Jakob

I just meant in in a rules sense, as in "the stats in the books won't be usable for BRP games without some conversion hassle if they use Gumshoe". Of course, everything would still be compatible in a broader sense, expecially given the fact that actual Cthulhu games are usually played pretty rules-lite, in my experience. EDIT: Anyway, I just noticed that Delta Green is OGL, so they could probably just build their own rulebook for their Cthulhu range out of that.

C7 has announced that they want to continue/reboot the respective game lines (Laundry Files, World War Cthulhu, Cthulhu Britannica) with some other rules system. It has been suggested they might do something similar to Delta Green by simply devising their own d100 system that would be closely compatible to CoC. It would feel strange, however - WWC is very close to what Chaosium is doing with CoC, anyway (and maybe that is one reason for terminating the license; with Chaosium becoming much more active, maybe they need to make sure that they are the ones who put out the products that are at the core of the CoC identiy). Having another d100 Cthulhu Mythos system next to CoC AND Delta Green that focuses on a strong integration of real world history/present and the Cthulhu Mythos just seems like one too much. Personally, I'd love them to license Trail of Cthulhu, but that probably won't happen, and of course, there would be no compatibility ...

I need to ask a heretical question: What is it about MoN that people consider so great? I have to admit, I've only read the German translation of the campaign, never played it, and that was years ago. It hasn't really left a big impression with me besides that lots of it seemed to make no sense in terms of the back story, and that there was a totally random, in no way mythos-related werewolf adventure somewhere in there. Basically, it was a massive disappointment in reading, and I decided definitely not to run this with my group. This is an honest question, especially since I've never played it and read it only once, and that was ages ago. It may very well be that I simply didn't get it. So can someone outline in two or three sentences what makes MoN great (and sell me on giving this new, improved version a try)?

Great! I'm really looking forward to this!

I had already wondered about this from the product descriptions: So there are minotaurs, it seems ... the setting will probably be much more fantasy-flavored than I expected, which is probably a good thing. the main question: will we see acephalytes? I love acephalytes, and no one ever seems to use them in their fantasy settings.

Very good decision, as far as I'm concerned!

@Jason Durall Thanks! That makes it much clearer - I especially like how damage to weapons is handled in that full version of the rules. There's only one hp value for weapons (no need for an extra armor value for weapons), and it is still possible that a weapon comes out of a parry with no, minimal or significant damage or that it even breaks on all levels of success. Also, in this version, it seems much clearer to me how crits and specials at attack and parry interact.

While the seeming brittleness of weapons is strange, this might really be a quickstarter thing that will be handled differently in the full rules - after all, it's something that will only become relevant after several combats, and the QS scenario features, one, maybe two battles ...

It's my summer holidays - I certainly won't take anything with me that can read a pdf, that tends to spoil it all ... and I can't carry the print edition. However, I'll join in as soon as I'm back!

I actually don't have the QS at hand right now, but in the fire elemental's stats it says that it can engulf its cubic meter volume times ten in size. The Fire elemental is 3x3x3 metres big, which means it has a volume of 27 cubic meters (which is also its size) - that means that it would be able to engulf 270 points of size! I think that can't be right, one point per cubic metre would make much more sense ...

I agree - being able to dodge multiple attacks by one opponent feels right, I would say - multiple opponents, not so much.

I'd be in as well, but I'll be abroad for the first three weeks ... I hope I'll be able to join in after that!

That's strange, because I actually played a lot of Stormbringer back in the days ... but I must confess that I don't remember the details of the combat rules that well. I think we just played it as "if you parry, no damage is rolled and all damage is blocked" and didn't use anything like weapon hp. I guess I need to get out my Stormbringer rules and have another look at them!

