colinabrett

15 hours ago, Mel Riffe said:

Throwing my hat into the ring as a play-tester.

I played Stormbringer when it first came out. However I didn't keep up with it through the years/revisions. I would love to help out in some form or fashion.

Welcome aboard, Mel! And welcome to BRP Central.

Colin

Regarding doubling-up on some skills.

It's just gut instinct for me but "Hide/Move Quietly" or "Repair/Devise" look untidy in a skill list. Can we rename the combined skills such as

• Hide/Move Quietly becomes Stealth
• Repair/Devise becomes Contraptions
• Sail/Swim (from Al's example) becomes Watercraft
• Scent/Taste becomes Sense (as per the BGB)

I can't think of many more that could be combined and the above are just suggestions.

Colin

3 hours ago, ReignDragonSMH said:

... However, there is a significant group of players that just take the bare bones BRP and morph it into whatever Lore they are  using to run their games. I suspect that basic BRP no setting attached system will never go away, but in itself does not require more than say a single book or two for players to work with. 

So we can create our own settings, or derive them from other settings (Skyrim, Fallout and Spelljammer spring to mind). With the BGB (or whatever might follow it), we can pick and choose those rules which simulate the setting, not try to hack CoC or RQG to fit our own campaign worlds.

Colin

Kudos to this post; flames to /dev/null :-)

2 hours ago, g33k said:

But there really *IS* a market for the generic-toobox-suite game books.  GURPS, HERO, etc...  I'm hoping that, eventually, Chaosium's internal reference-standard documentation & rules will be sufficiently-well-developed that actually pulling them out to a standalone "nuBGB" will be a viable project.

Eventually.

 

This is spot on!

Colin

18 hours ago, g33k said:

Mythras seems to be taking over as the default d100 core:  M-Space, Classic Fantasy, & AfterTheVampireWars have all ported from BRP to Mythras (and the first two, already out, seem to be doing very well there!).

And, despite the success of M-Space (with which I was tangentially involved), this is why I won't be making the jump to Mythras. <flameproof underware on> It just ain't BRP </flameproof underware off>.

Colin

Flames to /dev/null , please.

@Chaot

Looks very nice.

A couple of questions, if I may. What are Brawn, Finesse and Weapon Styles? Have they been adapted from other systems or are they your own home brew ideas? And, as a question of style, which fonts are you using? They look really nice.

Colin

6 minutes ago, Thot said:

BTW, I think a city would be a good place to have this take place, with all attempting to save all the city's inhabitants. But which one would be best? Any suggestions?

Karlaak by the Weeping Waste is perhaps the obvious choice. Elric lives there with Zarozinia at the start of Stormbringer. It would be an interesting encounter with a "tall, moody albino whose name nobody caught."

Colin

I for one would love to play in a campaign like this! 

One question, however: would the players or characters know the world is doomed before the campaign begins? (Either through the players' own knowledge or through clues previously planted in the game.) 

If the PCs know (or suspect) the outcome, I think this would change their attitudes to scenarios presented by the GM. 

I would arrange things so they (willingly or not) aid Elric in retreiving the Horn of Fate, then have a WTF moment when they realise just what they've done. Then they have a mad scramble to escape the Young Kingdoms by whatever means they can contrive. After all, eternity in Ameeron is surely better than being reduced to the very stuff of Chaos. Or maybe not .

Colin

5 hours ago, Marcus Bone said:

I really see the characters - no matter what their skill level - as 'victims' of Mistress Fate and the Balance, rather than truly their agents. 

So how to do this without adding another mechanical subsystem? I'm not sure yet, but I think it would be fun to explore the options.

Marcus

P.S. I hope no of that sounded pretentious, it wasn't meant to be - rather I've thought a lot about this subject over the years... maybe a little too much

 

 

@Marcus Bone

I don't think you were being pretentious and it does show the level of thought you've put into it. It's why I'm interested in working with you on this. I particularly like the idea of being "victims" of Fate.

As for a Fate system, my first thought was a random table of possible destinies. The player rolls a "possible future" and decides whether they want to fight or embrace that future. The GM would have to craft scenarios where the character is given that choice. This adds an element of randomness to your more structured character generation process, so might not be satisfactory. (It's a throwback to the randomness of SB3.)

Thinking about this, a character could have three Fates, one each for Law, Chaos and Balance. As Allegiance scores increase, the character is pushed towards one of these Fates. The player then decides to pursue this destiny or fight against it. Apotheosis happens when the character whole-heartedly follows that path; it needn't happen when an Allegiance score hits 100. I don't know how to assign these Fates during character generation aside from a long list of suggested destinies that the player can randomly roll or choose. If the player has strong ideas, however, these can supersede random rolls.

