Matt_E

@clarence I think it's like anything else:  Put a blunt instrument in the wrong hands, and... 

Remember that Campbell's ideas are synthetic and based on empirical observation--actual mythic stories from around the world.  He didn't invent this stuff out of pure imagination; it's grounded in phenomenology.  Thus probably one could find "Campbell's influence" in Hollywood writing even if none of those writers had ever actually read him, because they were (unconsciously) drawing from the same pool of ideas.  Maybe they learned to write by reading the same tales that Campbell did, and internalizing the same lessons about storytelling.  I don't know.

As for George Lucas, I believe he was personally influenced by Campbell:  IIRC, they used to hang out and chat, both being in California in the same era.  I suppose that Lucas discovered Campbell's writings in college (he is the right age for Campbell's work to have been the hot new-ish thing in intro Anthropology and Sociology classes in the UC system, I reckon) and then looked him up--maybe after that Star Wars cred started accreting. 😉 

I find Lucas an interesting case:  He can plot out a tale (especially the action beats), and he can create interesting characters (though not consistently...), but filling in details is not his strong suit, to me, and his dialogue is too often horrendous.  Thus Star Wars and especially some parts of The Empire Strikes Back were so great, yet the prequels were not.

I can't remember where I heard of Vogler, but you ring some kind of bell in my mind.  I will get around to checking him out, eventually.

1 hour ago, clarence said:

So, George Lucas took equal parts mythological storytelling, pulp sci-fi and mysticism to craft Star Wars?

Plus the stuff he ripped off from, er, included in homage to, Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress...  There's a movie I haven't seen in years.  I remember that I liked it, though. 🙂

That's a beautiful illustration.

Well, I intend not to argue any more, though we don't see eye to eye here.  The higher score in the skill indicates the amount of time the magician has put into studying; why shouldn't that correlate with learning more spells?  How can you say it is much harder to learn a spell than to buy equipment when you haven't named a price?  Yes, gear can be lost, agreed.  If you want to house-rule this, go for it, as we always say.

I have not checked, but I wonder if the Gods of Game Balance have already been invoked in giving magicians fewer choices for skills, or something like that.

2 hours ago, Thot said:

After all, if it costs experience points later in the game, why should it not equally cost a resource at character generation?

Well, I think you could make that same argument for other things, too...  You pick a culture and a career, you get access to some Professional skills, but not others.  If that career is magical, so be it; you get access to magic spells/abilities because they are the only "tools" that make the profession and its Professional Skills worth getting.  To me it seems like complaining that a warrior would get good armor and a shield for free at chargen, whereas someone else would have to pay real money for it later.  I am mixing XP and SP here, and skills and spells and equipment, but I think you see what I mean.  Viewed through the prism of "natural consequences of choosing a career", I think these ideas are quite comparable.

My other thought is, who said everything must be balanced down to the last penny?  You should also complain, then, about Social Status giving some people much better resources.  That is a random roll, I grant you, not a design choice...except in games like mine, where you let the players make the characters they want to play (within reason).

I'm not trying to say that you're wrong to want fairness, but thinking over my many experiences as both player and GM, I have never had anyone complain about so-and-so's character having an unfair advantage, just for being a [fill it in].  I'm not sure it is an actual problem, in the eyes of the people with the highest stakes in the proposition.  That said, I don't know your group, and in any case you are certainly allowed to take a principled stance, even in the absence of a practical concern. 🙂  I just personally don't see a need to introduce a bunch of extra rules to cover it.  I suppose the designers of the game  (who are thoughtful guys) take that same stance.

The answer is simple:  Rather than bothering with the extra arithmetic, the designers decided to allow GM's fiat to give out spells at character creation.  Considering the great variability in magic from setting to setting, this seems quite sensible.  There is a rule about how many Folk Magic spells a generic character gets (based on POW score), but beyond that, it's freeform.

Your method is fine, but calls for further bookkeeping; you assign a cost to something that's nominally free, but then give extra points.  Do you mean those points could be used for anything at all, not just magic skills?  Is your concern that higher-form magic users get some advantage at chargen?

A tidbit for you...

