RosenMcStern

Just now, TrippyHippy said:

Thing is, lots of gamers think 5E is 4E "done right". 

Uhm, I have heard many more 5E players say 4E was irredeemable. 5E was marketed more as a step back from 4E than a step forward.

15 hours ago, Richard S. said:

It's a hybrid of 4 and 3, made by designers of both.

I am not 100% sure that Jonathan would agree. We heard him speak a lot about how he actually preferred the 4E approacht to his own 3E at Chimeriades 2011, and in retrospective it turned out that these were musings due to him being writng 13A at the time, although not being allowed to tell us so. I suspect he himself would regard it more as an evolution of 4E to eliminate the grid than a merge with 3E.

13A is, IMO, 4E "done right". And note that I still prefer 4E to all other editions of D&D. It just lacked real integration with the setting.

Exodus is a brief sci-fi setting included in BRP Mecha - assuming Mecha itself cannote be considered a setting.

Have you ever considered a career as (de)motivational poster writer?

Actually, I have just finished reviewing the first volume of the comic book. It has six pages out of 110 which require interventions, but it is reasonable to assume that subscribers will receive a link to the first downloadable item by the end of this month.

It looks nice on small tablets, too.

Hopefully September. Ken managed to finish the editing pass before GenCon and I am laying it out right now. However, we are laying out three books at the same time so it will take some weeks.

1 minute ago, g33k said:

I continue to think the BRP chassis is worth attention (even by developers who desire to avoid even potential/theoretical violations of (c)).

Well, at least about this we are in agreement.

On 8/2/2018 at 6:58 AM, g33k said:

Despite the disputes around the Mongoose OGLs/SRDs, you DO have options within the BRP/d100 (originally RQ) system.

I urge you to contact d101 games and/or TheDesignMechanism.  Chaosium has said they both have agreements.  Either one may have a license that entirely works for your needs.

I wish it was so clear and neat, geek. But is it?

For instance, Newt has clarified above that OpenQuest is OGL and all development of games from OpenQuest can pass through the OGL, in the terms indicated in the link he has provided. A link that happens to clearly state that you can make your own game out of OQ without limitations – except the prohibition to misuse IPs by third parties.

And Thule has clearly expressed his wish to create his own game, not just publish scenarios for OQ or Mythras. Or so I understood.

So let us wonder for one moment: Thule follows your line of reasoning and goes along with Newt’s instructions (he does not need to further contact Newt, he already has the answer above). He then creates his own game, with lots of original contents built over the OQ chassis. Incidentally, this is exactly what Renaissance does.

Does this make his game “approved by Chaosium”? And if it does not – as I suspect, since it would be very unwise to extend approval to derivative works which might include lawful but questionable contents, like pornography or racial slur -  then why sub-license an allegedly approved system, if this does not make your game “officially approved”?

So, while it is certainly a good thing for Thule to hear from TDM and D101, I suspect that things might not work as you implied above.

Maybe I forgot. But do not worry, we basically aborted the project because it became clear that the supporters were way more interested in the PDF edition than a hardcopy. So this crowdfunding became a big market survey, instead.

The campaign is now ready for publishing, Ken Spencer managed to send me back the edited version before leaving for GenCon, so you will be able to purchase it in September, at most. I will keep everyone informed.

7 minutes ago, styopa said:

Should a PC be able to Form/Set Count Julan's magical sword to uselessness without any ability for him to resist/avoid?

More importantly, should any of the waves of enemies faced by PCs be able to destroy/remove important pieces of the PCs gear without any defense?

Count Julan should be able to defend himself from this tactics in other ways than a POW vs POW roll: Shield cast on weapon (it happened quite often in my games), decapitation of the unlucky fella while he is concentrating on the form/set (remember, one round without defending to shape the item), and so on.

Oh, and Julan has his allied spirit in the scimitar: in THAT specific case, it should be able to resist. In other words, you picked the wrong example

As for NPCs using this tactics, well, a NPC using sorcery is not a faceless enemy. And PCs are more likely to find a "creative" defense against this kind of attack than NPCs - a thrown dagger will likely break the pesky sorcerer's concentation even when it does not hit.

Quote

YGMV but it's easier (and fairer) for me to assume that everything "on" a person is not just physically but METAphysically "theirs", and thus gets their protective aura.

