Jakob

Thanks everyone!

"Mysteria Matris Oblitae" sounds very interesting, now I only have to get my hands on it ("Mortal Coils" doesn't seem to be available anywhere, not even as pdf ...)

@andylDo you know more about "A Time for Sacrifice"? I'm less interested in adventures that are about ancient ruins and more in those that make use of the political and social history of Mexico (not that one would exclude the other).

Note to myself:

This looks good:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/96891/Trail-of-Cthulhu-Many-Fires

I'll be moving to Mexico City in a few months (the general state of the world allowing ...), and I think a nice way to prepare for that might be to read some well-researched CoC scenarios set in Mexico, preferably in the 1920s (since those have certainly been Interesting Times there).

Does anyone know good Cthulhu scenarios that fit the bill? They needn't be for CoC, Trail of Cthulhu or any other system works just as well. Googling didn't really bring anything up except for Pagan Publishing's Mesoamerican adventures ...

1 hour ago, RogerDee said:

 

The other thing BRP needs is a more intuitive magic system. So if a magic-user has fire control, or the more powerful fire manipulation - anything they do with it would be subject to shaping rules. So if they want to make a fire shield, they shape it and it has a certain intensity / magnitude. I might get around to it at some point......maybe.

 

 

This might veer a little far OT, but in narrative terms, I keep thinking about a magic system that makes mechanical use of the ideas of "force" and "finesse", with force being raw power and finesse being the ability to manipulate it.

Like, if all you want to do is unleash your power and damage everyone in 5 metres radius, you don't need any finesse at all; if you want damage a specific person or thing, it might be force/finesse 50/50. If you want to burn away infected flesh, it's all finesse. If you just want to start a small fire, force would be okay, as well (assuming that you can control the rough amount of energy with your force skill, but can't really shape it).

It woul need to be designed in a way that it makes a big difference whether you invest in force or finesse or take a balanced approach; and both might also interact with how easily you tap into different aspects of magic.

However, the design task is much too complex for me ...

36 minutes ago, Hteph said:

 

So I wish the frakking in house board could be the center piece for this very interesting topic!

TBH, I would like that as well ... I frequent facebook pretty much only for the QW stuff, and it is hard to find older topics there and follow the branching discussions. And I don't even remotely get how github works ...

3 hours ago, Steve said:

Version 0.70 is now up - https://github.com/ChaosiumInc/QuestWorlds/blob/master/docs/QuestWorlds.pdf

From a first look at it, I would say the most recent changes don't seem as big as I would have expected ... I like the +5/+10 progression, the generalized concept of ranks, and I really like that fumbles have been dropped (I've never been a fan of treating fumbles as actual fumbles by the PCs, more as mishaps, if necessary - a failure is usually bad already, and you don't really need a special level for "wow, you really f***ed that up", because either it is inappropriate and damaging to the character concept, or it is quite clear from the context that that is what happened).

I'm very happy that Ian Cooper is really digging into this, laying the bones of the system bare to make it all a little more coherent!

50 minutes ago, Ian Cooper said:

So we may have a fix for this. There is a pending change that you can see here:

https://github.com/ChaosiumInc/QuestWorlds/tree/improved-masteries/docs

We now choose to count the number of successes and compare them. So success => one success; fail => no successes. A critical, mastery, or story point are a bump, which counts as an extra success. They are  all cumulative.

So if rolling against 7m. I get one success for my M. Then I roll against a TN of 7. One a 1-7 I get one additional success. On a 7 I get a critical, one additional success and a bump i.e. two successes. On an 8-10 I fail and I get 0 additional successes.

So my range is 1-3 successes, assuming no story points spent.

I them compare against the resistance's successes to get the difference

0 = high roll wins; rank 1 victory

1+ = wins; rank 2+ victory

But yes, we agree that was a problem we have been trying to solve for a while, and moving from bumping the result up, then comparing for the outcome, to *how many* successes did you get is better. It also works nicely with our preference to narrate PC successes on a defeat as "you were successful in using your abilities, but your opponent was more successful"

If you are interested in the ongoing design process, FB is a better place

 

 

What are fumbles then? -1 success?

Sorry, just found it by scrolling up one more post ...

I'm really looking forward to this in so many levels - not only the setting, but also the Implementation of OQ. Preview looks great!

I must confess that I'm sceptical about going with Mythras ... changing/modifying the Renaissance ruleset doesn't really seem necessary (also, the Renaissance system has its own unique approach to HPs and Major Wounds, and I would actually hate to see that go). The Mythras community does have a great dynamic at the moment, and sales could certainly profit from that, but if the problem is not sales, but getting material ready for publication, that wouldn't really help.

