Ian Absentia

18 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Any my PCs only had one.

My point being that whether managed by attrition or accretion, or even the binary Yes/No of a success/failure roll, the abstraction of hit points that you seem to be arguing against is present in every game outside of a purely narrative system (and arguably present in even those).

19 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

...you should come up with spaceship design rules that work the same way, and ways to bring in other stats into the fight, such as shields and ship maneuvering instead of just slugging it out with hull/ hit points. Something like someone being able to make a piloting roll to redirect damage from an attack to the ship's agility rating instead of hull. 

These were always options that one could adopt or develop in M-Space, and that you may already see in the most recent release of The Comae Engine or soon in other releases in development.

Despite the sudden shift in Chaosium's intransigence, there are plenty of other reasons to not abandon a decade or more of innovation and revert to the almost half-century-old hodge-podge of BRP.

!i!

15 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

For example, I once ran a game where there was going to be a big explosion in a couple of minutes, and everybody knew about it. The players were fighter pilots and had 10 rounds to get out of the blast area. Each round they got to make a piloting skill roll and needed something like 6 success levels to succeed.

So your explosion had 6 hit points.

!i!

On 6/5/2023 at 9:51 AM, Chaot said:

One that hasn't been mentioned yet is Pendragon Traits. Now, personally I'm one of those people who hold that there is no light side of the force. It is the force and the dark side, but for argument's sake let's use light side.

You've got the Dark Side / Light side and they each have a score that combined equals 20. Dark Side 10 / Light Side 10, Dark Side 4 / Light Side 16, whatever. Then when you need to make a choice you roll against that score on a d20. At or below the score succeeds, above the score fails.

If you wanted to use a d00, you can keep the same scale by measuring traits in steps of 5 points instead of 1 point. So, 50/50, 35/65, etc.

I've favored this mechanic for many applications in the past, and it was about to be my suggestion for this thread.  But then I settled on the thought that Light Side and Dark Side aren't so much polar opposites in dynamic balance with each other as they are competing impulses.

I'd rather favor the use of Passions as suggested up-thread.  And every potential Jedi holds these two contradictory ideas simultaneously.  Being committed to the Light Side doesn't mean that you don't feel the Dark Side -- it means that you're in control of it.  Mechanically, track them both on a scale from 1-20 (or 1-100, however you please), and key moments of conflict result in an Opposed Roll between the two contradictory Passions.  A master of the Light can still have a really dangerously high Dark Side Passion, and thus we see some of the great Jedi masters inexplicably corrupted and joining the Sith (and Darth Vader redeeming himself in his final act).

!i!

2 hours ago, rsanford said:

I also would recommend the first edition of Agon (not the newer kickstarted one). 

As an aside, why not the new Kickstarted edition?  I really enjoyed the original at the time, much more so than other similar games of the era.  What's changed?  And presumably for the worse?

!i!

4 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

...but only, like here, in the context of it spoiling the great film whose legacy it pooped all over.

A quick aside, as I scan back over my previous post.  Did I compare the quality of a sequel to an original?  Did I state that one thing was better than another?  Did I insult anyone's taste in film?   No?  Okay, but I needed to check, because sometimes I miss this sort of thing and wanted to be sure that I didn't owe someone an apology.

Back on the general subject:

• It's an age-old lament.  Tragedy seems to outsell drama and comedy. much less utopianism, a subject in search of a genre.  I'm reminded of a quaint aphorism a neighbor told me over the fence once: Happiness is something you remember, not something you experience.
• Dystopianism, as is often the case with science fiction, is more a commentary on the present than it is the future.  And it's often an expression of conservativism and fear of change (the irony in light of commentaries about Blade Runner vs Blade Runner: 2049 are duly noted).  Nostalgia with a vengeance.  So dystopianism can serve as either a standard bearer for conservativism or a critique of it.

Perhaps next we should discuss whether or not an action movie requires violence and bloodshed. (Compare and contrast: The Matrix vs Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.)

!i!

On 5/22/2023 at 2:09 PM, MoonRightRomantic said:

• The Immortals are no longer body snatching parasites but unions of an elemental essence, which is a mindless beast at best by itself, and a human soul that provides the awareness, identity and will to competently use its magical abilities. (Inspired by Montgomery's blog posts on the subject.)

A theory and approach that I'll selfishly point out has been promoted for several decades now.  But who's counting? 😃

!i!

Perhaps the most achingly positive outlook on the broos I've seen. 💔

By the way, I'm mildly disappointed that no one made the obvious joke about marrying an anteloper into the family or herd...

!i!

I suppose that we labor under the hypocritical delusion that we might at least be able to marry an interloper into the family (or herd) as long as it looks like us.

!i!

1 hour ago, Eff said:

Why would you suspect that? 

Inviting the fox to the henhouse?  Only it's not going to eat your hens...

!i!

I don't know that the statement needed "fixing", though I appreciate the sentiment.  The idea is that, in a remarkably short period of time, we'll look back on our current state of alarm and deem it "quaint".

