RosenMcStern

This is a follow-up of data that the Imperial Fleet has collected from the damaged probe returning from Frontier space.

Binary System 2143 GO, Beacon 4 SLEP 323, GalSec W

The system is composed of a Type G8VI Subgiant and a Type M3V orange star. The subgiant has six planets, of which the fifth and sixth are notable. 2143 GO A5 (Nurab) is a desert world home to the race of the Jillok. 2143 GO A6 is a frozen gas giant, but its four moons are somehow colonisable and have been used by the Momgä in their recent interstellar conflict with the Jillok. 2143 GO B has no planets.

They are certainly more effective when used in conjunction with crunchy subsystems, but there is absolutely no limit to what effects a Stunt may have. In fact, I absolutely encourage everyone (see sidebar on p. 27) to encapsulate their variant and house rules in Stunts, so that they are easier to port to other settings and campaigns.

If your house rule is encapsulated in a Stunt, you can always determine that in your own world that Stunt is automatically acquired with its parent Trait, whereas in other settings only the lone hero who has visited the faraway land of Zipango has it.

On 24/8/2017 at 5:56 PM, Tanaka84 said:

So I guess my hack is that I opened up stunts to be like edges/feats from other systems 

I am sorry to tell you this, but... you did not hack anything

This is exactly how you are supposed to use Traits and Stunts.

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Stunt traits on the other hand, do not provide bonuses; instead they may introduce a new mechanic into the game, change the way a mechanic works, and provide narrative justification.

This is a perfectly valid rephrasing of the definition of "Stunt"

No, it is not a mistake. It must be the absolute size of the target, for two very good reasons:

1. You get to add your Might to your damage, and that already includes the attacker's Size Class. The difference is already there, as you subtract your Size Class from a quantity that depends on the attacker's Size Class.
2. The rule is also valid for ranged attacks, for which it does not make sense to include the attacker's Size Class. Rocket Raccoon is Size Class S, but he has no trouble blasting big bad guys with his artillery.

The Frontier is just one part of one large Galactic setting. How much of the Big Picture will be in this first book depends on several factors, but you can rest assured that there is one.

The Imperial Academy of Science was finally able to recover some of the data present in the damaged probe returning from Frontier space. Here is a sample of what the researchers found.
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The Slithodon is a large reptile native to the vast desert areas of planet Nurab. The ancient Jillok had domesticated the creature to use it as a mount for their expeditions in the desert in search of Vamias to hunt. When air vessels became available, Slithodon breeding become less convenient and the creature stock decreased, although nobles still prefer hunting from a Slithodon as a display of bravery and skill.

Wild Slithodon are still present on Nurab, although not in large numbers. The creature is not particularly aggressive, as its slow reptilian metabolism allows it to survive on small prey, but it is still a carnivore and it can attack humanoids when starving or threatened. There are also reports of allochthone colonies of Slithodons on other Frontier worlds, probably the offspring of domesticated specimens that Jillok or Momgä travellers brought there to use as mounts for sport hunting. The behaviour of such individuals is unpredictable, and we advise caution when encountering anything resembling a Slithodon away from Nurab.

Skills: Close Combat [Bite] 50%, Perception [Acute Vision, Hearing] 50%, Survival [Desert] 50%.

Armour: Scaly Hide 6/0+; Absorb Heat/Cold/Light 2.

Combat Notes: Medium-sized opponents are -6 SR when in melee with a Slithodon. Its huge size provides a Bonus to hit it. The creature skin has adapted to the extreme heat and illumination conditions of the Nurab deserts and provides two points of Absorb against thermal and light-based damage, making it rather hard to kill with lasers or flamethrowers. Harder radiations and particle beams affect the creature normally.

General Notes: The Slithodon is surprisingly at ease in all desert environments, not just those of its home world, which makes it an asset when used as a desert mount. When staging a travel, exploration or chase conflict in a desert environment, any party using Slithodons as mounts can use them as a Support Bonus once. If the party includes a character with the Slithodon Trait, the latter can use his or her Trait as a Support Bonus, too, in addition to the one from the mounts. Slithodon-mounted troops add +1 to their combat value in Mass Combat when fighting in the desert.