If this were true, then Dullblade would be listed as requiring a resistance roll. It is not. I have not read its description in RQG, but in RQ3 it does not.

Dullblade cannot be resisted in RQ3, either. All spells that allow for a resistance roll have this detail described in the text, and Dullblade does not. Therefore, it cannot be resisted.

I think all the above methods of restricting magical attacks on enemy items are not appropriate. There are two reasons why.

1. Many of these considerations are hardly realistic. If targeting your sword is more difficult because you are moving it, then there should be dozens of cases when casting on living beings is impaired, too. Too big a can of worms to open it.

2. Discouraging creative use of non-attack spells is contrary to MGF. If the player has a good idea, the GM should allow it to work, not make a ruling that persuades the player to revert to Befuddle and Demoralize next time.

Note also that most spells that can harm or impair an item are either divine, and thus very powerful, or sorcerous and requiring concentration, in which case it is easy to break the magician's concentration. Bending a sword takes the time needed for casting, and then one round of concentration to shape it. It is not trivial.

It depends on what your players prefer: for a classic adventure, go for El Dorado. I have run that adventure really a lot of times over the years, with different flavours of BRP, and it usually works well, containing a good mixture of gritty, realistic elements and fantastic threats. The Conspiracy Theory focuses a lot on the weird aspects of pre-gen characters, and is more suited for players who prefer non-canonical settings. It is up to you to determine if your group would appreciate the quasi-superhero tone of that adventure.

The Conspiracy Theory also allows you to introduce the complexities of Advanced Combat one bit at a time. However, given that your characters are already used to Mythras, this should not be a big problem for you. What is important if you choose the Conspiracy Theory is that the adventure starts with a gunfight in a cramped space full of hiding place, so it will run *very* different from anything you are used to when playing effect-based combat in an environment without automatic weapons. This does not happen in El Dorado, where muskets are important but have a totally different use from the 9mm and uzi of The Conspiracy Theory. Most shots in TCT are aimed at keeping your enemy in cover while someone else outflanks him, whereas in El Dorado you really want to hit with *all* bullets you fire: your enemy will not give you the time to reload.

2 hours ago, simonh said:

Most ancient cultures had some form of astrology, had correspondences between the planets and various gods, and often these associations were similar in nature. It wouldn't have to work exactly like spirit magic, or rune magic or sorcery though and could be very much it's own thing.

Indeed, that would work very well for EMEA cultures in the classic age (Germans, Celts, Balts, Assyrians, Egyptians...). Standard Divine Magic could be used in this case without the need to reinvent the wheel (unless you want to roleplay the invention of the wheel, an achievement of that age).

The problem is that it would NOT work for the Far East, for Central African cultures, and for Abrahamic religions (which originated several millennia BC and became predominant in the Middle Ages). Maybe you could still use "divine points" for these, but it is arguable that the "Runes as abilities" or "<oter principles> as abilities" model would represent all cultures correctly.

1 hour ago, simonh said:

I made a critical Phegm roll!

I don't know, it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi.

EDIT: Of course here are many alternatives. The Egyptian portions of the soul, the Kabalistic Sphirot, the Greek elements (as used in modified form in Glorantha and Nephilim), the signs of the Zodiac.

The planets might work well because they are universal and are associated with various deities in different cultures in the ancient world, for which we have fairly well established contemporarily accepted equivalencies. This makes them a standard universal key into a whole range of different cultural religious traditions.

This is all very interesting. But, you know, it all sounds suspiciously similar to the famous "Our ruleset works well, let us adapt the setting to the ruleset" principle. Which is not, IMO, a good design principle, as various adaptations to d20 "because d20" have shown.

I can think of several real pantheons which could be represented with the rules used for Glorantha. But not *all* of them would. And do not forget that not all religions are polytheistic, or express their polytheistic aspects in the same way. A spirit is not a god, and a saint is not a bodhisattva. Similarities exist only in how the masses - lay members in game terms - express their low level worship. Those initiate to the inner mysteries have a deeply different relationship with the divine beings they revere, depending on their religious tradition.

A good example of this problem is the representation of Buddhism and Shinto in the old "Land of Ninja". Kamis and Buddhas provide more or less the same benefits to initiates, and while this may be a consequence of the snchretism of the Japanese Middle Ages, it trivialises the difference between the two types of transcendent beings.

