trystero

There were licensed Wild Cards supplements for GURPS back in the late '80s and early '90s. I'm guessing the license has expired by now, though.

2 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

Chaosium can sell you a mint copy of the game from its archives, if you are interested.

Ooooh. I don't see it listed on the chaosium.com website, but I'm certainly interested if the OP isn't.

This looks really cool. I'd back the KS campaign if I hadn't just blown my discretionary budget on "fixing the hole in my house". I hope the book and extras will be available later when my balance recovers.

4 hours ago, Zit said:

...this was the RQ2 rule. I don't know about the RQ3's.

Hunh. I had never realised that RQ2 allowed for "after-the-fact" stacking, but you're right that it does. Thanks for bringing this up; I learned something. :-)

23 hours ago, Zit said:

Shield, unlike battle magic spells, is "stackable". Subsequent casting just add to the existing. In your exemple, this result in a shield 3.

Not per the rules: a subsequent casting is a different stack. Stackable (in RQ3, anyway) doesn't mean you can add multiple levels of spell cast in different rounds; it means you can add multiple levels of spell in a single casting (in one round). From the Magic Book, p. 28, second paragraph under "Stacking Limits" heading:

Quote

Divine magic spells can be stacked (combining several castings into one) if the caster has several uses of a spell and if the spell is described as stackable. This provides a much more powerful effect when the spell is cast. There may be a ceiling to the maximum allowed to be cast together. All the spells must be cast at one target, in a single melee round.

(emphasis added)

So if you cast Shield 1 in round 1, then cast Shield 2 in round 2, you get Shield 2, not Shield 3. You'd have to cast Shield 3 all at once if you wanted Shield 3.

In the errata, the entry for p. 305 of the Keeper Rulebook reads "Insect from Shaggy"; this should read "Insects from Shaggai" (or "Shaggai, Insects from" to match the actual format of the creature entry).

Similarly, the entries for p. 403 in the Keeper Rulebook and for p. 252 in the Investigator Handbook should both read "12-gauge Shotgun" rather than "12-guage Shotgun".

(Yes, we're on to meta-errata. I look forward to the meta-meta-errata pointing out my own mistakes.)

I'll throw in a minor one:

• p. 37, “What the Numbers Mean” sidebar: Under “Size”, the entry for "60" entry should be "65", since this is the average roll for the SIZ characteristic. (Or are investigators meant to be fatter than average?)

They're very nice. I do wish (echoing a comment I saw on G+) that they were a little bigger when printed on shirts and hoodies.

And I also wish we could get custom combinations for specific cults: I wouldn't wear a shirt with the Death rune because it'd probably be mistaken for the Christian cross icon, but I might wear one with the Death and Truth runes for Humakt. :-)

Congratulations on running your first CoC game; it sounds like you had a good time, and I hope there are more sessions to come!

Mostly theatre-of-the-mind. For some complex action scenes, I'll sketch a rough map to ensure that the players and I have the same understanding of the locale, and may even put down pawns to show where investigators and foes are, but we don't use any sort of grid or measurement; it's more "you're at the front door, you're climbing in the back window, this creature is in the living room", etc.

Did you buy the PDF edition of the Keeper Screen pack as well as the print? That edition includes the Missed Dues & Blackwater Creek adventure book, so you could easily print off copies of the pages with the pregenerated investigators.

If you bought the print edition of the Keeper Screen pack at a store that participates in the Bits and Mortar program, you should be able to get the PDF version for free: see http://www.chaosium.com/blog/chaosium-joins-bits-and-mortar/ for more on this.

On 9/2/2016 at 1:18 PM, MJ Sadique said:

Yo, Styopa... there was always a rule like this one. Blunt weapon ignore half of flexible armor... i'm 100% sur in RQ3 and probably in the 2 too.

12 hours ago, Iskallor said:

This doesn't sound familar to me. Are you talking Mongoose runequest?

Blunt weapons special effects are crush in RQ2 and i haven't come across armour pts that high or that blunt weapons halve flexible armour.

The rule that MJ Sadique refers to wasn't included in the 1984 Avalon Hill RQ3 sets; it was added in the official errata, which I first encountered in the Avalon Hill single-volume softcover edition of 1993:

Quote

Blunt Weapons Vs. Soft Armor
When a flail, mace, or maul is used against soft armor, the value of the armor protection is halved (round fractions up). Soft armor overlapped with hard armor counts as hard armor.

This did give some benefit to blunt weapon-users, but didn't provide any advantage for using blunt/flanged weapons against rigid armour types, which is what they were historically used for.

pp.. 401, 406: The Hand-to-Hand Weapons table entry for Spear (cavalry lance) on p. 401 has an asterisk indicating a note at the bottom of the table, but no such note is present on p. 406. I assume the missing note says something about use of the lance at the charge; I'd hope the new edition sticks with the RuneQuest rule about letting the lancer use the mount's damage bonus in place of their own (e.g., +3D6 damage for a horseman) when charging.