4 hours ago, BMonroe said:

Maybe instead of "slow down" I should have said something like "zoom in".

I love this expression, too. "Zoom in" is definitely spot on. Consider it stolen

As for blazing through a dozen storm troopers... it is rather quick even with Advanced Combat.

I have come across this thread on RPG.net, which apparently has gone on for one week without my participation. Which I like, as we seem to have gathered enough supporters to explain things in my absence.

https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?808049-Sell-Me-On-Off-Revolution-d100

I have decided to not chime in, so that the thread remains a "sell me" and does not become an official advertisement. However, there is one point I really wanted to comment, and it is Ben's post #10, where he talks about slowing things down to bullet time.

Although I think the Bullet Time parallel is definitely appropriate and Ben hit the spot with this idea, I have to clarify that Advanced combat is NOT slow. Crunchy and detailed, yes, but not slow, at least when you are fighting mooks. It is not uncommon for a Player character in the 90% skill range (which means a beginning character who specializes in melee combat) to butcher one or two opponents with a 50% skill per round, sometimes even more if you have used power on your weapons.

7 hours ago, soltakss said:

As to the narrative, I would guess that you have done something that is a bit surprising and have gained a slight advantage from the target readjusting strategy.

Or, more simply, just Good Ol' Feinting

Now that Simon has competently explained the mechanical effects of the rules, I will explain why there is this ambiguity. The version we tested very, very thoroughly uses the 1dskill rule, while at a later stage we switched to the "tens die" version. Both versions work adequately, so we could not declare one to be better than the other and left the decision to the players. The combat cards, being a "quick use" game aid with no room available for uncertainty, list only the "tens die" version, but rest assured that if you use the other one, it will not betray you.

PS: Take Initiative is the fundamental Combat Effect for Melee Combat, use it liberally in game. When in doubt, use Take Initiative. Sooner or later, your enemy will need those Strike Ranks you have just taken away.

We would really love to give you an ETA for either, but a temporal anomaly in the Dagda system has totally disrupted our schedule. We had a probe coming back from the Frontier with relevant information on board, but it happened to cross the Non-A zone and what we could retrieve was... well, non-reliable data, to say the least. I will try to assemble a report of what we could salvage ASAP.

Guide to the Galactic Frontier

Alephtar Games, in collaboration with Mirko Pellicioni Edizioni and Edizioni Scudo, is proud to present the second of its cross-media products: Guide to the Galactic Frontier. Based on the “Tourist’s Guide to the Galactic Frontier” book written by novelist Giorgio Sangiorgi and illustrated by artist Luca Oleastri, this supplement for the Revolution D100 roleplaying game describes more than 40 alien worlds located in Frontier Space, examining the outstanding features of each planet. All worlds come with a map of their areas of interest and color plates illustrating their most remarkable peculiarities, such as alien species or space anomalies. The book also details the equipment, vehicles and technology that your character will use on his or her exploration missions.

The book suggests a sample storyline in which players travel on board the Imperial Spaceship Onyx, which is stranded in Frontier Space during an exploration mission, forcing its crew to search for a way back – or perhaps a new home, who knows? However, you are also free to make up your own frontier stories, using the treasure of information included.

Visit our Facebook Page for a sneak peek at more space critters.

This is absolutely intentional: automated calculation only occurs when the target fields are empty. No matter how long we have tested the JavaScript, I am not going to release a sheet that could potentially override a skill score after it has been increased through background or experience.

If you want to have the sheet recalculate a skill base, empty the field first, and then click on the checkmark to trigger a refresh.

As promised, the first in a series of game aids:

The editable character sheet (PDF)

We provide no guarantee about the correctness of autocalculations (I suck at coding JavaScript).

Quick replies:

4 hours ago, Tanaka84 said:

So, here is a neat Idea, let's work on the How to do X in Revolution thread, and then it can be published as a PDF collection as an OGL thingie... or better yet, maybe a zine  

This and other ideas might find their way in the Companion.

3 hours ago, pansophy said:

I vote for 'Visualised Combat', 'Abstract Combat' or 'Creative Combat'. Tending to 'Abstract Combat' at the moment. Either way, it is just a technical term, no game changer.

