trystero

Augmented Skill Suggestions section (p. 80): Add paragraph break between "Medicine" and "Navigation" entries.

A general one I've just noticed in the "Scholar" occupation description on p. 20, the "Swashbuckler" occupation description and adjustments list on p. 22, and the "Two-Fisted" entry in the Pulp Themes section on p. 91 is the use of "orientated". I'd use "oriented", which is the more common variant in both UK and US English (I don't know about usage in other English-speaking territories, though).

Example sidebar (p. 73): In the first sentence, "Barfly Dan has consumed about half bottle of whiskey" should be "Barfly Dan has consumed about half a bottle of whiskey". Later in the same paragraph, "deep one" should be "Deep One" and the rogue quotation mark and ellipsis between "fails a Sanity roll" and "The Keeper rolls" should be deleted. In the second paragraph, the rogue quotation mark at the end of the last sentence should be deleted.

This is more a stylistic niggle than anything else, but in the header on p. 71, isn't "Dual-Wielding with Two Weapons" superfluous? Maybe change to "Dual-Wielding (Attacking with Two Weapons)" if it'll fit?

More generally, the text refers throughout to the Call of Cthulhu Rulebook when it should really refer to the Call of Cthulhu Keeper Rulebook. But changing this in so many locations may throw off layout. 

Mythos Tome: The Inheritance of the Kingdom sidebar (p. 58): Change "It's" to "Its" (possessive use) at the start of the first sentence.

Using the Inheritors section (p. 59): In the second-to-last line of the first paragraph, change "sub machines guns" to "submachine guns".

Critical Successes and Fumbles section (p. 62): The roll for a natural fumble is given both as "00" (second paragraph, fourth line) and "100" (second paragraph, seventh line). These should be made consistent.

Adjusting A Skill Or Characteristic Roll header (p. 63): Lowercase "a" and "or" (i.e., "Adjusting a Skill or Characteristic Roll") for consistency with other headers in the same section.

14 minutes ago, morganhua said:

Not sure if it is deliberate or a typo, but starting luck is different in Pulp Cthulhu than from CoC 7th.

In Pulp Cthulhu, page 23, col 1, Luck: roll 2D6+6 and multiply by 5.

If this is a typo, it's repeated in the "Quick-Fire Hero Creation" section on p. 41. I'm guessing this is an intentional change, since there are more ways to spend Luck in the Pulp Cthulhu rules than in the base game. (See Chapter 4 for examples.)

I'll get us started:

Title page (PDF p. 1): Missing space between "Paul" and "Fricker" in authors list.

Table of Contents (PDF p. 3): The entry for  "Step Seven: Round Out The Hero" on p. 41 should have "the" lowercased (i.e., "Step Seven: Round Out the Hero") to match the lowercased "a" and "and" in other entries.

Table of Contents (PDF p. 4): The entry for "Learning A Spell" on p. 81 should have "a" lowercased (i.e., "Learning a Spell") to match the lowercased "a" and "and" in other entries.

Using Pulp Cthulhu with Call of Cthulhu section (PDF p. 8): Remove "the" from The Masks of Nyarlathotep.

Skill List sidebar (p. 36): The entries for Axe through Whip and Flamethrower through Submachine Gun might be easier to spot as Fighting and Firearms specialisations, respectively, if they were indented a bit. As it is, it looks on first glance as though there are mis-alphabetised skills in the middle of the list.

Ideology/Beliefs table (p. 39): For entry 2, I'd change the comma to a semi-colon (i.e., "Don't touch me; I'm special").

Cash And Assets header (p. 41): "And" should be lowercased (as in the bulleted list immediately above the header).

Back cover (PDF p. ii): In "It’s Time To Take The Fight to Cthulhu!", either the first "to" should be lowercased or the second one should be capitalised. I'd lean towards also lowercasing "the" ("It’s Time to Take the Fight to Cthulhu!").

Back cover (PDF p. ii): For consistency with the book text, "Pulp Cthulhu" and "Call of Cthulhu" should be italicised throughout.

