemyhamster said:

...meaning you have to faf to do anything in it, unless the caster is at the back.

As anyone who's tried to walk at night ahead of someone holding a lantern or flashlight can tell you, you've effectively described a Cast Shadow spell.

!i!

Ha!  I just gifted those very broos (plus the cost of shipping) to one of our forum members.

!i!

Talking with a couple of my horsey friends, I've gotten some real world advice, which works for actual weight ratios, but doesn't necessarily translate into SIZ.  As noted above, SIZ is not linear.  But by straight-up weight, apparently the 15-20% guideline is commonly accepted.

I was referred to this online resource, which works pretty well for our purposes by starting with the weight of the horse and saddle, then calculating the weight of the rider:

https://good-horse.com/tools/calculator-much-weight-can-horse-carry/

Additional tabs are specific to dimensions and breed of horse, running the spectrum from pony to draft horse.  I have not found a similar resource for demi-birds, antelopes, and rhinoceroses.

!i!

[Edit: A little more exploration led to a similar calculator that starts with the rider's weight, then recommends a horse by type. 

https://good-horse.com/tools/calculator-horses-can-carry-comfortably/

This may actually be the most useful for gaming purposes.]