threedeesix

2 hours ago, Runeblogger said:

It's a good article, full of enthusiasm.

I also wrote a small article on TDM's next releases here.

(The Translation button is on the right margin)

Thanks Runeblogger, I missed this one.

Rod

The Spanish online gaming magazine PX has published an article on the upcoming Mythras/RuneQuest Classic Fantasy by the Design Mechanism. While I don't speak Spanish myself, I bet its really interesting.

Here is the link for those who wish to check it out...

http://pxmagazine.com/sobre-classic-fantasy/

Rod

33 minutes ago, nDervish said:

Am I correct to assume that this is coupled with a house rule that you can only spend one XR on a skill at a time?  Otherwise, it seems that players who would normally say "I get three rolls, so one each to Combat Style, Endurance, and Evade" would just say "I get twelve rolls, so four each to Combat Style, Endurance, and Evade" for the same net effect, just chunkier.

 

Maybe I've been doing it wrong all this time, but I'm pretty sure you can only increase a single skill once per experience award session. You can't increase the same skill multiple times. That's why the skill still increases by 1% on a failure.

Edit: Looking at some of the discussion over at the Design Mechanism forum, it seems you are correct and I have been doing it wrong.

Rod

8 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

What I think I'd prefer is rather than having the GM assigning the number of experience rolls one could make, I'd  have him assign the number of skills that could be improved.  During play the players would get skill checks per the normal RQ rules, but when rolling for improvement they would pick which ones to try and improve first. The difference here is that the player could still try to prioitize what he wants to get better at, but "secondary" skills would eventually improve when the main skills fail to do so.

If you're saying you'd prefer that the player checks of the skill boxes like normal, then the GM assigns a number of skills that can be improved after the session is over, and the player picks from those checked off skills only, that's covered with the RQ6 Experience Rolls.

From page 109 (Sidebar): Sometimes, however, it may be unrealistic for a character to practice Lockpicking when he is currently on a ship and has done nothing but fight sea monsters for the last few game sessions. In such cases it is reasonable for the Games Masters to request that characters only attempt to improve skills which they have recently used, or for which the situation exists to practice them.

This could be easily extrapolated to mean "check off a skill when you use it, when I assign Experience Rolls you can only pick from those skills", and easily covers the "if you want to improve a skill you have to use a skill" form of advancement.

Rod

14 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

I prefer skill checks. But I disagree with threedeesix's players. Typically, specialization works just fine in skill-based RPGs. Im my experience it's the players that mess it up. 

For example, in some of my old RQ games, the players would want to sneak up and scout out an area. They had a hunter and a thief who were both good at sneaking, but the group would mess thing up because when told that they had to make sneak rolls, EVERYONE would look on their character sheet, say "I have that skill!", and then roll. 

Now the hunter and thief both had stealth skills in the 70% range, but the rest of the group were at the base percentages. Sure enough when 6-8 people try to sneak around and most of them are at 20% skill or less- somebody blows the roll. For a month or so the group never managed to sneak up on anybody. 

Eventually (that is, when a frustrated GM pointed out that skills were like excuses, and that everybody had "that skill", but most of the group shouldn't be relying on it), they figured out that skill specialization was still the way to go. 

 

Your kind of making my point for me. In an Experience Roll system, it doesn't matter it everyone rolls or not, only the players that want their characters to be good at sneaking will put an Experience Roll into advancement. Thanks Atgxtg. 

1 hour ago, pachristian said:

Being specialized is not necessarily a problem; but the character that can't do anything outside his speciality can be a real problem. 

Even when playing a non-class based game, my players like to specialize. One wants to be the thief, one the spell caster, one the healer, etc. They find that the Experience Roll award system lets them retain that aspect, where a skill check system typically doesn't. They don't necessarily want to be told that only the thief can climb walls (as in AD&D), but the thief wants to be the best at it. Having a limited amount of skill increases at the end of each session means that the players will concentrate on the skills that best fit their character concept, otherwise, everyone can start to look similar after a long campaign, at least in my experience.

It really comes down to play styles, and in that there is no right or wrong way to play. Luckily, d100 games have systems that cater to all groups.

Rod

1 hour ago, Kell Valar said:

Love it, great layout. 

I have one critique: The font settings for tables are a little bit hard to read. Increasing the size by a small bit or making it BOLD shout fix that easily. 

Thanks Kell.

I know the sample is a low res version to keep the SIZ down. Hopefully it will be easier to read in the final version. I'll have a better idea when I see them.

Rod

3 minutes ago, charlesvajr said:

Yes, but the idea was in discussion over social constructs. The original didn't have as much development in that area. I don't remember if there was any mention of a "guild" structure or not but the original three books did not have the same emphasis outside of combat/looting.