I don't know the editions well enough to tell which one it was, but I think it was either http://www.runan.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/drakarochdemoner.jpg or http://media.xn--ventyrsspel-k8a.com/2015/09/Drakar-och-demoner-239x300.png.

I'm also really digging the artwork. Pity I don't know any Swedish.

Edit: I remember seeing the box for Drakar och Demoner in a store in Sweden back in 1985; it was the edition that used the same Michael Whelan painting of Elric that appeared on the 4th-edition Stormbringer book, and (being unable to read the back-cover text) I wondered whether it was a licensed version of Stormbringer.

These are great links; thank you very much, Morgan!

Hmmm. Doesn't say which translation. I'm prone to Robert Fagles and Richmond Lattimore, myself.

Edit: The preview shows that it's the William Cowper translation from 1791.

1 hour ago, Kränted Powers said:

I think the challenge is that sometimes the drawings have many details, but as a drawings they miss the movement and expression. Especially when the style of the clothing is a bit strange, the drawing itself should be so cool that it would make the clothing look cool!

Comparison: [snip]

many details, but the costumes and the characters don't look very interesting.

[snip]

Here the drawing style makes the simple outfit look cool.

I prefer the first drawing, actually; neither the pose nor the style of the second one does much for me. To each their own...

Originally announced in 2001 according to its entry in the YSDC wiki (which also includes the summary from the announcement). "On track for a 2008 release" per this YSDC forum post, which again may be worthwhile reading.

1 hour ago, K Peterson said:

The BRP BGB uses Status in place of Credit Rating, with its skill level being tied into social class, base wealth rating and a cap on wealth rating. Cthulhu Dark Ages used it as well. 

The Cthulhu Through the Ages supplement for 7th-edition Call of Cthulhu also changes Credit Rating to Status in the Cthulhu Invictus (Roman), Cthulhu Dark Ages (medieval), and Mythic Iceland settings, and redefines what different levels mean in several of the settings.

1 hour ago, Akerbakk said:

I prefer real numbers in game, though I rarely track expenses except when characters are poor or wealth matters in game. I never really grasped Credit Rating as a skill... It feels like something that is more background oriented than anything. It's too easy to keep equipment lists with actual prices.

Of course, abstract wealth really require bookkeeping at all...maybe I will give it a try.

7th-edition Call of Cthulhu translates investigators' Credit Rating scores into specific dollar (or pound, etc.) amounts, but abstracts much of the accounting; you have a daily "spending level", and only track expenditures for days when you exceed it. Those larger expenditures come out of your "cash" pool (liquid assets), and if that runs dry you can convert "assets" into cash (though it will take you a while).

The system plays really well; it lets you say "I routinely have this quality/comfort level for my clothing/lodging/food/weapons/transport" without any bookkeeping at all, but you can still work in specific dollar figures for high-cost one-offs. In my current Horror on the Orient Express campaign, I have two very rich characters (a wealthy American from an old East Coast family, and a British lordling), and the only time we've really needed to track specific amounts was for an absolutely swingeing bribe they had to pay to a policeman — who had them over a barrel — to get out of Venice without being arrested for a series of grisly murders. They wouldn't be able to afford another such bribe at the moment, as they haven't yet had time to replenish their cash, but they can still afford daily luxuries like first-class train tickets, excellent hotel rooms, fine dining, etc.

I find this to be a very comfortable middle-ground between totally-abstract wealth on the one hand and dollar-by-dollar (or cent-by-cent) accounting on the other. As with many other CoC-7e changes, I'd love to see the new RuneQuest adopt a similar mechanic.

The PDF is great.

Now the question arises: why did the name change from Snakepipe Hollow in the earlier printings to Snake Pipe Hollow for the later printing and RQ3 version?

3 hours ago, Mechashef said:

In my very limited real life lock picking experience, in any one attempt (say a minute's worth of trying) the following things can happen:

[snip]

This is one reason I like the "pushing the roll" concept from 7th-edition Call of Cthulhu. On the first roll, your results are:

• Regular, Hard, Extreme, or Critical success - open the lock
• Failure - you have the option to try again, once, by upping the stake for the roll.
• Fumble - as failure, but with some added consequence (perhaps you make noise, or leave a noticeable mark on the lock)

On the pushed roll, any success opens the lock; any failure means you can't ever do it (damage the lock, break a pick, or just realize that you don't have the necessary level of skill).

