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RQ3 Players Book, page 52, first column, last paragraph, under Special Weapon: The Lance also in the same paragraph and on the second column, second paragraph and the example under Cormac's Saga So you have to use a lance or spear couched to get the bonus.

Apparently. In RQG, anyway. Guess it's yet another reason why I think I'm sticking with RQ3, where everybody doesn't get the horses db.

All too true. Most of the Elric stories were from the 60s, and his popularity probably peaked in the 60s and 70s. Even at the time Strombringer came out, he probably wan't as pouplar as he once was. By now I think you almost have to be an ol' timer like us to to be aware of Elric. Yeah, not to mention D&D alignment. But does it have an impact with the latest generation of gamers and designers? Hey, maybe PD stuff isn't the way to go after all? Maybe if they are going to go after a licensed setting they should go after something relevant to the current generation of gamers? At least we are lucky enough to have Magic World. I didn't get MW until recently, so I wasn't aware how close it is to being Stormbringer 6. It's a nice blend of old Stombringer and Elric!.

Stirrups and the proper saddle. You need both. I'm not saying they don't exist. What I am saying is that only couched lances used with stirrups and the right saddle should get the horse's db.

I just said the energy is comparable. If you factor in for impact area the .50 cal probably has about four times the energy per area at impact, but the lance benefits from the fact that the horse can continue to add energy after contact. Need it, hell no. I think we got our wires crossed. You don't need anywhere near that kind of impact to cause a fatal wound. Yup. I agree. After a certain point (sorry, bad pun) it's overkill. It's much like a bullet, once it goes through you it stops damaging you. A lance is a little different, since it is still imbeeded in the target and moving it will do more damage, but by then it doesn't really matter. If he's still alive he's probably not putting up much of a fight anymore, and poses more of a threat as a terrain hazard. I doubt it offers that much. In game terms I'd say it would probably just up db a little, say up the rider's db a step? The couched lance requirement for db was spelled out in later BRP games. Actually it might be the difference between penetrating the armor at all. Penetration is not a linear effect. Remember, most the people whom overhand lances were used against didn't have as much armor or protection that RQ characters have. If the overhand lance was half as effective as a couched lance then I'd agree. But it isn't Much of what makes the counced lance so effective is that the warrior is still holding onto it and so is till adding energy and force to the strike. An overhand lance doesn't get that. The charge bonus is the horse's db, and I disagree. Knights would hanve bothered with counched lances if the overhand one was just as good. And I think you are wrong. If you were correct, then there was no reason for Knights to switch to couched lances in the first place.

I don't think he would say no. I think it is more a question of how much he would want, and if Chaosium would be willing to pay it. One reason for them not doing so would be that SB didn't seem to be all that popular. It never got anywhere near the support that RQ or CoC did. I think at one point there might have been more editions than supplements. So maybe it might not bring in enough to be worth pursing the license? I don't know if I'd want to buy (yet) another SB1-4 or Elric! clone. Maybe something using Magic World, so we'd get a mix of the best of SB1 and Elric!, but I really don't want to buy the same exact rulebook (yet) again.

Do the math. A standard M-2 bullet has a mass of 46.2 grams and a muzzle velocity of 856m/s. Since E=1/2kgV^2 that's 16976 Joules. A knight on horse back with a mass of only 500 kg traveling at only 10m/s has an energy of 25000 Joules. Agreed. If you can't hit the target it doesn't matter. Which you couldn't do as effectively without the strirrup and saddle. Not really. Shields are wood, and pilum and only had to stick into the shield to be effective, not get to the guy behind it. And PIlum were mostly used against lightly or unarmoed foes, against whom all weapons are effective. But not nearly as much as one with a rider and horse holding onto it. And if the rider does hold onto it, the force on the impact will dismount him. Sure. Look, I'm not saying that an overhand lance isn't effective (it is) or than one used by a moving rider shouldn't do more damage than a javelin (it should, if fact even a sword should hit a little harder from someone riding by on horseback). I'm saying that thet shouldn't get the horses db. Designed to go after the Parthian horse archers. No, but the rest of his auxiliary Calvary were. No, and I'm not saying that it is.

Actually the horses probably will veer away. And the horse won't do it because they don't want to get killed anymore than you do. Not without the stirrup. Look at how they were used historically. Calvary were skimishers, who harassed and pursued the enemy. They didn't become shock troops until they had the heavy lance, stirrup, and saddle. And horses are spear adverse. Most will shy away from spearmen. That's why Pikemen and spear formations remained effective.

But that won't get you the same impact and damage with a lance. If I recall correctly the energy in a lance charge, from a heavy horse, it comparable to a .50 caliber machine gun bullet. A rider just can't get that kind of energy any other way. Thats when calvary became "shock troops".I think most other calvary skirmish and harass, and are good for their speed and mobility. Of course you also had the Norman approach of using light lances which had a lot of flexibility, but they didn't have the same sort of shock/impact.