Got ya. Lost track of the conversation.

27 minutes ago, charlesvajr said:

The original white box was 1974. Basically chainmail with smaller, one man, units. What was to become D&D/AD&D came out 1977. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons

Not really.

It was called Dungeons and Dragons even in 1974. They had character classes, level based advancement, standard races, adventures, etc. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons just expanded on it. 1977 essentially saw the next edition of D&D, but make no mistake, it was still D&D before that.

Rod

12 hours ago, Jeff said:

Social organizations, particularly cults, are hard-wired into RQ2 and RQ3. An adventurer without a cult (defining that broadly to include spirit cults and sorcerers) will always be a grave disadvantage against someone who does belong to a cult. When even a broo or a dark troll has a cult that can teach it magic, be a source of rune magic, and give it allies, a player character would be well-advised to do the same! 

Referring to the case of not having my players belong to a cult, it was balanced with not having ANYONE belong to a cult. I never ran games in Glorantha, so it wasn't an issue. I'll admit that in my youth, having come from AD&D, I just couldn't wrap my head around bronze age role playing. It was just easier for me to continue running my old games with the much better RuneQuest 2 and 3 systems. I guess that would be the actual origin of my Classic Fantasy game. Now with all of that said, today I would much more likely embrace an unmodified cult-heavy RuneQuest campaign, if I wasn't so damn busy with other things.

Rod

I have been running various versions of RQ for decades now. I pretty much ignored all forms of cults and organizations in every instance. They just weren't needed for the types of games I ran. But that being said, I also never ran games where everyone could cast spells and use magic either, which is pretty common in earlier RQ. I reserved it for those with spell casting professions only.

Pretty sure that was the inspiration for the name, not a potential copyright issue. The lawyers for ancient deities are pretty much non-existent.

28 minutes ago, SDLeary said:

History guy must resist!!! 

SDLeary

Oh, don't misunderstand. I'm not really up on my history like the majority on these forums. I use the term skalds simply for descriptive purposes. The only historic publications I broke out to write them up was my vintage Dragon Magazine collection.

Rod

1 hour ago, TrippyHippy said:

The interior layout looks good. I note the Class list doesn't appear to include the Illusionist anymore, while there are two types of Bard. Is this the case?

Also, this preview appears to have been out for a day or so without me noticing. Hint: Put it on the front web page.  Finally, will you still be using this cover for the full release?:

 

Correct with regards to the illusionist. I now include the different schools of magic, in which an illusionist simply concentrates on that school.

As far as the bard goes, I decided I would have two different types of bard, those of a more druidic bent like the Celtic skalds, and their more civilized arcane counterparts educated at one of the prominent bardic collages. They are still a single class, just using different options. The druidic bard is based on the first OD&D appearance of the bard in Dragon Magazine, while the civilized version is a conversion of the one from the 2nd edition Players Handbook.

Yes, the pictured cover is still a go.

Rod

Thanks Puck. You know as well as anyone, it's been a LONG road.

Rod

4 hours ago, jux said:

BRP basically has that - it's POW. I wish it was more important. It seems only magic users need that and for the rest it is a dump-stat. 

Well, its a dump stat until the character needs to resist a spell that magic-user has just cast on him. At that point I'm sure he'll wish he put a few more points into POW. 

29 minutes ago, fmitchell said:

On the other hand..., On the third hand..., On the fourth hand...

You sure your not playing Gamma World?

Actually RQ6 has plenty of personalty skills; Influence, Deceit, Acting, Courtesy, Seduction, etc. And that's just off the top of my head. Plus, Classic Fantasy is adding Animal Handling. So really most of the personalty skills you note are covered there as well.

On ‎2‎/‎13‎/‎2016 at 2:14 AM, Jeff said:

Or the reverse - the player who is personally very loquacious and outgoing, playing a low-CHA taciturn Humakti who gives speeches far better than their character could. We make a dice roll to see if a sword hits (we could just agree to talk that through), I see zero problem with rolling dice to see if a speech, seduction, quick excuse, etc works.

While not a social situation, I had a similar incident non-the less.

Back in my RQ3 days, I had a player who was playing a barbarian with a low INT score, as any good barbarian should have. ;-)  However this particular player was a physicist in the real world, and I remember the first time I sent them into a cave, he said he was looking for the ingredients to make gunpowder. No matter how hard I explained it to him, he couldn't grasp the concept of player knowledge and character knowledge.

