Jakob

Short answer - longer maybe later - on question 1: Don't! It's not your job to scare the players. It's your job to create an atmosphere that allows the players to get scared if they want to. And it's the job of the whole group to maintan that atmosphere and enhance it. It's pretty hard (and also potentially irresponsible) to really scare people on a psychological level who don't want to be scared; but it is pretty easy to get into a scary mood together and feel a little thrill if everyone is on the same page about it. So pretty much all you have to do is to say: "Okay, so we're going to play a horror game, let's try to maintain the mood." Short anwer to 3: I haven't tried the Delta Green sanity rules yet, but from what I've read, I'm pretty impressed with how they handle Bonds. I'd definitely give them a try if I was planning a campaign; for one-shots, probably not (since the best thing about them looks to be what happens with the PC's personal relationships between adventures).

Sounds very good! I have great fun at the moment mixing and matching from Mythras, Renaissance, OpenQuest and Revolution d100 - not for gaming (yet), but simply to see which elements I like in theory and which ones I can do without; And OpenQuest ist the baseline I keep coming back to, since it can accomodate most of the elements from other BRP games.

Hope it's still on for some time in the future. On the other hand, there's no dire need, since with BRP, it's always easy to mix and match - pretty much everything I need is already out there. It would just be nice to get some new OQ stuff. EDIT: Sorry for the double post ...

Hope it's still on for some time in the future. On the other hand, there's no dire need, since with BRP, it's always easy to mix and match - pretty much everything I need is already out there. It would just be nice to get some new OQ stuff.

My wish list with regards to the companion: I'd love a passions/traits system. I'm not quite happy with the one from River of Heaven, since it requires another roll on a passion to see if it modifies a skill - better go with a system that just allows for a bonus when applicable (like in Mythras). And what I would also love is putting the hit locations system from Renaissance in as an option - I'm sure the guys over at Cakebread and Walton wouldn't object, and it's the simplest and most elegant combination of major wounds and hit locations I have seen yet in a BRP game. Also, maybe add the Renaissance Rules about being able to go down to negative HP before dying as a less deadly option. And yes, some combat options would be cool, but definitely nothing as heavyweight as Mythras. Maybe just a short list of possible bonus effects to chose from when you do a crit.

Then it is possible to do a support action but save the actual bonus in form of a bead?

Interesting - is this maybe inspired by "The One Ring"? Armor that protects you against grave wounds, but also brings up your fatigue threshold so that you get worn down faster ... That's one of my favourite features of that system.

Still trying to get how exactly life points work ... I understand that previous consequences reduce life points at the beginning of combat, that you go directly to zero when you are wounded, that you pay a life point if you have too little Strike Rank left for your action but still want to act ... but do minor wounds cause life-point loss? Or do they really only effect strike rank for that one round?

Rules Question about conflicts (hope this is the right thread): The way I understand it, a support action adds the trait bonus (+30) of one character to the roll of the character who is active in the conflict; each trait can be used only once per conflict in this way. But is there a limit to ho much support a single roll I can get? If I have a group of 5, and 4 have sensible ideas and traits to support, does the player who rolls the dice get +120? Or does the "only two traits" cap apply?

Yeah, looks good!

Well, not quite - Meeros and stuff like Monster Island kind of fit in there, but Thennla is clearly discernible as its own, separate thing. However, I quite like this approach: It looks like they're going to publish stuff for the Meeros (and maybe the realms) millieu without tying it to a more general setting description, so that we can put the pieces together anyway we like or easily slot them into settings like Thennla.

'm really looking forward to this one. Getting back to reading Sartar - Kingdom of Heroes at the moment, and I think what I want now is some more focussed source material. "Gathering Storm" seems to be just that.

Der hier!

Berlin - I'm actually running an sf/fantasy/rpg bookshop here, and thought about ordering a private copy in advance to have a closer look.

Still on the fence about pre-ordering, since shipping to Germany is pretty expensive ... will it be available through other shops soon?

Sounds interesting ... after Looking at Crypts&Things, I actually toyed with the idea of using HP in OSR games as a kind of "universal ressource" (for both mental and physical stress), with real damage applied to the characteristic. Sounds like Life Points might work in a similar way. I guess I'll have to get the actual rulebook after all, if only to take a closer look at some of the concepts.