Yeah, I knew eventually I'd have to foot the bill.

As far as game design goes, you can pretty much use whatever game mechanics you like for whatever games you like. Game mechanics can't be copyrighted and aren't protected. Now actual text, and setting stuff, are protected, and can be copyrighted . That why there are a half dozen or so RPGs out there now that use game mechanics similar to RQ. You just have to make sure you type stuff up in your own words. You also want to add new content and alter a few things, otherwise what would be the point of doing your own game? And that's assuming you want to sell or otherwise distribute your game.

Yes, but they way that they used them didn't give the same sort of "oomf" that the couched lance gets in a charge. Generally, these were shorter weapons, and were used overhanded, and the wielder either threw the lance or let go upon impact so as not to get unhorsed. I'd suggest not using the charge rules, but instead just upping the riders db a step for the mounts movement. Adding in something like the old "Attack on the run" rule would fit, too. Except it's not about technique here (like different ways to hold an arrow) but the fact that physics prevent you from getting a certain effect (the awesome damage of a lance charge). It's like loading a musket ball into a sling. Yeah, the ball still does damage, but not the sort of damage it would do if it were fired from a Brown Bess. It's the stirrup and saddle that result in the big damage bonus.

I've been thinking of altering and simplifying the ship stats a little, and wondering if it looks reasonable to others: I am thinking of is using some old real world tax method for determining a ships cargo capacity (Length x Breath x Draft/100, in tuns). Setting Hull Quality by Era (Ancient, Medieval, Elizabethan, etc. this is the number of dice) and Length (the fixed add) Setting a ship's Structure points equal to it's cargo capacity, with a modifier based on hull quality. Allowing a trade of cargo for crew and vice versa at the rate of 1 tun per 10 crew. Allowing a trade of cargo for passengers and versa at the rate of 1 tun per passenger (better accommodations) Factoring in for cannon with at the rate of 1 tun per 10 pounds of weight of shot (so a Sloop that has a 81 pound broadside uses of 8 tons of cargo per side). Apply a modifier to speed based on a ship's length and how full the hold is. Setting a ship's Seaworthiness rating to it's Hull Rating, modified by the Beam to Length ratio (wider is more stable). Add in a Handling stat that applies to Seaworthiness My goal is to make it so you could designer any sort of sailing ship from Ancient Era through to 19th century or so and get stats comparable to what we have now, plus be able to expand it as needed. Mostly this means I can add a bunch of new ship types, such as sloops, frigates, and fluyts and give stats for small, medium and large versions (50 ton sloop, 100 ton sloop, 150 ton sloop). It also means that someone could modify one stat on a ship and be able to figure out how it would affect that ship. For instance if someone wanted a someone longer version of a ship then it would be somewhat faster, more maneuverable, hold more cargo, have more Structure points, but have a slightly lower Seaworthiness. Is that of interest to anyone else?

In Fudge terms it's not so much canceling. It's just that damage is shifted up or down in the attacker has a Body score at least 2 points higher or lower than the defender. Not sure if this would be doubled if there was a 4 point difference, but I'd probably consider than for Amber. The nice bit is that it keeps swordfight damage between two strong Amberites down to what we see in the books. I'm still trying to get a good solution for BRP. The canceling might cause other problems- a big armored creature can become invulnerable. Probably scaling the db with success level and maybe smoothing out the progression will do it. It's just that once the db becomes a big or greater than the weapon's normal damage it becomes the dominant factor, and combined with a bell curve and fixed hit points, turns things into a one hit fight. Sure, love too. Thanks for the input. Oh, I also have been working on some stuff for sailing ships for this campaign, and worked up and revised some stats for cannon over in the Seafaring thread in the Stormbringer forum (because I'll be using the ship rules from Stormbringer/Elric/RQ3). If you are interested take a peek. I think I've worked out a way for ships to be able to withstand a few broadsides.

It's the overlapping weapons and shields that made the Phalanx effective. It meant that you had several ranks attacking the enemies first rank. The stuff in Borderlands seems to cover a lot of what ti takes for a Phalanx to work. And Macedonian troops used to carry a kopis (shortsword, similar to a kukri) as a secondary weapon.

I attributed their disappearance to fowl play.

Yeah, that's why I think it's not practical. Not unless they took the OGL route and opened thing up for other companies to produce stuff. And that's a double edged sword. Of course if RQ really takes off and it becomes the second most popular FRPG again, it might be a different story.