Agreed. Abstract Combat and Detailed Combat are probably the best definitions.

However, major name changes might create incompatibilities with the first print run, and might need to wait for a second edition, which will not happen soon.

We can, however, start introducing official synonyms for things and promote a gradual transition towards the new names. I will open a specific thread for name changes.

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@Rosen: I assume the error in the Conflict table (p.48) will be addressed in the reprint? Also, will the PDF file be updated?

Errors will be corrected of course. Apart from what is already in the errata sheet, there are many other typos which we have already spotted. The PDF will be updated, expect it to be re-downloadable within Summer. Probably some days after the release of the PDF for the French version of Catthulhu.

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- change the Chapter marking at the bottom of each even page to either 'Basic Combat', 'Advanced Combat', 'Vehicular Combat' or 'Mass Combat'. Same for The Powers: would be nice to know if I am in the Alchemy or Divine Powers part of the book.

Good catch. We had thought of it and did not implement it because of time and technical constraints.

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- p.86 a box for 'Meaning of Damage': "If stuck for ideas, have a look at the 'Combat Effects' (p.115) in the 'Advanced Combat' chapter for inspiration.

I am a bit unsure. This might incentivize hybridation between Basic and Advanced Combat, which I do not recommend.

Re: adding a new level of success, it can be done, and I bet Mankcam will be in favour of it, too But it would be too messy to make it an official alternate rule. Whoever wants to use it is invited to print out Simon's table and use it in play.

Thank you for the feedback! I could not hope for a better 1000th post in the sub-forum. You will see that the system can handle even large amounts or opponents, or very tough monsters who can take huge punishments and require you to take their Life Points down to full negative, equally well.

This, and an editable PDF character sheet, are among the next freebie releases.

However, I have two soon-to-be-announced projects which are delaying the production of freebies at the moment, so they might take some more weeks to materialise.

Perhaps they are the descendants of the Kingdom of Fanes?

1 hour ago, Paid a bod yn dwp said:

If I read it correctly in RQ3 the penalty/deciding factor  to any form of movement is the characters DEX SR modifier plus the movement modifier. In contrast with RQ2 I believe you just applied the movement modifier at 1 SR per 3meters travelled, not the DEX SR as well. 

Adding the DEX SR mod as well as the movement SR mod seems a little over adjudicated. One calculation too many. You can always look at DEX if things are close in melee, no need in IMO to make it a permanent extra calculation 

No, you are not correct. It works exactly like in RQ2. You add your movement SR, You do not count your DEX SR again.

1 hour ago, Paid a bod yn dwp said:

Ok - so the "movement within the melee round" rule of RQ3 is the reason for Cormac in the example above having his parry ready after his DEX SR. - any movment must start on the DEX SR. So that's the soonest he can pick up his weapon.

Makes me question whether his attack should also incorporate a second DEX SR penalty, as is standard with making any attack? Should'nt the DEX SR for "movement within the melee" round be in addition to the attack SR? 

This Cormac example keeps throwing up questions. 

No. And this question kept us occupied for one summer, before starting to actually play the game, so I can understand why you are asking it

The key factor is that, with melee, the strike rank of the attacks does not represent "time spent to do an action" but a true "initiative" score. It is just a "who goes first", not a "how long it takes" affair, because a melee attack takes the entirety of the melee round, or, if you want to be precise, it takes all the Strike Ranks from the one you attack on to the end of the round. Strike Ranks for movement, readying etc., thus, are modifiers to the overall initiative numbers, and not the representation of an independent action, as all actions done in the MR are cobbled together in the overall value for the Attack SR. Saying that Cormac can attack on his DEX SR plus three for readying the weapon is correct, as the game system should handle also the possibility that a quick assailant undercuts the time it takes for a target to draw his weapon, but this introducion of a milestone event during the mielee round  does not mean that you should handle two different chains of events, each of which should start with the application of the DEX SR modifier.

All this, in melee.

Now, the part that often confuses newbies is that indeed, when you fire missiles or cast spells Strike Rank actually represents "how long it takes" and you can and should handle more than one chain of events, some of which need the re-application of DEX.