Many thanks! From reading through the first few chapters of the SRD, I'm really ambivalent about the system ... the gm/player advice/what is rpg sections really appeal to me (which is actually important to me, since these kinds of texts can tell you a lot about the design philosophy behind a game); I love the broad skills/trait system, the absence of fumbles and how advanced successes work (much better chances of getting a special succes at high skill rates = more diverse and interesting outcomes more often). However, I must confess that both combat chapters still give me headaches; I don't really get how lifepoints work (so basically they seem to be HP in the D&D way?); and more importantly, who resolution points work in combat (are points spent for actions spent for the whole duration of combat ...?) All in all, handling two pools instead of one, with both influencing each other, seems kind of unwieldy to me. Most of this has probably to do with the systematisation you mentioned and can be solved by re-reading the combat chapters more closely - I certainly don't expect you to explain the rules to me here (that's what the rulebook is for, after all). Still, musing a bit about what I get about the system and what not might help me getting it better.

So, I've been sneaking around this sub-forum for some time now, and since I'm always interested in new d100-based games, I wondered if anyone could give me a short pitch on what Rd100 does differently than Mythras, Open Legend or Renaissance. From skimming throughthe Rd100 SRD, on the other hand, I get the feel that the conflict rules are extremely complex ... however, they are also interesting in that they seem to provide a framework for all kinds of conflicts besides combat. (on the other hand, M-Space does this in a very simple and concise way). All in all, Rd100 seems to depart much further from the common d100 framework than most other BRP-based games out there. Essentially, I want you to tell that the rules are not as complicated as they look in the SRD, preferrably with a few examples of how the game actually plays and what the core concepts are that can be used to derive everything else if you get stuck as a GM (with Rd100 being a BRP-based game, I suspect that, unlike some other rpgs, it has this kind core concepts baked into the riles).

Nice! Just ordered it through lulu - to be honest, the very evocative cover illustration played a big role in that decision ... Looking forward to more adventure material for RQ. I especially like that it looks like you're going to expand on the Meeros setting without publishing a Meeros sourcebook - it kind of reminds me of the good old days when an overall setting for rpg material was more or less implied, but there was no overarching publication to put all the pieces together in one picture, so it was left to each group to decide how to form a bigger picture from them.

Wow, cool stuff. Now I'm not quite sure if I want you to keep working on Skaerune or if I want to see this city first ...

Reading that series is one of my most cherished childhood memories (although some elements were quite disturbing to me back then) - and it still holds up today; I tend to re-read it every few years. The prequels that have come out in the last few years are not that great, but also pretty good ... Anyway, I'd say these books would be a perfect Mythras. Lots of weird races and creatures, strange magic, a gritty swords&sorcery feel with regards to combat and death ... and the story has a very tragic element to it, which should also work well with Mythras, since it lends itself to bad and tragic stuff just happening to PCs.

I'm kind of a not-system-tinker ... I like it when something works for me and I don't have to think too much about why it works. OpenQuest comes pretty close, but I always like to try out new stuff (in the moment, that's RQ6/Mythras for me, but I guess in the long run that will turn out too rules-heavy ...).

Thanks for the update - looking forward too this setting!

The more I'm lurking around in this forum, the more I like what I read about Skaerune ... however, it's also been a long while since the last update - I hope the project is not dead? If seen too many weird and interesting rpg settings that, in the end, never got made ...

Regarding Tekumel, for some reason I always felt that RQ6/Mythras would be ideal for it. Maybe because of their common focus of the important role of communities. The same goes, for some reason, for the rules-free setting Dragon Kings, which is pretty much Dark Sun by one of the original designers with the numbers filed off, the D&D-isms reduced and some additional weirdness. But to be honest, I haven't even read through the whole book yet ... still I like it, and for some reason Mythras would feel right for it. Regarding China Mieville's Bas-Lag: Wasn't a BRP version of this in the works somewhere a long time ago? It's probably never going to come together, so maybe The Design Mechanism could pick up the pieces ... Also, I'd love to have a Mythras setting along the lines of Sofia Samatar's Olondria novels: Non-eurocentric low-magic fantasy with a strong focus on believable and slightly odd cultural systems and mythologies.