These options put a lot of the work on the GM to craft a campaign where each character is given the chance to shape their own destiny, rather than being pushed into it by Mistress Fate and the Balance.

Colin

On 19/03/2017 at 8:33 PM, Marcus Bone said:

 

• The Allegiance System has never been a happy one for me - it never really reflected Fate or being agents of the Balance (which in my mind all characters are). I'm leaning towards a system that rewards the characters for staying close to the Balance.

 

Hi Marcus,

It has been a while since I read the Elric stories but I am under the impression that the vast run of the Young Kingdoms population don't know a Balance exists. It seems they have been manipulated into choosing a side and fighting to the death. Some characters in the books do know of the Balance and pass on snippets of information as the plot demands. I don't think even Elric accepts the Balance until the Stormbringer novel. If the characters are all agents of the Balance, then a couple of things spring to mind:

• They are special or gifted in some way and should have higher characteristic scores (2D6+6 as mentioned elsewhere) and/or skills at the start.  The entire Young Kingdoms are "the enemy" and that's a lot of opposition to their quests.
• They don't know they are agents until they reach apotheosis. I think it falls to the GM here to craft adventures where the PCs thwart the plans of "Chaos one week and Law the next" (so to speak), thus maintaining the Balance without even knowing they are serving the Balance. This could be a big ask for the GM.

I don't know how a Fate mechanic would work but, given the points above, it might be better for your needs. I'd be interested in how you see this working.

Regards,

Colin

As an aside, I have just uploaded the Golden Grimoire campaign to the Downloads section. 

Colin

@Marcus Bone

Would you be amenable to dialling the clock back even further, to Stormbringer 3rd edition? Some things it brings to the table include: 

• The character generation dice rolls (everyone rolls 3D6 with modifiers based on nationality), minus the random nationality generation
• The Elan system, renamed as Allegiance, covers a number of Chaos, Law and Elemental Lords
• SAN rules adapted from one of the SB3 supplements (Demon Magic, I think)
• The rank-based Sorcery system might be one step too far but it's something I'm working on in the background

Also, how far into canon will you be taking this? Will you be including Dreamthieves as a profession/archetype, for instance?

I am really interested in going further but would like to know where the lines are drawn so I don't go off on a tangent.

Regards,

Colin

@Marcus Bone

I thought Languages (Own/Other) were Communication skills? (Sorry)

Repair/Devise/Trap could become "Mechanisms" rather than Engineer? I've always thought all disciplines of engineering to be "large scale" endeavours, rather than small, fiddly projects (electronic engineering being an exception). In my Golden Grimoire campaign for SB3, I had a set of extra skills including Engineering, which was taught by the Priests of Law, which might add some background flavour to characters from Lawful-aligned nations.

Colin

PS: I thought I had uploaded the Golden Grimoire campaign to this site but can't find it. It's hosted on my site at the Stormbringer page.

23 hours ago, g33k said:

Is it even an "it," a document?  Or is it a seething inchoate morass of rule-modules and ideas and depraved inspirations, with each volume published drawing forth slightly different elements, depending on the haruspicy performed by each author after they do the Blood Ritual?

The BRP Necronomicon, perhaps 

Colin

I'd be interested in helping out. Stormbringer is still my favourite RPG, even after all these years.

Colin

There are a couple of threads around here dealing with Cyberpunk. One of those led to me creating Cyberpunk 2046 , which might help get you started. After the discussions in the earlier threads, I devised "Techno Allegiance": rather than losing Humanity or SAN, the cybered-up character gains Techno Allegiance points (similar to other allegiances) and eventually leads to apotheosis as a "full borg" conversion.

Hope this helps.

Colin

On 09/03/2017 at 6:48 PM, Robsbot said:

In short, I'm completely unhappy about the current state of BRP based fantasy and Chaosium has lost most of the good will I've given them over the years. I also have no idea what is going on with "Mythras" and if it is going to be it's own line, or be absorbed into Chaosium? I was looking forward to "BRP essentials" as well as the possibility of a Magic World like Sci Fi or Science Fantasy package. Although MW continues to run, I like continuing to add to my campaigns and nothing Chaosium is putting out will tickle my fancy. 

Glad to see I'm not alone in feeling a bit let down at the moment.

1 hour ago, Robsbot said:

Not to derail the topic at hand, but any suggestions for D100 Sci Fi systems while we're at it? It's not a burning need but I'd like to run something in the future.

