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trystero

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Everything posted by trystero

  1. trystero
    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.
  2. trystero
    One of my players took "Wear no armour on your head" as his Humakti geas. Hooray for called shot rules!
  3. trystero
    It's called out very explicitly in RQ3's Player Book, p. 48, "How to Parry" section:
  4. trystero
    I prefer having 10 SR per round just because that makes it easier to track casting time for long spells (25 MP = 25 strike ranks = 2 full rounds + 5 SR). But then, I started on RQ3, so I may just be preferring the version I first learned.
  5. trystero
    You can get a used ("like new") hardcover copy off Amazon US for the low, low price of $200.44 plus shipping... http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1568823479/
  6. trystero
    When you can't rely on the game mechanics to make your character unique, sometimes you end up doing more of that work yourself. The best RuneQuest game I ever ran was one where I dictated that all PCs must be the same species and gender and come from the same culture, tribe, clan, village, and social class; then I told the players to pick the stats they wanted and see how different they could make characters with those constraints. We ended up with a smug, charismatic fight-picking Orlanth worshipper, his quiet, thoughtful Elmali hunter/outdoorsman brother, and their fierce honour-driven Humakti comrade (plus a Gustbran-worshipping smith who joined later); all of them were basically "fighter" types in D&D terms, but we never had any issues distinguishing those PCs from one another.
  7. trystero
    Of course, back in the day, there was only RuneQuest 1st/2nd edition... and then BRP, and Call of Cthulhu 1st edition, and Stormbringer 1st edition, and the three-game Worlds of Wonder set... and then Superworld and CoC 2nd edition and Ringworld and ElfQuest and RQ3 and (arguably) Pendragon and (definitely) Stormbringer 2nd edition and Hawkmoon... and that's all material published by Chaosium, not by third parties. There have always been a variety of BRP games/flavours out there. Now there will be three, it sounds like: one for Lovecraftian horror (CoC 7th edition), one for Gloranthan fantasy (the new RuneQuest), and one generic (the BRP Essentials book). The others -- OpenQuest and Legend and whatever RQ6 ends up being called after its license expires and all of the other d100 games you mention -- aren't Chaosium's games, and I don't think their existence should prevent Chaosium from publishing the games they want to publish. I guess I see that variety as a strength, rather than a weakness.
  8. trystero
    Well, there's certainly demand from me. While I liked RQ6 better than MRQ II, and liked MRQ II better than original MRQ, I'm still very excited by the idea of a Chaosium-published edition with input from members of the RQ2 and RQ3 teams; I'm hoping the new game will combine the simpler and more-systemic elements of RQ2 and 3 with some of the innovations from RQ6.
  9. trystero
    I suggested this approach to Jeff via the Kickstarter update comments. :-)
  10. trystero
    Chaosium were briefly selling a print edition (which is a pre-release "ashcan" apparently created for NecronomiCon 2015 in Providence); that's not the final print/PDF release, which I'm hoping to see next year. I got a copy from NecronomiCon, but not with me, so I'll include the back-cover and introduction summaries from the book's RPGGeek database entry: I hope that's some help.
  11. trystero
    Could we fan-source the text-entry part? I'd be happy to type in a couple of pages of RQ3; I know that won't help with the layout, but it would at least help get lots of eyes on the text to catch errors...
  12. trystero
    Need... to pre-order... intensifying...
  13. trystero
    I think Nick meant the Thieves' World Companion, which added RQ3 stats.
  14. trystero
    This is what I meant by "systemic design" above. I could keep almost all the information I needed for RQ3 in my head, or find it on a character sheet or in the 8-page Game Aids booklet, which made the game play very quickly and smoothly. The equivalent of that booklet for RQ6 is the "Charts and Sheets" section of the Games Master's Pack, which (even omitting tables used only during character creation) takes up about 30 pages. A specific example: hit points per body location in RQ3 are computed from formulae, with the results summarized in a table, while in RQ6 they're given in a table, from which you can derive the formulae with some effort. Having the formulae made it much faster for me to write up (or improv) stats for enemies. Again, I like a lot of the RQ6 changes; I just miss the clean simplicity of the RQ3 rules. And we should probably spin off a new thread for this, rather than continue to derail discussion of the eagerly-awaited RQ2 reprint.
