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colinabrett

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Everything posted by colinabrett

  1. MOB: Many thanks for your sterling efforts in moving Chaosium-related G+ posts to Tapatalk. I have just registered and look forward to seeing (and contributing to) more content. Regards, Colin Brett
  2. I like both ideas and explanations. But (and there's always a "but", isn't there?) how does the caster of Undo Sorcery know what he or she is trying to Undo? Is it an Unbreakable Bonds spell holding the mighty-thewed Barbarian in place or something more mysterious? This is one of the greatest things about Magic World (and BRP in general) sorcery (or powers): there are no, or few, explicit descriptions of a spell or power's appearance. Does Unbreakable Bonds manifest as a glowing set of handcuffs, a ball and chain, or a patch of quicksand (minus the drowning in the slurry, because that would be a different spell)? At this point, maybe the sorcerer should think about using Witch Sight on the victim of Unbreakable Bonds to divine what is affecting the Barbarian, before casting Undo? Sorcery is not a predictable power. But while the sorcerer dithers over whether to Undo the spell affecting the Barbarian, the Bonded character is rendered powerless. Of course, the caster of Undo might make the wrong choice. This then becomes an in-game decision by the sorcerer's player, which needs to be adjudicated by the GM. And this brings us back to the original question: is the adjudication based on the circumstances, the rules, or just "winging it"? I don't really want to cause a stir here but some of my players have D&D experience and are kinda used to "definite answers". Colin
  3. Hi All, I'm returning to Magic World and the Southern Reaches and this time have two dedicated sorcerers in the group. I see the use of sorcery ramping up over the coming sessions. My question is about Undo Sorcery. It seems pretty clear that a spell of lower level is undone, that is, a Level 4 Undo Sorcery spell will completely dissipate a Level 3 Unbreakable Bonds spell. It's also pretty clear that if a Level 2 Undo Sorcery spell is cast at a Level 3 Unbreakable Bonds spell, the Unbreakable Bonds is weakened but continues "running" at Level 1. How would you handle this weakening of the Unbreakable Bonds? Or, indeed, any other spell weakened in this way? Perhaps the spell's duration could be reduced? Or perhaps the STR vs. MP (in the case of Unbreakable Bonds) would be against one third of the caster's MP (the Bonds are weakened by 2-out-of-3 Levels, so it seems reasonable that the Bonds are now "powered" by 1/3 of the caster's power). This is just one example of the spells Undo Sorcery affects. How have my fellow GM's handled these sorts of situations? Is it a case of winging it, based on the circumstances? Thanks, Colin
  4. That depends on if you want to avoid any "Imperial entanglements". 😁 On a more serious note, you might find the attached file useful. It's big. Sorry. About 17.5 Mb and 540 pages. I found it here: https://usir.salford.ac.uk/14831/1/D083029.pdf It contains little snippets like: The and charge for passing under the bridge at Marlow was "one penny for each vessel passing under the bridge laden with goods for sale exceeding in value 40s." (37); at Windsor:- "Every ship passing under the bridge, laden with wares for sale exceeding the value of 100s., is to pay two pence." (38) Charges were also made at the bridge of Maidenhead:- "id. on every ship or boat laden with merchandise passing under it." (39) Where "s" represents shillings and "d" represents pence. So there may be charges for passing under bridges. There's this, as well: The river was used for the conveyance of passengers in the twelfth century; in 1198 the Sheriff of Shropshire paid 6s. 3d. for the hire of a barge to carry the wife of one Griffin ap Rese from Bridgnorth to Gloucester. (3) Bridgnorth to Gloucester is about 60 miles, not much different from your Tindale to Shillingsford journey. There are 12 pence in one shilling, so the journey from Bridgnorth to Gloucester would have cost (6x12)+3 or 63 pence According to MW p.35, a loaf of fresh bread costs 1 Bronze. For this to be "affordable" in the middle ages, it would seem that 1 Bronze = 1 penny. Therefore, Bridgnorth to Gloucester would be 63 Bronze, plus the costs of any bridges passed under. Roughly, this is 1 Bronze per mile. Your journey from Tindale to Shillingshead is about 3/4 the distance of Bridgnorth to Gloucester, so the cost would be about 63 x .75 = 47 Bronze. Let's round that up to 50, say, to account for bridges and other taxes. Now, I freely admit I've had a few pints tonight and the research was carried out very quickly. So I'm not terribly confident of the 1 Bronze = 1 pence conversion. However, you may be able to get some comparisons from the following links: http://www.guildofstmichael.org/money/prices.html http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/society/city life/cost.html http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/medprice.htm http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency/default0.asp#mid Price comparisons from these sites are mostly Renaissance-based. It depends on how "developed" you consider the society of the Southern Reaches to be. Booze aside, I hope you find this useful. Regards, Colin PS: If you need some more input with your Tindale project, please let me know. D083029.pdf