On the other hand, creating a Mythras edition of Renaissance might entice new creative talent to come aboard, so that would be great.

12 minutes ago, Vile Traveller said:

To elaborate, the reason I say that is because I find it more difficult to read up and internalise setting background on its own, whereas if it's tied to an adventure both I and my players get it more readily. Thereafter I can more easily use it for my own adventures.

It's the same with me. I rarely use adventures as written, but having a narrative thread applied to the background material makes it much easier to digest and remember for me. Also, I must confess that big setting books tend to intimidate me ...

However, I'm often torn about this. If an adventure is too narrative, it becomes really hard to mine it for your own campaign. I actually like what Iron Crown Enterprises did with their old modules for MERP - they were basically mini-sourcebooks with a small setting, some NPCs and one or several missions attached. Reading the better ones, you could easily see the potential narrative unfold, but at the same time, the setting material was presented in a very logical way that made it really easy to hack in all kinds of ways.

I'd certainly buy and read more Fioracitta material! (Don't know if or when I would get an opportunity to play it, but that's the case with most rpg stuff I buy ...)

5 minutes ago, Alex Greene said:

Most characters, and practically all Fiorese characters in particular, are Civilised. Barbarian and Nomadic exceptions are listed on p. 15 of Fioracitta. Because characters are Civilised, their cultural background skills can be drawn from those listed on p. 15 of Mythras. The skills listed here are for their professions. The 100 points can be spread among those cultural background skills from Mythras as well as the skills listed for these professions.

Some of these professions are new. There is no cultural equivalent to them in Mythras. It kind of makes the character options unique to this book. You may complain about the lack of useful skills for Journalists, but in my experience journalists in real life seem to have no useful skills whatsoever, so.

as for the Combat Styles, p. 87 of Mythras still stands. There's an or in their listed Combat Styles, too. You just don't see it in the pages of Mythras.

You do, however, have to choose which Trait to learn when your character chooses their Combat Style. If it says "choose one from," that's the Trait you pick for your Style when you're using it to fight. It doesn't just grant flexibility in Combat Styles, such that no two warriors, even with the same characteristics and Combat Style %age, will fight in exactly the same way; the difference in Traits can be used to identify the character by their fighting stances, the way they apply their abillities, and even to identify the fighting stable or teacher who taught them to fight.

Thanks! So with regards to combat styles, that means that I best decide whether one or several of the listed weapons are part of a combat style based on campaign type? (I'm using the German edition of Mythras, so I don't know what p. 87 would be in there, but I guess it is the paragraph on Combat Styles in General).

I'm still not sure if I get the new professions right, because they're so different from the format used in Mythras. If there are no standard skills listed (like for the Diarist), does that mean that the profession gets to spend its 100 points between 3 of the professional skills and all standard skills? That would actually make these professions potentially extremely versatile. Or does it mean that they can spend their 100 points only on the listed skills? That would conflict with the core rules, where you can only choose 3 professional skills and raise each one by a maximum of 15.

I mean, in the end, I don't have a problem with treating the profession skill lists as suggestions and having everyone just raising the skills that make sense, so this is not really a problem, more kind of a nitpick ...

Okay, let's start with the questions ... I'm a little bit rusty with Mythras character creaton, so maybe these are dumb, but nevertheless:

The "skills for Fiorese characters" (p. 9/10): I don't quite get where these come into play ... are they meant to replace cultural skills?

Professions: Several of them (e.g. the Diarist, the Diplomat) seem to lack standard skills to choose from (and they don't point you toward a core rules profession either, like a lot of the others do).

Combat Styles: Is every combat style for one and only one of the listed weapons? The list format (several entries separated by commas, with the last one lead by an "or") seems to imply that.

I'm being a little premature, having only skimmed the material, but on the other hand, I'm premature since I've first heard about Fioracitta ... I'd love to see this expanded to a whole line, maybe Fioracitta even becoming a "backdoor setting core book". Really, from what I've read, it seems to be a setting that gets what I love about the best recent fantasy.

From my first look at Fioracitta, I think we could sure do with a decidated bestiary - I love bestiaries, and would be interested in what kind of beasties would be considered appropriate to the setting.

41 minutes ago, Alex Greene said:

Glad you are enjoying the book. And yeah, there are a few groundbreaking things in Fioracitta. You can enjoy the city as is, or purloin bits you like for your own. Me, if there's a new Bestiary from TDM, I'd like to see at least one of my non-human peoples brought into such a future book.