Dodging and running away—pretty much the tactics you should use in real life if you meet a bear in the woods—seem like the best options, frankly. As in real life, you could try to use Stealth to hide from the bear or Climb to get out of its reach... and as in real life, these are bad ideas because bears have sensitive noses and are better climbers than you are. :-)

It's worth remembering that most animals—including bears—don't attack humans unless they're starving, threatened, or protecting their young, and that they may start with a threat display (roaring, rearing up, etc.) to frighten off intruders before actually attacking. Not every "monster" will fight, or fight to the death, and this is a change from the combat assumptions embedded in Pathfinder and many versions of D&D.

In general, Call of Cthulhu being what it is, running away is very often the best way out of a potentially-violent situation. Combat is always a risk, and (again as in real life), the best way to avoid losing a fight is to avoid having it.

I'm especially entertained to hear about the situation arising in your game because "starting character(s) vs. a pissed-off bear" has been, for decades now, my way of gauging the combat system in any new RPG. The characters should be in danger, but should, with luck and determination, be capable of driving off or killing the bear. My experience is that many games favour the PCs over the bear: RuneQuest and its scion Call of Cthulhu, however, come out of this test pretty well.

14 minutes ago, MOB said:

I agree they were very clearly presented, but to me the RQ3 rules lacked the enticing charm and mystique of RQ2.

I assume you read RQ2 first? I read RQ3 first, and found RQ2 hard going as a result, despite enjoying its more heavily-Gloranthan flavour.

I always found the RQ3 books to be models of clear presentation and useful organisation, myself; that game is my gold standard.

I'd love to see a Glorantha map shower curtain. Why not? Warner Bros. sells a shower curtain with Daniel Reeve's map of Middle-earth; I don't know what the resolution of the image is (and at US$59.46, I'm certainly not buying it to find out), but if you wanted a reeeally big map for your The One Ring campaign...

I found that disparity confusing, too. We play that Extreme successes do maximum damage, and just add special goodness for Critical successes.

11 hours ago, Falconer said:

Is everyone really on board with the new edition, or just being polite because this is the company board, and the editors post here? Hope this isn’t a taboo question, and I don’t mean to offend; I just assumed most people were sticking with 6e or earlier.

I'm not being polite; I like 7th edition better than 6th edition, and will recommend it accordingly. Though I guess I will be polite in saying that I understand why other folks prefer some of the pre-6th editions as the classic, more old-school version of the game. (And impolite in saying that 6th edition is a good game wrapped in an unreadable hot mess of a layout: if you don't want 7th edition, get edition 5.6 or 5.6.1, which are the exact same content, as far as I can tell, but in a readable layout.)

Belgath, my advice would be to download the free Seventh Edition Quick-Start Rules PDF (which includes the classic starter scenario "The Haunting") and the free solo adventure Alone Against the Flames, and to buy either the 7th-edition Investigator Handbook (if you're going to be a player) or the Keeper Rulebook and Keeper Screen pack (if you're going to GM), and to digest all that material before you pick up anything else. If you're GMing, I'd concur with Mike Mason's suggestion of the upcoming 7th-edition scenario pack Doors to Darkness, which includes adventures set in the game's "classic" locations and era (Lovecraft Country in the 1920s) plus advice for new GMs.

Nameless Horrors, Dead Light, and Pulp Cthulhu can wait until you've gotten comfortable; all are worthwhile IMO, but you don't need them, and certainly not as part of your initial embrace of the game. The rulebooks are plenty of reading on their own. :-)

Edit: The reprints of the 7th-edition books are on the boat(s) from China, per this G+ post by Chaosium's Michael O'Brien.

Should this thread be in the Glorantha forum?

The original PDF edition didn't have any title other than Call of Cthulhu on its cover or title page, so folks called it the Call of Cthulhu 7th edition rulebook. But the final corrected PDF release, and the print editions, all say Keeper Rulebook on the cover, and so I think that's the least-ambiguous name for it.

3 hours ago, rust said:

The Call of Cthulhu 7th edition rulebook will do. 

Which is to say, the Keeper Rulebook. :-)

The article is on Monte Cook Games' site, but is actually written by Charles Ryan.

One thing I've always liked about Call of Cthulhu is that scenarios often include NPC skills that aren't listed on the investigator sheet; Masks of Nyarlathotep, just to pick one example, includes NPC skills like "Belly Dance", "Be Tempted", "Act Before Thinking", and (relevant here) "Cook and Clean". These are great for giving the Keeper a vivid picture of the NPC; their existence implies that the skills on the investigator sheet are just the most commonly-used ones, and that any skill is possible.

That said, I agree that these specialized/descriptive skills are generally better used for NPCs; unless one of them is really important to the player's character conception, I wouldn't bother adding them, as they (a) take points away from the listed skills, and (b) won't ever be called for in a scenario. (Though they might be usable even if not called for...)

I prefer the RQ3 skill category modifiers because they make every characteristic point count, whereas in RQ2 a STR of 17 and a STR of 20 give the same adjustment to Manipulation skills. Also, I liked having POW involved in fewer categories.

That said, I'd suggest either not including POW in any category modifiers or just computing skills based on original POW and not letting later changes affect skills. Even with the less-granular RQ2 modifiers, many characters are still going to be bumping their skills up or down on a regular basis as they gain and lose POW.