Starcraft would probably be one of the best options for a rpg adaptation (a real one) - it includes a lot of hand to hand combat techniques and weird monsters along with an acceptable dose of fancy spaceships, And the computer games already provide some very good guidelines about giving your characters some depth. "What happens when your character is infected by the Zerg" could fill, alone, a 200 page supplement. And ghosts would make extremely interesting player characters, too*. 

* Kerrigan is her own league, of course, as she is both a ghost and altered by the Zerg.

Perhaps hinting at the fact that you could have hired this artwork studio to help you add more artwork to the bestiary would constitute a better deterrent against whining, Jeff.

We used to have an online version but it is no longer available as it was never updated after 2016.

Ideally, an EPUB version could be convenient and more phone-friendly but we have little time for maintenance of the SRD. We could try to make a RTF version when we update the SRD to align it with the hardcover version of the rules, but this will take some more weeks. The short answer, thus, is that the only public version available of the SRD is the pdf.

16 hours ago, lawrence.whitaker said:

There are already a plethora of d100 games available: RQ, Mythras, Legend, Magic World, OpenQuest, Raiders of R'lyeh, and Revolution d100 (also OGL). Is another needed?

You forgot Renaissance, Loz 

5 hours ago, Thule120 said:

1. which niche to choose, in terms of setting,

The one which you love the most, and in which your writing will have the opportunity to excel, of course. Writing about something you are passionate about is what will make the difference.

At the moment, the underrepresented setting niche is classic, hard sci-fi, while planetary romance seems to be covered by John Snead's latest Mythras book. A new Chaosium game will appear at some moment, by Chris Spivy, but the ETA is unknown (and subject to temporal anomalies and tampering, given the subject), so if you want to avoid immediate competition that could be the way to go. But if what really excites you is fantasy, then stick to fantasy.

Quote

2. how much "crunch" should the game contain, given the tendency to oneshot-, beer-and-pretzel-gaming, and the fast pace of life of today´s world.

Heavy crunch games such as Pathfinder ans Starfinder are still popular, so putting some simulative element in the game should not be a taboo. Again, think of what would excite the players at your table, and focus on that. 

My personal preference is to allow for "variable crunch", but it takes some study to implement it.

Quote

3. is it wiser to join bigger, already established game producing entities (and some of them are really very established) within the smaller BRP D100 market space, compared to CPA: "unity gives more force"?  

What kind of answer do you expect to receive, asking this on a forum where the "big established entities" dwell?

This boils down entirely on how much you want your book to be a "setting" for someone else's game system, versus how much you want it to implement your personal game ideas and not just include a couple of house rules. 

You see, one of the advantages of  an OGL over a generous gateway license is that you are in full control of what you put in the book. If you want to change something and the original author disagrees, the OGL allows you to go on, while a negotiated or gateway/logo license does not. But of course, if the vision you have for your game comes very close to an existing game system, then a Gateway license is better.

4 minutes ago, lawrence.whitaker said:

Of course, if the long-rumoured Elric film or HBO spectacular ever materialises, then that could change, but the reality is that Mike's work simply doesn't have the profile it once did; and at its height, 'Stormbringer' never really made a huge impact on the RPG market.

But it did have an impact on the development of RPGs, particularly the D100 ones. Its unique approach to BRP is still in use, even in one small-but-important detail of RQG!

Hello Thule, and welcome to the community.

I think the point boils down, essentially, on what sort of game you wish to create. Should it be based on the MRQ/Legend/RQ6/Mythras core assumptions (no general HP, no resistance table, skilll bases are CHAR+CHAR, no huge MP costs for spells, action points, effect-based combat, etc. ) or should it be a more classic ruleset with fixed base skills, resistance table, etc. ?

If the latter, then you could start with OpenQuest, or even better GORE, which is a retro-clone of classic BRP and compatible with CoC and RuneQuest. Both games are absolutely free and require no permission to use the SRD, just crediting the authors and including the OGL in your rules. 

