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1 hour ago, Keeper Bolog said:

Haha the Goliath bit is awesome!

The hard part was trying to keep from laughing while running the adventure.

A key thing here is that RPGs take plac ein our heads. So if you can put an idea into the heads of your players it is real to them. 

It's the same with NPCs. How tough the appear to the players has less to do with their actual stats and more to do with how you present them to the players, dice rolls included. In one game the GM got on a hot streak with a minor NPC ( a street urchin) and rolled double crticals with two pistols.  We didn't know that and just assumed he was a great shot. By the time the GM told us about the double criticals, the NPC was an officer in the musketeers and actually had become a great shot

1 hour ago, Keeper Bolog said:

Thanks mate for the tips, i`ll try to incorporate some of this into my future games. Stuff like this would work well with my Masks pulp game

Good luck, and have fun.

7 hours ago, Keeper Bolog said:

This is really great! I should indeed ad more flavor to the scenes rather than have them be fist fights in an empty void! Next game I will try this out, thanks !

You welcome. It's actually from Fate: Spirit of the Century. 

What they did was give locations aspects that could be tagged for bonuses, like with characters. So if you were fighting a bad guy in a burning building you could tag the "burning" aspect for a bonus to your combat roll (or escape roll). BRP game mechanics are different, but the concept ports over. You could even use one of those "things you find in a..." tables to help you round out a location. 

The idea works outside of combat too. I once stressed out a PC who was doing a little B&E to check out a warehouse just by having him step into a water dish as he climbed in through the window. Amazing what a water dish with "GOLIATH" written on it can do. The guard took the dog home with him, but the PC didn't know that, and spent the next half hour on edge expecting the guard dog to appear. Next time I do something like that, I think I'll make Goliath a Toy Poodle. 

I usually scribble out some sort of rough map just so the players know where everyone and everything is.  It usually not to to character scale either. One of the drawbacks to a battle mat is that it forces GMs to put everything close together. No one is every really out of range with 5-10 foot squares. 

If you want to make things more interesting, make the setting more interactive. Come up with a few details about the area where you are staging the fight, and think of how the the characters could incorporate them into the battle. For instance, if they are in an old warehouse, there could be a forklift someone could hope into a use to push , racks with various products that could be toppled onto cultists or maybe a power line that could be used to electrocute something. An alleyway could have a dumpster, a fire escape, some broken bottles, an open door to the busy kitchen of a restaurant Just think up a few features for the scene.

Then have a NPC use one of those features in a fight to help get the players thinking of such things. 

1 hour ago, Ali the Helering said:

I think I may be in love....

Careful, that might make your world go round. 😉

22 hours ago, Bardrium said:

Here is a high res interpretation of the Young Kingdoms. 

https://www.deviantart.com/axelmaps/art/The-Young-Kingdoms-from-Elric-of-Melnibone-Saga-906499773

 

Nice! It has a satellite image look to it that must have taken some work to pull off.

19 hours ago, lawrence.whitaker said:

Rod Leary's the one you need for this. However, he's not been too well lately, so that delay any answer you're seeking.

I hope it's nothing serious. Best wishes towards him.

1 hour ago, AndreJarosch said:

My bad, i got my Learys mixed up. 😉

Don't blame yourself, I suspect they were already mixed up. 😉

7 minutes ago, SDLeary said:

This is correct. Rod is the person to talk to. 🙂

SDLeary

I'm surprised I got that right before coffee. ☕

3 hours ago, AndreJarosch said:

Summoning 
@SDLeary

I believe Classic fantasy was by Rod Leary AKA  @threedeesix. He hasn't visited the boards in quite some time. 

25 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

Sad, but probably true. Not a good thing for the hobby though. When the day comes where the majority of tabletop RPG players are getting the senior discount, then the hobby will probably be like rotary telephones.

5 minutes ago, Ian Absentia said:

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!

Definitely. This might be a case of new tech and capabilities working against us. Old RPGs were done in basic, legible fonts on a while high contrast background. Today most games are full color with lots of artwork, and can use highly stylized fonts designed to invoke a sense of the setting/genre being emulated. But generally at the expense of legibility.