I regularly recommend David Mitchell's novel Cloud Atlas (the book, specifically, not the film adaptation) for a series of good examples of how, no matter how absurd or horrifying life may be from an observer's perspective, for the people actually living it, it's just the normal state of affairs.

!i!

21 hours ago, hix said:

these threads will be incredibly quaint in 5 years

I appreciate that this prediction asserts neither a positive nor negative development.

Best case scenario:  It was never as bad as we imagined.

Worst case scenario:  It's amusing that we ever thought our opinions mattered.

!i!

Oh, my God, ding-dongs.  Follow the fire, not the smoke.

13 hours ago, deleriad said:

If you're designing a *game* to sell then it needs to be engaging, fun (for some value of fun), accessible and so on otherwise no one will buy it or play it.

[...snip...]

If I were designing a game now that I wanted to sell, I wouldn't include a mechanic that involved division and multiplication unless the game was about division and multiplication.

While I've lamented the resistance of many to simple arithmetic in RPGs (and far from just "young" people), I really can't argue with the assertion that people won't do it they're not motivated.  And arcane methods of reading the dice isn't a solution, either.

!i!

Well, sure.  If you need to be right.

!i!

6 hours ago, Greg said:

Maybe we could create a list of more RPG-centric prompts?

I think the real promise of Schmidt and Eno's Oblique Strategies is that they're functionally evocative regardless of the medium.

Imagine music as a series of disconnected events.

Okay, that seems rather specific to a particular medium.  But using music as a metaphor, we might view plot structure (literary or RPG) in this light, like Burroughs' cut-up technique.  Don't be afraid to get a little art on your clothes.

!i!

I've found that, the more I look, the more I find that Eno is connected to everything I like.  Often by far fewer than seven degrees of separation.

Given what we've become accustomed to shelling out for RPG books these days, the cards themselves are a reasonable investment.

!i!

[Edit:  I just tried the digital version.  I got...

Go outside.
Shut the door.

"Shut the door" is a homophone to "Je t'adore" meaning "I love you," which I find especially poetic in contrast to the command to leave.  Thank you once again, Brian!]

If anyone's interested in seeing Michael Allison throw a javelin in competition form, here he is just a month ago:

!i!

[And he wins the Men's Pole Vault, too! --> 2:18 ]

Fantastic!  I've just begun training a handful of young athletes in the javelin who've been hammering me with questions about how realistic it is as spears go.  It's beautiful watching this guy throw!

!i!

Clearly some people need to watch more Dragonball Z.  Or at least be certain that they're emulating the correct genre.

!i!

Well, shucks, when you put it that way...

It's always worth pointing out that the French had a sense of humor about their games, much like early Chaosium had a sense of humor about theirs.

!i!

22 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

If converting from existing Traveller resources is a concern (depending on the brand of "Traveller" as noted above) here are some notes from someone who went the M-Space route with The Pirates of Drinax campaign...

Ha.  I just realised that there's a whole thread about this right here in the Mythras forum:

Pictures and everything!

!i!

2 hours ago, PoppySeed45 said:

True! It's mostly B and C we need anyway; it's the mechanics that are "lacking" for my players that's the issue...

If converting from existing Traveller resources is a concern (depending on the brand of "Traveller" as noted above) here are some notes from someone who went the M-Space route with The Pirates of Drinax campaign:

https://elruneblog.blogspot.com/2020/03/converting-pirates-of-drinax-to-m-space.html

!i!

Just to complicate the discussion...

"Traveller" is defined by:
A) a set of game mechanics
B) a published setting
C) a conceptual style of gaming
D) A and C
E) other

M-Space will comfortably handle B and C for you, convert from A and D with minimal fuss, and quite possibly manage E depending on where you're taking it.  I'm glad to hear that you and your group decided to go with it.  Enjoix!

!i!

When choosing one system over another, it boils down to a matter of which one you're most comfortable with.  M-Space successfully marries d100/BRP-ish mechanics with the game ethos of old school Traveller.  It recognisably does the kind of game that Trav does, but with different mechanics.

Adding to that, though, is the modular adaptability of M-Space.  It's built on a simplified and pared-down Mythras chassis, but all of the things that are notably omitted (such as expanded, detailed combat options) are easily ported in.  I imagine options exist for Traveller/Cepheus, but that'd be up to individual familiarity.  M-Space at its core is very simple and easy to run.

So, it's like white wine or red with fish.  Which one do you actually like?

!i!

5 minutes ago, TheophilusCarter said:

I haven't gone through thoroughly yet, but it looks like it has retained errata from the BGB (and per the nearby sticky thread).

Retained errors?  Or incorporated errata?

!i!

12 hours ago, smiorgan said:

Opposed rolls are absolutely terrible. If I get to run it I'm going to houserule this bit.

Opposed rolls in general?  Or as applied in Dragonbane?

!i!