If the former, then you could use Legend as the base for your game, even without TDM permision, as they wrote this version of the rules while working for Mongoose so they do not own the copyright to the text (you still have to give them credit, though). HOWEVER, you might be more interested in obtaining their permission for the non-OGL but nevertheless licenseable version of the ruleset, that is Mythras or Mythras Imperative. This is actually rather simple: you just click on Loz's name on one of his posts here to reach his profile page, and then hit the "Send Private Message " button to contact him about a Gateway License or other agreement. He will explain to you what the terms are, or can be.

If you have any other ideas about the game you wish to develop, feel free to post it here. We are always available for useless rule debates giving a fellow author some pieces of advice on these forums.

1 minute ago, Atgxtg said:

You wouldn't have to reprint statblock, just expand them a little. Add in SR or Combat Actions, put in RQG and BRP Hit Point values, alternate damage bonuses for games that use a different db progression-just add in the handful of things that are missing. I think it would make things easier for all those semi-experienced GMs. 

Do you think so? My idea is that anyone who could not do the conversion on his own would be extremely confused by such a "multiversal" statblock. Just think of the different names of skills in the different systems. We could open another thread and try making such a statblock example, just as an experiment.

Skarka, the owner of Adamant, had a serious health problem some years ago - one that can easily kill you. I had it 40 years ago, and my father last year (he did not survive), and believe me, it compromises your health. Before this episode, Adamant was an extremely active company, and Skarka was the coordinator of the CB7 partnership program when it included literally dozens of partners.

11 minutes ago, simonh said:

Jeff discussed this a bit at Eternal Con, it looks like again it will be up to whoever the author(s) are. I think it would be good if the 'Fantasy Earth' games as a group had a common set of core game mechanics, but it's still open what form that will take.

I suppose this is one of Jason's taks as line manager: keeping things consistent, while allowing them to vary enough to adapt to different settings.

3 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

That doesn't prevent Chasoium from doing their own Britain or Rome supplements. Or even making a deal with the guys at DM to do RQ versions (unlikely, but possible). Heck, with all these D100 mostly compatible games out there, I'd love to see the companies get together and do cross-system supplements like in the old Thieves World days. It would probably be fairly easy to do a book compatible with  BRP/Mythas/OpenQuest/Revolution/etc.  At least easy mechanically. It might even help the companies involved too. OGL did wonders for WotC and D20. Not that I expect that to happen. 

Honestly, it would be a waste of space.  The systems are 80%-90% compatible with one another, reprinting a statblock to change one tenth of it is not what I would call "an efficient usage of the dead bodies of oxygen-producing organisms". Any semi-experienced GM can convert between d100 systems on the fly.

As we prepare to release several supplements with plenty of character statistics, I would like to introduce a new standard for stat blocks. The aim is to make character entries more concise and less prone to ambiguity.

As usual, any feedback is welcome.

--

General info: Size Class and Move are listed below the character name, along with species, gender and other general information.

Characteristics: given on a line in the order STR, CON, DEX, INT, WIL, CHA.

Attributes: these are given under the characteristics, in order, Exertion (or Effort), Might, Readiness, Toughness. Optionally, the entry for Resolution Points in Basic Combat, labelled as Basic Combat, precedes these four.

Skill list: Each skill comes capitalized and followed by a list of traits in square brackets, and by its score including the +30% for the Trait(s). If the score follows the Skill name and not the bracketed list of Traits, for instance because the character has no Traits for that skill, then its value does not include the +30% for Traits.

Example: Agility [Climb, Dodge] 53%, Survival 24%. The Agility score includes the +30%, the Survival score does not. Writing Agility 23% [Climb, Dodge] would be the same, as putting the score before the brackets signals that the Trait bonus is not included, but is not recommended. Writing Agility 23% [Climb, Dodge] 53% is redundant, but corresponds to what you would write on a character sheet.

Trait list: all entries in the list in square brackets correspond to a Trait or Stunt which occupies a slot, unless its name is preceded by a bullet (·). A sub-list in round brackets may follow the Trait name. The sub-list may contain either a set of specific languages/specialties which occupy the same slot as the main Trait, or a set of stunts which usually occupy their own slots and are listed there only to signal that they depend on the main trait. When a list includes both entries which occupy a slot and entries which do not, the ones using up slots are preceded by a “+”.