  5. Hi, Hi @rsandford . Thanks for the feedback. I have run a couple of scenarios with it over the past few months. I might pretty them up and post them here. I think the 2046 rules need a clean up, so I might start on a "2050" iteration with simplified hacking rules, an expanded timeline, more corporations and a more detailed look at Techno Allegiance. 2019 has just begun, so I'll add it to my project list for the year. Colin
  6. Isn't this how magic worked in Stormbringer 3rd edition (and perhaps earlier). I seem to remember the rules saying, to the effect, that Man was incapable of performing magic in and of himself; he must summon demons and elementals and higher powers to do the magic for him. Magic had its variety by allowing the player to choose the demon's form and some special powers. Colin
  7. Hi Seldak, Welcome aboard. I think the failings and character points apply to characters with Super Powers, as described on page 141 onwards. Hope this helps Colin
  8. Designed for the Golden Grimoire campaign, with a mixture of Stormbringer 3 and BRP PERIHELION - DEMON OF KNOWLEDGE STR [0] CON [30] SIZ [5] INT [88] POW [17] DEX [0] CHA [15] Hit Points = 30 Major Wound Level = 15 Skills Language (Summoner's) 95% Language (Demon-tongue) 109% Language 1 (GM's choice) 145% Language 2 (GM's choice) 114% Language 3 (GM's choice) 116% Knowledge (Region: Hell) 125% Knowledge (Demonology) 107% Knowledge 1 (GM's choice) 153% Knowledge 2 (GM's choice) 121%, Knowledge 3 (GM's choice) 125% Powers Perihelion has 3 chaos powers. 1. Retrocognition - Seeing the Past (left hand mirror) 2. Scrying - Seeing the Present (centre mirror) 3. Clairvoyance - Seeing the Future (right hand mirror)
  9. May I suggest, not knowing the who-owns-what-IP question, Fritz Lieber's Lankhmar (and by extension all of Nehwon)? It's a setting rich with most of the standard fantasy tropes (except elves and dwarfs) but filled with magic that has consequences, plane-hopping (e.g. Bazaar of the Bizarre and a few others), interfering gods, meddlesome mages and even the possibility of ghouls as PCs. Aside from TSR's products, who might own the license to one of fantasy's leading lights? Colin
  10. Hi, I am running a Chronicles of Future Earth 'campaign'. (I use air-quotes here because it was suggested and started at very short notice and lacks a lot of my usual planning.) One of the players has asked about the metal-substitute Alagin. His character (a psionic) is interested in learning how to craft it (or, knowing the player, exploit it to his own benefit). There is little information in the rules about it. CoFE page 46 has descriptions of the substance as "dark brown or jet black substance ... created - some say grown - by the mysterious Spider Folk." It is "vaguely translucent, and warm to the touch, as though alive." CoFE p.17 says "Gardeners, producing raw materials, growing vocali, luminacts or alagin colonies in specially prepared environments." So, where does it come from? Here are my thoughts so far: It is clearly grown from organic materials. What if the Hsun are like 40K Tyranids? They dissolve organic components in vats of their own digestive fluids to produce a gruel of protoplasm. This is then mixed with inorganic material from their own chitinous shell, which is perhaps from natural shedding or harvesting from dead Hsun. The alagin colony is then psychically manipulated into many different shapes, from bizzare and beautiful sculptures, to plain ingots, sheets, blocks, rods and even wires. The shaped items are then left to 'air dry' in a Helium-enriched atmosphere. What do you all think? Any suggestions or official "canon" would be massively useful. Thanks in advance, Colin
  11. Here are my 5 suggestions Fey influences building to a crescendo ... can the PCs stop it? Shadow wars between the Houses ... I've always liked a bit of espionage and assassination Orcs found their own kingdom and disrupt the power balance ... The orcs have been reduced to primitives and this isn't fair in the eyes of a 40K Greenskin player 🙂 A Rime Isle (Fafhrd and the Mouser) location just off the southern edge of the map ... where planes and planets intersect Parties, balls, galas and feasts ... as an excuse to let the characters' hair down Colin
  12. Missed that bit of your original post. Sorry. (Note to self: Learn to read the whole post before replying 🙂 ) Colin
  13. IIRC Hawkwind definitely were aware of Stormbringer/Elric. One of their albums is Chronicle of the Black Sword (of which I have a Live version on CD). I believe Michael Moorcock even played with Hawkwind. He mentions the band as "members of the Hawkwind orchestra" (my italics) in one of the Cornelius short stories where the Teddy Bear steam boat sails up the Thames and plays such loud music that the Houses of Parliament collapse! My memory might be a bit hazy on some of these points as it's been a while since I read the stories. Colin