And to be fair, BRP isn't bad as far as size and legibility goes, it's just our eyes aren't what they used to be. 

On 1/10/2024 at 5:24 AM, Questbird said:

The fonts are quite small in BR:UGE, especially in the tables. But there is a lot of information to pack in.

Disclaimer: I do need to use glasses these days 🤓

LOL! Me too. I used to be able to read that small font in the RQ2 APPENDICES, and old C&S was entirely written in something like a 4 point font, which I went through with no problem. Now, I'm lucky if I can read the chapter headings without glasses.  

I wonder, as the average age of table top RPGers increases will we wind up with LARGE PRINT editions of all the old RPGs?

1 hour ago, sladethesniper said:

The M-232 Combat Buggy is used by the Colonial Marines (of Aliens) for fast attack and was described twice and shown once in a Dark Horse comic. It then made it's way onto the Aliens wiki and the Colonial Marines Operations Manual for the Aliens RPG.

It isn't a real thing.

-STS

Oops.😳

16 hours ago, sladethesniper said:

Hmmm... I could look for the 1 picture of the M-232 combat buggy used by the USCMC then wonder if it is owned by Dark Horse or is it Marvel, or Disney?

Now there I might be able to help you. In the US, most photos of military gear, and vehicles taken by government agencies are considered to be in the public domain. Apparently years ago it was decided that as all this stuff was paid for with taxpayer money, the taxpayers owned the gear, and so if was considered wrong to charge people for photos of stuff that they owned.  

It doesn't apply to all photos, but generally speaking you can usually find a PD image of US military gear without much trouble.

For instance, the USMC have released this  photo of the ULCV  https://www.marcorsyscom.marines.mil/Photos/igphoto/2003237282/ into the public domain, although they do ask that you credit the photographer. 

On 1/17/2024 at 1:36 AM, sladethesniper said:

Since I used movie pics and reprsentative art taken from the internet, they were taken down. I asked about fair use and the whole purpose being to drive interest in the original works and them being free, but have received no answer.

Yeah that's the thing about using art or owned IPs. I'd suggest either not using art, or use art that is in the public domain.

As for something that touches on an IP, such as Aliens, you best approach is to remove any IP specific stuff and replace it with homemade or generic substitutes. Yes, it's not ideal, but unless you can get a license, it's the only way you'll be able to put stuff up here without problems. Keep in mind that the folk at Chaosium and Triff need to protect themselves from any claims of wrongdoing.

BTW, once you get the posting bugs worked out, you might want to send a message to TrippyHippy about these, as it would appear to fit right into his "mini-settings" idea. 

19 minutes ago, Mugen said:

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.

No, it isn't. THe only real difference is that with each player rolling it turns into a 2d20 bell curve. 

19 minutes ago, Mugen said:

And me from RQ3. 🙂

Yup, there too. 

4 hours ago, Mugen said:

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.

Yup. I remember that from RQ2, I think.

4 hours ago, Mugen said:

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.

There was an article in Different Worlds which did just that. You could have different success levels, you'd just need to extend the specials for the passive side. 

But, ultimately Pendragon does the same thing in a more elegant fashion.

Oh, and on a related note, I was working on a solo RPG that used the resistance table, but in a hidden way. I made 50%-NPC skill a modifier to the PC's ability. So if the PC with Sword 70% and was facing a bandit with ax 60%, the PC would subtract 10% when fighting that bandit. If he later ran into a goblin with scimitar 30%, he'd add 20% to his skill. It was the resistance table.

Since I used the ones die to determine success level, I could determine who wins and the success level with one roll, which was very nice for a solo game. You also got a choice of specials to make solo combat more interesting.

4 hours ago, Mugen said:

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).

But could be scaled further on if needed. 

35 minutes ago, Mugen said:

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.

I agree, I just pointed it out as an option.

35 minutes ago, Mugen said:

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%.

Yup. I

Ultimately this all comes down to RQ not being designed with opposed rolls in mind. It had Attack vs. Parry and the resistance table. It predated that by a few years.

