Jakob

... apart from that, it's Interesting that we'll get another city setting with "Book of Schemes". Theres a LOT of Mythras cities of intrigue by now: Constantinople, Fioracitta, Guelden, to a certain degreee also Sorandib. Not that I'm complaining, though I wonder what different takes on a city setting would be possible ... Also interesting about Guelden: Do the people there speak "German"? "Guelden" (or Gülden) actually is the German word for "Golden", and on the house on the cover it says "Schneiderei", which is Geman for "tailor shop". I'm also looking forward to the Casting the Runes scenario book - CtR was not quite my thing, but I'm still curious for some classical horror scenarios that are not cosmic. And of course Polynesia, I've been waiting for that one!

Just when I thought I was out ... they puuulllll me back in!

Now that I have Babylon, that Polynesia is announced (and Aztecs won't happen ...), I'm kind of hoping that TDM will tackle a Mythic Yucatan sooner or later!

We're getting Destined - as expected - and a cover preview of Mythic Polynesia, which is glorious! And what is also glorious: If the TDM online shop is correct, I'll only have to pay about 7$ shipping for Destined to Mexico ... normally, I'm paying at least thrice this. Hope this is actually true!

The pitch sounds pretty cool, but to be honest, I'm not exactly blown away by the preview - it's well written, and the first few dungeon rooms are described in a evocative way and feel original, but structurally, the text reads like a choose your own adventure book, which, in my experience, doesn't lend itself well to actual play at my table. The adventure seems to be structured in scenes and starts with the first one without telling the GM anything about what's going on. If the preview is indicative of the structure of the scenario as a whole, it would mean a lot of trouble for me to make it gameable.

I'm pretty excited for it (and I definitely want in on the playtest!). Jason mentioned Stormbringer as the sweet spot in terms of crunchyness they're aiming for, and that's right up my alley. I also like the idea of a post-apocalyptic setting that is not a ruined, violent wasteland (Mad Max style), but more what the people were able to make of it after the catastrophe, and this seems like it. And I just have faith in the team to come up with a great, original setting!

I look forward to get a more extensive look ... I love Mythras, and I'm pretty willing to be proven wrong when it comes to BRP and supers.

I must confess that, despite myself, I kind of like the preview - especially how the powers/boosts/limits seem to work. They seen extremely flexible, will still giving you a solid mechanical framework for all kind of powers. Why "despite myself"? Well, I really don't see BRP as a supers system. I can't see supers beyond street level having anything like Hit Points, much less zone specific Hit Points. When the Hulk and Thor fight, it's a lot of noise until one of them is pummelled into submission, but neither is really "hurt", they're fine for the next fight. With super-heroes, it's usually either lose, but be (physically) fine, or (extremely rare) lose and be dead. As I said, people like Daredevil or Batman might be the exception here. Still, making stuff like super strength work in combination with "real" BRP hit points and heroes who are actually vulnerable on a mechanical level seems pretty impossible to me. Anyway, Destined looks very good, and while I suspect it will shine more at street level super-heroics, that's fine, too!

Thanks - I know Mythras and like it (I've even written for it), but this is something slightly different - for one thing, I want to find a consistent way to integrate characteristic rolls into classic BRP, and for the other, I like the idea of different approaches to a task. Still, it might be a fool's errand ...

I wouldn't quite call it a vision - more something I might try or not, depending on if ot seems to make sense to me on that particular day. 😄Still, thanks!

I would certainly limit it to tasks where it makes sense - Shooting an apple off someone's head would probably require a critical, anyway, so it would be out of the question. Also, I wouldn't allow it for weapon skills and combat (except for Dodge, as outlined). It would have to be very clear that taking the "crude" approach won't allow you to get sophistcated results and always comes with a significant downside, but will allow you to succeed at the task in some way. That way, having a better chance at "crude" than a trained person has in the actual skill would not be a problem. That guy with DEX 16 might get the door open with a knife, but it will be a butcher's job ... What I'm not looking for is characteristics modifying attributes; that is a valid approach, but very different, and if I wanted that, I'd turn to Mythras ... I just like the idea that depending on "raw characteristic power" will often give you a better chance at succeeding, but also a very different type of result.

Maybe "crude" is not quite the right word, here ... I'm thinking about cases of "you might not have learned to do this, but you're natural dexterity/intelligence etc. gives you a good shot. However, it will always be noticeable that you don't really know what you're doing." It would require a certain amount of GM fiat to come up with negative consequences on succesful "crude" rolls (and even more negative consequences for failed crude rolls). I also wouldn't allow them in combat, maybe with the exception of Dodge: The Dodge skill would imply that you actually have learned how to dodge in combat, if you roll DEXx5, you're just throwing yourself out of the way of an attack, and consequently, wouldn't be able to attack yourself that round or do anything else besodes dodging (and on a failed "crude" dodge, you'd probably end up on the ground).