  14. Well put! I had thought of using a previously unknown island off the cost of the Southern Reaches as a staging post for a Spelljammer inspired campaign, similar to the Rock of Bral (in the Spelljammer setting) or even Rime Isle in Nehwhon (Fafhrd and the Mouser). Surely, so long as we don't publish or attempt to sell our campaigns, we wouldn't be infringing IP rights. IANAL so if anyone can clarify this, I'd be interested in knowing more. Colin
  15. Couldn't escaping characters end up in any BRP-based world? Imagine a group of barely-sane Pan Tangians ending up in the Chronicles of Future Earth setting, for example. Perhaps they would be chased by a group of Lawful PCs intent on stopping the Pan Tangians spreading their own particular brand of Chaos in a new world. Colin
  16. I downloaded a couple of sets of rules many years ago. One was written by Frederic Moulin and was hosted at Michigan State University. I don't know the author of the other set. You might be able to find them on the Internet Archive http://archive.org/web/web.php . Colin
  17. I have a suite of Perl scripts I've written over the years to generate PCs and monsters for various BRP games. The abbreviated output looks like this: 11 colin@rokk> ./mkbrppc.pl --genre=fantasy --profession=wizard --race=human | ./npcstatblock.pl Name: normal fantasy human wizard Characteristics: STR [13] CON [11] SIZ [11] INT [11] POW [14] DEX [10] APP [6] EDU [15] SCB: Combat 1% Communication 1% Manipulation 1% Mental 5% Perception 3% Physical 0% Combat: Hit Points=11 Major Wound Level=6 Stat Rolls: Effort 65% Stamina 55% Idea 55% Luck 70% Agility 50% Charisma 30% Know 75% Derived: PP=14 XP=6 FP=24 SAN=70% DB=NONE MOV [10] Skills: Knowledge Occult 56%, Perform Rituals 46%, Language Other 21%, Craft Skill 21%, Knowledge 1 40%, Knowledge 2 30%, Insight 28%, Persuade 36%, Research 50%, Literacy 64% Powers: Cast 4 Magic spells of the player's choice. Each has a starting level of 11 %. Or Cast 6 Levels of Sorcery spells of the player's choice. These spells have no starting skill level. They just *work*. Bonus Skills: 27 34 24 21 Possessions: Notes: 12 colin@rokk> The 'Bonus Skills' numbers can be used by the GM to increase existing skills or add new ones. Now, this wizard isn't exactly great but I can always re-run the script until I get a 'better' result. Most of the NPCs used in the Golden Grimoire (Stormbringer) and Magic World campaigns were generated using these scripts. Colin
  18. A Critical causes double damage; a Special causes the weapon's special effects; so what would be the effect of an "Under Half Success"? Roll damage twice and take the higher result might work but that just increases the number of dice rolls. Or, an Under Half Success could automatically allow a riposte. When applied to other skills, I can see how this would be useful. Perhaps on an Under Half Success, a particular task gets completed more quickly (even a couple of combat rounds could make all the difference in some cases) or has some other minor advantage. As for a different name, I quite like "Solid Hit" or "Solid Success". Hope this helps a bit. Colin
  19. Welcome to BRP Central, dieselpunk! I agree with Questbird that your use of POWx5 as a willpower check is a good idea. For morale, however, you can be a bit more flexible. POWx5 will work nicely but I often use INTx5 to see if the enemies are smart enough to run away if they're taking a kicking from the PCs. Hope this helps. Colin
  20. Does this mean that when the stars do align, there'll be no need for an Introduction to CoC ... because we'll all be living it Colin
  21. Surely "Introduction to CoC" or "Introduction to Roleplaying in Glorantha" are specific to the worlds or genres in which they are being played? It's great to have Intro to CoC if I want to play a modern-day horror game (with or without the Mythos) or a Glorantha introduction for fantasy worlds. But if I wanted to play in a science-fantasy world (like the 80's cartoon He Man and the Masters of the Universe) or a post-apocalyptic setting (like Mad Max or Gamma World) would either a CoC intro or RQG intro have all the material I need? Hence the calls for an updated BRP/BGB, which I would support. Colin PS: I am probably getting "RuneQuest Glorantha" mixed up with CRQ (Chaosium RuneQuest?), which I confess is new to me, so apologies in advance.
  22. @David Scott That's the page that is missing from my copy. (Grumble, GW production quality, grumble). Colin
  23. Hi @Borejko The title page of SB3 was painted by Peter Jones, as interviewed by John Blanche in White Dwarf 90 in June 1987 (thirty years ago! Arioch save me, I'm getting OLD ). Many of the other full-page colour and black-and-white illustrations are by Frank Brunner. Are you looking for something specific? Regards, Colin
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