soltakss

:eek:

Quote:

Originally Posted by soltakss

...They are adventurers and are the rarest kind of adventurers as they are, by and large, successful ones and don't end up eaten or naked in a ditch...

We obviously play very different styles of BRP...

Nick Middleton

You meet a bandit, he attacks you, you kill him, you strip him of his armour and throw him into a ditch.

What did you think I meant? Oh, hmmm, perhaps occasionally .....

I always liked the Discworld (books not RPG as I've not seen the RPG) approach that you can either do it or you can't. That and the idea of chain-smoking, mysoginistic, 100 a day wizards who live for the next meal and don't have to pay in shops ("Pointy Hat Sir? That'll do nicely.")

You could make magic use dangerous, culturally taboo, illegal, difficult to learn, restricted to certain families, available only to those who are talented or whetever you want, but what happens when a player says "I really want to play a Sorcerer/Priest/Wizard/Magic User/Whatever"? Do you say "No, they are very rare in this setting" or do you set out a certain number of goals that the PC must do to use magic?

After all, PCs are very rare. They are adventurers and are the rarest kind of adventurers as they are, by and large, successful ones and don't end up eaten or naked in a ditch. So, Magic Users are rare, PCs are rare, therefore PCs are ......

Whaddya mean it doesn't work that way?

Look at modern day fantasy fiction. Magic use may be rare in the books, but one of the Heroes is invariably a magic user. That's what people like to play.

No matter how often people try to move away from stereotypes, people still want to play the same kind of characters. In our game, one player really loves playing shamans, another loves playing trader/scouts, another loves playing fighters and I love playing berserkers.

Magic Users are one of the broad stereotypes that people like to play, so I don't see why you'd want to restrict them.

Unless, of course, it is a question of restricting magic in general. But, even then you have the problem that as long as there is some magic in the world, some people are going to be able to use it and PCs are going to want to be in that group of people. Knowing PCs the way I do, if a PC wants something then a PC is going to get it despite what the GM wants.

So, perhaps banning it completely is the trick, but that restricts the fantasy element quite a lot.

Just Say Yes to Magic Use and have spells being bandied about left, right and centre. It's far more fun that way.

Use SAN for creepiness and prolonged shocks and it works really well. Imagine teenagers in a Haunted House, teenagers being chased by mass-murderers, teenagers hunted by mutants, teenagers .....

Using SAN for shock value works fairly well. Imagine turning up to see your doctor and finding him with his skin peeled off.

Using SAN to scare hardened adventurers doesn't really work that well. You see something big and dark covered in tattoos with a huge club and it ... "Oh, it's a troll, what cult is he in?" You see a beast-like creature, foul and covered with filth, with a powerful odour and it's coming closer to you ..."Oh, it's just a broo, we'll kill it!" You see a horned winged creature, taller than the tallest of men, the air is full of the smell of brimstone ..." Oh, it's just a demon, we'll kill it!"

It's like soldiers. Some come back with Post Traumatic Stress, something that can be modelled with SAN. Most don't as they get used to seeing things and it's only really extreme things that bother them.

The trouble here is that everyone is discussing what they think will be in the D100 rules, or what was in RQ or Magic World or some other system, rather than what's going to be in the rules.

Hopefully it will come out close enough to Christmas for me to use Christmas money, or close enough to my birthday for me to use Birthday money so we can discuss what's actually in it.

Absolutely.

One setting's mile-long-starship is not the same as another's.

You wouldn't want the same things on every starship in every game. Each would have different systems, different technology and so on.

But, the core rules should be the same for everything.

So, you'd have a rule for Hull Quality (AP) and another rule for Shields. Shields could be by location or cover the whole ship. They'd have energy costs and would absorb damage. Shields in Star Trek are not the same as Shields in other systems (can't think of one, off-hand, but I've seen one film/series where shields work until they break and another where shields protect a bit and let a bit through). You'd reflect this with rules for different types of shields.

