Jakob

Next question: Dodge simply seems to be the best defensive skill - its effects in the combat Matrix are the same as in parry, but you don't have a weapon that can be damaged or broken. There are two downsides: You can't make a riposte, and Dodge is a separate skill to put points in at Chargen.

Still, Dodge is definitely superior to shields - you need to learn a separate shield skill, as well, and, like a weapon, a shield can be damaged and broken.

Am I missing something? In terms of effectiveness, is there a good reason to put your starting points in a shield skill instead of Dodge?

Just now, Nick J. said:

That's not possible unless you allow for "Experienced" starting characters (see sidebar on page 23). The goal for characters should be to get a fighting skill to 101+ because that makes survival in a fight more probable. That's all the advice section is; a list of things that will probably help you avoid a messy, forgettable death in the long run.

Thanks, makes sense! I read the advise as "things you should keep in mind when creating your character", so I was wondering if there were some hidden extra-points to spend ...

Using this question for a quick rules question: The MW player tipps suggest that you should make sure to have a combat skill at 101%+ ... but is that even possible for a starting character with no extra age? The way I see it, you get a maximum of base 25 (e.g. warhammer), 9 points STR bonus and 60% for one occupation skill (culture doesn't provide weapon skills, and the free bonus points you receive at the end don't stack with your occ. skills). That makes 94%. Am I missing something?

12 hours ago, Sean_RDP said:

This is very important to me in many of the designs I am working on. Plenty of other games and settings do dwarves and elves great. 

Sounds reasonable - especially since dwarves and elves are in the MW rulebook, anway, so it's easy to re-introduce them if you want them in your campaign.

Regarding species: does "main species" mean that these four are the only playable species? Or will we see all kínds of cultures and creatures as viable PC choices besides those? I always felt that BRP lends itself perfectly to the latter, even though it hasn't been done that much.

2 hours ago, g33k said:

Reign

(a homonym)

'Cause Sean is too polite/professional to correct a fan... but me?  I'm just being helpful, I am...

🤩

Oops .. I actually alway read that wrong - thanks!

This is great. Now that I finally own Magic World, I'm pretty impressed with it - and I love all of those little snippets from Rain Dragon Press, so I'm really looking forward to a full setting!

Okay, I finally caved in and ordered a copy. I've been sneaking around MW for years (a major part of my rpg upbringing was Stormbringer 1st). I hope it will fall somewhere in my sweet spot between OpenQuest and Mythras in terms of complexity. And the continued fan interest by a small, but dedicated group here did a lot to convince me that MW, despite its problematic history, is actual a very good Iteration of BRP.

Let's see that fanzine, now!

53 minutes ago, klecser said:

As a biologist, VanderMeer doesn't seem like he consulted with any scientists in writing his characters.  I find the decision-making of the characters to be counter-intuitive to how actual scientists would approach situations. I understand that some level of suspension of disbelief is needed for fiction. He just went too far for me.  And, I'm not talking about after they start to be mentally affected by the zone.  I'm talking about before that even happens. In the first few chapters I'm like: "Yeah, this is not how we think about things like this."

While the second and the third book are quite different from the first, I'd suspect you wouldn't like them either - most of the characters have more or less serious mental problems which, among other things, lead to pretty counter-intuitive decision making.

Didn't want to be a dick about it, too, btw. - it's just that your initial post sounds extremely derisive about a book that I happen to hold dearly ...

EDIT: BTW, the POV character of Annihilation is paranoid, so you're probably not supposed to trust her decpiction of the other expedition members ...

I consider all three books great. Maybe you just shouldn't expect something Lovecraftesque, they're a completely different animal ...

Nice ... I must confess that I'll probably give it a pass, since I have so much unplayed retro-sf already on m shelf - Space 1889, Rocket Age and now Odd Soot ... but still good to see that Mythras keeps expanding its scope.

So, is this teasing a new setting ...?

H.G. Wells, okay - but "Worlds United" sounds like a Kurd Lasswitz spin on it ...

Just reading Odd Soot (and having a great time). One thing occured to me: Where do the nuveri get "replacement bodies"? If the question is answered in the book, I couldn't find it.