Thanks, that seems to make sense! It's more or less what I came up with after thinking things through, so that's probably how it's supposed to be. Regarding the choice between parry or dodge: Would you say that you can choose on each SR? Or do you make a choice for the whole round and stick to it? Also, if there's no cumulative penalties for extra dodge rolls, does it mean you can theoretically dodge as many attacks as you like on every strike rank? That would seem excessive ... I suspect that dodge might be subject to the cumulative penalty after all, since it says in the rules that the dodge skill may be used instead of a parry - that sounds a little like: "You're doing a parry, but you use the dodge skill." Am I making any sense ...?

I also have a few parry questions - in general, I feel that the whole attack-parry-sequence is explained in a slightly roundabout way in the QS, leaving a few things unclear. On p. 14, under "The Parry", it says: "A parrying weapon can only block damage equal to the parrying weapon's current hit points. If more points of damage get through, those points go on to do damage to a hit location of the defender." This seems to be the general rule, with exceptions for for critical and special success at parrying, where it is explicitly stated that "the parrying weapon (and the defender) take no damage". However, in case of a success, it only says: "the attack is parried, but the parrying shield or weapon loses 1 hit point." Taking all this together, I'm not quite sure how to resolve a succesful parry against a succesful attack, especially with regards to the question when a weapon would break. Version 1: The attacker rolls damage. if the damage is below or equal to the weapons current hp, the weapon loses one hp and nothing else happens. If it exceeds the weapon's hp, the weapon also loses 1 hp, and all excess damage goes into the hit location. Version 2: The attacker rolls damage. if the damage is below or equal to the weapons current hp, the weapon loses one hp and nothing else happens. If it exceeds the weapon's hp, the weapon breaks, and all excess damage goes into the hit location. Version 3: There's no need to roll damage. The parrying weapon slimpy loses one hp, and all damage is absorbed. Version one seems most in line with the rules as written - it's simply a combination of the general rule for damage overflow and what is stated under the sucess at parrying. Version 2 seems to make sense, also, but on the other hand, breaking a weapon seems to be a special case that is only explicitly mentioned under parry success against failed attacks. However, I strongly suspect that a weapon is supposed to break once it loses all its hp (but also when its hp are overcome in one strike ...?). Then again, not even the critical and special successes at attack explicitly state something about weapons breaking; it is just said that the defending weapon "takes" the criticals damage with the rest going to the defender - which, going by what it says under "The Parry", would be the general rule anyway, so it's not quite clear why it is mentioned again here, but then left out when describing the results of a normal success at attacking. That makes it seem very much as if the damage overflow thing would be a special rule for critical and special successes at attacking, which it is clearly not. Version 3 is what I actually thought first after reading through "The Parry", since I was focussing on the bullet points. However, this would conflict with what I quoted from the main text under "The Parry", so its probably the wrong answer ... Going by all that, I would tend to go with Version 1, but I'm still not quite sure whether the weapon would be supposed to break if its hp are overcome or not. Both would make sense. I think all of this would probably be easier to understand if it came in a chart with the outcomes for each possible combination spelled out separately. Another related thing: Dodging. It says "The Dodge skill may be used to avoid a melee attack instead of a parry". I suspect that this also means that the cumulative -20 for multiple parries includes dodges, meaning that if I have parried once in the same round, I dodge at -20, and if I then parry again, that's at -40 - right? Also, can I dodge and parry on the same SR? Can I make several dodges on the same SR? And finally, shields. I didn't get it first, but shields are actually very cool, because you can use them to for a second parry at the same strike rank if you already used your main weapon to parry. However, one thing is also unclear to me: "When a shield succesfully parries a succesful attack, the shield uses one hip oint and the damage of the attack is absorbed entirely." This seems to state explicitly that even if the damage exceeds the shields hp, it is still entirely absorbed (as opposed to when I parry with a normal weapon) - is that right? (not talking about special and critical successes here, it's stated explicitly that shields are damaged by them.) A bunch of nitpicky questions, I know - but these are the small things that keep nagging at me in sleepless nights ...

