Aelwyn

Maybe they don't know they're working for a Lunar. Duke Raus could hire them to perform a task through an intermediary, and they could find out later who their employer is. That might make for an interesting reveal. What do the characters do--go back on their word and betray the one who has already paid them, or swallow their pride and take the money? Or if things go south during the task, maybe they get rescued by Duke Raus, who reveals he was their employer--now they're doubly in his debt. If the players are curious about the person who has hired them, finding out who their employer is could be an adventure in itself.

Judging from the art, I would guess somewhere from northern India and the Himalayas over to central China and Cambodia. Although I usually think of Central Asia as the "stans"--Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan. This might be useful: http://omniatlas.com/maps/southasia/19241013/ http://omniatlas.com/maps/russia/19200103/ You can change the dates with the drop-down menu. Some interesting stuff: 1920: Soviet revolutionaries take over the Khanate of Khiva and the Emirate of Bukhara. 1921: Reza Khan stages a coup d'etat, becoming the effective ruler of Iran. In 1925 he officially deposes Ahmad Shah. 1923: Nepal signs independence treaty with British Empire. 1928: Persia occupies Western Baluchistan with assistance from British.

I remember reading that two characteristics would be added together for base skills, ala more recent versions of Runequest. That would yield non-multiples of 5. I don't know if that decision has been changed, but it seems unlikely.

The version currently being sold by Chaosium, if it's the same one I bought last summer, is based on Big Gold Book + Enlightened Magic, but it is heavy on setting notes, medium to light on rules, and light on stats. So it would be VERY easy to use it with any RPG, D100 or not. I suspect After the Vampire Wars will be rewritten a little after the new Basic Essentials rules come out, and packaged with same, but that's a decision for Chaosium. From what I can tell, the new Basic Essentials is not out yet and has not been used in any existing product. Last I heard, a new version of Mythic Iceland was going to be the first such product.

I actually like the word conflict, but I missed most of the Forge Wars. To me, conflict can be violent, nonviolent, social, verbal, nonverbal, or almost anything where one force opposes another. It can describe a dance-off, a political campaign, a battle of the bands, a poetry recitation (if there's a chance you can fail), a starship battle, or two thugs slugging it out in a bar, or even something impersonal, like a climber v. a mountain. "Sequence" doesn't really describe those things. "Exchange" is better than "Sequence" if you're looking for an alternative. But "resolving a conflict" is something many people can understand--and that's what you're talking about. The GM wants something to happen; the players want something else to happen (or alternatively, the fictional villain/implacable force of nature/entropy "wants" something to happen, but the GM and players and the fictional characters want something else to happen). That's a conflict--the rules resolve that conflict. If you're worried about turning off people who don't like ideological wars, I would avoid talking too much about theory in the rules. Just tell us how to play the game. Don't compare the game to other games, and don't talk about game design history or theory. Give us maybe a paragraph or three in the introduction about what you think Revolution D100 is about and your ideas behind developing it. Then let the rules speak for themselves. I think "narrative" and "simulationist" are more highly charged than "conflict," and I would avoid those unless you think it's necessary to situate Revolution D100 along that particular continuum.

More info here... and here...

RQ6 has a number of nonlethal Special Effects: Bash (knockback), Blind Opponent, Compel Surrender, Damage Weapon, Disarm Opponent, Entangle, Grip, Pin Weapon, Stun Location, Take Weapon, Trip Opponent. Yes, often the house rule is, you only do lethal damage if you deliberately call a lethal shot. Doing so would have severe consequences for either a hero or a villain.

If Joseph Campbell had created an RPG setting, he would have made Glorantha. If your players aren't familiar with Joseph Campbell, that won't tell them anything. If they are, that will tell them almost everything. I would avoid saying that any one group is like a combination of five different Earth cultures. That's just confusing--there's no way to tell what parts of each culture are used, and people who aren't history or anthropology majors will be baffled. Just tell them that their characters are defined by culture and religion, and that there are many, many cultures and religions in this world. Describe a few examples--maybe Humakt, Orlanth, Storm Bull, Issaries, Chalana Arroy--and ask if those appeal to anyone. If a player isn't interested in the ones you pick out, ask what kind of character he or she is interested in. That probably comes after the pitch, though. You might even just show players the runes, along with their names and descriptions, and ask which ones appeal to them--if someone picks Death, you've got a Humakt worshipper.

Just to add on to the review I already posted, what I liked most about this book is how you could use the setting to do role-playing about current social issues. Characters might be veterans of the Vampire Wars and be dealing with post-traumatic stress or residual anger toward their opponents... whom they may now have to work with. They might be dealing with discrimination against fey or harassment by the police. They could be dealing with corruption in high places by an elder vampire or a monitor highly placed in the government. That won't appeal to everybody, but if that's not your cup of tea, you could also use it to do straight investigations or just kill a whole bunch of peeps. There's no requirement that you explore current issues, but it's there if you want to go down that road.

I'm going to concur with Mr. Scott. Blues shouters were musicians, mostly from the 1940s and 1950s, whose vocals were halfway between shouting and singing. Big Joe Turner is the most well known, but if you're interested, also check out Wynonie Harris, Tiny Bradshaw, H-Bomb Ferguson, and Bull Moose Jackson. Lyrics were often risque or advocated massive alcohol consumption.Tiny Bradshaw's "Snaggle Tooth Ruth" is particularly insane--it describes an out-of-control party that turns into a huge fistfight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blues_shouter

Baulderstone, on a strictly legal basis, I agree, and as a content provider, I have some sympathy for people who want to protect their IP. But sometimes it's not worth the negative PR. In the case of the day care centers, Universal and Hanna-Barbera jumped in and offered to repaint the day care centers for free, using their own characters. Making Disney look very, very bad. http://www.snopes.com/disney/wdco/daycare.asp

Oh, crap, I need to change my signature.