On 5/7/2017 at 7:01 PM, Archivist said:

I think changing the name of Basic Combat to Narrative Combat as another poster suggested is pretty cool.

It is indeed a neat idea. However, the word "narrative", albeit entirely appropriate, is loaded with a lot of toxic meanings for those who think the Old School is the Only True Way, so I am a bit reluctant to make it official. Perhaps we might add a side note that says "You can call it Narrative Combat", too, so that people can use the term on official forums without causing confusion.

13 hours ago, Tanaka84 said:

- A short one/two page table for adjudicating spells in Narrative Combat -and remove the Narrative combat explanations from the spell list-

Nothing bigger than a short sidebar can be included in this list. Either it works by changing or adding a couple of sentences, or it must wait until we wish to make a new edition.

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- Related to the first point, perhaps an optional rule on using overcome powers in narrative combat; the way it is right now, it´s a waste for a character to have several overcome spells, as mechanically they all do the same thing (Loss of RP).

Like weapons In any case, duplicate overcome spells are a waste even in Advanced Combat. Having both Demoralize and Confusion is not convenient because they occupy two slots for essentially the same purpose: keeping your opponent out of the fight until someone can kick his *** in physical combat. The rules already incentivize having a single attack spell.

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- An optional rule for "creating obstacles"  as a support action in conflicts, that is, situations that prevent a character from taking a certain action until they are overcome. For example, "I use my elemental wall talent to create a water wall, preventing them from running", this forces the opponents to change their tactics. This could be used in conjunction with the second point above, so a mind control spell could be used to prevent a creature from attacking (until they win a roll for effect against the caster in a battle of wills). 

This would require pages and pages of careful explanation in Chapter 3, which has already been accused of being "verbose and baroque". I am in favour of giving narrative (oops, I wrote the N-word) control to players, but when a rule does so it must explain very well what the player can impose on the environment. Think of all that revolves around the concept of creating "Scene Aspects" in Fate, which are essentially what you are suggesting here.

Actually, the fact that you can describe the outcome of an exchange is already enough to implement this at "fictional positioning" level (sorry for the technicality). The opposition should react consistently with what you described, out of mere common sense. For instance, one should describe the next roll for effect as an attempt to shake off the spell instead of an attack when hit with a Dominate power, which would trigger a Willpower versus Spell roll instead of a combat roll. The rules already specify that you cannot describe an intermediate success as the equivalent of winning the conflict, so this kind of action is already covered with sufficient detail.

Mmmh. perhaps we could add this explanation to the "How do I do X" section.

This example is really badly worded. Its potential to create confusion is huge. I remember it made us really puzzled when we first read the rules thirty years ago (Summer 1987, it is exactly 30 years, ick). However, it is not wrong, just badly exposed. Here is why.

9 minutes ago, Paid a bod yn dwp said:

First point of confusion,  Cormac's DEX strike rank of 4 is incorrect. If you’re following the examples previously Cormac had trained up his low DEX characteristic to 11, which should mean that his new DEX SR for this example is now 3.

Who said that Cormac's DEX has already been trained? That episode might occur in the future.

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Putting that aside:

• Why is only the DEX SR taken into consideration, why not SIZ SR too? After all this is a melee combat?
• What is the SR of 2 that is added to get Cormac’s actual attack SR? its not mentioned specifically. Is it the 1 handed weapon SR of 2, or is it his SIZ SR of 2?

The break down of SR in this example is likely wrong ( feel free to correct), but also needlessly complicated. Why not just the single attack SR ( combo of SIZ/DEX/ Weapon SR) added to the 3 SR it takes to stand and unsheathe the weapon? My head hurts

Here both the guards and Cormac use the "Attack on the Run"/"Opportunity Attack" variant that are among the most complicated rules of RQ3. Essentially, the rule here is that when you move and attack, or attack someone who is moving, SIZ SR does not count. Thus, Cormac can attack at his DEX (4) plus Weapon (2) plus 3 SR delay for grabbing the hatchet. His SIZ is not relevant.

Similarly, the guards attack at their DEX (4) plus Weapon (2) plus 2 SR delay for moving six metres. Here there is in fact a slight imprecision because they should slow down to 2 m/SR to attack on the move.