I've revised my cannon damage: Instead of doing the damage for one gun, I did up by weight of shot. 1 pound of shot does 8D6 damage. Each doubling adds +1D6, and if you want a 50% increase is worth +1 Weight of Shot Damage BGB 1 8D6 2D8+2 1.5 8D6+1 2 9D6 3D8+3 3 9D6+1 4 10D6 4D8+4 6 10D6+1 8 11D6 5D8+5 12 11D6+1 16 12D6 6D8+6 24 12D6+1 32 13D6 7D8+7 48 13D6+1 64 14D6 8D8+8 96 14D6+1 128 15D6 9D8+9 192 15D6+1 256 16D6 10D8+10 384 16D6+1 512 17D6 11D8+11 768 17D6+1 1024 18D6 12D8+12 1536 18D6+1 2048 19D6 13D8+13 3072 19D6+1 4096 20D6 14D8+14 6144 20D6+1 8192 21D6 15D8+15 12288 21D6+1 16384 22D6 16D8+16 24576 22D6+1 32768 23D6 17D8+17 49152 23D6+1 65536 24D6 18D8+18 98304 24D6+1 131072 25D6 19D8+19 What's nice about this method is that: Ships won't disintegrate at the first broadside. It's compatible with the existing cannon stats from Strombringer (a 3" cannon ball, roughly a 4-pdr still does 10D6) It's compatible with BRPG's BGB. Just art off at 2D8+2 This will be lower than Stormbinger, but ships in BRP have less armor. It also works out to +1D6 (or +1D8+1 for BGB) per doubling the number of guns, which is easy to do in your head. It lets you mix in guns of multiple sizes (useful when dealing with historical ships). It gives a damage for any size cannon. So if your ship is armed with Minions (5-pdrs), or Sakers (6-pdrs) or if you have 8-pdr or 10-pdr Demi-culverins instead of the 9-pdrs. you'll still all set to go. It lets you handling a lot of guns with only one damage roll. If anyone wants to change things all the have to do is shift the base damage die up or down to suit their needs. It also seems to work for siege engines, if you apply a 3 row reduction. For instance a Trebuchet that fires a 55 pound rock does 12D6 damage. This makes sense too, since the rock would be traveling slower and is about half as dense as lead, so it would hit harder and spread the out the impact over a larger area Examples: A 20 gun sloop with a broadside of nine 9-pounders would have broadside eight of 81 pounds for 14D6 damage (or 8D8+8 in BGB). HMS Victory a 104 gun First Rate Ship of the Line has a broadside of one 68-pdr, fifteen 32-pdrs, fourteen 24-pdrs, and twenty two 12-pdrs, for a total broadside weight of 1148 pounds for 18D6 damage (or 12D8+12 in BGB), and beats rolling for 52 guns separately.. A typical 16th Century Spanish Galleon (I'll spare you the mix of guns), has a broadside weight of 338 pounds for 16D6 damage (10D8+10 in BGB)

Thanks Yes it does. My reason for raising a dead horse is that I've got a campaign coming up where the typical PCs will be stronger than normal, and I should be bumping into that 1D6 to 2D6 shift quite often, a smoother progression would help.

I think Pinnacle owns it now and have adapted Savage Worlds to it.

No, the monographs never really went anywhere. I was thinking more alone the lines of how games like Hero, RoleMaster, and GURPS had one off Books for specific settings (Ancient Rome, Pirates, Robin Hood). I think that's probably the only way to cover a lot of bases without taking time away from existing lines. If something gets hot and people want more support for it, they can give it a supplement or two. If not, then at least it got covered. Otherwise they are only going to be able to support a couple of lines. BTW, Any idea just what cultures are going to be in Fantasy Earth? Is it going to be Medieval, or Dark Age? Do we get Celtic Britain, Arthurian Britain, or Norman Britain? Do we have Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome all at the height of their power? So many ways to go with it.

Hmm, in that case maybe we should have some sort of generic indicators of NPC ability? That might make it easier to adapt things to different groups. For example, a Swordman in an adventure could be rated at "Best PC"-10% or average PC.

I think that depends on if they are one shots or lines. I don't mind the idea of there being a book based on a particular PD book or character (Robin Hood, Ivanhoe, Sinbad) , or for a particular setting or Genre (Ancient Egypt, Feudal Britain, American Civil War, Film Noir). Especially if different people are writing those books. It's when something becomes a product line, and get support that I get worried that the new product is going to cut into the support for existing lines. What might work would be to treat the "one-shot books" as one line, and then, if something becomes a breakout hit, make that a supported line. Perhaps even in some sort of carousel or popularity format. That is, the one-shot games that sold the best get a follow up supplement, and so on. Ideally, I think we'd all like to see stuff to support any/every setting, but we all know that they only have the time, resources and personnel to only do some of the things we want, and will have to prioritize.

I've seen d3s, d5s, and d14s. I was thinking of getting a 12 die set that had those. I wasn't aware of d16s and d18s.

I know I'm raising a old post, but how would you implement the D14s, d16, d18? Roll a d20 and reroll if the value is too high. I might have sufficient reason to get "fiddly" soon.