I prefer science fantasy so I was going to try to do some Numenara conversion (been planning this for a while now). Shadowrun of course has some ideas I can steal but I wouldn't run it as is. I don't know of any science fantasy D100 systems though so I'll probably hack together something myself.

I have written crossovers for 40K RPGs and Cyberpunk 2020. The latter contains Elves, Dwarfs and so on ready for Shadowrun-esque games. You might find them useful.

Colin

@g33k and @atgxtg

Good points and food for thought for my next campaign. 

Colin

2 hours ago, g33k said:

That said:  I too abandon hit-locations once weapon-tech gets beyond black-powder-ish... hit locations get less relevant -- most people hit by modern gunfire are mostly-disabled (not fully-functional-except-in-the-injured-hit-location); fully-modern and sci-fi weapons?  Yeah, hit-locations NOT a thing!

 

Maybe it's the wargamer side of me that accepts "one hit, one kill", which is why I don't use hit locations. As a rough illustration, the average human in BRP (SIZ 10, CON 10) has 10 or 11 Hit Points. A broadsword does D8+1 or an average of 5.5 (before any damage bonus); a medium pistol does D8, for an average of 4.5. The broadsword hit is enough to half kill our average human, the pistol only needs a slightly above average roll for the same effect.

So my point is that, given that the target is half dead, does it really matter where he was hit?

Colin

I had the opposite experience with my son. We had played several scenarios and settings with BRP/BGB and Magic World, then he expressed an interest in learning about AD&D (I have a load of 2nd Ed books) and Pathfinder. He wanted something "simple" he could DM for his friends. So we went through the character generation and a basic dungeon bash, after which we abandoned the whole concept and went back to Magic World. 

So, for newbies, I'd say D&D/Pathfinder are more complex than BRP. Given that the entire character generation process is summarised into a two page flow chart in the BGB, it seems to me that getting into the game with minimal fuss, is a major selling point for BRP.

Colin

8 hours ago, Mankcam said:

OpenQuest is basically Mythras without Hit Locations and Combat Manuvers.

If these things are too clunky then I totally agree with Jakob's comment: Definately play OpenQuest instead,  and port Mythras scenarios as you see fit.

 

Thanks to all responders. I'm basically looking for a substitute for the BGB and Magic World. My play group couldn't really handle Mythras's crunchy bits (and tbh, neither can I :), so it looks like OpenQuest may be the way to go.

Thanks,

Colin

Are any parts of Mythras optional? Hit locations and combat special effects spring to mind as something I can live without: they add a level of crunch I'm not comfortable with. Would dropping either of these have a wide-ranging impact on a campaign?

At the moment, I don't have the full-blown Mythras, just the Mythras Imperative download. Does the full version handle selectively ignoring some sections of the rules?

Regards,

Colin

On 22/02/2017 at 9:22 AM, clarence said:

Colin Brett did some programming on a (generic BRP?) PC generator, but I'm not sure how it went. 

@Questbird and I made some progress but real life has gotten in the way. We're trying to get "back in the saddle" but other commitments keep getting in the way.

Colin 

23 hours ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

I'm planning to get some RPG writing done and would like a little guidance from more experienced BRP/d100 gamemasters on how POW is gained and expended.

I came up with some ideas for gaining POW (and other characteristics) based on Stormbringer 3rd edition.

In the Chaosium/Games Workshop Stormbringer rules (third edition or SB3) there was a way of a Priest (of whatever cult) gaining ELAN points for acting as his/her religion specified. When Elan reached 50 points, it could be converted into ONE point of the character's POW (with all the bonuses the POW increase also allowed).

I thought this was a great idea and wondered how it could be applied to normal (i.e. not SB3 Priest) characters. My idea is this:

Whenever a character successfully rolls to increase a skill (D6 points or similar) the player then has the option of increasing the skill by the amount rolled or adding the amount rolled to a "experience pool" of spare points. When this experience pool reaches 50 points, the player may increase the character's POW. STR. DEX (or whatever) by one (1).

Over the course of time the character's skills rarely increase but his/her stats do.

The player then has a choice between increasing a normal skill or investing in the characters natural attributes. The character must balance natural ability against learned skills. High skills or high stats: the character can't have both.
 

This idea hasn't been tested in game play but I thought I'd throw it out there as a suggestion.

Colin

I experimented with something like this for the BRP Lord of the Rings rules. You can find the file here . It's not tested at all but might be a starting point for you.

Colin