The case where you miss the first roll but make the second one is the "you fail, but you learn something (or achieve partial success) which aids your second attempt" outcome. And you don't get the worst-possible outcome on the first roll, even if you fumble; you have to accept the risk, try again, and then fail to get to the okay-you-can't-do-this point.

I prefer the RQ3 method as well; it's much easier to remember the 0.4/0.33/0.25/0.1 fractions.

Rick got me sorted out last Thursday by private message. For some reason, the e-mail from BackerKit didn't reach me (though it has done in the past).

1 hour ago, Rick Meints said:

We decided to stop using Garamond last year when we created a new "look and feel" for all Chaosium publications going forward, and that includes the HeroQuest and RuneQuest new books in the works. The Coming Storm will be the first gloranthan one published using this new look.

I'm very glad to hear it. Thanks for listening to your readers!

My main concern is with the typeface used; please don't use the spindly Garamond face that Moon Design used for the Guide to Glorantha and for HeroQuest Glorantha. I'm sure it fits a lot of words on the page, but it makes the books hard for me to skim (and increasingly just hard to read) for my aging eyes. The type needn't be large, but I hope you'll use a slightly heavier face with a bit more page colour.

Still waiting patiently for my e-mail... 

Call of Cthulhu 7th edition in a monthly(ish) Horror on the Orient Express 2nd-edition campaign. The players and I are all really enjoying the new edition.

On 2/28/2016 at 0:44 PM, Joerg said:

I never got my eyes on a complete set of the [Conan] novels, and all I read started in medias res with a fully grown and mightily angry barbarian. To be honest, Conan isn't my favorite R.E.Howard preincarnation...

Joerg, if you're interested in the original unadulterated Robert E. Howard stories, the best source is Del Rey's three-volume set: The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, The Bloody Crown of Conan, and The Conquering Sword of Conan. No pastiche elements, no "posthumous collaborations", just Howard's stories and fragments.

You may still prefer other Howard characters, but it may at least be worth your while to read Conan as his creator intended, rather than the mix of original and imitation material that was all that was easily available for many years.

And I don't think of Howard's Conan as particularly angry except when in battle; he's mostly bursting with confidence. He acknowledges his own culture's traditions in many stories, but he's not especially angstful or fixated on past wrongs like the movie versions are.

4 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

As far as Usagi goes, it has some nice options that I'd love to port over to RQ. For instance when a character is attacked, he can opt to counter-attack instead of parry. This basically allows him to oppose the opponent's attack roll with his own. The winner gets to hit first. If the loser is disabled or killed, his attack doesn't get completed, but if he is able to act, his attack hits second. So the tactic is risky. Characters are restricted to one counter-attack or parry, but there are ways to get more parries and to recover your counter-attack to use again. Most polearms have a rebound  critical where they get to keep their counter-attack as a critical (read special in RQ) hit. So someone skilled with a polearm can fend off several attackers. RRebound and counter-attack also open up the possiblity for a character to act like a hero in a Samurai film, since in theory, someone who can rebound could counter-attack multiple times iand cut down a dozen oppoents or so in a round, if he gets beating them and getting critical to rebound with. 

Call of Cthulhu 7th edition has a somewhat similar system which my players and I are really enjoying: when attacked in melee, you can Dodge (which includes shield blocking and weapon parrying) or Fight Back. Dodging means you avoid the attack; the defender wins ties (equal levels of success on attack and defense rolls). Fighting back means you can hurt an enemy on their turn, but it's riskier; the attacker wins ties, so you only inflict damage on them if you get a higher level of success than they do.

You can make multiple Fight Back attempts per turn, but each attack after the first gets a bonus die (an extra tens die, used if it's lower than the roll's inherent tens die) to reflect that you're spreading your defenses thin.

I've found that this makes a single high-skilled character really dangerous against lower-skilled opponents, much like the Usagi Yojimbo game you describe above.