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/243775/Individuals--Denizens-of-Tozer

Individuals: Denizens of Tozer

This game aid presents ten characters who could be used in the Old Bones scenario Savage Swords Against the Necromancer, as alternates to those provided, or for additional personae if there were more than three players. Of course they could be used in any other scenario as well, keeping in mind that they have been created specifically for a Sword and Sorcery setting. In accord with the genre, none of these individuals knows magic, and some of them are rather villainous. There are notable exceptions, too, in case one prefers to stretch or challenge the classic tropes.
 

These characters present a diversity of attitudes and skills. Some are good fighters, while others practice nonviolence. Some can actually read and write, while others barely speak the local language. Some were born in the city, but others have arrived from far away, thanks to the vicissitudes of fate. Some are sophisticated and full of guile, whereas others are simple and sincere. Some are ignorant, while others are wise in legend, lore, and craft. Each is driven by personal Passions ranging from greed, vengeance, and physical craving to loyalty and human kindness.
 

These Denizens of Tozer have been created for the MYTHRAS gaming system, and should be fairly portable to other d100 systems. Characters are not merely their statistics, of course, and with that in mind their personalities, histories, and other defining qualities could be translated to any game system.

 

You are free to use this material in your own game world, for fun. If you are interested in doing more than that, such as incorporating it into a scenario or campaign setting for publication, please contact us.
 

Individuals: Denizens of Tozer is offered as Pay What You Want. If you like it, please consider leaving a tip, but in any case it's yours for the taking. Happy gaming!

This post is essentially copied from the corresponding original on the forum for The Design Mechanism, https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/designmechanism/my-own-take-on-a-character-creation-spreadsheet-fo-t2393-s10.html.

Version 2 of this tool is now available for download here.  The biggest change is the addition of a Fancy Character Sheet.  Not only is this sheet fancy, but it does a lot of additional annoying calculations for you automatically, including:

* movement rates and distances for all common situations, even taking into account your armor
* adjusted Initiative score, taking into account your armor
* equipment roster with Encumbrance tracking, for those who can be bothered

To support the additional features, some small changes in field structuring have also been enacted.  Most are apparent on the Basics sheet.

As fussy as it may sound, I have taken pains to check that the fonts I use in the workbook are completely free for use in all contexts, including embedding in documents.  That means if you choose to use the output from one of these sheets in some publication, or even just distribute it on the Web for free, you don't have to worry about breaking licensing laws (and if you haven't thought about this before, you should...).

Enjoy!
 

Mythras_char_helper_v2.ods

On the TDM forum we had a thread or two about the oddities in the Mythras die progression in various tables, including the one for damage mods.  I came down in favor of using the d12 whenever possible. 🙂  I had a specific concern when calculating the damage mod of a titanic critter in Savage Swords Against the Necromancer...  Let's just say I doubt you'll have to take the table out as far as I did. 😱

It's a good review, FYI.

Nice.

I'm not sure that it's worth much, game-mechanically, but you could make it so.  I would treat it basically like a broadsword or scimitar, or maybe a falchion.  To me it's clearly Medium/Medium, like those other blades, and should have the Bleed and Impale Traits.  Other than that, we can quibble over exact damage and AP/HP ratings.  Others know more than I do about weapons IRL, and surely will be glad to expound about whether it should be 1d8 or 1d8+2 or whatever. 😉

EDIT:  I may be confusing this weapon with the Greek kopis.

PM sent

Yes, eye of the beholder and all...but, my eyes!  My poor bleeding eyes! 

What's orcish for "bait and switch"? 

I think that would be a good idea in general.  As an alternative, you might choose to present that list as a small, standalone product (if e.g. as author you prefer to deemphasize combat , or complexity in combat).

I agree:  You need to develop your own Combat Styles.  This is how it is in base Mythras; I couldn't recall for M-SPACE, but now I have checked the book, and I couldn't find them (searched document for "package" and "combat style").

There are three extremely simplified Combat Styles in the "Simplified Combat" section, but I suggest you make your own. :-)

I already commented on this over on the Tanelorn forum.  Personally, I don't like this logo, but I don't feel strongly.  For details, check my other post.

Rod, Raleel, and all, I have just uploaded a related spreadsheet file (for base Mythras characters, not CF) over on the Design Mechanism forum.  Thanks for the inspiration, Rod! :-)

7 hours ago, clarence said:

That's an interesting asymmetrical setup. I would probably make damage asymmetrical as well. The villain would deal 1d6 damage to all four pursuers (if rolling a 3 all pursuers take 3 each). But only the fastest PC deals damage to the villain. And I would say the fastest PC is the one who rolls best each round (ie. the highest success). 