On 1/14/2024 at 2:28 AM, DreadDomain said:

Correct. The ties are not the problem. The fact that it results in too many ties is the problem. That is why I like to introduce Hard successes from CoC. Between, normal, hard, special and critical, it makes the success levels quite narrower and repeated ties less likely.

One thing you could do is to have something that breaks ties. For instance higher skill wins on ties or lower tens die, or some such. 

I was working on a method of using the ones die to determine success level rather than math/table. For instance all crticals ended with a "1", all specials ended with a "2" and so forth. That way one a tie a 46 will beat any success than ended in a 7 or higher. That way ties only happened when both the success levels and the die rolls matched (1% of the time). 

19 minutes ago, DreadDomain said:

Was it? Where can we read about this?

Sorry, typo,  Stormbringer. 

I believe the story goes that Chaosium had been working on  a new edition of Stormbringer, but that was when Michael Moorcock wanted to end the arrangement, and licence out Elric to another company. So, not wanting to just throw the new edtion away, TPB decided to remove all the Young Kingdoms specific stuff, and release it as Magic World. At least that's what people said in the Stormbringer forum.

That's why Magic World is so similar to Stormbringer and Elric!

On 1/12/2024 at 1:53 AM, Ravenheart87 said:

The extremely generic title Magic World didn't help either. If I saw it first today it would remind me of a classic Gunshow comic strip line ("Dare you enter my magical realm?"). Stormbringer? RuneQuest? Dragonbane? Now those sound cool as hell and immediately catch my attention. Magic World? Not so much. Before someone wants to hold a history lesson: yes, I know where the name comes from. But MW ended up being quite different from the little booklet in the Worlds of Wonder boxed set, which is a product only BRP/RQ grognards remembered by the 2000s anyway.

Well, it was supposed to be called Stormbringer but things happened. 

Your comment does highlight one of the weaknesses of generic RPGs, namely that they are generic. No one gets excited over generic coffee, generic soft drinks, or generic anything.

21 minutes ago, Mugen said:

I think it also completely missed the mark,

Not really. The "mark" as it were was to handle encumbrance. THe fatquie system was made as a replacement to the encumbrance rules of RQ2. 

21 minutes ago, Mugen said:

as wounds you suffered or what actions you performed in a round didn't have any impact on your Fatigue.

True, but wouldn't probably shouldn't have impacted fatigue. In combat you get an adrenaline dump and don't usually feel fatigue until later, when it all wears off and you crash. Of course that should apply to all fatigue though, not just encumbrance.

I think most people's objects to the fatigue system were three fold:

1.  You can to mark off a point every round.
2. You had to subtract 1% per point into negative from everything.
3. It made high stats much more important in terms of what armor you could fight in while still having some skill, and for what length of time.

4 hours ago, Renfield said:

What implementation of BRP rules does everyone think created the "biggest sin"?

 

Oh, that's like tossing a grenade into the room. I doubt you'll get a consensus. MRQ1 maybe? And that mostly for how they bungled the Gloranthan cults. Orlanth with the Chaos rune because TPB didn't understand that Gloranthan Chaos wasn't the same as D&D Chaotic. 

4 hours ago, Renfield said:

That is to say, if there was a rule or mechanic that you think deviated to such a degree as to be un-fun or overly clunky = what was it?  

Well most people didn't like the fatigue rules from RQ3. Ticking off a fatigue point every round and appling an increasing peanlty to roll, in 1% increments. Probably the winner for " un-fun or overly clunky"

4 hours ago, Renfield said:

Or maybe to say, is there a mechanic or rule that a majority of folks just kinda wish would go away/ be replaced by some better implementation?

Yeah, that was probably fatigue points. Not that there aren't other things here and there that people don't like, but Fatigue Points probably topped most peole lists.

4 hours ago, Renfield said:

(just making sure I don't wander down mechanics path that is already a tried and tested failure/frustration, lol )

Oh, it's not that bad. It's just pesky micro-managing bookeeping.