We're still great friends, now we watch movies. ;-)

Rod

On 2/2/2016 at 3:51 AM, dracopticon said:

Have anyone heard of a more thorough and somewhat systemized conversion-mechanic for transferring AD&D scenarios to BRP? For myself I aim at converting L1 The Sexret of Bone Hill, and N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God, maybe even a 1st level Planescape adventure. I know about and have d/l the AD&D monster books for BRP, but I'm searching for a more complete transfer mechanic.

Ive gotta say I have never been a proponent of conversion formulas. Yes, I use them for some parts of the write-up, but typically I start with a similar creature in whatever system I'm converting to as a base and modify from there. That way, your conversions will remain consistent with already established creatures.

Lets look at the basilisk for example. Right away I see its pretty much an eight-legged crocodile and nothing like its RQ counterpart. So I start with the characteristics of a RQ croc. Then I look at both the AD&D croc and AD&D basilisk to see in what ways they are different.

1. The basilisk is much smaller but tougher
2. The basilisk has better armor
3. The basilisk and croc are just as fast
etc.

With this information in hand, I take the RQ croc and modify appropriately.

Using this method means that your conversions will remain internally consistent with all other creatures that are already a part of the game your converting to.

Rod
 

6 hours ago, mikuel said:

I've always wanted to run some of the classic higher level modules, such as Tomb of Horrors and White Plume Mountain, but did not know how to do it due to power levels and magic items.  AD&D assumed that higher level characters would have magic items equal to their power level in order to survive the dungeon.  Will Classic Fantasy have suggestions on how to make higher level guys?  

RuneQuest has built in rules going up in Rank. Rank is used for Cults and Brotherhoods. RuneQuest also has rules for Luck Points. I simulate characters being able to take on more powerful opponents by the granting of an additional Luck Point every time the character gains Rank. Therefore, higher "rank" characters can take on greater challenges.

Rod

1 hour ago, Belgath said:

Decided to run 3 Classic  Fantasy games all the same scenario. "Somethings wrong with the INN on Black Rock Hill" Now that you think about it you can't seem to remember how you got here.

    Was shooting for a more D&D vibe Will run the game the number of times with brand-new players on roll 20 to make sure I get the timing right and make shure people like the short scenario. Have the time set for 2pm but  I'm wondering if I should make this later in tha day.

Hey Belgath,

When you get the adventure finished, let me know. I would love to proof if for you.

Rod

1 hour ago, Ryasin said:

Also, are there any plans for supplementary material like a GM book? I recall that was planned for the old BRP version.

And one of the things I liked about the BRP version was how allignment was handled. Will this still be part of it with player actions giving allignment points? Or maybe handled differently?

Everything that was to be in the BRP Classic Fantasy GM book is now all in the new book. Where as the original had pretty much just the player character stuff, the new version has all of that, plus monsters, treasure, and magic items.

I do have plans for a Companion book with more of everything; more spells, monsters, and magic items. Plus some additional stuff that didn't fit in Classic Fantasy. But this will all depend on the success of the first book of course.

The alignment system from BRP is not in the RQ version. However RQ has its own unique and equally awesome system called Passions, which can do everything the other system did, plus more. It's similar and percentage based.

Rod

50 minutes ago, Kell Valar said:

I have a question, too. Where will we buy it? The Design Mechanism shop or only on drivethruRPG? I'm asking because I'm not a fan of drivethruRPG. They watermark/protect the PDF's because of piracy, which is fine. But it hinders the user making bookmarks which is an absolute deal breaker for me. On the other hand it must be an "upload" feature from the publisher that is defaulted to be active because not all PDF's have it.  

I mean I want to organize my own bookmarks in the PDF when the book is bigger than 100 pages, because that is the whole reason I'm buying PDF's in the first place!

It should be available at RPG Now, Drivethru, and TDM in PDF, and from TDM as well as some local game shops in dead tree version.

Rod

2 hours ago, dracopticon said:

I understand this probably is out of topic here OR there's an reply to this somewhere I haven't seen. But the whole AD&D-based Classic Fantasy is by this unsupported then?
Why I'm asking is because I intend to transfer a couple of basic 1-3-level AD&D scenarios to BRP and the precursor to this, the first ed CC. 

If you're referring to the original BRP Classic Fantasy, then you would be correct. For reasons that do not need to again be specified, there will be no more BRP Classic Fantasy.

However, for everything that was in BRP Classic Fantasy, as well as tons more stuff, I would encourage you to pickup RQ Classic Fantasy when it comes out. Like it's predecessor, it converts the 1st and 2nd edition of that level based system everyone has heard of, but in addition to that will be supported with modules/adventures and companion books for "hopefully" years to come.

Just get a hold of of the free RuneQuest Essentials while its available to supplement RQ Classic Fantasy, and you'll have everything you need to run skill based d100 classic dungeon crawls for years to come.

Rod