Examples:

• Communication [Language (English, French, Chinese)] 60%. This means that the character speaks these three languages, which occupy only one slot.
• Ranged Combat [Bow (Fast Reload), Dagger] 55%. This means that the character knows how to fire a bow and throw a dagger, and that he can reload arrows at zero readiness cost. All three Traits/Stunts occupy a slot.
• Perception [Acute Vision, ·Hearing, Track] 60%. This means that the character has a better sight than normal, and this Trait occupies a slot, together with Track. Hearing, a natural ability for most creatures, does not occupy any slots.
• Close Combat [Karate (+Deflect, Kicking)] 50%. This means that the character knows the Karate Martial Arts and Kicking is the default Stunt learned with it, which does not occupy a further slot, while the Deflect Stunt has been learned separately and occupies a slot.

Marks that indicate whether a Trait occupies a slot are only useful for player characters, so they are usually omitted for NPCs.

Weapon list: when there is not a header line with column names, each entry is made up of

• the weapon name,
• the skill score,
• the Strike Readiness with that weapon preceded by the word “Ready”,
• the SR cost for Attacking/Defending preceded by “Att/Def”,
• the damage dice preceded by the word “Damage”,
• the Parry or Range value for close combat and ranged weapons respectively, preceded by the words “Parry” or “Range”,
• a list of effects and attributes, in lowercase.

When the header line is present, the words in double quotes are omitted.

Example:

• Scimitar 84%, Ready 23, Att/Def 5/3, Damage 1d6+1d2, Parry 3, impale (advantage), slash (auto)
• Medium Shield 84%, Ready 20, Att/Def 4/2, Damage 1d2+1d2, Parry 3, bash, coverage +1
• Nomad Bow 94%, Ready 43, Att/Def 5*/-, Damage 1d6+2d2, Range Medium, impale (effect)

Power list: each power system is one separate entry, with its limiting factors (Channelling, Holiness, etc.) in round brackets, preceding the list of actual powers.

As you can see, this campaign has not funded. Rise of the Yōkai Koku will appear, but in electronic format only. A pity, but not a catastrophe.

You may have noticed that we have not pushed the campaign much in these last days. Maybe you are wondering whether a massive advertising campaign might have changed the final outcome. Perhaps, but there is a consideration we have made during the first half of the crowdfunding period. Unlike other projects, contributors to this one chose mainly the electronic format for their reward. In other words, even if the idea did generate some excitement among players, the format which this campaign intended to fund (a printed supplement) was not perceived as the best one for Rise of the Yōkai Koku. Please note that the number of contributors reached, if the usual percentage of 80% had chosen a printed reward, could have been sufficient to fund the project. With a percentage of 50% choosing the paper version, funding was much harder.

With the basic premise of the campaign in doubt, we decided that it was not a good idea to use pure marketing techniques to reach the goal. If the majority of players preferred a PDF, then giving them a PDF was the way to go. And this we can do even without a successful crowdfunding.

Now, the contributors who pledged for a physical copy will certainly ask one question: what about a print on demand version? Well, it is not entirely ruled out, but at the moment we have not organised any POD version for any product in the Revolution D100 line, except the combat cards. And the cards have sold poorly as a POD item, whereas the small print run which we have sold directly on RPG Meeting has sold out. That said, POD is possible, but not a priority. Especially with two other crowdfundings still to fulfill, for a total of five books and two accessories yet to produce. Let us go back to these before thinking about POD of other products.

18 minutes ago, deleriad said:

The authors have tried to make SRs act more like an initiative system but it is still, in my eyes, a hybrid that is further down the impulse line than DEX ranks. Historically speaking, Ringworld was a pure impulse system that was virtually un-managable. The earliest BRP book and CoC was basically a pure initiative system. Mythras is an unusual kind of initiative system where you act once on your initiative and if you have any actions left you act again when your initiative cycles back round.

You can call it an impulse system with each action having the same cost in terms of impulses (1).

The impulse-like nature of classic RuneQuest and classic CoC is particularly evident with missile fire: you fire, then wait to reload, then fire again if you have enough SR. In CoC you fire twice or thrice, depending on the weapon. Melee combat resembles more a pure initiative system as you usually attack once on a given SR. However, this new dual wielding rule has made melee combat impulse-like, too, as you can strike, then strike again if you have the SR for that particular weapon.