4 hours ago, Renfield said:

 

As a side note, I am not really looking to do anything radical with my implementation of BRP rules.  So really, this is largely a sanity check since this is my first time making a full game from the ground up.  🙂

Good Luck! From the ground up can be a bit tricky. Be sure to playtest stuff. It's surprising just how consistently another pair of eyes can spot something in ten seconds that the designers somehow could miss repeatedly for months. 

3 minutes ago, g33k said:

<heh>
The old joke goes, "the only thing scarier than a hardware engineer with a patch-tape is a software engineer with a new circuit-board."
(n.b. which is the scarier depends on how you tell the joke, to which audience)

LOL! One of the engineers I worked for once told a doctor that at least he can fix his mistakes, not bury them. 

3 minutes ago, g33k said:

I'm mostly a software guy.  I can solder... kinda (if you don't mind large blobby masses on your circuit-board).

Argh, cold solder joints, solder bridges, more rework.

But that's just in. In game terms you have the skill, sorta. You just don't have it at the same level, and vice versa. What I can see, in game terms, as that as someone gets further away from their field of expertise, the difficulty goes up. The task is still within their general field, just not something that they actually do. 

BTW, on the software side of things, I gamed with one of those engineers and routinely went to his house and did tech support for him. Mostly undoing the stuff he did. He once deleted a bunch of Windows system files that "he didn't install". Now the guy could program machines. It's just that he was used to a very different operating system (G Code) and the memory constraints of CNC machines. Things like hidden system files to support the GUI were not something he was aware of. At least not until I had to reinstall Windows. 

4 minutes ago, g33k said:

It's entirely-similar, IMO, to how a "Physicist" may understand a nuclear reaction better than than an "Engineer," but an "Engineer" has a much better grasp of a nuclear reactor !

LOL! You're hitting close to home with that one. I'm an electronics technician and have worked for several engineers. When it came to theory and designing circuits, those guys were way ahead of me. When it came to actually putting the design together, soldering connectors, following NASA, Milspec, ISO9000, etc. standards, I left those guys in my dust. And well all knew it. I had one boss who would toss me the 26 pin MS connectors because none of the engineers could solder one without either breaking a wire or shorting one out. At least not on the first try.

Now we all kinda knew what the other knew. I did know the theory to design a circuit, and they did know how to wire and solder a circuit board.  But we were so much slower than each other. 

33 minutes ago, g33k said:

I am actually considering a version of this for my own in-development BRP-based RPG... even for PC's!

Take a "Profession," defined as a suite of skills (and backstory).  "Professionally-relevant" skills would all be at a single % (decided by GM according to their campaign).

You could use the difficulty mechanic to handle both specialties and knowledge that is outside the character's field of expertise. 

For instance, you archaeologist 60%, could specialize Sumerian culture and such rolls would be easy, with most other cultures being average. He might have some knowledge of ancient Egyptian rafts, but wouldn't be be all that experienced with actually  piloting an ancient Eqgyptian raft making that task difficult. 

Experience and improvement could consist of shifting a task's difficulty. 

This might simply stat blocks, as you'd only need to write down the stuff that changes.

3 hours ago, sladethesniper said:

What is everyone's opinion on a single skill NPC,

I think it's fine for "rank and file" NPCs, extras, mooks and the like. NPCs who the PCs won't interact with much, or will interact in a limited way (i.e. Guard Dog 53% which gets used to spot intruders, bite and jump). It harks back to WEG's 2D Attrubtes, 4D skills NPCs. There even a few RPGa that uses character professions and classes that way, and f a given profession applies or not depends on if the player can convince the GM that, say , a Boxer should know some first aid. 

Even old RQ used to do something like this with "Significant Skills" listed for NPCs (allowing GMs to given them "ingisnficant skills" if they needed to).

THe skill ladder from Novice (5-25%), to Journeyman (50%), Veteran (75%) to Master (90%+) leads itself to this. 

More significant NPCs, though naturally need more significant writeups. So Stormtrooper 44% yes, Sith Lord 93%, no.