Similarly, a good well-equipped crew will increase your damage control chance, this would apply in most settings. Star Trek uses big Starships with large crews, but other settings have much smaller crews but other ways of handling damage control. Look at Starship Troopers - space combat is deadly in that with chunks getting blown off spaceships left, right and centre, so damage control wouldn't be as important.

So, yes, rules would be added for certain eventualities and there will be a lot of them. But, people will still say "What about the so-and-so spaceships in such-and-such file/series? The rules don't cover Black-Hole_Imploder-Missiles." or whatever.

I'd like to see good BRP Spaceship rules.

I think you are right. But one thing you forgot IMO: sensors. To "see" another ship or not is a matter of life and death in some space opera settings. This could be modelled like spot hidden skill or on the resistance table. (eg. sensor power 23 vs. ECM 20 or so)

Sure, there are a lot of things I didn't include. Sensors are one of them.

It's easily covered by having a Sensors skill and resolving against a Stealth skill using whatever method is best.

Crew Quality could gives a boost/penalty to certain activities, individual crew members could have skills to use (The Communications Officer uses Sensors, the Weapons Officer uses Blaster, the Engineer controls Manouver, the Medical Officer controls Life Support and so on), High-Tech equipment could give boosts to certain skills as would the presence of AIs, Alien technology could give boosts as well.

You can make it as complicated as you want, to cover many eventualities, but it basically boils down to "Shoot, Dodge, Absorb Hit".

Ship design is more complicated. I'd treat ships as PCs, whether they are alive/intelligent or not. So, give ships SIZ, CON, INT (?), DEX, POW (?). I'm not sure if they need STR or CHA, but they might be useful, STR might indicate how much cargo a ship can carry. You could have a series of templates showing typical ships of certain classes and base your ship design on one of those or make up a new one. AP/HP might be called Hull Quality/Spaceworthiness, but you'd need something like this. Weapons, propulsion systems, power sources, battery stores, cargo holds, shuttlecraft and so on need to be included as well, so you'd need some way of limiting the number of things you can include in a ship, possibly based on SIZ. You'd need rules or guidelines on how to incorporate extra systems, alien technology, system upgrades and so on. But, it is easy enough to do and keeps well within the BRP ethos.

I'd hope to see something similar in any BRP SciFi/Space System.

I've always wanted to treat Starship Combat very simply.

Having played and loathed Traveller and played Ringworld, I am not that experienced in Sci Fi games, but ...

What do Starships do in combat?

They move.

They shoot.

They get shot at.

They damage other Starships.

They take damage themselves.

One bugs out or one gets destroyed/disabled/boarded/whatever.

Now, what do people do in combat?

They move.

They shoot.

They get shot at.

They damage other people.

They get damaged themselves.

One runs away or gets wounded/disabled/killed/captured.

Can anyone see the similarity?

I'd treat Starship combat the same as normal combat.

Starships have locations, AP and HP. They have weapons that do damage. They have forcefields that absorb damage.

Sure, there are extra things to think about. You might be able to do Precise Attacks and target particular subsystems (Drives/Weapons/Life Support) you might even have to have rules for what happens if the hull in penetrated, with air leaks and so on. You'd certainly have rules on the number of charges a weapon has, recharge rates, batteries, how much power a ship has and how much can be fed into shields/weapons.

But, when it comes down to it, you have someone with 60% Pilot Starship, someone with 55% Starship Blaster, a Blaster doing 1D10 damage and a Starship with 6 point Hull and 10 HP in every location. The opponent can't dodge a Blaster but can dodge a Quantum Torpedo using his Pilot Starship. Some Starships might have modifiers, one might be Manouverable and give +20% to Pilot Starship for dodges, another might be Tough and have extra APs, another might have resealable skin or whatever.

Anything a lot more complicated than that is going way too far, in my opinion.

Hmmm, methinks that arguing something on the atomic level is getting a bit far from AP in BRP ......

Everyone knows that any rule in BRP or any game is reasonable to non-experts but completely unreasonable to experts.

All rules are compromises between realism, complexity and playability.

Whether random armour is a better compromise over fixed armour, I haven't a clue. But they are both reasonable compromises, in my opinion.

