Thalaba

That's a really interesting study, and not at all what I was expecting. Thanks for putting it up!

Thalaba

Every campaign had a Vecna, his eye, his hand, Orcus, Dispater, and Githyanki.

To me, that's the endearing element of D&D. It certainly isn't the game mechanics. It's the implied setting. Sure, there are those that have immersed themselves in Forgotten Realms, or Eberron, but the gamers I seem to connect with most are the ones that plagarize relentlessly and unapologetically. BRP (for fantasy) needs that kind of writing. Books of NPCs, adventures, magic items, and spells.

Ironically, that's why I got fed up with D&D many years ago - because every campaign had the same things in it. The PCs would come across monsters that the PCs could know nothing about, but the players did, so metagaming became rampant and all the wonder was taken out of the game. Eventually, our D&D fantasy campaigns all became kind of the same.

I'll take a richly detailed, well thought out, unique setting over a generic one any day. I'll hold up The Known World of Artesia and much of Glorantha as examples of wonderful, immersive settings.

I'm not disputing that the BRP needs generic books that GMs can mine for ideas - it certainly does. But I would also argue that it needs one or more good immersive settings. Runequest did not survive as long as it did on the strength of it's system alone. There are a great many people who loved it primarily for Glorantha. Many of them are now playing Heroquest.

Thalaba

I would certainly buy such a monograph.

...if you enjoy working on the magic systems, contact Dustin at Chaosium and see what he has to say but do not plan on making a ton of money.

Well, I've contacted Dustin, so I guess now I sit and wait.

Did anything ever come of this? I'd be interested in seeing a magic supplement. My current campaign is making use of several homemade magic systems in addition to the 3 RQ systems, and yet I crave more!

Thalaba

I'm at work and don't have my books with me, so I can't check to see what the BRP movement rates are listed at right now, but in RQIII the MOV for a human is 3M/SR, for an elf or broo it's 4M/SR, and 2M/SR for a dwarf or halfling. A mount is anywhere from 10M/SR (camel, pony) to 12M/SR (horse) as I recall.

When converting between SRs and rounds, I typically use a factor of 10, because there are 10 SR in a round. So a human would move 30M/RND etc. Now, according to the strict rules, a person or thing cannot begin running until their DEX SR in a round and this would technically reduce their total movement per round to something like 21M/RND. I only apply this rule to the first round, though.

Hope that helps. If not I can check later today when I get home and actually look at the books.

T.

BRP does have Ads/Disads - they're called Chaos Features. My personal favourite is 'explodes on death' - nothing rallies your fellow party memebers around you like that!

T.

...that was exactly my original intent, yes - a permanent sacrifice of POW in exchange for a permanent power. (I was inspired by a spell in the ELRIC! rules that let you get a demon power in exchange for 1 POW).

But then it occurred to me that if you wanted characters to have a lot of powers, they'd have to give up a lot of POW, and that might have disastrous effects on the game.

This got me thinking to thinking - if you sacrificed POW to get permanent effects - who are you sacrificing it to? Are there other things you could sacrifice, or other ways to sacrifice POW?

So, not knowing if you have a higher power in your games (Gods, Demons, whatever), what if a POW was sacrificed for each permanent effect, but the player didn't have to relinquish that POW until some later time (e.g. death). But with each sacrificed POW, the player loses a little bit of control over themselves to the higher being. I'm thinking you could mine the Allegience or Sanity rules here to mimic this effect. Perhaps these sacrificed POW give the God the oportunity to call upon the player from time to time, or force the player to act a certain way - this would give you plot hooks, too. Or Perhaps each sacrificed POW gives you an increased chance of a psychotic episode in times of stress. I think you could do interesting things with this.

So I started to think that saying you "dedicated" POW so it wasn't available for magic points, might be a better way to go.

I think this is less evocative, but it would be much faster (and less work) to implement.

You could put it this way: You must sacrifice POW to gain a permanent effect, and that POW resides within the Skin Rune. You Skin Runes contribute to your magical defense (as long as they are attached to you), but don't contribute to your casting ability. Maybe runes on weapons also contribute to magical defence? I'd sure hate for someone to separate me from my magic sword if I was sneaking around a Wizard's tower.

Thalaba