One thing that keeps bothering me about "classic" BRP (RQ, the big gold book, the current SRD) is that often, there is not a clear distinction between when a skill would apply and when a Characteristic x 5 (or x3 or even x1) roll. Why can't you make an Agility roll to dodge something? Bascially, because there's a dodge skill. It kind of bugs me ... So I wondered: Could you make the Characteristic x5 roll a standard alternative to a skill roll for a "crude" approach? Some things are crude in themselves, of course, like breaking stuff with sheer force, so it would make sense that that would be a STRx5 roll, anyway. But maybe you are good with your hands, but have never learned to lockpick - so you could still try with a DEXx5 roll. However, there would be a catch: I'd say that with the crude approach, you never get a critical, and you always get some unwanted side-effect: A lock would be broken if you open it with DEXx5 instead of the Lockpicking skill, or you'd make a lot of noise, take a lot of time. With knowledge-based tests, an INTx5 would only ever get you a general idea and never something specific. And some tasks still might just need you to have and apply the skill (like reading a specific language). You could even say that, after failing a skilled approach, you could re-try with the crude approach in some cases (if you have enough time, if the task is repeatable); that would be a bit like pushing a roll in CoC7, because it would entail a negative consequence. To me, it seems like a nice way of keeping specific skill largely separate from your characteristics (so you can be a good climber even with DEX and STR at 6, because you just have learned it and know exactly how to do it right), but still give a siginficant role to characteristics (the guy who knows nohting about climling but has DEX of 16 will probably do well as well, but leave some equipment in the wall because he doesn't really know what steps to take in what order).

I have (kind of) reviewed OQ3 in my blog: OpenQuest 3 Review

I'm just re-reading the rules and have been wondering ... would it maybe make sense, as an alternative, to have a master whose skill has been lowered by a negative modifier roll, but still treat every sucess as a critical? A failure would remain a failure.

It's really cool to find out that so many of my favourite authors seem to be roleplayers! China Mieville, R. Scott Bakker, now Laird Barron ... can please someone tell me that Jeff Vandermeer is a roleplayer, too?😄

One element from a non-Chaosium d100 game I really like is Advantage from Revolution D100. It's basically a kind of special sucess, but you get it when your tens die on a succesful roll is higher than your units die. Success with a rolled 53 is with advante, sucess with a rolled 49 is not. That way, you don't have a flat curve for success with Advantage, but a very steep one - the chances are pretty low with low skill values, but rise much more rapidly. If you need a "true crit" in addition, you can add a "doubles are crits" rule to that.

I haven't done so, but it would definitely be worthwile. I love Barron's first collection and his novel "The Croning", and his mythology has a lot of interlocking pieces and is wonderfully cosmic!

Terry K. Amthor has passed away. I don't really know a lot of his work (his Shadow World looks fascinating, but I've always been intimidated by it, much like I used to be by Glorantha, actually). Still, his MERP modules are RPG gold, and they taught me a lot about good adventure design. I wrote a little obituary here.

Someone needs to summon @lawrence.whitaker

It's Matt Eager's "Secrets of Blood Rock", it has been available for a while on Drivethrough RPG (but the German edition has a new cover). Great scenario - I haven't played it yet, but from reading it, it's a basically really cool, moody, isolated setting for a mini-campaign.

I think that would be Eclipse Phase.

I must say that the concepts of flipping and of doubles-as-crits are just enormously satisfying to me on a "game aesthetics" level. Knowing that something special (good or bad) happened as soon as doubles hit the table is just cool. And using Hero Points or Luck Points or whatever you call them to flip a die roll is a nice in-between-solution: With re-rolls, there's always a chance that you'll just have wasted a point on another failure (which is something I truly hate), but simply buying a level of success by spending some kind of game currency also feels wrong to many. With flipping, you know whether you'll get a success out of it (and you can even radically alter very bad results, like a 90, to very good ones), but you will not always be able to do it (flipping a 97 to a 79 might do nothing for you). And it all can be done without doing any maths. I don't know if it's the best thing in terms of d100 game design, but on an aesthetics/fun level, I'm truly grateful for Stolze to come up with the doubles-as-crits and the dice flipping.

Very sad ... The one consolation is that Steve Perrin still got to see the wonderful resurgence of Chaosium. Thank you, Steve Perrin! Thank you for RQ and thank you for giving us gamers many other great games!

Your absolutely right - it has obviously been changed for the finished OQ3 (and I'm quite happy with that).