I 'm not sure how the structure of alloys at the atomic level helps decide that, though.

The HQ Books are very adaptable to BRP/RQ.

Books such as Storm Tribe/Thunder Rebels/Imperial Lunar Handbooks/Sons of Kargzant/Blood Over Gold/Wintertop's Shadow have a lot of background material with Homelands and Cult writeups.

Homelands are character backgrounds, giving skills and professions available to people from those Homelands. Cult writeups are generally very sketchy with very little background or flavour but describe the spells that a cult gets. I use the HQ format when I am prototyping a cult - I write it up in HQ format then flesh the spells and skills out for RQ.

You have to do a bit of work on the cults to use them in RQ/BRP, but it is not impossible. I'm currently working on adding the later HQ cults to my HW/HQ Cult Conversions and am planning to convert Homelands as well.

But, there's no reason why you can't take a HQ book and immediately start using it for BRP/RQ.

They are very Gloranthan, though, expect for Mythic Russia, of course. So, you'd have to use them with a lot of adaption outside Glorantha.

But, if you want new cults, new backgrounds and interesting scenarios then I'd recomment the HQ stuff.

Does anyone use random armour with hit locations?

In our game, when the PCs put on a dollop of Protection, they are very hard to hurt. Random armour might be the answer to this. I doubt if they'd agree though.

I sometimes use the Chaos Features Table for mutations in games that have mutations.

But, I don't use Chaos as it is in Glorantha as it is a very unique concept. I don't often use Gloranthan cults outside Glorantha, either, as they don't really fit. However, I do use the spells and genral outlines for cults and sometimes have pulled across most of a cult for a certain setting.

Where spells are Chaotic in nature, I generally ignore them, change them or change the rationale.

I don't often use Gloranthan chaos creatures in other settings, either. So, I don't have broos in Alternate Earth, although Stupor Mundi has them as minor demons/devils, which is an interesting idea. Ogres are normally out, but Stupor Mundi has them as demonic children, the children of incubi and so on, which again is an intersting idea. Scorpionmen only really fit in deserts, Jack O'Bears don't really fit except as Pumpkinhead monsters, Gorp might be usable elsewhere and so on. I'd use some of them where I need a strange creature, but they wouldn't be chaotic in the Gloranthan sense.

In Fantasy Earth settings, Chaos isn't the enemy. In games with Christian backgrounds, the enemy is often the Devil or pagans (or Christianity depending on the period/setting) or heathens. In games with Muslim backgrounds, the enemy could be Christianity, Infidels in general, Djinnis or the Devil.

Even in CoC type settings, the enemy is the Cthulhu Mythos and doesn't touch Chaos. Eternal Champion has a different type of Chaos and Gloranthan Chaos doesn't fit. And so on.

All in my opinion, of course.

Having information on the left where I normally look and links on the right that I normally ignore is fine by me.

I don't often visit the homepage, but I like the new layout.

There's always a need for maps. The more the merrier.

Why not post some examples and let us drool over them?

Our Rhino Rider has gone through a few mounts, but he has had to sell a few after some broos messed about with them.

His current war-rhino has lasted for about 3 seasons so far, or perhaps a little longer.

The other PCs have the same cavalry bison and cavalry zebra that they bought as soon as they could afford them, so they have lasted probably one and a half years.

They rarely risk their mounts in combat, preferring to use missile weapons and spells at range. When they do charge in, the rhino goes first with a hefty Protection spell and goes in at speed, so there's rarely much left to attack it. The bison goes in next to mop up, followed not very closely by the zebra.

They normally heal their beasts immediately, to save buying a new one. I play that Praxians can use Heal without any penalty on their mounts, so Healing works really well (not halved for the different species).

Of course, they don't take beasts into caves or into danger areas, being the most risk-averse party I've ever played/GMed with.

In past campaigns, I never bothered to buy a war mount, or even a cavalry mount, because they probably wouldn't last the scenario, so I had a succession of identikit horses rolling off a conveyer belt.