If replacement bodies are "donated" by nuveri whose head has been destroyed, leaving an intact body, that would probably mean that they are in very high demand - which would imply that there must be some kind of criminal activity, probably involving murder, to sell bodies, even with the nuveri taboo against violence.

Or are the headless bodies "grown" in some way? Or can nuveri give birth to headless bodies? Would that be something that just happens, or something they are able to do willingly? Which brings me to the question of sexual reproduction ...

Anyway, Odd Soot has some fascinating aliens!

1 hour ago, TrippyHippy said:

Punk is 70s more than 80s, if you live in the UK at least. 80s was a post-punk era.

 

In West-Germany, punk was still a big thing in the 80s - but generally, you're probably right. I guess the 80s were the times when punk already had become pretty commercialised ...

@Rosen McStern:

Sorry, mixed that up!

30 minutes ago, Tywyll said:

But none of that is RQ. Real world mythic figures don't do the high action hijinks of Runequestors. It's not a fair comparison. If you want to look at Greek mythology then hercules is a better example, and he's still probably weak sauce compared to Arkat or Argatha.

That' s probably a point - I've been playing RQ3 back then, and we never used Glorantha (since there was practically nothing Gloranthan published for the German translation, which we were using). So RQ was first and foremost my system for "gritty, swingy, with a potential to get to either do something badass or die screaming for everyone." I can easily get that together with real-world mythology like the Odyssey or the Ilias, much better than any D&Disms.

If it hasn't been such a good match for Glorantha back then, I would suspect that this has been rectified with the new edition. I've been playing it for a while, and my character seemed pretty badass from the get-go on a mundane level (though she still has good reason to get very nervous about a fight against a troll ...), starting with Battle Axe at 95 (now 103). And while Glorantha has been presented to me as a world of great heroes and powers like Herak and the Crimson Bat, I don't experience them as such a dominant factor, and wouldn't consider their existence (or the ability to go head-to-head with them) as the core of what feels "mythological" about Glorantha.

EDIT: Thinking about it, I guess I got the original post wrong - sorry about that. I took it as the general demand that "mythical role-playing" needs to be high powered, when it was in fact about the very specific expectations generated by certain RQ supplements that I don't own and haven't read.

I actually consider everything mentioned features, not bugs, with regards to mythic play. If you look at the Odyssey, it is certainly not characterize by Odysseus having tons of HP, killing cyclopses left and right and succeeding at resistance rolls against siren's song. It's characterized by him being a smart and somewhat ruthless guy who keeps running into trouble, but who also knows when to tie himself to his ship and when not to pick a fight with a giant monster.

I'd say that works pretty well with most BRP games.

6 minutes ago, Tywyll said:

I assume that mechanic bottoms out at skills of 100%. What happens beyond that?

If I remember correctly, Revolution is capped at 100.

1 hour ago, Tywyll said:

How does it handle specials and criticals?

Revolution has "Advantage" which is similar to a Special success (no criticals, though). You succeed with Advantage when your ten die is higher than you ones die - this means that the chances for a succes with advantage increase exponentially the higher your skill goes. I actually really like it, it is elegant, avoids additional math, and you get a sizeable extra benefit from being really good at a skill.

I think a connected question is whether you consider dice-rolls representative of someone's performance - that way, it actually seems more consistent to say "the lower the roll, the better you perform." But I have moved away from that assumption anyway. Performance can be part of it - but especially when a quite competend PC fails or even fumbles, I tend to interpret such a result as some fluke event that impedes the PC - a fly in his eye, a loose stone ...

If you look at it that way, a major part of the die roll just represents a number of more or less favourable circumstances.

22 minutes ago, womble said:

It's only a little thing, but the sheer difficulty I've seen people experience in figuring out Pendragon chances to hit and crit for higher-than-20 successes (not dimwits, neither: programmers; research veterinarians) on a 'casual' basis argues that it's something that can disrupt a table. There's a lot to be said for the 'best you can roll on the dice' being a consistent number, and being consistently determined.

It's really strange - I prefer "roll highest within the margin of the respective succes level, and you win", since it minimizes adding/substracting numbers, and I never had the slightest problem wrapping my head around. Since I'm neither a programmer nor a math person, I'd suspect that it may be simply a matter of overthinking the whole thing in one way or the other.