Anyway, this scene is definitely not a good example of how to explain the SR system to a newbie.

Just a little bit of maths to clarify what I mean by "being in constant danger of losing a nurtured character".

Let us take the example of Rurik Runespear and the infamous trollkin. Let us say Rurik is 100% in parry and the trollkin is 40% in attack (after modifications). The chance of the trollkin doing a solid 14-point hit against Rurik ignoring armour are the composite chance of the trollking criticalling and Rurik failing the parry, or 0,02 x 0,05, that is 0.001, or one chance in 1000. This means that Rurik might die at any moment, but it is not exactly a likely event.

Let us go with Derik the Dodger instead. With a 100% dodge and a 40% attack, the chances are the composite probability of Derik non-criticalling (0.95) by the trollkin's chance of criticalling (0.02), or 0.95 x 0.02, that is 0,019. More or less one chance in 50. This means that Derik will survive an average of 50 trollkin attacks before someone kills him, barring the option of the ubiquitous Chalana Arroy healer in range of Heal Body.

After a first round of inverstigations about the feasibility of a hardcover - which seems to be the most popular option - we are still stuck with an undesirable price tag, unless we decrease the quality of the binding, with the consequent risk of the volume falling apart if you use it at the table.

Question: assuming we launch a crowdfunding to update the production line to hardcover without over-taxing customers, would some of the current users of the system support it or would anyone cry scandal because we re-crowdfund a few days after delivering the last reward of the original cf?

The CF would be strictly a "give us the money, get your hardback in a month or so, printing and shipping time" affair. No fancy stuff that requires more production time, as we are already at work on Red Moon Rising.

10 hours ago, Runeblogger said:

What happened in my RQ3 campaign was that some clever adventurers trained a little and then risked dodging against not-so dangerous foes in order to get experience checks.
Then one day, I made the mistake of letting dodge downgrade the success level of the attack. They were complaining that it wasn't fair that a successful dodge wasn't any use against a special attack. It kind of made sense, so I let them houserule that. But then, as they became better and better at dodging, it became increasingly difficult for enemies to hurt them at all. SO, the morale of the story is: never houserule that dodge downgrades the success level of attacks. 

And yet, my personal experience in 15+ years of playing the same edition of RQ was exactly the opposite: using the rules as written was extremely detrimental to enjoyment, and Dodge was a viable option only when we introduced that houserule. As many other groups did:

https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/226-dodge-skill-vs-parry-skill/

https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/1122-opposed-rolls-codification/?page=2#comment-22712

https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/861-combat-and-opposed-rolls/?do=findComment&comment=18332

https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/861-combat-and-opposed-rolls/?do=findComment&comment=18354

including your own group

The problem is that the all-or-nothing rule for Dodge means that a dodge with 100% chance against a critical has only two possible outcomes: either no effect, or insta-kill, as damage will be doubled and armour does not count. This means that your character will survive an average of 20 hits before dying - or permanently losing a limb - if he relies on dodge.

I can unserstand your fear of making life too easy for munchkin players, but I do not consider this as something that gets in the way of having fun at the table: the GM can still introduce more dangerous opponents. Dodge as a downgrade becomes totally unbeatable only if the sole chance for monsters to hurt the PC is a critical, which the downgrade effect makes nigh impossible. But if this is the case, it means that the PCs totally outmatch the enemies in terms of armour and magic, and it is time for the GM to provide more dangerous opponents or cast more magic in battle.

On the other hand, I cannot see how this may be fun for players, to be in constant danger of losing a well-rounded, long-term character that they spent time nurturing not because of a tactical mistake or a heroic choice, but because of the GM rolling 01 or 02 on behalf of Joe Trollkin with a spear. To me, this is a showstopper, as I consider player enjoyment and attachment to their characters to be more important than any desire to balance the challenge that the GM may have.

3 hours ago, Ethereal said:

 There is also a supplementcalled 'Cities' that also originally came from Midkemia press that Chaoisum published later that is a good source for creating encounters and

populating cities, towns and villages.

This one is a small gem. "Kidnapping in al-Halisa" was originally designed by just rolling on the Cities encounter table and adapting the result to the context.