We had a unicorn rider whose mount lasted a very, very long time. We also had a morokanth whose war slug lasted a while, but it was only brought out for special occasions. Trog's Triceratops (Trixie, I think) lasted a long while as well, but that's because he bolted bronze plates to its hide and it was probably more intelligent than he was.

We used a wagon in Dorastor, but the mounts kept getting scared and running away, until the Death Lord bought a number of draft bison and performed a ritual on them that made them stronger, untiring and pretty immune to fear-based spells, but they made Humakti a bit uneasy and could cross rivers underwater. They lasted a while until a PC Humakti noticed that they never ate and never got tired and had blank expressions on their faces .....

No one? I really wish I lived in England or Scandinavia or Austria sometimes...'cause BRP style games seem MUCH more popular and common in those places than here, in WOTC land.

Why don't you move? We'd love to have you ....

In RQ2 specials did extra damage, criticals did the extra damage AND ignored armour. Either way, why do you think maces and mauls are preferred cultural weapons for trolls while humans use swords and axes? Perfectly good in-game reasons!

We always played that Specials did extra damage and criticals did normal damage but ignored armour. One of our RQ2 PCs had some Power Arrows that moved the roll up one level, success became special, special became critical and critical became critical impale, doing impaling damage ignoring armour.

In Glorantha, maces and mauls are trollish weapons because the troll wargods Zorak Zoran and Kaarg used maces and mauls. They are cultural weapons in Glorantha. Trollkin use spears because Argan Argar duffed over Lodril and took loads of his magical items, including the use of spears.

Other settings may well have other weapons for trolls.

Secondary weapons are important to people who want to advance in certain cults that need 90% in more than one fighting skill.

They are also important to people who fight different kinds of enemy. Spears are almost useless against certain forms of undead, for instance.

Soldiers typically learn two weapon skills, e.g. spear&shield/shortsword or 2H Axe/Broadsword, one main weapon and one secondary for close-quarters.

It's convenient to carry a secondary weapon, or have a secondary skill, if your prime weapon breaks, is stolen or becomes unavailable.

As for specials, I've been using Impales/Slashes/Crushes for years, as RQ2, but with Impales doing Max+Normal, Slashes doing Normal twice and Crushes doing Damage Bonus Twice rather then RQ2's Max damage Bonus which makes trolls and giants incredibly over-powered. Admittedly, a giant with a 7D6 Damage Bonus and a 2D8 club will do 2D8+14D6 on a crush, so it doesn't make a lot of difference, but I love rolling lots of dice to scare players.

Will we have to take our shoes off at the door?

No spitting on the floor, I suppose.

None of the above really fit my idea of Glorantha and my wife says I can't have all the pies.

I liked the simplicity of the RQ2 background but I also like the way that cults have been expanded on in RQ3 and HW/HQ.

Personally, I'm not that keen on the way HQ cults are organised into one big cult and lots of subcults (Vinga with her hat on, Vinga with her hat off) but if you treat the HQ cults as RQ cults then conversion is a nobrainer.

I didn't much care for sorcery as in the RQ3 rulebook, but I like the Malkioni sects and much prefer the new style for sorcery, although making distinctions between Grimoires, Orders, texts and what-have-you is just confusing.

So, I take bits and pieces from all the incarnations of Glorantha.

We spent two or three evenings rolling up characters for Aftermath, played it for one session and then gave up entirely.

It was too complex and we had no feeling for how good we were, what we were rolling for or anything else.

Half of us had played RQ/CoC and all of us had played D&D, so we had experienced other systems.

I'll lower the post requirement to 50 posts, then everyone active on BRP Central will have access quick.

Just when I'd organised my non-spamming spamming schedule :mad:

Hey, I have a hundred posts and the door won't open for me! What's up?

You've got 100 posts?

I'll have to post more on the really interesting minutiae of guns and spears, then.

The people were quite clearly wrong, then.

Why produce one big sourcebook for a setting when you can produce half a dozen really thin ones?

More for us to buy.

Hmmm, I used to be able to go into the main forum and read all the topics.

Now, I have to remember to go into all the other forums as well.

Get rid of the forums and drop everything back to the main one, please!