The thinking behind this is that a fast villain will outrun all four pursuers. But the pursuers are only as fast as the best rider. 

Yes, I agree:  In this method, the villain needs to deal "damage" to each of the pursuers, else it is radically unfair.

About Clarence's final sentence above:  In a sense, the definition of "best rider" is the only actual question, in choosing a mechanism for this scene.  If you believe "best rider" means "the character with the highest Ride score", then that never changes throughout the scene, and you just have that one static character compete against the villain, in every contested roll of the extended challenge.  However, if you believe "best rider" means "the character who rolled best this time around", that title is dynamic, and could be different for every contested roll of the extended challenge, so you have all 4 heroes roll every time. :-)

The more I think about it, the more I like having all 4 heroes roll in the extended challenge (no matter how exactly you structure the rolling).  Not only does it seem more realistic, but it engages every player at the table, which is an inherent good, to me.

11 hours ago, Runeblogger said:

Haha  of course, that would have been another valid option.

however, in this particular chase, the PCs didn't want to wait for the slowest horse to catch up, they just cared about stopping the minion before he got on board a ship...Each of them wanted to be the first, so each wanted to do their own rolls.

To me, the second sentence above is quite separate from the first.  If each player wants to try to be the winner, fine; then in my setup you have 4 heroes + 1 villain all competing in the Task.  That's more dice rolling, but otherwise is the same game mechanic as for just 2 teams.  It also improves the chance that (at least one of) the heroes will prevail.  The first sentence, though, suggests to me that nobody really cares who stops the villain--the opposite of the second sentence, to me--, which is why I outlined what I did.

As we can see, the good news is that there are numerous satisfactory approaches to modeling this situation. :-)  Your Mythras is Your Mythras!

1 hour ago, Runeblogger said:

Hi, the other day I used the conflict rules from M-Space in the samurai campaign I'm running.
Well, kind of, since I (still) don't have the book, but I have Rev d100 and I've been reading some comments about it. However, I wonder if anyone has used those rules for group contests?

In that session, the minion NPC was riding a horse, trying to escape from the PCs, who followed him galloping on their own horses also at full speed. What I did was:

I used the average of each horse's CON+DEX as the pool of points to be depleted, while the PCs and NPC used mostly their Ride skill in opposed tests. However, if I had had the 4 players roll each turn against the same roll of the minion, they would have had a clearly false advantage against him. So what one of my players immediately suggested (good boy!) was for the minion NPC to have four different pools of "hit points" and every PC could only "damage" one of them during the conflict. The minion would hurt every PC's individual pool as long as his roll was a better success than each of their individual rolls.

In this way, the PC who managed to reduce to zero the particular pool of the minion he could hurt would be the PC who would manage to get to him first.
If the minion would have managed to reduce to zero the pool of every PC, he would have gotten away.

I also had them change the rolls at some points. For example, when the minion reached a settlement, he tried to quickly convince the guards that he was being chased by 4 violent bandits. So when the PCs arrived, they had to roll their Influence or Oratory against the minion's successful roll or lose 1D6 points of their own pool, which represented the maneuvers they had to do in order to avoid the guards trying to stop them for questioning.

My players seemed to like it this way. But I wonder how would you have handled this.   Or if the actual rules are very different from this approach!

You already know my suggestion... :-)  I would set up a Task, and in this case I would have each of the two teams attempt to complete it, with the higher point total winning the day--or you could have the first team to a target Task score be the winner, which would emphasize the racing aspect.  Having 2 teams, not 4 against 1, seems rather natural, and avoids the problem you mentioned.  Call for 2 rolls of Ride, 1 roll of the mount's Athletics, and 1 of its Endurance; the team of 4 may use either the best Rider's score, and whatever scores apply for that character's mount, or may be led by the most Athletic or Enduring mount, and whatever score applies for its rider.

I think your way works well, though, and may be simpler (but maybe not).

9 hours ago, Skunkape said:

Sounds really interesting! I'll need to check it out!

I hope it fits your needs.  We live but to serve.

Yeah, it does an exact match of the text in the list-box selection to pull the related data from the Charts tab, using the LOOKUP function.  If the text in the list box doesn't match that in Charts, because of e.g. a typo, then the right data probably won't be pulled.