  15. trystero
    Fantastic news.
  16. trystero
    You're correct; the creatures in "The Festival" are not named. Wikipedia says: I haven't read these stories, but it appears that they're the source of the Hastur linkage: byakhee <-> Carcosa, Carcosa <-> Hastur, therefore byakhee <-> Hastur by the transitive principle.
  17. trystero
    I agree on rules design, though I think RQ6 lacks a little of the clean, systemic design that I associate with RQ3; there are more tables and fewer computations in the newer version. However, while I like RQ6's layout, I do wish it used a slightly sturdier typeface; I'd honestly rather have RQ2's plain look or RQ3's layout than the small, thin Warnock Pro type used in RQ6. I find the PDF nearly impossible to read without doing a lot of zooming, and even the printed book is a bit more strain on my old eyes than I like. (Some of Moon Design's books have similar issues for me; the spidery Adobe Garamond type in HeroQuest Glorantha, for instance, makes that book harder to read than I think it needs to be. Perhaps it's just me.)
  18. trystero
    I don't pray, but I'll second your hopes that folks are out of danger. (Except for the 120 or so, at last count, who no longer need fear it.)
  19. trystero
    I tend to think of APP (in BRP games which use it) as "Appeal", rather than "Appearance"; it's a mixture of looks and personality.
  20. trystero
    Wow. That's a long but very solid write-up; I liked it a lot. I think you've integrated the abilities demonstrated in the films nicely into the game mechanics. Well done.
  21. trystero
    I'll be old-fashioned and suggest Chaosium Forums so we can discuss the upcoming Chaosium boardgames without triggering flamewars about whether they're off-topic. :-) But I'd love for the BRP section of the forum to be BRP Central.
  22. trystero
    Fully agreed. To its credit, CoC 7 provides different scales to illustrate this distinction (characteristic scale on p. 37 of the core book, skill scale on p. 54, special Credit Rating scale on p. 46) and specifically suggests taking the disparity into account for opposed rolls on p. 90: For me, the big benefit of having characteristics on the percentile scale is that they can directly oppose one another instead of requiring Resistance Table lookups (or brief calculation); I also like that this approach lets both sides roll, just as in combat or any other opposed situation, instead of only the "active" participant rolling. I do still need to do quick division by 5 when assessing an Investigator's (or creature's) scores, since I've had so long to get used to the 3-18 scale, but it's not a problem for me during play.
  23. trystero
    You may want to take a look at Cthulhu Wars... https://petersengames.com/downloads/ ...which similarly organises Great Old Ones and other critters into "factions" for game play. Specifically, the faction listing on p. 6 of the main rulebook gives you the run-down on who's associated with whom in that game. (But note that not all of these associations are canonical by any means.)
  24. trystero
    Some of the creature/god associations are from non-HPL stories, like the chthonians and Shudde M'ell from Brian Lumley's The Burrowers Beneath, or the fire vampires and Cthugha from August Derleth's "The Dweller in Darkness". And some creatures are associated only with other creatures, such as the Old Ones (Elder Things) creating the shoggoths, or the conflict between the Great Race of Yith and the flying polyps. (Oh, and I left out another reference from The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, in which "hunting-horrors" appear to serve Nyarlathotep. They're described as "formless", though, so I'm not sure they're really the same as CoC's Hunting Horrors.)
  25. trystero
    I think it's difficult to establish firm connections, since Lovecraft didn't usually take a systematic approach, but the associations that come to mind for me include: "The Whisperer in Darkness" shows the Mi-go associating with (or worshipping?) Nyarlathotep. "The Shadow over Innsmouth" states that the Deep Ones worship Cthulhu, and also mentions Mother Hydra and Father Dagon, possibly as ancestor deities (?). The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath mentions that the night-gaunts' ruler is Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss, and also notes that Nyarlathotep is the "soul and messenger" of the Other gods which surround Azathoth. At the Mountains of Madness mentions Tsathoggua's "formless star spawn", and also the "fabulous prehuman spawn of Cthulhu" ("a land race of beings shaped like octopi"). I'm sure I'm missing some, but that's a start.
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