We were lucky enough to have Jason Durall at our bookshop in Berlin yesterday, where he ran the new RQ for us. I had already read the quickstarter rules and hadn't been quite convinced by some things - there seemed to be too many passions, too many runes and too many spells to keep track of per character, and augmentations looked a little unwieldy to me ... but it turned out to be pretty great at the gaming table. I guess the key is that in RQ, every roll tends to matter, so if you need one additional roll for the augment, it's really not that much of a hassle when compared to the outcome. I also quite liked the scenario: Thematically, it has a nice little twist, it‘s open-ended, well-suited for the provided pre-gens, well-written without being verbose … pretty much everything I want from a short introductury scenario, and then more. I really need to run this myself for my group at home.

I somehow don't believe that it will be 2d20 - after all, Mindjammer Press is a publisher on its own and is just distributed by Modiphius - and design-wise, as far as I know, Sarah Newton has had nothing to do with 2d20 until now ...

Well, the recent situation was about tying someone up who doesn't resist (since there would have been no point), but would probably try to escape, and leaving him behing to pick him up later. Now I need a way to determine if he can somehow free himself of his bonds ... Of course, I could just consider the tying-up an auto-sucess and have the prisoner roll a hard atheltics test to get away, but I like to keep the die rolls player-facing. So I'd rather have the PC's roll for tying their prisoner up - if they succeed, he will be unable to escape, if they fail, he gets a normal roll to escape. Basically, the test would not be: "Can I tie him up?", but "Can I tie him up so good that he will have no chance to escape?"

I'd consider it a question of whether the guard has reason to suspect anything going in; usually, I'd say that the guard probably feels some queasiness or a short clouding of her vision, shakes it off (if she resists) and doesn't give it a second thought ("maybe I shouldn't have eaten that cold chicken from the day before ...").

Well, the usual situation is that the characters tie up a prisoner somewhere to pick her or him up later (because they can't be bothered dragging them around the whole way ...) So the test usually determines whether the prisoner will have a chance to escape before they return. I usually go for: "make a test, and if it fails, you as players can be pretty sure that the prisoner will be gone, but your characters will think that the knots should hold." For some reason, this is a situation that seems to come up quite often when I GM ...

Since it came up recently in a one-shot: What skill what you use to truss someone up? I'd say Craft, but I'm not quite sure - Craft seems to be such a broad skill ... and what skill would you use to wriggle out of your bonds? I'd say Athletics, but I'd also allow Craft (which could represent improvising a tool from a nail or splinter found on the ground). By the way, searching the character sheet for a useful skill, we stumbled over Engineering - does anyone ever use this? It seems strangely specialized among all of these pretty general skills.

Great news. Since I'm mostly doing one-shots with new players every month these days, OQ is pretty much my go-to system for fantasy. Mythras ist just too complex for my needs. I also tried FantasyAge for a while because I like the sense of fun it conveys, but just yesterday, I noticed once more that it's still a little too cumbersome rules-wise ... also, like most D&D-inspired games, it has this heath point grind thing that I just can't get over with. The two new covers look great; I've never used (or read) the Gatan part of OQ, but now I'm actually a little interested in it ... And I love the submissions part. I've already startet daydreaming about polishing up my homebrew weird fantasy setting stuff ... sadly, I won't have the time for now ... and since I'm not a native speaker, writing in English takes a lot of time for me.

Thanks for sorting it out - looking forward to the book&cards!

I'd also suggest OpenQuest, especially if you're after content beyong the rules - I really liked the OpenQuest Module "Life&Death", which has elements of horror, sword&sorcery, ancient mysteries and post-apocalyptic wasteland; and they have published some more fantasy modules (crucible of dragons, the savage north). If you ant an interesting campaign world, you could use Mythras's thennla (described in "Shores of Korantia" and "The Taskan Empire"), that should be easy to use with OpenQuest or other BRP systems. It is however, a kind of low-key setting in many regards. Weird and original in some ways, but it spends a lot of time explaining how the different peoples and cultures work, while there are relatively few direct adventure hooks.

Tried to order them, but I keep running into trouble and error pages ... I'll write the admin, maybe they can sort it out.