This is a link to a story about a company that we may or may not be discussing and about which I have no comment: https://www.theselfemployed.com/law/disney-threatened-sue-daycare-centers/

I would agree with both of these. BRP is more simulationist; Revolution D100 is a descendant of both RQ6 and FATE.

It's neither light nor dark, because you could easily run either type of campaign. You could do everything from a very light campaign for very young children involving goblins, friendly ghosts, and talking animals, all the way up to something completely brutal where the characters end up alive but stuck on meathooks in the Siberian vampire enclave. Or perhaps the characters are the ones sticking the NPCs on meathooks, if they're into that. I got the early edition and wrote a review here: Sounds like Chaosium may fix most of the problems I noted. If the lamination problems are fixed, typos are fixed, and interior art is replaced, this will be a first-class product, even without pre-rolled characters and a ready-to-play scenario.

As another example, an expert at Communication, with a skill level of 90% and Traits of English and Literacy, spends some time in France, gains the French Language trait, and instantly goes from 0% proficiency to 90% proficiency in French. Not particularly realistic, but maybe that's okay. Maybe the GM requires the player to spend a year or more in France, but there's still no way to express in game terms the fact that the character is going to gradually get better at French. There are a couple of ways you could change/fix this, but they might introduce complexity you don't want. 1. You could have "levels" of French (or any other second language) that have to be bought as Traits, in order. (Start with Basic French; replace that Trait with Advanced French as you get better; then replace Advanced French with Fluent French. OR 2. You could add a second Communication skill only for French and make the player progress in that skill separately, and buy Traits and Stunts separately for French, at least until Communication [French] is equal to Communication [English]. OR 3. If a character is on the way to learning French but hasn't acquired full proficiency, the GM could waive the rule that it's a required Trait and allow characters to use it with the Raw Skill column. Either the game designer or the GM would have to determine which skills have levels, or progress on separate tracks, or under what circumstances a required Trait isn't really a required Trait. Like I said, more complexity, and you might not want that. I'm not necessarily recommending any of these methods--I like the simplicity of the system as is.

Communication could be CHA x 2; I know a lot of high intelligence folks who aren't so great at communicating. Athletics could be STR + CON. That's a little more balanced. Maybe not as realistic as you want, since DEX is probably involved in Athletics, but you're going to have to make a decision about whether realism, balance, ease-of-play, or crunchiness is most important.

There's a nice review of the game on RPGnet. http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/16/16573.phtml

And for the low price of only $10.97, you can read all about them. Plus you get to view some cutting-edge art from 1983. http://www.chaosium.com/superworld-roleplaying-pdf/ Why weren't they included in the BGB? Pure speculation, but... they would have made the book too long, and they don't really add much to the game. They tend to make players obsess over fine details of character creation rather than to just grab the powers you want, accept the default advantages/disadvantages of those powers, and start playing. However, if you're looking for highly customized, unusual characters or NPCs, Superworld enables you to fine-tune how the powers work to a great degree, using a universal point buy system.

The Power Disadvantages in Superworld are limits on powers, such as "can't be used underwater," "doesn't have immediate effect" (Action Rank Delay), "requires extra energy," "chance that the power will burn out." The Superworld rules have a little more crunch than the superpowers section of the BGB and enable you to carefully design a character a little more, i.e., I want my character to have Teleport 18, which would normally take 18 energy points (similar to power points) to activate, but I also want it to only cost my character 9 energy points, so I'm going to spend an extra 9 hero points (similar to character build points) to have that Advantage. To pay for those 9 hero points, I'm willing to add the Disadvantage of Failure Chance 45%, which gains me back the 9 hero points. So now I've got a very customized Teleport power that due to an Advantage and a Disadvantage doesn't work exactly like the default power. "Handicaps" from Superworld are more like personal problems a character might have to deal with, but they also include things like "susceptible to damage" and "bad luck." In the BGB, they're known as Character Failings, and they're on p. 142. The list isn't exactly the same as the one in Superworld, but there's a lot of overlap.

I voted GM decision, but clearly that's going to be a little harder to program than doing it all one way.

Looks wonderful. Some ideas on the overall structure: I think users are going to want to use this for two things: 1) simplifying character (and NPC) creation, and 2) record-keeping/automating game mechanics during an ongoing campaign. So I'd suggest that those be your two main sections. Alternatively, you could separate it into a GM and Player sections, and then have those two sections fork into NPC creation and GM screen (for GMs) and character creation and player screen (for players). If you go that way, lists of races, powers, skills, and professions would all go under character/NPC creation (with characteristics, etc.), and then they'd get recorded in some kind of character sheet available through the player/GM screen. Apologies if I'm misunderstanding what you're building. Interface looks beautiful. Only quibbles: I can't really tell what's next to the human on the characters button, so you might just want to have a stick figure there. The "lists" button and the "story" button are very similar. If powers, professions, and skills go over into the characters button, then the "lists" button could change to something like "equipment and money" and you could put put a bag of gold or a helm or a shield or a backpack there. But if you decide to keep it "lists," the icon you've chosen makes plenty sense, and people will get used to it as they use the tool.

Ah! In that case, I wholeheartedly agree. Customized skins for every forum would be very cool.

I am no expert, but my impression is that the Lunar Empire is a lot more feminist than most of its adversaries and predecessors. But it is also an expansionist empire, and it's been set up as an antagonist for the heroic barbarians. Gloranthan politics is complicated.

Click Home. They're third and fourth down from the top.