Maybe it helps to think of your skill rating as a target number - that 's the potential you wan't to reach, but if you're overreaching, you'll fail ... of course, the problem remains that critical are on the lower end of the scale (though one could use the "doubles are criticals" approach or even the advantage approach of Revolution d100 to solve that problem).

In the end, I don't care that much - owever, subtracting two-digit numbers doesn't come as fast and easy to me as substracting one-digit numbers, so I tend to avoid it. And since BRP games are practically my go-to-systems for most cases, I can hardly accept the suggestion that "they are not for me anyway."

41 minutes ago, Newt said:

@Jakob can I ask you to refrain from commenting on others posts. I'm asking for people's opinions on what they would like to see in a new OpenQuest. Discussion about the details comes later   Thanks.

Of course, sorry about that!

Another rules comment:

I think fighting with two weapons has already been discussed as rather advantageous with its extra action. I'd suggest just dropping any specific rules for it - two weapons simply give you flexibility, a shield has the bonus advantage that you can use it to parry missiles; also, if you're disarmed, you still have the other weapon. For attacking with both weapons in one round, you can simply use an all-out attack.

Some thoughts about the bestiary (whether as a book on its own or as a part of a cleaned-up version):

Maybe some more advice on how to handle typical player character races like dwarves, elves or ducks - especially how to use the point-buy characteristics method for them. Regarding that, it might be useful to not only list the average characteristics, but also their range in the monster stats.

What I would really love to see, if there is a separate bestiary, would be spot-lights with immediately playable additional material related to some of the creatures. For example, give us a generic dragon, but also a specific dragon with stats, a map of his lair and a list of his treasures. A specific werewolf along with a sketch of the village he lives in and how he keeps his dark side a secret from his friends and familiy. Nothing in-depth, just a page or two each, but with a focus on adventure hooks and practical play-aids like maps and short descriptions of places and people. Keep it true to "monsters are people, too."

3 hours ago, Simlasa said:

or bonuses for 'good' role playing would lessen my interest.

Well, the bonuses for good role-playing are actually in the 2nd edition, even though in a very minor way - I was actually suggesting to do away with them.

Going through the book, I've found a few more things that I always thought could be changed slightly - most of these are simple matters of preference and probably not very important, but nevertheless:

Modifiers for skill tests: I'm a big fan of the "use only significant modifiers" philosophy, but I don't like +/- 25 as a step. It just makes the math a little more complicated - why not stick to modifiers dividable by ten, like 20/50, 20/40, 20/40/60 or something like that. Calculating 38+20 is just a little bit easier than calculating 38+25.

Also, I'm wary of suggesting "good role-playing" as a factor for granting a bonus on a roll. People tend to view all kinds of different things as "good role-playing", from good problem-solving to cooperative spirit to playing you character to the hilt, possibly at the expense of everyone else at the table. In the end, a bonus for good role-playing is simply a bonus the GM can give if he likes what a character is trying to do for one reason or another. This doesn't quite ring true with the BRP rules principles for me. It's a very small thing, basically a sentence of little consequence to the rules, but I have made horrible experiences with discussions about "good role-playing", and I feel a little rush of panic everytime I read those words.

However, I'd love to see player-controlled passions as an optional rule (if I remember correctly, RoH has them, but OQ2 doesn't). I'd suggest having them work similar to RQ:G, where the player can decide to roll on them and they have a positive effect on a success and a negative effect on a failure.

2 hours ago, blindluke said:

The Gatan setting material deserves it's own book

(...)

This re-refreshed edition could be followed by a Empire of Gatan setting book

I think Newt mentioned somewhere that he wouldn't get around to writing more Gatan material in the foreseeable future. But I suspect the three-book option might involve folding Gatan into the d100 worldbuilders book as a kind of extended example.

EDIT: to be honest, what I consider most important is that whatever ideas come out of this thread don't create a "River of Heaven Companion" situation for OQ, where some new element that is planned for a new edition/refresh becomes a roadblock to the whole thing (and maybe further OQ products). So while I'd love a new edition, it's probably important to keep the project managable.

BTW, the notion of a unified magic system for OQ is at the very least interesting - it seems like a big break with RQ/BRP traditions, but I'd still like to see OQ3's take on it.