I'd actually really love to see a Mythras Bestiary that solely focuses on presenting some weird species for player character use.

I didn't have a chance yet to do more than give the pdf a scroll-through, but I am already impressed by how well-organzied the material for further elaboration of the setting by the group seems to be: There's table to generate historical events and historical people - I think it's the first time that I've seen something like that in an RPG. Given that ancestor spirits seem to be a major thing in the setting, it especially seems to make sense to have the latter.

Oh, and a table for criminal penalties; who couldn't love that one?!

Oh, come on! Just hit the "publish" button on drivethru!😉

29 minutes ago, Videopete said:

So what do we call heroquesting and heroquests now?

Well, luckily Hasbro can't come to your home and force you at gunpoint not to use these words anymore (or can they ...?)-

55 minutes ago, g33k said:

It is, frankly, the kind of brilliant innovation that makes for an "oh, of course! it's so simple!" experience looking at it after the fact, from the outside.

 

Nothing against CF and Mythras, but I'm pretty sure that that in itself is not an innovation; I have a strong feeling that I've been playing several RPGs in my youth that used the "You level up by raising your skills" method. Okay, the only one I can name now is the German RPG Midgard (which has been doing it like that since the early 80s, I think), but there must have been more ...?

Sounds really good.

I like that

- Passions made it into the rules

- Skills and Combat will be more streamlined

- Creating the ship is a major part of character/party creation

- the setting seems to be more grounded (well, watered or whatever ...) and not that gonzo. Not that I don't like gonzo, but there's a lot of gonzo post-apocalyptic stuff out there, so something with a more "old west feeling" is a welcome change of pace.

I'm not that interested in vehicle rules (I really don't ever seem to need those), but apart from that, everything in that interview whets my appetite!

"Die gute Nadel" is out in pdf now (still working on the English translation, though ...).

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/328209/Die-gute-Nadel

The Layout looks great - simple but stylish!

Skimming through the text, I feel that there is one thing that should be clarified in random character generation - it is actually the same problem that crops up in "Skyraiders": I f you re-roll all ones and twos, that would mean that with random characteristics, you can't end up with any stats below 9 (or below 12 for INT and SIZ), and even those values are extremely unlikely ... I suspect the intention is that you re-roll 1s and 2s once, but keep them if they come up again? If that's the case, that should be clarified.

Sounds like some interesting changes! I'm definitely going to get this one.

6 hours ago, Mugen said:

I really don't like asymetrical rules.

I mean, if I want that a NPC goes down easily, I give him few Hit Points. I don't need a "mook" rule for this. Of course, it means I'd have to change standard BRP rules, because it would require me to put negative CON in order to have NPCs with less than 7 Hit Points. But I would apply the same rules to PCS and NPCs.

I also won't bother creating NPCs using the character creation rules used for PCs. I'd just write down the important skills, and assume "default" values for others.

So, you're saying, you only like assymetrical rules when they're house-rules? 😁

I love BRP, but I most confess that I also really like the notion of assymetrical rules - not so much the mooks thing, but rules that think about how adversaries and NPCs of all power levels can be run in a simplified way that is appropriate to the fact that, as opposed to the PCs, they are not the protagonists of the story.

Examples from games I've run:

Numenera/Cypher System - Adversaries are basically one number (their level, signifying how generally dangerous they are on a scale of 1-10) and two to five special effects. That actually works pretty well, but it requires a lot of GM adjudication when PCs try to go for the weak spots.

The One Ring: Adversaries are handled different in lots of small ways - they have "pre-programmed" moves that get triggered by certain die rolls, they have one attribute instead of three, they have "group skills", they have a different "story point" ressource than the heroes (heroes have "Hope", adversaries have "Hate"), they can't decide to take an aggressive or defensive stance ... it's a really well-designed system, and the assymetric bits are a significant par of that ...

Gumshoe - That's one that is, kind of surprisingly, largely symmetrical, but newer iterations (The Yellow King, Swords of the Serpentine) are breaking with that. To me, it never really made sense that Gumshoe is/was symmetrical, because it is a system that is based around expanding skill pools point by point, which is a PITA when you are  a GM have to bookkeep skill pools for several adversaries.

I think BRP could do well with something along the lines of "The One Ring" - a little more generalisation and simplification for NPCs and monsters, but nothing as radical as boiling them down to just one or two numbers.